#& feels like he needs to be useful maybe bc if he doesn’t have a narrative function why does he exist

[erinravenseeker]

Just had a middle-of-the-night “ohhhh” moment as I just figured out that Kim Dokja needs the Fourth Wall not because of the scenarios but because it was essentially his survival mechanism for life.

Now I have only read the novel once so I could totally be forgetting stuff & way off-base but this is what I remember. Inane rambling under the cut, major spoilers included.

We know he’s generally antisocial, placing himself outside of society like a reader, and he internally smoothed over Sangah’s rough points even before the scenarios, making her into a ‘character’ (a caricature of herself) that fit into an archetype.

Dissociating from reality & viewing himself as a reader is his coping mechanism & “WoS coming to life” provides a convenient excuse to keep ignoring that fact.

This kind of ties in with an idea I’ve been forming about the Fourth Wall, which is that KDJ is fundamentally incapable of believing that “The Characters” (read: everyone) can experience growth as a result of his actions. He exists outside of the story, he is in the audience beyond the fourth wall, so he cannot affect the characters.

Hence the paradoxical nature of the Fourth Wall. For as long as he is a Reader, the Fourth Wall is maintained. And as long as the Fourth Wall is maintained, he will continue to be a Reader.

(Warning this is where it gets incoherent and messy.)

Kim Dokja fundamentally NEEDS the Fourth Wall to be maintained. Not just because of the OD stuff, but because it’s the way he’s learnt to cope with existing. It’s also why dying is so easy for him—we know he cannot deal with the guilt of making people he cares about suffer, but if he’s just a Reader, that means he can’t really have any meaningful impact on their lives, so it’s fine for him to just… disappear.

Kim Dokja is not actively suicidal, he’s just invested himself so far into the worldview of himself being a Reader that to him, his temporary deaths no longer register as dying. More like… stepping out of the theatre for a bit.

It gets complicated when we hit OD. Because then we realise the KDJ we’ve been accompanying is essentially a self-insert OC. So we can ascribe the way he thinks to OD, including all the coping mechanisms and self-distancing. But where OD manages to escape the narrative along with SP, at the same time the KimCom Crew escape the narrative, KDJ actually kind of… doubles down?

Like, OD does what any Reader does and learns from the book. When KDJ says “I, someone of no redeeming quality, could be loved by the others.” It’s not just him learning this lesson. It’s actually kind of the opposite. OD is Reading this lesson so he learns that he’s allowed to accept the mercy of SP & the 999 crew. So they escape the narrative.

KimCom also manages to escape the narrative but KDJ… can’t. He comes to the conclusion that he was actually backstage all along. But that means he’s still not ON stage. A Character can’t feel for the Script Writer or Director or Stage Manager. So he doubles down on his separation from them, stepping into that role. And then then KimCom comes banging on his door backstage because they’re not just characters, they’re the Actors now, and KDJ disappears because he can’t deal with that, because he fundamentally cannot exist on the same plane as them.

I think that’s why I’m hopeful at a post-epilogue ending. KDJ The Reader exists at essentially a higher tier than the people around him, and so he believes he cannot be loved in a way that has a lasting impact on them. But he DID spend years being affected by WoS, by Yoo Joonghyuk. If he becomes the Character, and them the Readers… maybe, just maybe, he can actually accept that love.

[ourflagmeansgayrights]

man i saw this and i was gonna write a whole post abt how maybe the problem for these ppl isn’t that ed wasn’t punished enough (even tho that’s what they say) maybe it’s that it’s a poorly-executed redemption arc but they don’t know how to verbalize that.

and that would actually make sense bc ed doesn’t have a redemption arc in s2. bc the show does not think ed needs redeeming. even at his worst and most harmful to the people around him the show is deeply sympathetic towards him and gives us sooooo much screentime dedicated to showing us that everything ed does he only does bc he’s hurting. which doesn’t excuse any of what he does but it does shift the narrative framing away from an actual redemption arc, where a character needs to like, learn why the things they did were bad and try to make amends. but ed never needed to learn anything, he knew his actions were unacceptable and that’s why he did them. he was trying to be the most horrific monster he could be in hopes that someone would get sick of him and kill him.

so then i went looking for an old post i wrote abt redemption arcs to talk abt why ed’s s2 arc probably reads like a poorly-written redemption arc for ppl who are expecting an actual redemption arc and. i change my mind actually. because “is this character willing to accept that their behavior is harmful, to make amends for their past behavior if at all possible, and to try and become a better person?” yeah we see ed do all of that tho.

Accept Their Behavior Is Harmful: i mean aside from the fact that ed knew this the whole time, we also see ed talking to fang about how guilty he feels for how he treated the crew. but like this isn’t zuko slowly unlearning an entire lifetime of fire nation propaganda, ed doesn’t need a season(s)-long arc abt this. He Already Knows

Make Amends For Their Past Behavior: like literally the whole thing with getting pushed off the ship!! wearing a sack and a collar at the crew’s behest!! he’s very much trying to make amends!!!!!

Try To Become A Better Person: there’s a lot i could talk abt here but just on a surface level, he’s trying to quit his job where he attacks and steals from random innocent ppl for a living. like objectively that job does not make you a good person. and also that job makes him miserable and when his mental health is in the shitter sometimes he hurts other ppl in his efforts to hurt himself so like!!! he is very much trying to not be the kind of person who forces crew members to fight to the death anymore!!!!

so yeah, thinking this was abt a “poorly-written redemption arc” was giving these ppl too much benefit of the doubt lol they just want to see ed grovel and suffer for an entire season, which was never going to happen lmao. the show thought izzy had more to apologize for than ed and that’s why ed’s apology was one sentence and izzy’s apology was a whole speech on his deathbed. the show thought izzy needed more punishment for his actions than ed did and that’s we see izzy get put through the physical ringer in the beginning of s2 and ed getting beat to death by the crew happens off-screen. ppl can argue all they want abt how ed did so much worse than izzy but at the end of the day the show disagrees with those takes and that’s why it treats these characters the way it does. die mad about it.

[silverliing]

Mike’s wall art

I love seeing analysis about ST set design because it really spells out so much of the story without verbally telling you, and ive seen much discussion abt the details of mike’s room in s4 (that one way sign haunts me btw). buuut there are two pieces of visible wall art that I don’t really see get talked about on here (that i’ve read) and I just have a few things to say about them and what i think they might be telling us about Mike’s character and upcoming journey (hint: going into the UD)(hint: making plans and leading the party)(hint: byler)

so idk if this has been pointed out or if it’s common knowledge atp but the two pieces circled above are lithographs by artist MC Escher; Hand with Reflective Sphere (left)

and Relativity (right)

(a lil hard to see in this screenshot i’m sorry😢)

The artwork is beautiful as you can see (canon Mike Wheeler has great taste in art). Escher was most known for his intricate “impossible constructions” which are optical illusions of paradoxical space, he was also the inventor of the impossible cube:

this is some pretty cool nerdy, mathy stuff that I’d expect mike would be into, but looking at it from the context of his character and the direction of where the story is headed, there were 3 immediate possible readings that popped into my head which point toward 3 different (yet coexisting) directions:

He likes the art — It’s true, this art taps into Mike’s interests. Valid but boring. zzzz. snooze. You could argue that these posters should be taken at face value, but I just feel like in a show like ST —where the main cast knows of and is in various ways affected by an evil alternate dimension— having a character with wall art that references perspective/dimensional anomalies doesn’t really tell us much about his specific character or story. We’ve known that the ST set designers use a character’s space to show us who they are as people, these two artworks need to tell us something about Mike and his journey. And maybe Mike’s sensibilities about the world at large are shifting into nihilism with everything that’s happened in hawkins and the art reflects an absurdist outlook of future (teenage stuff, growing up, etc. etc.)

It foreshadows Mike’s s5 arc — I love this one. Mike is one of the few in the main cast who haven’t been in the upside down proper, so this art could reference not only that he’ll go into the UD in s5 but also that there could be dimensional anomalies involved in his travel or journey there. Perhaps this is how they’ll be able to find Max— by bending the laws of physics and using the mechanics of dimensional travel against itself, perhaps to open new doors or travel in different directions (hint: time travel 😏). And i think the reason this art is in Mike’s wall is bc it will be Mike who formulates the plan to find Max and retrieve her with the help of El and Will’s new powers 😏 (g*d knows i want to see leader Mike make a come back)(and Will with powers).

Will Byers — we know Mike and Will are tied together by the narrative and so I think these artworks could be directly pointing to Will with big red arrows. This point is corroborated by simply analyzing the formal qualities of the artwork, both individually and as a set. Hand with Reflective Sphere is about optics and perspective, about seeing, but also about the flattening of space. Relativity is about space, dimension, and paradox, but also about impossible perspective/vantage point. When read together the objective reading of them is about sight and space and paradox, about how the flattening of space helps us see something new and impossible. While Mike hasn’t experienced the dimensional travel into the UD proper, many of those closest to him atp had; El, Will, Nancy… but the reason i think these two posters remind him of Will specifically is because out of everyone else who has been in the UD, only Will experiences the feeling of being stuck there and of seeing into both dimensions at once; the stuck view-master, true sight. Mike associates these things combined (dimensional travel and dimensional sight/perception) with Will.

Also, Mike is a nerdy guy, he seems interested in this kind of stuff for the fun of it so he could’ve had sciency charts that reference the subject of visible light and paradoxes the way Suzie does, but instead he has not one but two fine-art pieces by a pretty big graphic artist that reference the subject of sight and space. Also, Idk what it is about the fact that it’s fine-art and not movie/game/dnd art that makes me also associate it with Will— the self-proclaimed visual artist of the show. The words are all jumbled up in my head rn but; artist. sight. all-encompassing. dimension. paradox. new perspective. -> -> -> -> Will Byers (is this a hint to wills powers??) etc. etc. etc. you get it

Secret 4th option (ties into #2)

Mike gets Vecnaed and this forces him into extensive self-reflection and the labyrinthian trials of finding himself and mastering his fears(maybe he’s already begun his self-searching and that’s why we see this art at the beginning of s4). cue cool musical montage of Mike navigating his own memories and mind-scape to find the answer that will make everything make sense while also hiding from vecna and buying the party time to find a way to end him.

[myfairkatiecat]

why'd you get so mad at that sophie/keefe sibling anon?

hope that doesn't seem rude

I didn’t mean to come off as mad or anything, sorry if the tone didn’t translate right! BUT! I did get a little frustrated, because this is something that people who ship non-canon ships rlly need to figure out.

And hello to you anon, and also to whatever anon send the original ask! Because considering the amount of anti-Sokeefe friends I have in this fandom, you totally might be one of my friends! Want to be clear—this isn’t because I have a problem with you not liking Sokeefe, the problem is with saying she saw him as a sibling in canon when she did NOT see him as a sibling in canon, because that has icky implications.

Since I don’t want to misrepresent anyone’s opinions, here’s the exact message:

Sophie never seemed romantically interested in Keefe, sorry

it was more like a little sister comforting her brother

That’s the part that bothered me, because that implies that in canon, the thoughts sophie has about Keefe seem more like a sister about a brother.

It’s one thing to read Percy Jackson and say, “wow, I just don’t really like a Percabeth ship :/” and that’s totally valid, like, ship whatever you want! Ship Annabeth with Piper if you’d like, or Percy with Jason or whatever!

But it’s another thing to say “Percy always saw Annabeth as a sister!!” 1) that’s a weird thing to say because they’re canonically together and so comparing them to siblings is really icky, and 2) if you actually read the books it’s very clear that he develops romantic feelings for her. Even if it’s not super prevalent in the first few books cause they start out as twelve.

So people who say Sophie never seemed to like Keefe until book 9 sound to me like if someone said Percy never liked Annabeth or considered her romantically until the kiss in battle of the labyrinth. Just because it wasn’t a focus of the narrative doesn’t mean it wasn’t there from the beginning—and it CLEARLY was!

It just sort of feels like a really icky reaction to not liking a ship to say they always acted like siblings when clearly that isn’t canon.

If you don’t like Sokeefe, maybe you can say you would have preferred it if Sophie saw Keefe as a brother. Maybe you can write fanfic where they’re just friends and have more of a sibling type relationship. But that isn’t canon and that’s FINE, you don’t have to be on board with everything in canon, but for the love of God not liking a ship doesn’t mean they were never interested in each other 😭

Especially cause the ask didn’t even say she saw him as a friend, it said she saw him as a sibling??? Hello??? That’s SUCH a weird thing to say about two people who are now canonically dating???

Like it wouldn’t really have bothered me if the anon said “I would have enjoyed kotlc more if Keefe was a brother to Sophie instead of a love interest.” Like, I definitely disagree, but I don’t care that much cause everyone can have their own opinions and enjoy whatever they like about the media or write whatever fanfic bc they don’t think canon did it right! You’re MORE than welcome to believe that Sophie and Keefe would have been a better dynamic IF they were siblings.

But don’t say that IN CANON Sophie treated Keefe like she was his sister, because considering the many specifically romantic thoughts she has regarding him, that is a really weird thing to say because it implies that people think that way about their siblings? And comment internally on how attractive they are? Like maybe even if the anon had used the word “friend” I wouldn’t have been as frustrated, though it’s definitely the case that if we’re looking at canon, Sophie has feelings for Keefe. They’ve kissed. They’re together. That’s canon. If canon isn’t your thing, read fanfic, but don’t outright deny what’s in canon in a way that has weird implications.

It’s almost like saying sophie never had a crush on fitz. It’s slightly different because she acknowledged that one more overtly beyond just commenting on how good he looked or how he made her feel, but it would still really frustrate me if someone said Sophie and Fitz had more of a sibling relationship in canon when clearly they had romantic feelings for each other. So like it has nothing to do even with the fact that I ship Sokeefe, I would get frustrated if it was about Sophitz too because you just can’t say that someone who has very clear romantic thoughts about someone always saw them as a sibling in canon

That has really weird implications??

Anyway. I know im not being super tactful but I do hope that anon sees this so they can understand what the problem was with the ask, which wasn’t that it was anti-Sokeefe. I’m super okay with someone not liking Sokeefe. Literally a bunch of my best friends in this fandom are anti-Sokeefe. One of them might even be the one who sent this ask, in which case, hey friend!! my advice to you is, if you want a sibling dynamic, go write some fanfic! But… don’t imply that “and she had to say, the beachy look really worked for him” is a normal thing to say about your brother, because it seriously is not.

Hope we can all continue to be friends! Again it’s not the anti-Sokeefe that bothers me, it’s the deliberate misrepresentation of canon in a way that has icky implications!!

Whoaaa that was long sorry

TLDR: Sophie has romantic thoughts about Keefe in canon, so saying that in canon they seemed like siblings is weird because that implies people normally have romantic thoughts about their siblings.

Have a great day :)

[opheliasam]

4.16 is literally the craziest most insane episode ever . Dean goes to heaven n sees sam for who he is via his memories (assumes this must bc sam hates him despite sam having done nothing to imply that… like these were his happiest memories.. sorry his happiest moments weren’t about u or john oh my what a transgression???? like what . maybe it’s not about u or john it’s just about sam . It’s not a reflection of what he feels about you just about what makes him happy) and after seeing . Sam for who he is . he resents him bc sam does not feel all warm n cosy about home but the thing is . That’s not his fault and no one is saying that it’s dean’s fault . he just assumes that this means sam hates me and sees me at fault and resents me which makes him in turn resent sam . For being different than the way dean saw him . Which is actually so fucking crazy it makes my stomach churn—peak toxicity … and dean throws the samulet away bc his baby brother isn’t baby brother-ing and he can’t stand that. He does not like who sam is outside of his little brother—sammy. He does not like sam—the person. And so the only way he can reconcile staying with sam is by getting him to BE not sam but sammy. But samny is just baby brother—endlessly enamoured and dependent on dean, all heart eyes and hero worship. But what this means for sam is that he has to cede aspects of his personhood and autonomy away until he becomes what dean wants him to be—because that’s the only way dean can love him without resenting him. He makes himself smaller and smaller to fit into the role that dean sees him as, and it is such a small space—and sam doesn’t want to be sammy. He doesn’t, he wants to be sam but time and again the narrative punishes him for attempting to be sam until he can’t trust himself anymore and turns to dean (stone number one) and dean betrays, and lies and manipulates and changes the rules all the time, but dean can’t be wrong, right? he did it all for a reason (some reason) So . So it must mean that sam is at fault even though he had no way of knowing when the rules change or why they do.. he just knows that he doesn’t know anything, and that he’s a mess and that he needs dean and dean protects him. (this is what he believes he knows but we know that is not objective reality—prolonged abuse leads to him rationalising and even revising history just so it can portray dean in the best possible light, despite it not being the objective truth.) Because that’s the only way sam can make sense of anything.

(I’m using the rhetoric sam employs in order to make sense of the things happening to him, and the deep seated denial of his victimhood.)

Because otherwise it would mean something that it cannot possibly mean—that dean loves him but he’s also tried to kill him multiple times over and he’s violent and he doesn’t like that sam is vegan or likes smoothies or books and he doesn’t like when sam talks back or tries to question a decision and he is so angry all the time and sam is so so scared of him . But it can’t mean that . It cannot. Because that makes dean an ab—so it must be sam. It must—has to be sam’s fault, it has to be because he deserves it and sam just has to try harder at being good so that he can absolve himself. He’s not a victim. He can’t be .. he can’t be , he wants this . He does he does. He. He has to.

[goldensunset]

Fun fact about N’s character theme: it’s based on prime numbers! I don’t know enough about music theory to tell you exactly how, but it’s neat that the composer took his mathematical affinity into account -moon

ya!!!! that’s what i was talking about w the arpeggios. that’s a detail i think is great fs….

don’t get me wrong it wouldn’t surprise me at all if n’s battle theme was some masterpiece of musical composition on a purely technical level that i don’t get because i don’t understand complex math and music theory terms. i tried researching the meanings behind his name and just exploded. i mean look at this. i do not go there

like i’m sure they were absolutely cooking something intentional. it’s all so nerdy. i trust they made their choices for a reason. but i still disagree with them

i guess what i was getting at is that like extra flavor details in the music like this are great but what’s underneath really matters too… the main melody plays the biggest role in storytelling here. in a critical plot moment you should be able to listen to a track and just Feel a certain emotion and get an impression of what the character is like or what the situation is like. is it happy, sad, fearful, determined? unsettling? does it actually distinctly lack a melody, and what does that say about it? like without having to study details like this behind the scenes.. you shouldn’t need a phd the song should just hit you y’know

like it doesn’t exist within a vacuum it exists in the context of ‘i’m fighting this guy who by now i know means well and has been lied to and is in denial at this point, in the hopes that he backs down from trying to change the world for the worse and admits he was wrong, so that we can please be friends’ i understand n is an unusual sort of person and that formulas and calculations are part of his character quirks. but also at his core he’s not a machine or something he’s a human being with a lot of feelings and beliefs. that’s like. a really important part of the narrative… ik he suppresses his thoughts a lot but like

ig i just would’ve expected more of that passion in him to come out during his decisive battle. you would not have to change that much about it to satisfy my conditions. like his standard battle theme works fine for him when he’s battling you just to like test and study you in a calculating sort of sense but in the endgame you’d expect it to be more dramatic. which is why i love the pokemas version where it gets fused with his castle theme it sounds absolutely perfect like that’s the n theme we needed

the like. main part of n’s battle theme like the melody part… it is full of dissonant intervals. again who knows there might be a numerical thing to it that i’m unaware of but y’know like those are the sounds that make you distinctly uncomfortable. that composers use to signify fear or evil. i once woke up in a feverish mini-panic bc that song made its way into my dreams. (and that actually made me appreciate it more not less. lol. if you strike fear into my heart that’s a compliment). and i know he is an antagonist and you should be at least a little bit afraid of him but see like that’s the kinda thing they did for like. ghetsis. the pure evil dude of all time whose name is actually music-related too. the man is so evil he got named after his own evil music. ok king

basically n my man he deserves more to his battle music than sounding scary and cold

buuuut i guess you could say that’s what his encounter theme is for. ‘prisoner to a formula’ has a distinct melody (although that song is creepy lol). and then in b2w2 it gets remixed into a major key and it’s now called ‘n’s theme’ so like yay for once mr natural harmonia has a memorable theme that sounds like he gets sunlight and fresh air and that’s definitively considered to be his character theme!! yay!!!!!

idk. maybe this is all supposed to represent how he suppresses everything he feels and withdraws into his shell and his mechanical obsessive habits while he’s battling. bc his heart is distinctively not in it it’s not true to who he is as a character and also he’s in denial and trying to talk a big scary game the whole time. like the music represents his outer self not his inner self which is imo not ideal for a decisive character battle. and especially not given that his battle theme is at its core basically the same in the sequel even after he’s undergone character growth they bothered to make a remix but still didn’t add heart to it. as if they still wanted your impression of him to be offputting. but who knows!

[vamos-chilli]

My god people are so miserable in your tags, trying to find a problem everywhere . And btw haven’t you guys wondered that the vibe was maybe just a bit “off” because Carlos was just probably disappointed that he didn’t win that’s it, no need to insult or blame Charles when he did nothing. He won his race beautifully, so no need to be bitter. Some Carlos fans are being really annoying lately sorry

im ngl i dont even think the vibe was weird charles went to celebrate w whoever was collecting the constructors trophy i can’t remember and both of them gave carlos a spray before carlos went to spray max and they chatted before they left the podium like it wasn’t weird to me

but the main thing is people are always going to be like this in fandom . it’s a form of parasocialism in believing that we as viewers can understand the inner workings of our idols from ‘knowing them’ through the screen and coming to ‘recognise’ what we see as behavioural markers . happens all the time that’s why we end up with prominent shipping and rpf cultures in a lot of fanbases bc of our interpretation of how people interact with one another .

it can become obsessive for people, the majority of fandoms i’ve been in have been centred around real people and the subject of ‘truthing’ comes up a lot- the strict determination of a trait or personality of a person based on a second hand perspective of them, where the f in rpf is made redundant and people start to genuinely believe their headcanons of a person are applicable to their real life person . larry stylinson is knocking at the door .

because of parasocial and truthing behaviours peoples perception of drivers becomes tilted on what will best fit the subconscious narrative they are building- lando for instance i believe doesn’t deserve the mass hatred of mischaracterising as an awful person he’s been getting this season. nothing has changed between this season and the last except for the number of wins under his belt .

last year people felt the same hostility towards max . a few years ago it was lewis . its the relationship to our drivers as a competitor that’s changed . and those that pose a bigger threat receive the harsher penalties to their character .

it’s not an issue with carlos fans . it’s not an issue with lando fans or max fans or charles fans or anyone . it’s an issue of parasocialism that’s prevalent in every fandom for every character ever . we see it more for these drivers because they are top 5 drivers and they have larger fan bases . none of us are the big bad .

sometimes it feels like us vs them and i’ll tell you first i felt that way at the start of the season because genuinely i was being flooded with carlos hate in my asks and people posting the most insane negatively parasocial conspiracy theories about carlos having paid out the media to talk about him as if he didn’t just win a grand prix 2 weeks after surgery and be one of the most valuable drivers on the market for 2025 (i still get heated about that bc it was just plain disrespectful) . and yeah it did feel like it was carlos fans vs the lecfosi . because sometimes we let it be .

we build these insanely negative parasocial relationships with drivers and it consumes us. i’ve had to block ferrari fans for constantly posting carlos negativity and no doubt charles fans have had to block some carlos fans for constant driver negativity. lando fans will have gotten death threats over a race result even though that’s an insane thing to do and so have oscar fans .

everyone is annoying all the time we all annoy each other with our parasocial truthing of drivers personalities and the only way it’s actually going to change is if

1) we all take a step back to analyse our own behaviours and how we engage with negative parasocial behaviour

2) we stop making call out posts of ‘x drivers fans are so annoying’ because all it’s doing is reinforcing the narrative we want to build

[bestworstcase]

@sailorb00 tags here

#i was also on the fence about the EA siblings and Theodore being related by looks alone (#... and the alice + dorothy comparison#mostly chalked it up to coincidence but now that they're conf. to be from Vacuo it's looking less like coincidence fsdf#then is the girl on the desk photograph Alyx before she and Lewis found the EA?#And Theodore juat inherited it? He grew up on his great-great grandfather/uncle/who know's stories about the EA being real?#Maybe in hopes that one day his sister would return and be welcomed by family? even if they're generations apart#if Lewis's pseudonym is Theodore Im gonna lose it#I mean we dont know his or the EA siblings' surnames.#IS THAT WHY THEODORE DOESNT GO BY HIS SURNAME#BC OF THE FAMILY LEGACY???#ok imma go sit down now before i hurt myself w/ speculation fsdf

YEAH SAME on the being like Doubt.jpg about a relation between theodore and lewis on the basis of… skin color, basically, but the minute i heard “i couldn’t believe they were from vacuo,” that’s a deliberate choice to link these kids to the setting for the next major story arc, and that’s happening in conjunction with several developments in the 9.11 animatic that suggest history is about to become very important (soaring popular support for the crown—probable mountain glenn history-repeating-itself theme with salem razing vale—oscar mentioning vacuo’s history of colonization—plus the great war having ended with ozma’s use of the sword in vacuo).

it’s very. raises eyebrow. alrighty then!

so whatever lewis did after coming home, other than writing tgwfttw, probably has some narrative relevance—might be as small as something jaune needs to find closure, or it might be bigger than that, who knows, but if it was a hundred and fifty years ago and it matters enough to be in the story, then the story needs a vehicle to deliver this information in a manner that feels naturalistic and non-arbitrary. (jaune-stumbles-across-loved-one’s-memorial-statue-by-chance once is a believable happenstance; twice, a cheap contrivance.)

the simplest way to do that is to introduce a vacuan character with some connection to lewis, and the obvious choice there is a descendent, because lewis lived a long enough time ago that family lineage is kind of the only plausible reason for a living character in the present to have a meaningful personal connection to lewis.

(and it can’t be oz, because oz had no idea the ever after existed.)

this descendent-character also ideally should be prominent enough in the story to matter for reasons unrelated to their relation to lewis, to avoid feeling shoehorned in. and they are probably human, given the apparent rarity of interracial human/faunus couples.

that pretty much narrows it down to theodore, or the asturias twins. NOW hysterical as it would be for jax and gillian to be descended from lewis, finn asturias is obsessed with “the old stories about [his] family” and yet doesn’t drop even a single hint about the ever after, so i think we can rule that out.

which leaves theodore. hmm.

that picture in his office:

She still remembered that her attention had been drawn to one photo in particular: a black-and-white picture of a young girl in pigtails and a checkered dress with a small black dog. She hadn’t mustered the courage to ask who she was to Theodore. A daughter? A sister? Whoever she was, Velvet could see the resemblance.

plainly evokes dorothy, and even bearing in mind that there may be discrepancies (theodore is described as blue-eyed in the book but has brown eyes in beyond, for example)… there’s nothing in this photo to suggest a resemblance to alyx beyond ‘young girl.’ alyx doesn’t wear her hair in pigtails, nor does she have checkered patterns anywhere in her design, nor does she have a little black dog. so i doubt it’s her.

but black-and-white does suggest it’s old. ‘sister’ seems a lot more plausible than ‘daughter’ for that reason, and ‘mother or aunt’ even more likely than either of those.

(the other thing about a young girl with a small black dog in This story, is.

it’s a symbol for the deaths of the ozlem girls and the inescapable grief that underlies the whole conflict between ozma and salem—there’s a reason she sends a giant monstrous hound to capture oz and then huddles in the shadows miserably looking at conjured images of her daughters until oscar wakes up; the black dog reappears as this terrifying monster in conjunction with the surfacing of all this pain.

so the question is to what extent this small black dog in the photograph is Just Toto, and whether the specific narrative symbolism is or isn’t in play here; Did This Girl Die? that would preclude her being theodore’s mother but she could well be an aunt or great-aunt.)

of course the point of drawing attention to this photograph might be as simple as hinting at theodore’s quote-unquote real ozian allusion; not dorothy but the silver shoes lost in the desert. which is an interesting angle to consider with regard to this possibility of lewis being his ancestor, because on the one hand there’s the silver shoes carrying dorothy home yet becoming irretrievably lost themselves in doing so, and on the other there’s alyx, the white rabbit, guiding people home yet never able to return home herself. see the rhyme?

in a sense jaune and team rwby bring alyx home with them, in that they know what happened to her and if there are descendants of lewis still living in vacuo then the question of why she never came home can finally be answered. and if the descendent is theodore, then the intertextual confluence between him and alyx is more resonant than the surface dorothy-and-alice comparison; the silver shoes are the home the white rabbit returns to, as a memory, a hundred and fifty-odd years late. and it matters.

but also i have a little hamster wheel churning at all times in the back of my mind and right now it’s churning around: sixty, seventy years before the great war began, vacuo was a colonial territory of mistral—before the great war, it had no formal government, it wasn’t a state, and oscar references the history of colonization in the 9.11 animatic. so that history and the history of the great war—which was for vacuo a war for independence—is narratively salient. lewis was a child who grew up in vacuo during the fractious decades preceding the great war; he gives a face to this period in history.

and jaune told lewis and alyx not only that he was from remnant but that he was from more than a century in their future; he and lewis “compared notes on remnant.” jaune couldn’t believe they were from vacuo, “back before the war, before huntsmen.”

they compared notes.

jaune’s grandfather fought in the great war.

so lewis went back home to colonial vacuo fifty, sixty, seventy years before the great war knowing that the great war was going to happen. knowing that within his lifetime vacuo would fight for its independence and win. knowing that there would be peace in the end. according to what blake says in 9.2, in the book, alyx “didn’t know [afteran] customs and started a war between the townsfolk” and that takes on a really different subtext now that we know the story’s author was a man who grew up in colonial vacuo knowing that the great war was coming.

either lewis and alyx were vacuan, or they were mistrali but born in vacuo; either way the tenor of the girl who fell through the world suggests that lewis’ sympathies lay with vacuo. both options stand to be compelling if he acted upon this knowledge more directly than writing anti-colonial themes into his children’s book. or books. there is also the boy who fell from the sky, mentioned in after the fall, and alice’s adventures in wonderland does have a somewhat lesser-known sequel.

i doubt lewis fought in the great war himself—he was probably in his seventies or older by then—but if he had children they would have been of an age to fight for vacuo, and if lewis had passed down to them the stories he knew of what remnant would be like after…

y’see how lewis could have ended up playing a really important role in vacuo’s side of the great war, if he’d decided not to leave matters in the hands of fate? jaune told him about what the world would be like after the great war, but lewis also figured out that jaune knew more than he let on, figured out that jaune remembered a story lewis hadn’t written down yet. he knew that knowledge of the future could shape the future, because if it hadn’t been for jaune and jaune’s foreknowledge of his book, he might not have written it the way he did, as a guide for how to get out of the ever after.

so he goes home, knowing the great war will happen and what the outcome will be—or else knowing that it might happen that way. who did he become with that knowledge? what did he choose to do with what he knew? the one thing we know is he became a storyteller, and “storytellers have great power” is a prominent narrative theme.

salem inspired the world to rebel against the brothers by telling the story of what they had done to her, and speaking of her vision of a time when humanity could be free.

lewis…?

[rhondafromhr]

So I started writing that Max and Steph roleswap AU and I wanted to post this little snippet I have so far and hear everyone’s thoughts because I’m not 100% happy with it yet…idk i feel like it might be too exposition heavy if that makes sense?? Like the backstory is important but idk I feel like I just kind of dumped it and maybe could weave it throughout the story better?? Lmk if you have any thoughts :)

Also Max and Richie’s relationship is going to be platonic in this (bc once again I’m weak for aroace Richie and the power of friendship being treated with the same narrative weight as romantic relationships).

Finally shoutout to tumblr user @idk-imrambling-idk who said in the tags of the original post that Max and Steph give sibling vibes in this au because I was like you know what, I love that, yes they do!! And it really inspired their dynamic and relationship in this

Here it is :)

Stephanie learned what it meant to be powerless at the ripe old age of nine. She sat next to her father in the crowd, watching the blindingly bright spotlight shine down upon her mother and beaming with pride as she was crowned Honey Queen. The applause was uproarious, every last townsperson’s gaze fixed solely on her. She’d always known her mom was the sweetest woman in Hatchetfield, but now it was official. Now she had the beautiful, ornate crown upon her head to prove it. As her mother was whisked away to what she assumed was some sort of super special, secret ceremony, her father insisted over her protests that no, they couldn’t go with her, she needed to go home and get to bed. It was a school night, after all, and she’d see her mother soon enough. She didn’t. Her mother never came home that night and with each passing day, Stephanie’s hope that she ever would dwindled even further.

Every woman who’s ever won that pageant has left Hatchetfield and never looked back, but back then, she didn’t know that. She just knew that one day, her mom was there to fawn over her drawings and point out all the little details she liked and put her spelling test up on the fridge and say how proud she was that Steph worked so hard and got more words right than last time and the next day, she wasn’t and there was nothing Stephanie could do about it. She wondered what she did wrong that her mom was so eager to get away from her. To this day, Stephanie doesn’t know where she ended up. She went through a brief phase where she spent hours a day fervently researching online and following every crumb of information she could find, desperate for any answers, but the very few flimsy leads she was able to find turned out to be dead ends. Not long after her twelfth birthday, Solomon told her she really ought to stop digging, because she wasn’t going to find the answers she was looking for and if she did, she wouldn’t be able to handle them. She rolled her eyes at his usual weird, cryptic nonsense, but for once, she didn’t argue with him. She never did figure out how he knew what she was doing. She only did her sleuthing when she was home alone and always made sure to use incognito mode.

As she got older, the list of things she had to do and wasn’t allowed to do and people she couldn’t hang out with grew exponentially. Everything always came back to the next election and how her behavior might reflect on her father. There was to be no hanging out with the smoke club kids, because he didn’t want the public thinking she was some kind of drug fiend (as if they were doing actual drugs. They were seventh graders. They may have upgraded to the real stuff now, but back then, Stephanie’s confident their vices of choice were, in fact, cloves and oregano, whether or not they were aware of it). If there was an option for honors or AP in a given subject, she had to take it, regardless of her interest or aptitude. He didn’t want her looking like some kind of slacker. Ironically, she credits that with how she became one. It was embarrassing trying so hard, only to still struggle to understand the material and receive abysmal grades in return, but it was equally embarrassing to admit to this and ask for help, so she figured the easiest route would be to stop trying. She made sure to keep her grades just barely high enough to keep her dad off of her case, but refused to do anything more. These days, she doesn’t have to sweat it. If she’s really in a pinch, she can just threaten some nerd into doing her homework for her.

As if that weren’t bad enough, the summer before Freshman year, one Greg Jägerman followed in his wife’s footsteps and vanished without a trace. That in itself was nothing out of the ordinary, but it did raise the question of what to do with the son he left behind. Solomon wasn’t doing so hot in the polls and Miss Tessburger decided that taking in the guy’s now-orphaned kid would make Solomon look kind and charitable, two of the last descriptors most voters would apply to him. Of course, nobody asked Steph her opinion. She was just stuck with this annoying pseudo-adopted brother one day and expected to be cool with it. Well, more accurately, nobody cared whether she was cool with it or not. The worst part was that he totally bought into this stupid fake family thing. He still won’t stop calling her sis.

What really infuriates her is that he gets the freedom she’s long been denied. Solomon truly couldn't care less what he does as long as he stays out of major trouble, doesn’t completely flunk his classes and shows up for all the public appearances and family photo ops. To this day, he still calls Solomon Dad as if he has any right to, as if Solomon sees him as anything more than an unfortunate consequence of a bold PR stunt, as if he’s had to put up with a fraction of what Stephanie’s endured from him. Solomon is not his dad and he is not a Lauter, no matter how many people mistakenly call him that. Solomon even praised him once. He came home from his latest lacrosse match and proudly said that they’d creamed Sycamore or whoever. Solomon, nose-deep in the latest poll and survey results Miss Tessburger had sent him, absently said, “that’s nice, son,” and waved him off. Sure, it was insincere. Sure, it was dismissive. But it was still far more than Stephanie had gotten since she was literally nine years old and more than she’s gotten since. It made her blood boil. She’d been jumping through hoops like some kind of goddamn show dog for her father for years and never got so much as one half-hearted compliment. It was just expected of her.

Still, she continued to jump through those hoops. It wasn’t like she had much of a choice and at this point, it was all she really knew, anyway. Unsurprisingly, Solomon still demanded more and just before she went into high school, he decided she was going to do sports. If there’s one defining trait that all of his constituents in town share, it’s their bizarre obsession with high school football, so this was a surefire way to impress them.

“Why do I have to?” she’d protested “Max already plays volleyball and lacrosse, doesn’t that satisfy the sports kid requirement?”

“Stephanie, I’d like to have an intelligent conversation with you. In other words, shut up. You know as well as I do that nobody cares about either of those sports. Clivesdale doesn’t even have a lacrosse or volleyball team and beating them is all these simple-minded hicks seem to care about. If you refuse to bring up your mediocre grades or put your time into any useful extracurriculars or bettering yourself in any way, the least you can do is join the cheer squad. How hard can it be to jump around and do some silly little chants?”

Max was there, too. Of course he was. On the increasingly rare occasions where Solomon was actually home, he was sure to be right there at his side, telling him about his day as if he fucking cared. Calling him Dad as if he had any fucking right to. She didn’t miss the way his face fell ever so slightly when Solomon said that nobody cared about his stupid sports and she couldn’t help but feel smug about it.

“Ha, yeah,” she said with a smirk “volleyball and lacrosse are dumb.”

The brief satisfaction was quickly overshadowed by a more pressing matter. Hell no, she was not going to join cheer. Pep, enthusiasm and silly dance routines aren’t really her style. She wasn’t sure she could do it if she wanted to and she really, really didn’t.

“Well, figure it out,” Solomon told her, looking at her with the usual disdain “it’s either that or football.” He may have said it mockingly, but she decided to take it as a challenge. She breached her own “no putting in more effort than necessary” policy and spent hours a day on the empty football field practicing plays. She’d usually drag Max along with her if he didn’t have practice for whichever one of his unimportant non-sports was in season.

“Hey,” he said during one of these practice sessions as he threw an admittedly decent spiral, his signature dumb, goofy grin on his face “I’ve been thinking about trying out, too. It might be kinda fun to be on the team together.”

She scowled. “No,” was her only response “just shut up and throw the ball, okay?” This was going to be her thing, damnit. He wasn’t going to invade it like he did everything else in her life. He did as she asked and never brought it up again.

She spent hours more at the gym, doing hard cardio until she was as sweat-soaked as that annoying weeb kid she saw around school sometimes and pushing herself to her limits strength training. It all paid off when the day of tryouts arrived and she blew everyone away with her athletic prowess, earning the position of star quarterback. That alone would have been great publicity and the fact that she was a freshman and the first girl ever to make the team in any position were the cherry on top. It spoke volumes that Solomon didn’t have anything negative to say, although he didn’t offer any praise, either.

If nobody could stand up to her before, they really couldn���t now. She wasn’t just the mayor’s daughter anymore. She was the star football player and with every victory she helped them score, especially against Clivesdale, the teachers and the principal became less and less likely to discipline her if anyone complained of her so-called bullying. It wasn’t as if they could do much before, but now they didn’t even care to try. With that, her iron grip over the school was secured and she’s thoroughly enjoyed it ever since. She still can’t do anything about her mom walking away or her dad treating her like some kind of accessory whose only use is to make him look good to potential voters or her stupid not-brother encroaching on her life and taking everything that’s rightfully hers, but she can maintain the delicate balance that is the high school hierarchy she’s created and bring order to Hatchetfield High. Really, she’s doing them all a favor. They don’t know what’s good for them and without her, it would descend into chaos.

Max slides into his seat in AP Calc with seconds to spare before the bell rings. He’s slammed two of those vile tasting sugar free energy drinks and he’s praying they’ll kick in soon.

“Alright, we’re going to have a pop quiz today. Hope you’ve been hitting the books, Mr. Lauter,” Miss Mulberry says. He doesn’t bother correcting her. Maybe if he could wear his letterman that has “Jägerman” embroidered on it, people wouldn’t make that mistake so often, but he’s not allowed to. The letterman jacket is Steph’s signature look. Not even Kyle and Jason get to wear theirs unless it’s a game day and they’re her closest friends. Max doesn’t even get that privilege, so he settled for a navy blue flannel with a tiny nighthawk patch poorly sewn into the pocket and his letterman hangs untouched in his closet. Sometimes, he doesn’t mind being called Max Lauter, even if it sounds a little off. Sometimes, he wants to believe that’s what he is. Other times, he wishes people would get it right. That’s the least of his worries right now, though. His chest feels so, so tight and a wave of nausea overtakes him and makes him wonder if ingesting so much caffeine and chemicals was a wise idea. He’s screwed. He can barely pass a test in this class when he has time to prepare and sacrifices several nights’ worth of sleep to study. He shouldn’t even be here. He knows he’s kind of dumb. Stephanie gleefully reminds him on a regular basis. Solomon doesn’t vocalize it, but sometimes Max will say something to him and he’ll just give him this look as if he’s just uttered the stupidest, most incomprehensible words ever spoken, then shake his head and go back to ignoring him. He’s always had a lot of trouble in most subjects, but math is by far the worst. Realistically, remedial algebra would be more his speed, but it wouldn’t be very becoming of a sort-of Lauter. Solomon took him in when he had nowhere else to go. He’s been a lot nicer to him than his own father ever was. He figured the least he could do is make him proud, but so far, that plan has backfired tremendously. Nobody’s going to be impressed with the D plus that he’s clinging to for dear life and can still feel slipping through his grasp.

He glances to his left and sees his neighbor calmly reach into his backpack and pull out his pen and calculator. The sheen of sweat on his forehead would suggest that he’s almost as nervous as Max is, but his demeanor radiates confidence and excitement. Max wonders why that guy wears so many layers if he’s always so sweaty. They’ve been in classes together since the first grade, but they’ve hardly spoken two words to each other. Max has, however, watched his hand eagerly shoot up whenever Miss Mulberry asks a question. He has watched him answer every equation with ease, solving them without fail, even when it all looks like gibberish to Max. If anyone can help Max out of this jam, it’s this guy. He has no real reason to, but Max supposes it can’t hurt to ask. What’s the worst that could happen?

“Hey,” he whispers “Shitlips, right?” He immediately winces. Fuck, he did not mean to say that. That’s how Steph and her friends always refer to him and he let it slip without thinking. Richie turns to glare at Max, clearly not amused.

“Sorry,” he says sheepishly “I meant Lipschitz. Richie Lipschitz, right?”

“Yeah,” he says, still a little irritated “what is it? We’re about to take a test.”

“It’s just that, uh, we’ve been in school together for, like, ages and I just realized I’ve never introduced myself. I’m Max.”

“Yeah, I know, Max Jägerman. The mayor’s kid. Stephanie Lauter’s brother.”

“She doesn’t like me reminding people, but yeah,” Max replies with a self-deprecating chuckle “I feel kinda bad now. I called you Shitlips and you got my name right on the first try. A lot of people think it’s Lauter.”

This gets Richie to crack a faint smile. “Yeah, I always remembered it because it sounds like Eren Yeager.”

“So, you ready for this test?” says Max with a sheepish grin “‘Cause I’m really, really not. Like, nothing in this class makes even a little bit of sense to me. I’m one hundred percent going to fail. Unless you help a bro out.”

“Oh, we’re bros now?” Richie says with a raised eyebrow.

“Sure,” Max says “we’re Nighthawks, right? We gotta stick together.”

“But won’t we get in trouble?”

“Not if we don’t get caught,” Max says “rules were made to be broken.”

“Fine,” says Richie “I’m willing to tilt my paper slightly so you can see it better. Try to keep up, though, I’m not waiting to turn in my test so you can finish copying. That’ll look suspicious.” That much is true. Richie’s always the first person to turn in his test in this class, usually by a substantial amount of time. “And don’t be super obvious about it,” he adds.

“Really?” Max says, his face lighting up in a way that he rarely allows it to “thanks, dude, I owe you one!”

[coffbeanie]

One of my biggest “what if” thoughts for miraculous ladybug is “what if the writers let Nathaniel be another love interest for Marinette even after Evillustrator?”

(I elaborate on this under the cut!!)

Just bc as someone who was in the fandom (and by that I mean I watched the show on YouTube and saw fanart via Pinterest and google images) like before season 2 but after season 1 ended, Nathaniel not only seemed to me like a well liked character, but there was also a good amount of fanart with him and Mari

I feel like he was kinda the go to for people who didn’t quite like him with Adrien (I always wondered why she didn’t just pick him-he seemed just as cute and as nice and he liked her back) and I also see him as that “Luka before Luka” as in he was another guy to ship Mari with, and they’re both kinda emo with the artsy vibe

I say this bc 1. I think it would have been interesting story wise and 2. As someone who was present when Nath as a fairly popular side character it’s sad to see him be neglected by the narrative

1. I’m not saying the writers should have scrapped Luka entirely and replaced him with Nath- obviously not Luka’s important to the story. I also understand that having too many love interests would have been difficult to tackle, but it would have been fun to see Nathaniel go “oh yeah I had a crush on you lmao kinda awkward it’s fine tho i’m trying to move on and I might be into ladybug now” and to them have Mari do a double take and be like “crap maybe I do like you a bit”

Also I think it would have provided interesting development for Mari to have Marc as a romantic rival-characters like Chloe, Lila, and Kagami (at least when she was first introduced) were all kinda put into a bad light, Chloe and Lila cause they were just mean and manipulative respectively, and Kagami cause she first came off as kinda mean and cold, giving Mari enough reason to dislike them and question whether they’re good for Adrien outside of also being jealous, but Marc wouldn’t be like that for Nath-he’s a quiet kid who seems nice enough, and he just writes fanfics, plays soccer, and doesn’t want to be bothered. If liked Nath enough, she would just have to accept that she’s feeling pure jealously cause you can’t really hate him for any other reason, also could have led to fun shenanigans to her trying to justify not liking Marc when she really can’t, she’s just mad cause he’s getting close to Nath

Also cause it would have been interesting to see Mari almost be rejected-maybe it’s just me but I could never really accept Kagami as a romantic rival cause they always portrayed Adrien as almost hesitant to get with Kagami, and his love for Ladybug would triumph over all(yeah they would do Chat getting over Ladybug for an episode it barely lasted) so I couldn’t see them actually being together and having the both of them be happy. Also Chloe and Lila weren’t fit for Adrien just cause they sucked

And for Luka he’s just like still there, and while he knows now that Mari and Adrien are made for each other before he had this “but I’ll still be here waiting for you if you need me :D” vibe

I think Mari being rejected by a character romantically if he was presented as a legit love interest would add more to that “just a normal girl with a normal life” cause we all don’t get what we want and people we like aren’t just going to stay waiting around for us-if Nath clicked with Marc more than he did with her than she would just have to deal with it, and seeing her deal with a still kinda hard (cause rejection is difficult) but realistic situation (something must of could relate to as it doesn’t relate to superhero-ing) would have been refreshing

2. I understand as I’m typing that I’m slightly biased towards Nath (were all the fanarts I saw as a kid really that popular? Or was I just being given Nathaniel centric art caused that’s what I looked up? I can’t remember honestly) but I’m still disappointed with how he was being pushed aside in the show, especially when-the character who would draw his superhero self insert at first denying a miraculous when presented one, and having to share his hero debut with three other people

(Penalteam could have worked if it was more Sabrina centric cause it’s hard to get out of a toxic friendship so yeah she would have gotten her miraculous last, because while getting away from Chloe definitely took her some time, ultimately she was still able to do it and become a hero, and what a better villain for her to fight than a whole bunch of Chloes; Ivan, Marc, and Nath should have gotten their own eps and I stand by this)

Idk as someone who got into the show bc of the Evillustrator episode, it’s just hard to see my fav boi be pushed to the side :((

If you read all the way to the end, thank you and pls share ur thoughts!!! Especially any Nathaniel fans wanna know if anything else has thought of this.

[tossertozier]

ao3 literally didn’t let me put my thoughts into my end notes at the end of my new chapter of rewriting it. i’ve been CENSORED i’ve been SILENCED i will SHARE WHAT I HAVE TO SAY!!! (it was just too long.)

i hate the sequences that occur after the restaurant in the movie. i’m not even going to get into why it’s stupid. the introduction of the artefact thing is when i went from “this isn’t going to be a very faithful characterization adaptation of a character gold-mine book” to “this is going to be a bad movie.” what in the goosebumps was that. do we also need to find the map to treasure island. i don’t feel like explaining why i feel like if you get it you get it.

i am stoned as hell there is so much i wanted to tackle in this it is insane. how to hold a mirror to the first chapter, as the book does, without directly or senselessly repeating it. i find the sequel bizarre in its choices. i really do. why do we spend SO long retconning the clubhouse. what the fuck are we doing. why are we doing this. the kids are adorable, and i understand the desire to shove em back in there. but i genuinely think it lacks confidence in the adult cast. a film that doesn’t trust its ability to win the audience over with just the story they have to tell is a narrative that hasn’t been well thought through. because genuinely. the entire sequence added absolutely nothing of narrative value. also. it’s a retcon. just didn’t happen, and i guess they regretted it?

also i love my sweet little guy ben but how the FUCK did he build that.

he didn’t, he just didn’t. even “reinforcing the walls” those walls are at least 6 ft tall. there’s… there’s just no fucking way… by himself?? if we were gonna do this why not be like… plausible about it and be like “oh yeah this is what we did Together after the events for the sake of ~healing~ energy and we still had plenty of people in town that don’t like us” that would have been fine? i guess bc bill moves away at the end of the movie. maybe they did it in like the three days they had till bill moved? i don’t know. it was dumb. all around.

also.i feel characterizations are off in this entire sequence. stan and the kids with the bonnets felt like an unnecessary attempt at being wholesome. forced? maybe? i really want to stress i think the kids acting abilities shined with the material given.

the inclusion of eddie breaking the toy? weird. out of character. wonder why it was included. wonder if they were looking to recreate that improv magic that made that first movie so special.

i, obviously was absolutely taken with the storytelling of chapter 1, and i wanted to know everything. i did as much research back in the day as i could on the topic. i was fascinated by that these sent those kids to camp. i hadn’t heard of something similar in a project in a while, and i thought it was genius. (obvious nod to child actor ethics, hope they were being observed, etc etc etc) but i went to camp as a kid. camp is fucking magical for friendships. i’ve tried and failed many many times to write camp based fics because like the friendships and the feelings and experiences you have when suddenly untethered from your home base is crazyyyy. i had some of my deepest feelings of trust during my friendships at camp… like to this day. genuinely

the young cast chemistry in the first film is insane and it is what makes that movie and it is heartbreaking to accept that it was… literally never coming back. even if you mimiced the process however long later. a lot had to have happened to, around, between those kids in that time elapsed. that’s going to change whatever dynamic they had before. that’s perfectly fine, but when you literally coattailed that script on JDG and FW’s backs (i still laugh at “suck the wound!! get in there!!” in my head sometimes) and let dialogue come naturally as a result of the experience and the environment… you should accept you cannot script its continuation. love love love the kids. still think giving them the scene like that was a mistake. it was time that should have been utilized to fall in love with the adult losers before we start scaring the shit out of them.

gonna say it… not a huge fan of the scripting of richie. we’ll get into it later. the book makes it a point to say that richie as an adult is not a cruel man. the apology moment is IN the book over a joke that surprises him. being in derry brings him back to a part of himself he’s deeply uncomfortable with. having his dialogue have a bit of a mean streak with zero exploration of it bums me out.

now to the second part of this: shitting on the book, which of course i do reference several times in this now literal fucking essay as of course… ultimately it’s the holy book. it is canon, to me. IT is the book. these movies are adaptations. i’m going to be real here: i respect stephen king as an author. though my jokes may suggest otherwise. etc. it is his story and that has to be commended. these are his characters and plot and original ideas and that’s a fact.

the second act of the book is a mess. in order to kill an entity, you have to explain what it is. that’s… that’s just da rulez. you cannot end existence without at least ?? rationalizing it ?? i suppose ?? to your audience.

i think that’s why king won’t touch this book with a ten foot pole. i’ve seen him show a lot more interest in projects around some of his other books. his general regard seems to be like “go nuts don’t ask me to write a script” because he knows. i don’t want to bring drugs and shame into all of this but like let’s be real… the book doesn’t really make sense when it comes to what pennywise actually is, and it doesn’t even really seem like he tries that .. hard to make sense. yes yes shapeshifter… get it. but he also makes balloons and shit appear from thin air. fact of the matter is he bends not only his own form but the reality around it.

and yes : i get it. i understand that if you’re a fan of stephen king, and you understand his universe, it all becomes less convoluted. i genuinely understand that.

but the task at hand is to write a horror movie for mass-appeal. i’m gonna take a crack at explaining what it is, why it’s so fucking powerful, and how it can be killed.

(honestly the ending of the movie, i know i know we’ll get there, but i was literally holding a hand to my mouth trying not to laugh. remember kids, if you’re ever being bullied, get more people than your bully and bully them.) we also didn’t do any of the metaphysical stuff in the first movie… so… sending bev to the deadlights instead of bill was interesting… obviously i think the interpretation of what she saw was weak as hell idk just see where i’m going with this. i’m trying to do a lot all at one time for no reason!

but really king created a BEAR of a villain to try and make sensible in two hours. i’ m gonna try

[jemmo]

rambles on that last twilight ending

my thoughts on the last twilight ending are so??? im gonna need to sit on this one for a while, bc i loved this show so whole-heartedly that i don’t want to write it off bc of a ‘bad ending’, but it also means it’s hard to reconcile that the ending was… well, i don’t think it was bad. i think it deserves more thought than that, but i don’t think it did what it wanted to, nor did it keep with what the shows message was, or should have been. and we can say it’s as simple as day shouldn’t have got his sight back, but I don’t think that was the only thing. if he stayed blind, the ending still wouldn’t have hit right for me. none of it hit right from the end of ep 11 bc it’s like I could feel the intent of the writing, but it’s not what the writing actually was. and if it was given maybe 3ish more episodes and all these characters were given more time, i think an ending like this could’ve worked. but again, it all comes down to that damn ep 11 curse that I thought p’aof was better than, bc you can’t squeeze everything that needed to be reconciled after this breakup and everything they wanted to do into one ep, not with this show.

i didn’t hate the idea of a breakup. if you’re going with the narrative of mohk having a fear of being away from day bc of his trauma and so on then fine, that works. and so it works that they had to be away from each other to grow in that way, but I do think it was unkind to mohk to send him away on that note. some understanding, and day wanting him to go for his own good would’ve felt kinder, and even if they were his real intentions, they didn’t communicate that either. it just felt like day had no empathy for him. and yes he was probably hurting too feeling like no one was trusting him, but whatever, it could’ve been done better. and if they wanted to play on anything else, then hey there was that whole bit with the car and day thinking mohk was looking after him just for the money, why not use that and the fact the opportunities mohk got in his career were connections bc he was with day. day could’ve been like well that was the whole point, you don’t work for me forever, you can do whatever you want now, or even just played more on him feeling like he’s holding mohk back. idk, i just mean if this breakup was going to turn out to be 3 years, no contact at all, which it did, it should’ve felt bigger than a 5 second argument.

anyway, then the finale comes and again, if they’d given more reason for a breakup, i would’ve understand more why day keeps on denying mohk a second chance, which i already don’t like the phrasing of bc it makes out like he did something wrong and needs to earn a second chance which he doesn’t. the whole thing would’ve been more understandable if this was day realizing that they both grew and found happiness in what they’re doing and he didn’t want to ruin that when the breakup meant it could happen. or they could’ve completely 180-ed and shown that one of them wasn’t happy, or both, idk mohk had no one in the states and was incredibly hurt and lonely, day was struggling after losing mohk like he did and reinforcing the idea that he couldn’t be independent made him retreat again. just anything would’ve given more strength behind a need to push away, and would have made it more satisfying when love overcomes it all blah blah blah.

and as much as i liked the airport scene and the fact day did go after him, do you know what would’ve been more impactful? day, knowing his full ability, and going against his mom who still worries for his safety or going bc of his mom seeing that he’s not truly happy, bc both could’ve worked given different writing, getting on a plane by himself and going after mohk, seeing him be able to traverse it all. for once we watch day by himself and unlike at the start of the show, we’re not constantly scared he’s gonna get hurt, bc he’s confident and able now and we can just watch him go after mohk and be excited about it, like the end to any other romance story. and it would’ve meant mohk got this moment where, after looking after day so much and getting broken up with bc he cared too much, he gets to see day caring for him that much too.

and the sight thing. yes, with the time they had they shouldn’t have done it, it should’ve been that they manage to find their own happiness despite it all, then the whole show would’ve been about day accepting his situation and standing up for his own ability and his own right to independence and happiness, and it would’ve meant mohk could overcome his fear of loss and guilt over his sister and learn that he isn’t to blame for anything, bc now day can make his own decisions and is ok on his own. now if there was more time, i could’ve seen it working, but only with stronger writing. I would’ve loved to have seen a conversation over day getting his sight back, maybe him not wanting it bc he’s accepted the way he is much like how some deaf people don’t want implants, and the opposing argument of how not all people in his place can have the possibility of seeing again. we could’ve seen fear in the opposite direction now that he’s used to his life, and that damn first scene of part 4, we could’ve seen him then wanting to go out into the world and look after people like him, just like mohk did for him, bc mohk made him see the importance of having someone there for you that cares for you and sees you as a person, as normal, not as your disability. and funnily enough, do you know what made me cry at the end of it? then showing the pictures that were taken when day was blind. that’s the kind of thing i wanted to see, and wished i did if they had more time. day getting his sight back but still showing how connected he is to who he was at that time and while not being thankful for it happening, being thankful for the way he’s grown, and loving the person he sees in those pictures. to go from someone who hid himself and his blindness to someone who shares his story and helps and advocates vocally for those like him, despite not being blind anymore. that way you still get to give day his sight back as your happily ever after but manage to retain the message.

so yeah. they missed the ball. but i also want to remove this idea that an ending ruins a whole show. at the end of the day, it’s one ep, and when a show has done so much good in all its other eps, at least in my eyes, that’s the stuff I’d rather talk about and remember.

[mycringeaccount]

Sooo.. What actually was Mhoks character growth?

I’m still thinking about the last episode and why there had to be a time skip.

I mean it’s kinda obvious. To skip right to the character growth with minimal effort or time spend on it.

And because we really see absolutely nothing as to how Mhok has changed, we have to analyze his actions in the episode to figure it out ourselves. But even there I ran into the trouble of not really seeing any real changes in his behavior. Not from Mhok or Day, even tho at least we where shown some scenes from his life while they were apart.

The first thing that I found weird was how Mhok still treats Day as if he was his caretaker (which Night even comments on). Bc in ep. 11 that’s what the show told us needs to be overcome for them to be in a happy equal relationship. Even the mom said there is a difference between being a partner and being a caretaker. And bc the mom was pardoned and made a fckn relationship guru in this episode, that has to be important right? (No seriously f the mom and spoilers.. nothing this ep sets up is gonna be important urgh)

Then there is the whole flirting, Mhok perusing and Day mildly rejecting the advances. The same dynamic that they had before they got together.

So kinda nothing new.

But it’s just so weird to me how I really can’t make out a change in Mhok at all but he still seemed so ooc to me this episode.

So why is that?

Is it the fact that Mhok just went right in again, flirting after literal 3 years of break up and zero communication as if nothing really happened?

That you are supposed to believe these characters had some actual character growth but nothing was shown and then they just act the same?

That the conflict they had was so poorly handled, it kinda made me sick.

For not adressing Mhoks issues at all.

Or that the issue that the show wants me to believe was the cause of their break up, which was that Day thought he was holding Mhok back and therefore he led him go, was never resolved and in the end that’s exactly what happened again for them to be together. Mhok wanting to staying in Thailand for Day, instead of having a great career, was what the fight apparently was all about and in the end he just quit that same job and stayed in Thailand for their relationship. Good job narrative 👏👏

Ok but back to the actual question. What actually was Mhoks character growth now? What where the 3 years working alone in Hawaii supposed to be for?

One thing that did stand out to me, that was kinda different, was that Mhok seemed more invasive in his flirting than in the beginning. Like how he groped Day while trying on the suits. Or how he shushed him when asking if Day is seeing someone new.

Maybe Mhoks Growth is that he respects his own wishes now more, that he goes for what he really wants without holding back.

Like when Day tells him they not gonna get back together and at first he does what he is told and leaves ( just like he left when Day fired him or wenn Day broke up with him) but now he turns back and goes to confront Day again. Not accepting Days rejection this time and going for what he wants instead.

Which I find kinda iffy bc of course it seemed to be ok, bc we know that Day also wants to be with him. But the groping, the disregard of personal space or boundaries, it just doesn’t feel like green flag Mhok to me. I’m happy that for once he seemed to fight for what he wants but how the show handles that just seems so poorly executed.

There was such a good story to be told about Mhoks grief and how he feels so responsible for his sisters death and they just dropped it to make him more of a plot device for Days story. I really wish we could have had Mhok finding new friends and family and purpose in Hawaii, or in his life in general. Bc how the story is written, Mhok still only has a desire to be with Day. Day still being his one and only priority even after 3 years. As if he was not really living, just working and waiting for the chance to get back together and nothing else. You can actually write a character building a new better life and finding a purpose, but still miss and love someone. I think that takes nothing away from the love, in my opinion it makes it even more powerful.

[ramblingdisaster73]

hi! i'm curious - what are your thoughts on some ppl (maybe mostly in the minority?) have made comparisons of the carlos & iris rescue scene in 4x03 being parallel to that of tk/carlos in the iconic Push, and how they've said it kind of undermines the emotional weight in Push?

personally, i'm trying not to put too much weight on it, bc i think it's probably not as deep as they're making it out to be, and it makes logical sense for carlos to tell her to breathe as she was near hyperventilating at the time (if my memory serves me well, i'm not planning to rewatch it so pls do correct me if im wrong) – but the more cynical part of me can see where they're coming from as well (e.g. with the framing), and it's starting to get to me a little

my heart really does hurt for tk in that moment tho :( it certainly didn't help that carlos was being a jerk during that scene - this will def always be a skip for me. there's angst and then there's being a jerk for no reason bc he's what, mad? i can't imagine what/how tk must be feeling at the time

also, idk. there's not much to work with here, a part of me wondered (if it was intentional) if carlos was that spiteful enough to purposely do all of that to get a reaction out of tk (i doubt this. it's fucked up, but it's whatever, he's already walking a tightrope between being petty and also being an a*hole. i honestly wouldn't be surprised if the writers are trying to play this up for dramatic purposes), or if they'd just wanted to be sprinkle in the additional ✨ angst ✨ to get a reaction out of the audience instead, if it was completely unintentional, or it really isn't as deep as that.

ig we'll never know atp, but i thought i could come to u and see what you think! i'm really liking the discussions we've all had in between the eps haha, i hope that's okay!

This got a bit longer than I intended.

The “Breathe, breathe” scene in Push was a huge moment for them (& us) after their breakup – but I don’t really think the writers intended to have Carlos tell Iris the same thing to cheapen the scene in Push.

I totally get the people who had that gut reaction of “what the fuck, why would they have him say that like that?” and feel like it took away from the Tarlos scene – I do. The first time I watched the ep (I have had it on repeat pretty much anytime I am home alone while I am writing.),

I had a similar thought process – when I watched it again the 2nd time though, it made more sense to me narratively & like you said she was hyperventilating & in a decent amount of distress – telling her to breathe was pretty much the only thing he could say here. Saying something like “calm down” doesn’t always help when you are not in a position to think clearly – simple direction is much easier to follow (I say this as someone who has frequent panic attacks & telling me to calm down is not at all helpful) so, if someone was telling me to breathe – I would be able to follow that direction – telling me to calm down would only make me panic more – because I have to think about HOW to calm down.

I really do think that they are making Carlos’ less than perfect sides more obvious this season, that is why what we saw last year as a little bit of pettiness (3x13) now feels almost cruel at times. I understand why there are fans that just can’t get into this storyline – why they are struggling so much.

I have said since at least last season, the writers did a real disservice to Carlos by making his appear so perfect on the surface for so long. By finding ways to put the blame for any issues between them on TK, or just glossing over his need to keep everything in boxes & his control issues – made it so some fans didn’t need to look deeper at the character – they saw this absolutely gorgeous man, saw the ways he supported TK – thought he was the perfect boyfriend/fiancé, the cop with a good heart.

Now, all of a sudden, they are being confronted with the fact that Carlos has a past, one that some just can’t fathom. They are being forced to acknowledge that Officer Reyes is not perfect and they really don’t know how to handle it.

If we had any in canon hints (other than deleted scenes we won’t ever see) of the actual closeness of Iris & Carlos – some of the people that are struggling with this arc – may have been able to believe that this person was so important to Carlos (NOT MORE IMPORTANT THAN TK, BUT STILL IMPORTANT), but – we didn’t. So now, they have to build that now – and Rafa & Lyndsy are doing a fantastic job of showing a real emotional (platonic) relationship.  

The writers had to do something that would SHOW us their closeness – not just tell us, like some of the other parts of the storyline – and this was actually (imo) a beautiful way to do it. I don’t really think it was to be petty or dickish to TK, just to show us the emotional connection the characters share. The fact that Rafa & Lyndsy have pretty great chemistry helps this as well.

Carlos was definitely walking the very fine line between petty & dickish, but I think the writers need him to do that for this part – the 3rd act. In a lot of media – the 3rd act is the hard part – either emotionally or mentally – they needed to set up the angst and tension for when Carlos got shoveled to kick off the 4th act.

Would we lose our shit if Carlos went missing while things were perfect for Carlos & TK? absolutely – we love them. BUT – to have it happen when things aren’t as stable, when they are both too much in their feelings/heads to see clearly – that is where the real pay off comes from.

We know that Carlos & TK love each other deeply, we understand why TK went to talk to Iris, we know that it didn’t trigger anything for her. Carlos – doesn’t right now. He is a man that thinks rationally (because he tosses his problems in a box & throws away the key) – but right now rational thought isn’t something he is capable of.

The man had like 15 seconds of not being noticeably stressed the fuck out on screen before that “dream” venue called him – he has been riding on pure emotion and avoidance ever since.

It is easier to lash out (or treat not so great) the people that you KNOW love you. You know that they will be there when you realize what you did/said. We all do it in little ways all the time, (we have a bad day at work, then go home – and every little thing builds up until you blow up – typically not at the people/thing that originally caused your irritation). In this case – I think that Carlos blames himself for all of it – and he can’t shove it in a box – he has to face it, especially in this 4th act.

Carlos KNOWS that TK loves him. But this man is TERRIFIED of his actions hurting Iris, that he seems as though he is ignoring TK, or at least dismissing him. I go back and forth between thinking that Carlos was more defensive to TK in the bunkroom than trying to explain it – but that is an emotional response from me. When I take my emotions out – I can see the way his anxiety is tearing him apart, he is scared to hurting TK, of TK leaving – not because of something TK did – but because Carlos hurt him emotionally. He is scared of jeopardizing Iris’ health and wellbeing.

He also can’t see that these two people, the ones he loves most (in very different ways), are stronger than he can see – especially in this particular situation.

*We have NEVER seen Carlos be the one to fall apart. He is used to being the one putting the pieces back together, for the most part – keeping a clearer head, & connecting the dots. Right now – he isn’t able to do that – but he also won’t let TK or Iris really help him – which leads to the shoveling.

I know that Tim and Ronen keep hyping up Rafa’s acting in 4x04 – but I am also really looking forward to Ronen’s as well. Both of these men have been doing such an amazing job of making us feel all these annoying feelings.

I think another reason people are struggling to see Carlos being more standoffish to TK in 4x03 is that we have watched TK handle this situation so well. Carlos tells him that he has been legally married to someone during their whole relationship, TK listens to him, listens to his reasons on why. We have watched TK handle it with grace – but are now being shown Carlos not doing the same. And it does hurt. It hurts because we know how much they love each other, how much they truly need and want each other. So, to see real friction between them (probably the most we have seen – especially since they broke up off screen) hurts. Going into those scenes knowing that the shoveling was coming hurt more.

The hurt is intentional from the storytelling perspective– but I am hoping & optimistic about a pretty good pay off. I have a feeling that a lot of this elevated pettiness will be gone like the ‘lasting ramifications of hypothermia for TK’ last season, so I am not worried about that continuing either. Once he is rescued, we will get the super tactile, loving, beautiful Tarlos – one that has become stronger through their ordeals – both separate & together.

When in doubt: Just remember Tarlos is endgame & all roads lead to the wedding.

I love the discussions that this show brings up & my husband loves that I have people other than him to talk to about this show.

[wander-wren]

i finally watched the first seven episodes of trigun stampede today and i have to say 👀👀👀 i have thoughts. i will attempt to be vague and not spoil things

first of all this is a puppy of a man and he is my new best friend

second of all, y’all weren’t kidding bout the christ allegory and all that. wow. it’s kinda goofy but like, also believable? in context?

i already knew going in that vashwood was a thing and i was waiting to see how gay, exactly, they were gonna be. and then one of the first things vash says to him is about how he has Good Person Eyes with his silly little smile and i’m like Oh okay. gay.

also it’s just, like, really sad. darker than i expected from what little i saw beforehand/the opening. (well. not the first four minutes. after that.) (maybe i should’ve taken the first four minutes as a hint.)

and more violent than i expected, ig i’m still new to anime and not used to my Silly Cartoons being full of The Violence. but also i get squicked by hand gore and arms are close enough to hands that some of the ep2/3 bits were. hm! hm. it’s cool tho. ig i should’ve expected something like that when there’s a bad guy named knives.

I HAVE A DUMB NITPICK ABOUT THE WORLDBUILDING THO. i do like the worldbuilding i think it’s really cool i love a good desert space planet. i like the sand worms. always gotta have sand worms. and the plants. it’s neat. but uh.

my question is why is the whole thing a desert and then there is ALSO the great sand ocean?? you can see the outline of the continent and everything?? but?? when we go to the great sand ocean it is literally just, yknow, more sand, and cars drive on it at the same speed as the ship, so like, what is the point. i thought maybe it’s like a big shelf, big drop off, like cliffs, but no? bc there is a genuine concern at one point about sailing into a town?? i’m so. i’m so confused. why is there an ocean. am i missing something??

ANYWAY my other nitpick is that meryl and roberto are very necessary to the story in the sense that they need to be there as outsiders to vash/knives/wolfwood/etc, as stand-ins for the audience, but like. they don’t DO anything so far. aside from occasionally doing one small useful task, they mostly just follow/drive vash around. i felt guilty about internalized misogyny for not liking meryl as much as vash/wolfwood, but cmon, one of them is a Smart Reporter who is interested in vash and has no sense of self preservation. two of them are very traumatized potentially not-quite-human gunslingers. and i like meryl! and roberto! i love a good grumpy mentor and his plucky newbie partner trope. they just don’t do much and dont give me a lot to latch onto.

yeah, that’s about it for right now. most of my thoughts are just that i love, love, love vash. so much. he’s so silly and strange and he’s a pacifist but he’s also veryy competent with a gun/in a fight. and he is sad. and he is a puppy. i want to give him a hug.

i saw that little thing about him refusing to eat after [redacted events] and how he “doesn’t deserve to cry” and meryl going “look at you!!” and clapping when he finally does, + him looking at wolfwood and repeating wolfwood’s comment about deserving to eat. oh my boy. oh i’m latching onto that so hard

same with wolfwood tbh tho i’m not as attached bc he came later and i’m still a little suspicious of some things. he’s also a weirdo but in a very different way. wow it’s almost like he and vash have really similar backstories but adapted in opposite directions.

(what if i was your narrative foil….and we were both boys…….)

oh! final thing is that i love the art style. the planets look so cool and the creature/machine designs are very neat and it’s just. pretty. yes.

hopefully i’ll have time to finish season 1 on tuesday? it doesn’t feel quite like a hyperfixation to me yet (which is good i don’t need to deal with that rn lol), but i’m definitely interested and want to take a wander through the fandom.

[saulwexler]

saul gone aired almost a year ago so maybe that's why i can't stop thinking about the whole thing rn. it all stems from the fact that i genuinely miss a show i can't even bring myself to watch anymore. but anyway. my mind keeps coming back to one element in particular: the handling of mcwexler's mental health. 6b tries and tries to show you how jimmy's self-destructive behaviors have taken a toll on him, but then nothing seems to matter anymore when he hears kim's confessed and then he proceeds to do it as well – in what seems to me like a classic "love saves you 🥰" narrative more suited for other kind of media imho. and as for kim, i know she starts to volunteer in the law again or whatever, i know she goes to cheryl, i know she isn't wearing those loser clothes in the last scene, still, i wish she could've gotten more of her journey – she was one of the main characters... until she wasn't anymore, and you were left to try and solve the puzzle of who is this person and how she's going to fight those demons that haunted her way before the howard tragedy. for a show who made me fall in love with these people's minds and how fucked up they were, the lack of closure or even perhaps realism and depth in the finale in regards to their traumas still makes me so sad

False it’s been 900 years since Saul Gone aired. It actually feels like grief since I don’t typically get that emotionally invested in shows and I don’t see it happening again. I can’t go back and I can’t go forward. just sitting in a corner i haunt 😩

my mind keeps coming back to one element in particular: the handling of mcwexler's mental health.

mental health in bcs lives in my head rent-free and I can barely articulate it. He was able pull out of his mental breakdown using the saul mask one more time, but it wasn’t really addressed 🤷���‍♀️ like, Jimmy has intense baggage, criminality-addiction-metaphors plus textbook mental health issues. He clearly has a good heart and is genuinely trying to dig himself out of a hole, but traumatic events keep piling up, and he lost the only people he could turn to for support (and these relationships were unhealthy to begin with). In a show that deals more with realism in the justice system, life in prison thematically works as jimmys ending! - it’s storage space for the mentally ill, addicted, and lonely. cynical and dark? sure!

nothing seems to matter anymore when he hears kim's confessed and then he proceeds to do it as well – seems to me like a classic "love saves you 🥰" narrative more suited for other kind of media imho.

This goes back to my theory theres a reason so many people seemed to think jimmy’s confession must have saved kim from her own punishment. The knowing glance before the the bait and switch confession feels like it should free her because that’s the type of cliche we are used to *in other kinds of media*. If life in prison doesn’t help her and love doesn’t redeem him, we are left with that more cynical dark ending (which doesn’t not work!) But the lighthearted tone from his sorkin-esque speech to the bus chant minimizes just how bleak his ending really is. It feels glib in a way no other character ending was.

The change of heart after he hear’s about Kim’s confession also denies him the same character growth. Kim is still his moral compass. If she told him to confess about lalo when the ada offered the deal (and i suspect when she was leaving him) i think he would have. but at least he became a man worthy of looking kim wexler in the eye! No longer a dog in kim’s presence now that he regained his humanity! humanity he lost from… trauma 🫠

There is “up to interpretation” and there is confusing. i chose confusing since gould and co have more recently doubled down on their *official* version (that jimmy wont get out early, probably wont see kim again). i would like a sane reason why they felt the need to backtrack on this instead of leaving us in peace.

as for kim, i know she starts to volunteer in the law again or whatever, i know she goes to cheryl, i know she isn't wearing those loser clothes in the last scene, still, i wish she could've gotten more of her journey – she was one of the main characters... until she wasn't anymore, and you were left to try and solve the puzzle of who is this person and how she's going to fight those demons that haunted her way before the howard tragedy.

it's frustrating the way kim was such an afterthough in 6b after being one of the most nuanced female character’s i’d ever seen. She just… wasn’t there, and when she was there she didn’t talk. i love rhea, she deserves all of the awards, but iif people think her best performance was sobbing on a bus I will riot. LET HER SPEAK!

We went from “i had to time of my life with you” to her telling some rando “when i knew him, he was [good]” like who is this person!!! We were so used to the slow organic character development there was definitly shock value in how she was post-time jump. trauma and guilt impact people, plus it’s been 6 years, and us obsessive freaks can take a stab at connecting these gaps! but honeslty i could do the same thing if instead of girloser floridakim, she became a train jumping hobo or a wall street trophy wife or an alcoholic working at piggly wiggly or whatever. She has become the blank puzzle.

for a show who made me fall in love with these people's minds and how fucked up they were, the lack of closure or even perhaps realism and depth in the finale in regards to their traumas still makes me so sad

it's still so frustrating that this show treated these characters with such nuance and depth, only to end things in. black and white. my theory with bob’s cantankery is its exactly like that. he keeps saying how miserable playing jimmy was, as such a lonely sad character… he suffered for his art and for what? for people to think he had a simple ending? Misery forever:)