#// even if S3 had SYMPTOMS of the issues that S4 had

[simantopia]

the most ironic thing i saw was S4 simmers on twitter saying "aT lEAst wE cAN PLAY WITH ALL THE PACKS!!" regarding S4 vs S3. 'cos it's like uh. yeah. you can play with all your packs but they're all half-baked, barely finished, content luster, recycled features, buggy af packs but uh. you do you i guess

also i've been playing S3 ever since 2009. i could play every pack back then (since i did pirate everything lmao) and never had issues. the only time i started having issues with it was around 2016, and i remember joking that EA intentionally sabotaged the game just to sell S4.

but NOW? i got it working again with ALL packs enabled AND with CC downloaded and guess what? it actually works better than S4. the autonomy / simulation lag is so bad in S4, it makes me wanna pull my hair out lmao.

[findafight]

ty for pointing out that steve graduated on time despite a severe concussion and likely limited or non-existent support (esp considering how his dad reacted to the college thing). it's also worth noting that steve had no issues passing his classes throughout high school while playing and captaining at least 2 sports (3 if you count baseball [on top of other clubs and extracurriculars] from that yearbook thing they released post s1 i think). that's not easy to do. it also irritates me sm when they harp on steve confusing the names of things as proof that he's incredibly dumb or illiterate. esp the gumby thing when it's a fucking children's cartoon. even the german vs nazi thing makes sense in the context of him having a grandfather that fought in ww2, told him stories, and probably called the nazis germans. also v hypocritical when it's not commonly pointed out that the soviets are near exclusively called the russians. yet they always conveniently forget that steve is the only reason they figured out the russian code was coming from the mall (and, going by dialogue in the scene, was specifically the person that put together that the message was coming from the mall on top of recognizing the music and being the only person to pay attention to it - i always see the realization that the message is from hawkins misattributed to dustin) and the only reason they got out of the elevator in the same season where's he supposedly illiterate and incredibly stupid bc he confused the names of things. i stg ppl that do this so they can hype eddie up make eddie feel like my enemy.

Do I think Steve was getting A's? No. Do I think for the back half of his senior year he was working his ass off to scratch C's? Yes. VERY frustrating and honestly kind of hurtful when people keep calling him stupid about it! I interpret a lot of Steve's spacier moments to post concussive syndrome, and it's actually so impressive he's doing as well as he is especially in S3, just over seven months since billy, and is finished hs. Buddy bounced back! People love giving Steve migraines as a lasting symptom of his head trauma but don't acknowledge that focus and what I call "thinking speed" are also affected. Like yeah it'll take him a minute to process what is happening and formulate a response/plan, his brain was goop a few months ago! And S4 happens less than six months after S3 so like yeah. Clearly he's not at 100% we should all be so proud of him.

S1 sort of indicates he cruises through school when helping Nancy study. He's not a model student, and while one could argue teachers were more lenient because he was on sports teams and they wanted to win, that wouldn't have applied after billy beat him because he'd have had to take a leave from the teams, and it's the eighties so some teachers would potentially have thought "serves him right for fighting".

Steve is consistently making connections to things that others aren't! With the "realizing Russians in the mall" thing he is definitely leading Dustin to the conclusion. He goes "Indiana flyer? No way" or something to indicate that it's unlikely the message was from elsewhere, and he has already realized that the transmission is from Starcourt, and wants Dustin and Robin to as well. Just because Dustin said it doesn't mean he figured it out.

(I find people also attribute a lot of what Robin does and figures out to Nancy? Robin gets the newspaper that talks about Victor Creel being possessed by demons, Robin gets them into the hospital, Robin makes the connection to music as key to saving a victim. Stobin contributions so underappreciated smh)

Steve's quick on his feet and makes sure they're able to get out of the elevator with an Indiana Jones move! Without getting caught! I once saw someone saying it's Steve's fault they were trapped at all because he was older and should have put a stop to it, but. Did they think Dustin would drop it? And not explore by himself?? Also Steve's 18. Notorious dumbass decision age. (They also don't know the Soviets are in the mall, and then don't know it's an elevator) yeah it's a bad call, but where is this attitude for Nancy and Jon trying to expose the lab in s2 that absolutely would have known who snuck in and recorded Owens (why weren't they searched?) And then disappeared them. Like if you want to do that with Steve do it with everyone who has made a decision that potentially put people in danger. Hell, Hopper's the reason the lab agents go to the school in S1! He sells El out!

The German/Nazi thing is weird like. Everybody knew who he meant. What OTHER Germans would be a connection there. Yeah it's not "correct" but also. It's not wrong either. Especially when you're right! Russian/Soviet is used pretty interchangeably in the series I think even though many other countries were considered Soviets. Gumby/gumbo is such...a dumb thing to use as proof Steve is illiterate or whatever. Only one is a real word, and it's not Gumby!! Mixing up and confusing words is a normal thing, and these are one letter off and sound similar. Shit happens.

Him connecting Henry Creel to being a clockmaker? Logical conclusion to make given the emphasis the clock had gotten. He's also the one to find the pet siders and it doesn't mean anything even those were Henry's schtick. Literally they included that to make Steve look stupid for making a connection and then getting scared by spiders in his hair and I was just sitting there nodding along like wow same king you're so smart.

Idk I don't like comparing him and Eddie this way because it's not a competition? Frustrating when people try to make it seem that way. You don't need to drag Steve to make Eddie look good? Eddie wants to graduate, and I think it's probably a combo of him skipping and also not being good at/liking formal schooling and possibly some teacher bigotry that prevents him from getting a bit of slack that keeps him in hs. Eddie's good at what he likes and cares about (he's a brilliant guitar player!) And likely doesn't focus on things that don't interest him. That's fine!! But just because he's a rabble rouser and a weird guy and poor, doesn't mean teachers, for three rounds of grade twelve, held him back for no reason.

Idk it's like. Teachers can have biases and that can influence their teaching and interactions and expectations of students, but for it to happen twice to the point that Eddie didn't pass, seems very unlikely, because most teachers do want their students, even the ones that annoy them and they don't like, to graduate. It's sort of insulting to insinuate they would get away with it for three years without any other teacher complaining? Or calling them out? There are bad teachers out there but there are so many good ones too. Saying that the only reason he didn't is because of everyone but him and then turning around calling Steve stupid when he did a near impossible task? Seems weird. Don't agree. Bad take. Acknowledge people have different intelligences and can be better/worse at formal schooling than others and move on.

[harringtontmaa]

⚡ — HEADCANON :  intellect  +  learning style  +  mindset

     this headcanon is gonna be about steve’s “little harrington brain” to use his own words,  &  how it works.  fandom says steve is a himbo,  &  yeah, he is tbh.  can’t argue with that.  but is he  really  just a head empty idiot with no brain cells ?  i’m saying no !  

                   steve is not stupid,  &  tbh i’m fully prepared to die on this hill.  however, there are several large factors at play that do make learning  —  especially in a classroom setting  —  a lot harder on steve than it is on his peers.

     ●  the foundation for school’s core learning skills such as reading comprehension  &  writing skills are built in infancy.  it is well documented that the more you hold, talk to, play with, read to, and otherwise actively engage with small children, the better their grasp of language as they age.  as a small child, steve was rarely talked to, played with, or read to by his parents.  he could barely recite the alphabet, let alone read, when he started kindergarten, putting him well behind his peers.  it took him two years of summer school to catch up to the baseline for his age.  the only reason he wasn’t held back is that the harrington’s made a generous donation to the school’s athletic department.      ●  steve had untreated head trauma from an early age.  &  this one is canon now, ha ha !  when he was a baby, steve crawled backwards. the issue with this of course is that he couldn’t see where he was going, so one day, he crawled right down the stairs  &  hit the back of his skull.  this happened while he was in the care of one of his many nannies,  who patched him up  &  called his parents.  they instructed her that if the bleeding had stopped, that it didn’t seem necessary to take him to the doctor, so steve never received any medical treatment for this injury.  this head trauma results in slower thought processing, especially of new information.  the results are only intensified with the events of st2 + st3, both of which involve steve being hit in the head repeatedly.  after st2, steve begins to experience migraines,  &  after s3 they become much more chronic.     ●  all brains process information differently,  &  all people have different learning styles. steve's learning style is  auditory.  if steve can have information be read aloud to him, or even better, made into a song, he will process it much more easily.  however, most of classic american school is focused around reading, writing  &  math, all of which steve struggles with.  after st3, steve also develops a sensory sensitivity to sudden loud noises,  &  can sometimes get overstimulated in extremely loud environments.    ●  steve has undiagnosed adhd.  his primary symptoms are an inability to focus for long periods of time or hyperfocusing on seemingly random things, multiple overlapping “layered” trains of thought happening at once, a fixation on emotions over reason, physical restlessness,  &  acting instinctually without thinking in times of high adrenaline.      HOWEVER !   in spite of all of these challenges, steve has many intellectual strengths as well, though they may be less obvious than some other character’s.   ●  steve has a unique mindset that makes him able to think about problems in outside-the-box ways.  it is precisely because of his perspective — that is admittedly sometimes born of naiveté  &  his need to question the things that seem obvious to others  — that steve does bring something intellectually to the dynamic.  in groups, steve often serves the role of  asking the right questions  that push the more technically intelligent people like dustin  &  nancy toward the correct answer.  this happens in both s3 when steve focuses on the music in the russian tape instead of the words that he doesn’t understand,  &  again in s4 when he, dustin,  &  lucas are reading the victor creel article  &  steve questions the  why  of the similarities between the creels  &  the hawkins teens that were targeted by vecna.  dustin quotes sherlock holmes to steve saying “the world is full of obvious things which nobody by any chance ever observes,”  &  i really think that is rather poignant for their relationship, as steve frequently states the obvious in a way the more intellectual heavyweights take for granted, but that ultimately does help them get on the path to the right answer.   ●  steve is also very good at relationships. he is absolutely a people person. because he had so little meaningful interpersonal interactions in his early life, steve craves attention.  &  this need for attention turned him into a compulsive people-pleaser, someone who would say pretty much anything to make others like him.  making other people want to be around him has been an intense motivator for him throughout his life,  &  steve has learned how to read people well enough to try to anticipate what they want from him,  &  charm them into giving him what he wants from them in turn. [ steve voice : i could turn on my charm ! ]   ●  as stated above, steve is an auditory learner.  so while steve struggles to understand information if it is written down, he has an amazingly good memory for sound.  he can remember people’s names effortlessly after being introduced only once.  this is also why he recognized the music from the russian tape as the indiana flyer’s song in st3. ●  finally, steve is actually incredibly  emotionally intelligent.  he is very intuitive,  &  his tendency to be very observant of others allows him to be very in tune with what they are feeling.  the vast majority of steve’s own thoughts are rooted in his emotions,  &  trying to understand his own emotions.  therefore, early on in the series, steve mostly used his emotional intelligence for making other people feel fondly toward him to earn affection.  however, steve showed some  amazing  self-awareness in st4 that really hammered home his understanding of his growth.  &  i think since he struggled so much specifically with making space for nancy’s grief  &  emotions in st2,  which is a major factor that ultimately leads to their breakup  &  prompts him to self-reflect yet again, i think that following that, steve tries really hard to take the emotions of other people into account more often.  this ultimately makes him more practiced at empathy, which hones his emotional intelligence drastically as the seasons progress.           so at this point, i’m just going to go ahead  &  say it again : steve is not stupid.  it’s true that he’s not good at many traditionally intellectual things like reading, writing, or math.  it’s true that he is bad at test-taking  &  schoolwork.  it’s true that he struggles to focus, especially on things he finds boring.  &  it’s also true that he can be extremely ignorant about certain things  —  he’s very privileged, after all.  but steve has other strengths,  &  given time  &  the right tools,  steve is actually capable of understanding a lot more than i think most people give him credit for.

[kaypeace21]

The theme with “time” this season makes me think of the phrase, “wanting to turn back the clock.” And I then think of Will never wanting to grow up and wanting to go back to the old days of playing dnd in Mike’s basement.

And then I think of Will’s (speculated) reality altering bending powers. So could there be a possibility that Will may use those powers to “turn back the clock”?? Maybe rewrite how things happened? Maybe it would be after Mike’s “death” like you speculated earlier. Since he thinks Mike is “dead” he wants to go back, and that’s what he does accidentally.

ALSO, Hopper tells joyce that he was trying to runaway from his "past" trauma with sara- before he says that line in the letter about wanting to turn back the clock and then saying it's not possible to do so . (And that life life hurts you but eventually you get out of that cave and life goes on ). Similar to Will he wants to turn back the clock to better times, but a part of him isn't ready to accept his entire past/ the tra*uma that comes with that- in order to move on and heal for the future .

Like robin said about back to the future "he's stuck in the past .But he needs to get back to his time which is the future!"

HOWEVER- I DON’T THINK THERE’S ANY REAL TIME TRAVEL!!!!

I’ve mentioned  my time-theory many many many times- in relation to my DID theory.  even if my did theory is completely wrong (aka Will has powers so his alters/split personalities/innerworlds come to life)- 

We also see how memories are explored in a supernatural way in st - it’s not literal timetravel just El using her powers to explore tra*matic memories of others (Terry/Billy so far). Like NO TIME TRAVEL PLEASE-THAT’S JUMPING THE SHARK. I really don’t want it lol. XD I think hopper and Robin's lines allude to the theme that will be addressed: confronting the past/times that harmed you but overcoming it for the future because time goes on 'whether you like it or not '.

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In reference to my time-did theory. Look at the st s4 movie inspirations. In ‘what dreams may come”  a guy explores a heaven like world influenced by a painter’s emotions/created via immagination.We also have the movie ‘inside out’ -which involves “memory islands” (distinct worlds based on a child’s memories) which are influenced negatively by the kid being depressed she moved to California. The characters traveling to these memory islands are constructs of  kid’s mind -and 1 of them also has a guide helping them explore the ‘memory islands’.  Welcome to marwen- has an artist (attacked for being perceived as gay) imagining an abstract world based off his art- where the characters he made experience their own adventures (loosely based off the artist’s trauma). ‘The cell ‘ has characters explore the mind of a guy whose father ab*sed him- and the different alternative fantasy-worlds they explore are based off his memories. The cop exploring these memory-worlds, was also implied to be se*ually ab*sed by his dad . Also,in  Inception a guy says he’s a construct of a guy’s mind ( the guy who created the dream worlds that are like alternate dimensions/levels- also hates his dad). And leo’s character says he needs to help him escape the many different levels of the dream world of the mind. Movies like inception, total recall, the cell, enter the void, wizard of oz, Peter Pan, hellraiser 2, dream warriors, bill & ted’s bogus journey, the labyrinth,and welcome to marwen, all allude to this: because they involve entering simulated abstract worlds usually created/based on happy& traumatic memories/fears. While truman show/matrix are more about realizing your reality isn’t real. While in bladerunner 2044/total recall it has the theme of false implanted memories… probably relating to hopper/el realizing they’re alters of Will’s-and their memories were technically created by him.

Something some DiD suffers have are “innerworlds” .When someone has DID there can be multiple “innerworlds” that are separate from one another (and look very different from one another) .And are usually very abstract worlds that are based on the child’s memories (good &bad) . These worlds are usually created at different times and almost act like alternate dimensions (and the inhabitants -npcs/alters of those worlds usually don’t interact with one another) . So they can almost resemble alternate dimensions like how Scott Clarke mentions “Hugh Everett’s many worlds interpretation.” Russia where Hopper is- is probably one of those innerworlds.

HOPPER THEORY: 

tw:ab*se/r*pe. In s2 Nancy asks Steve how his “grandpa’s time in the war is a metaphor for your life?” And steve compares the mf to the germans in the war. Dr owens mentions Will has ptsd like “ (vietnam) soldiers’, Hopper saying he had buddies like Will . “In the 70s there was a study that compared the post-traumatic stress symptoms in Vietnam veterans and adult survivors of childhood s**ual ab*se. The study revealed that childhood s**ual ab*se is traumatizing and can result in symptoms comparable to symptoms from war-related trauma.” Hopper isn’t actually in Russia -but in one of the innerworlds (after he jumped through the rift of the machine- into Will’s mind). We’ll see flashbacks but also present circumstances of his imprisonment echo Will’s past with Lonnie (if the movies indicate anything)- being starved, guards getting payed in order to let other prisoners  r*pe a gay prisoner (than claim incorrectly because of his sexuality he wanted it) , as well as a gang of sadist men who r**e others and a warden using that as a threat to be compliant , being thrown in a dark room of solitary confinement and starved when they didn’t obey the warden, the warden being religious, etc. And the American soldiers (in Vietnam) in the movies aren’t much better and do similarly horrific acts to civilians like r**e and bragging/ happily k*lling women, children, and the elderly. The drill sergant in vietnam calling them homophobic slurs & women, and chocking one of the soldiers with one hand (like the mf/russian), slapping one for not believing in christianity. Tying up a soldier in a bed , gagging him, beating him and saying “remember it’s just a dream.” Only praising them when good in fire arms.(movies : fullmetal jacket, papillon, shawshank redemption, platoon, welcome to marwen, etc ) . My assumption is flashbacks of his life-  hints about him being an alter -the boxes in the basement are “vietnam” ,“dad”, and “ny” (and these are the memories of his we’ll see).or after escaping the prison he’s stuck in diff innerworlds of memories. And some of the bad characters in said stories will also parallel Lonnie . Like how in  the s4 film ‘peterpan’- the young girl Wendy imagines netherland and the villain -captain hook- is based off her father ( in the movie they have the same voice actors/while in all stage productions the 2 characters are always played by the same actor). Similar to the other s4 film- ‘wizard of oz’ where the wicked witch of the west from the mythical land of Oz (is played by Dorothy’s real life mean neighbor in the real world/kansas).Or in ‘the cell’- all the alternate dimensions of the dream world that were created by a guy with a ab*sive h*mophobic dad -had the same actor play the villain in each very different dream dimension. ”Not sure if they’d use Ross Patridge (actor of Lonnie) in this way . But it would be very interesting if (In makeup) Ross played many negative people in Hopper’s life.  

Also, in  s2, Jonathan mentions Indiana writer Vonnegut- In his book ‘slaughterhouse 5′- Vonnegut begins the story of Billy (William) Pilgrim, a man who has “come unstuck in time”. (time ref of Hopper saying he wants to ‘turn back the clock.’ or’ runaway from his memories.‘It accounts of Billy Pilgrim’s capture and incarceration by the Germans during the last years of World War II (Hopper captured by the russians), and scattered throughout the narrative are episodes from Billy’s life with his dad, and his own wife and kids.Billy is forced to be part of the war and similar things against his free will. The moments start from his childhood when his father throws him in the water to teach him how to swim. He was unwillingly drafted into the war. Later, he is kidnapped by Tralfamadorians  (aliens that are implied to be caused by his mental health issues/trauma) against his will. Therefore, he realizes that this concept is just an illusion.in bladerunner 2044/total recall it has the theme of false implanted memories… probably relating to hopper realizing he’s an alter and his memories are technically ‘created’ . Like in total recall- the bad ass spy is told all his memories: his wife/ years of marriage,  his name, are just implanted memories. And she says “you’re life is a dream.” We also have ‘Arrival’ -the parent’s daughter died young cause of terminal cancer- and the mother later realizes time is also just a abstract construct (a thing she can experience differently than others), but she still finds meaning/happiness in those memories/times.

I also talked about how sarah as an alter could come back and the 2 would explore the “innerworlds” of Will’s mind together (you can read the details there). 

El and Will theory 

I’m thinking of the s4 movies and 1 matrix scene comes to mind that could be an obvious hint to Did (and Will’s importance). Mr smith (the suited calm villain/ who is a literal computer program of the matrix world -cough alter/npc of Will’s) kidnaps/ ties up Morpheus to a chair (like Will in s2), injects him with drugs in the neck ( like s3 steve/ will’s arm in s2).  Then Mr smith says as everyone leaves the room “I’m going to be honest with you. I hate this place, this prison, this reality or what you call it.” (grabs Morpheus’ head and glares) “ I need to get out of here! I need to be free! And this mind is the key.”(referring to morpheus).morpheus also translates to ‘god of dreams’. Also Morpheus was wearing head gear similar to El in s1/Will in s2 . or in 12 monkeys the guy sent to psych ward -starts believing he’s just “crazy” and says “i created a world with those people in it.” “It’s not real .I’m just mentally ill, like you said ” when you know- it is all real,cause of the supernatural angle involved. in 12 monkeys a patient even tells him the fictional world he created would dissappear once his mental health was in order.

Then there’s the El stuff.  Hellraiser 2- has a normal psych hospital, but the basement floor has an evil psychiatrist experimenting on teens to open a portal to another reality. assasains creed/dream warriors -  has the psychiatric facility be similar to the s1 lab with sensory deprivation tanks, cameras, solitary confinement in dark rooms.The doctor experiments on them- and forces a character to go into the memories of another individual (we know El has memory powers).The dr reveals how the character’s reality/whole life isn’t what they think it is (and that the memories they saw with their powers-was their past life and they are that person’s reincarnation) . Aka Will is the host- and El is an alter (alters can see memories of other alters/the host irl-aka billy/terry were also alters ).

In assasain’s creed there’s 2 psychiatrists- one bad / one who is good (but influenced by the bad dr). One dr annoyed at the lack of progress, says about the patient “he doesn’t want to remember his father.” While one dr doesn’t want to rush the therapy/ the other dr wants the patient to go back into his memories regardless of how it affects him. (which could be Brenner & maybe Owens referring to Will’s dissociative-amnesia and not remembering all the ab*se Lonnie did. And Owens not wanting to rush it/hurt el by making her go into said memories …but Brenner not caring.

also other hints : Cough s4 using the movie wizard of oz refs “we’re not in Hawkins (kansas) anymore”-hint at russia. David on instagram posting st stuff and captioning it with and quotes, pretending to be dorothy from the film. Hopper in s1 saying hawkins lab was “emerald city” (referencing El- it’s also why they reference El entering our world in ep 1 and the alice in wonderland song plays) . Murray says about the supernatural “no one wants to see behind the curtain” (what was behind the curtain in wizard of oz-was a wizard aka Will). Or you know right before Will sees the mf for the first time -a clock turns rapidly/ he  has goosbumps at the back of his neck. Which he later grabs/states  are from “memories” he can’t remember that are like a “dream”. 

If i’m right-not sure how much of this may happen in s4 vs s5, though. But I think something like this is possible.  For all we know-Will/El being trapped with Brenner while Hopper escapes ‘russia’ could be how the season ends? The timeline i’m a bit iffy about-tbh.

[inmyarmswrappedin]

So, because Fatou’s season ends today and, as far as we know, Druck hasn’t been renewed yet, I want to go over the things I feel the team did well in this season and the things I hope they take with them when they sit down to write the next season (which I’m manifesting will be Ava’s).

I think that s5 and, perhaps to a bigger extent, s6, were the team’s attempt to address fan feedback for and criticisms of s3 and s4. So I have hopes that, after possibly the most scrutinized season of any Skams, they are still willing to read even more feedback and sit down once again to craft a couple more seasons (possibly even 3 or 4 more seasons!).

So, without further ado, things that were done well! (Do I have to add “in my opinion”? Do I??)

I liked that for both s5 and s6, the thorough-line for the season wasn’t made obvious or shared in a press release, but rather it was up to fans to connect the story threads for themselves.

I loved that the team sought to address one of the biggest criticisms of s3, that is, that Matteo was given so many symptoms of a mental illness, but it ultimately went unaddressed in the narrative. They did this by giving Nora a dissociative disorder, and Fatou dyscalculia. (Matteo has been headcanoned as being mentally ill and having a disability.) It allowed the teams to develop both fan theories into full-blown seasons and give each of them the importance they deserved.

I have said this already, but I really appreciate that the team chose misunderstood, misrepresented and underrepresented mental illnesses and disabilities. I feel like s5 and s6 will be referents for many years, because they really took the time to portray a dissociative disorder and dyscalculia in a down-to-earth, unhurried way that isn’t meant to shock and awe, but simply allow us to understand why and when Nora and Fatou will struggle. Druck got the viewers to anticipate when Nora and Fatou would struggle, and that’s the first step in being able to anticipate and accommodate the needs of the Noras and Fatous of the world. I really can’t overstate how important this is and what a difference it makes in a real, tangible way. These seasons aren’t meant to be enjoyed for voyeuristic reasons, but they will legitimately help people.

One of the biggest criticisms of s4 was that Amira and Sam didn’t connect as women of color. In fact, it seemed like in s4 Sam was treated as another white friend, when in s2 both she and Amira were the victims of Kiki’s racism. The team addressed this by giving us Ava and Fatou’s friendship, which I want to say might be the first friendship between main characters of color where their race is a substantial reason for their bond. (There are the Sanas with their Jamillas, but the Jamillas aren’t main characters, and then there are friendships like Jo and Megan and Zoya, or Imaan and Liv, or Luca and Yasmina, but iirc in every case their bond as women of color isn’t made explicit.)

Another criticism of s4 was the way Kiki turned into the world’s most understanding white friend offscreen. The team addressed this with the Ava and Mailin storyline, which I think was wonderfully and subtly set up in s5, then built on with the biology test leaked answers.

On the topic of race, I think a major criticism of s3 was that David’s ethnicity wasn’t acknowledged (to the point where a white actress was cast to play his sister gvhvhv). The team has made up for this with Josh (more in the s6 sm than in s5, but I still count it) and with Kieu My. Fatou and Kieu My bonded over being first/second gen children of immigrants, and in doing so, they acknowledged that these characters aren’t white and have different experiences than white Germans.  

The first 6 episodes of this season were some of the finest writing in the Skams. The storylines all connected and built on each other. The motifs were just so good and beautiful and fitting. The themes were all clearly defined and easy to follow.

The tortoise plot was one of the most fun and imaginative storylines in any Skams, it connected Fatou and Ismail in a believable way. And not to rave about a fucking tortoise, but animals can be really uncooperative and that tortoise delivered every fucking clip. Druck has a reputation for being one of the most depressive versions of Skam, but the Maike/Burger plot was just plain fun.

I feel like some of the old gen’s instas were a bit self-indulgent. I’m thinking specifically of Matteo’s memes and how they they weren’t necessarily the kind of memes a gay dude born in 2001 would pick, but someone a decade older. I think this is much better done with new gen. Fatou’s memes reflect her age and her sexuality, and not just that, but Ava, Mailin, Kieu My, Josh, etc. all pick memes and even focus on different aspects of recent news, based on their gender, race, personalities, interests, etc.

I appreciate that the team found a way to fit a sex scene between Fatou and Kieu My to add to the small catalogue of wlw sex scenes on Skams (I’m including the scene in lovleg or we’d only have two lol). While I understood the reasons eskam opted not to include one, I thought there were ways to feature a sex scene that didn’t sexualize the actresses and didn’t require nudity. Cases in point: the lovleg scene, and this scene in Druck.

And it also needs to be said. This is the first original season with a main of color, and the third season overall (after Liv and Imane) where 10 episodes are given to a character of color and no one else. Of the three, it’s certainly the season that loved and respected its main the most. The bar is so low it’s in hell, but Druck did clear that bar!

With all that said, let’s talk about the things I would really want the team to address in following seasons:

The thing I most want them to fix might be small or unimportant for a lot of people, but I think it’s at the core of why the season has been unenjoyable or certain plot points haven’t come across the way the team wanted, for many people. I am talking about the overly expositional nature of the writing.  It appears as if the team approached the writing of the clips with the intention of hitting each beat as noted in their agreed upon outline, and absolutely nothing else was to be added. This is an issue both in s5 and s6. It’s just less noticeable in s5, because s5 is setting up stuff for Fatou’s season, and possibly even seasons that haven’t been written yet. The fact that absolutely every second counts makes for a stressful watching experience for me, because the narrative tension is always heightened. Whereas with Skam, the narrative tension would build throughout the clip. Take the Pride scene in Skam, for instance. The clip allows for Isak and Eskild to get increasingly more agitated as they butt heads. I feel like if this Druck team had done the Pride scene in s5 or s6, the clip would’ve started with both Isak and Eskild already on edge, and cut much of the dialogue that got them there.

On the topic of naturalistic dialogue, this season doesn’t have it. Here is an example from ep 10 clip 2, Wieder vereint/Reunited 11:37.

Fatou: I’ll get a certificate too and bring it over to you. And I checked it, I only have to change one course and my schedule will work.

Teacher: Miss Jallow, you are not the first one to come to me with an epiphany. We could fill entire school weeks with the lessons you missed. In addition, Doctor Steinberg told me about your, well… activities. You don’t have a lot of arguments on your side. 

Fatou: But I’ve spoken to all of the teachers and they said they are okay with it. 

Teacher: You seem to have friends among the teaching staff. Mrs Pavlovic put in a word for you. Okay then, do it and go before I change my mind. [translated by @kieu-tou! Thank you!] 

Like. This is the bare bones version of a dialogue. This should be the first draft, not the final version. The coordinator goes from absolute no to yes, with just one line from Fatou. The coordinator gives reasons that would necessitate more than one sentence of counterargument, like Fatou’s absences and the Biology test leaked answers. The coordinator even says Fatou doesn’t have a lot of arguments on her side, and yet it takes Fatou one line to change her mind!

And of course we viewers don’t want or need a lot of time with the coordinator. And particularly at this point in the season, no one would enjoy a naturalistic dialogue with the coordinator of all people.  But my point is that this is an issue with the dialogue all this season (and last season as well, but this season has been more scrutinized), the reason I picked this example is because of how easy it is to see here.

Which brings us to the pacing of the clips, and specifically the Friday clips. Because the script goes straight to the information the team wants to convey to the viewers, skipping the build up to it, many Friday clips have fallen flat, felt abrupt, and have been, tbh, unsatisfying. Again, I had this issue in s5, but as that season went on, I felt like the team had a better grip on Friday clips. But then they did it again in the first Friday clip this season, and so I think this is something the writers really should work on. The first Friday clip in Isak’s season closes on Isak being sandwiched by Emma and Even on a bench, visually setting up the love triangle, or more accurately, the personifications of who Isak should want to hook up with and who he really wants. But in order to get there, we’re shown a good amount of info, from the way Vilde, Eva and Sana are handling Noora’s absence, to Chris and Kasper, Even hovering around Isak, Emma trying to impress Isak, Isak escaping and, like, draping himself on the walls because he’s so over it all. Isak playing a game on the bathroom to stall for time. The paper towel maneuver to immediately give us a sense of what a weirdo Even is. A conversation between Isak and Even that gives us some clues about Even’s shame, as well as establish interests in common (like weed), and this is all before Emma even joins them! Just think of all the stuff we learn about who Isak, Even, Emma, Eva, Vilde or Sana are as people, before we get to the point of the clip! Fatou’s season simply didn’t have that. Compare it with the first Friday clip of Fatou’s season where the cashqueens quickly talk about the leaked answers, one of the major storylines this season that only gets a couple lines, before Fatou says she doesn’t want to talk about school (Fatou’s struggles with school, another major storyline), and then we’re onto the point of the clip, which is that Kieu My likes girls too. AND FADE TO BLACK. When people say they want longer clips, what they mean isn’t artificially inflate the clip length or add more plot stuff. Just let us watch the characters interact with each other so that we get a feel for how they relate to each other. I know I wish we’d have gotten more of Ava and Fatou interacting with each other before things turned to shit, and Ava with the other girls, so that I know why they all like and value Ava so much. I wish we’d have gotten more of Kieu My talking to the cashqueens about, like, why she didn’t make use of the biology test answers, instead of getting it on a chat. Or food combos they don’t like. So it makes more sense that later on Kieu My actually thinks she and Fatou are friends.  And every line doesn’t have to count. In Skam España, the characters are constantly talking and not everything they ever talked about ended up being relevant. When one of the characters lied about her house undergoing renovations to hide the fact that she was poor, the characters joked about Italian marble and put on bad Italian accents and made that Italian hand gesture. None of this was important to the plot because those renovations weren’t real to begin with, but they made viewers feel like these were real friends joking around, instead of characters needing to hit every storyline beat in a clip.

I have this joke with my friends about Druck always going 🤪🤪 in the last third of every season, in which a season that was very tightly written and cohesive suddenly pulls something inexplicable and pretty much impossible to resolve in 1-3 episodes. Hanna’s season suddenly switching to Mia, Björn creeping on Mia in episode 9! of a total 10, David getting outed in episode 8 and then disappearing for a whole week, Amira’s season pivoting to Mia and Hanna. It has happened in every season except Nora’s, so I thought the team had learned its lesson, but then the forgotten date with Ava happened. To be clear. It really makes no sense that Nora would have hung out with Ava several times since Tuesday, and the topic of the cashqueens being officially introduced to Kieu My wouldn’t have come up. it’s just not realistic.gif I feel like at that point the writing for the rest of the reason became super contrived to keep Fatou miserable and apart from Kieu My and Ava to artificially delay the reunions until episode 9 and 10. Why add a cheating insinuation and the main checking her partner’s messages in episode 8 if you know you won’t be able to properly resolve it? Why make Kieu My mock Fatou’s “uhm” if it’s not going to be addressed in their reunion clip? Kieu My had taken the initiative for a lot of the relationship, so it’s okay for Fatou to take the initiative when it comes to making up. You don’t have to add things that can only be resolved through an expositional info dump. (Please no more exposition than it’s necessary! I think we’ve established that at this point lol.) In the case of Fatou’s season, this is even sadder because I feel like Kieu My’s intimacy issues could’ve been the reason to drive them apart for two weeks, rather than the Maya/uhm stuff. This could’ve also been resolved through Fatou and Kieu My explicitly negotiating their boundaries and how they want to be comforted and how they want to comfort each other, which I thought was the issue with Fatou rejecting Kieu My’s attempts to help while wanting physical touch, while Kieu My didn’t want to be touched but rather seen.  

There are going to be many thinkpieces on why a myriad of stuff didn’t work for people, so I’m going to keep this simple and address one last thing. I think that choosing to focus on Nora’s mental illness and Fatou’s disability is a great choice that doesn’t complicate the themes too much, but Druck (and all the Skams, but I’m invested only in Druck succeeding at this point) still struggles with being intersectional. This is the major reason why the Ava/Mailin storyline ended not with a bang, but a whimper. There just wasn’t enough work done to connect Fatou’s struggles not just to her disability, but also to her race (and even her sexuality). I think that if people really want (and lbr, it’ll be mostly poc who will put in that effort and work), they can see how Fatou’s race affected the way other people and especially adults reacted to her, but this wasn’t made explicit. If Ava and Mailin are going to argue about racism all season, why not connect that with Karin firing Fatou from Aquarius? As it stands, Karin fired Fatou because of a disability neither of them knew Fatou has, and that was the resolution to that storyline. Why not make it explicit that the Physics teacher had preconceived ideas about Fatou because Fatou is black? Why wasn’t Fatou’s disability addressed in the meeting with the coordinator? Why didn’t Fatou express to Mailin that Fatou, too, had issues with how Mailin was acting wrt racism? It felt like, with the way the season was putting so much emphasis on racism, all these threads were going to be connected. In the end though, it almost felt as if only Ava is affected by racism (aside from Mailin mentioning Fatou in the last episode). It’s not like talking about how racism affects Fatou is going to make the topic redundant for Ava’s or Ismail’s season. As a light-skinned black lesbian with a disability, Fatou’s life is going to be impacted by racism in a different way than Ava’s will, as a dark-skinned black fat straight cis girl, or Ismail’s, as a Turkish-German possibly Muslim possibly non binary person. All these experiences are specific enough, and different enough, that they can be touched upon in different seasons without becoming redundant. The fact that Fatou’s season almost seemed to forget at times that she is a black lesbian, doesn’t bode well for Ava’s and Ismail’s season to acknowledge all their struggles.

The bottom line is that this season really was great and did a lot of good, and I feel like the writing just needs to be tweaked a bit for further seasons to be even better and more enjoyable overall. I am very pleasantly surprised by how the team took s1-s4 fan feedback to heart and worked to implement suggestions, and so I really trust them and hope they keep working on the show. It’d be a shame if Druck wasn’t renewed, with this team at the helm.    

[mrs-nate-humphrey]

i hope this isn't weird but I've decided I like how you interact with this show (not something I can say for a lot of fans) and now I wanna hear what you have to say about Eric and Jenny's friendship. I have this image in my head of the two of them dying her hair pink in a VDW bathroom (Lily thinks they should've gone to a salon but that's no fun). feel free to talk for literally forever I'm actually obsessed with them ~ily

not weird at all! that's really sweet of you to say, actually. whenever i get qns like this, often the first place my mind goes to is fic, so if that's not something you were looking for, feel free to ignore the next 2 paragraphs, lmao. 

a lot of my jenny and eric feels are in these fics that i've written: "a remedy for bland sweet potatoes" (sort of like, a fix it but it doesn't fix anything - it's canon compliant and jenny & eric discuss some of the things jenny's done), as well as "the lights that stop me (turn to stone)" which is a post-canon blair/jenny fix-it in some ways, but is also a character study of jenny as a whole & there's a lot of j&e feels in there (jenny and eric are housemates! they look out for each other and defuse derena tension together LKHFKLDHG).

other fics that highlight some great jenny and eric feels (both of these are kinda sad KLHDFKLH) are "withdrawal symptoms" by lunasol28 and and "fell from grace (it left me in this place)" by @vanderwoodlings .

now i’m actually gonna answer your question........ putting it under a read more, ‘cause it got long!

anyway, to answer your question as much as possible - i have a lot of feelings and i'm not sure how best i can do them justice - i have so much to say about jenny & eric. @mysteriesofloves said this thing once about how jenny and eric's friendship sort of parallels blairena friendship, in the sense of like - you love this person so much and no matter how much you hurt each other, you find your way back together, and i think that's extremely true of them both. in a lot of ways, i feel like jenny and eric are each other's most important person - best friend, support system, family, all of that. unlike dan and serena, when jenny & eric find out about rufus and lily they're actually excited to be step siblings which i find incredibly cute.

there's also - i love the fact that during their first meeting eric tells jenny pretty much everything about how he's in the ostroff centre and why he's there, and jenny doesn't judge him or treat him any differently - instead, she shows up at his room later with board games, just to spend time with him. we see things like this at various points, i feel, where jenny & eric's lives are sort of unstable or at a low point in some way and they're both able to just be there for each other without having to do any sort of grand gesture.

there's also definitely, uh... while i see the blairena friendship parallels, i'd make my own danessa friendship parallels. much like dan and vanessa, jenny and eric are incredibly lonely, and also, deeply different. they're not like their peers at st judes/constance! they struggle to make friends, and they have to navigate that. in a lot of ways, the only real friend either of them has is each other, despite the fact that there are instances when they've let each other down or hurt each other.

@nocakesformissedith made a post that i don't have the spoons to find right now - one of her jenny masterposts - that's basically an image of eric and jenny and it's like, "don't ask gay people how we know each other- we know each other from being gay". and i feel like eric and jenny absolutely and totally had that specific intimacy of like. being queer and knowing you're queer and having sat with it for a long fucking time, in high school, when nobody else around you really gets it. to me, my lesbian jenny headcanon explains a lot of the jenny & eric closeness - it's like, when you're young and gay, your One Gay Friend feels like the ONLY person who understands you.... sort of because they are! navigating any form of queerness in high school is terrible, and i'm just glad that they had each other when they did have each other.

it’s so notable to me that like - even though j&e spent so much of s3 at odds/fighting, when jenny’s gone in s4, eric goes through a major downward spiral, with the whole damien thing and everything else. jenny was his anchor! she was the one person who made him feel a little less fucked up about everything, and a little less lonely. and as for jenny with eric - i feel like jenny’s really comfortable and open around eric, and unlike with other people, for the most part, doesn’t try to be someone else around him. part of why eric feels so alienated by jenny’s behaviour in s3 - other than the fact that she was mean to him and jonathan - i feel is just that the way she was behaving with him was fake, and whoever else jenny was fake around, she’d never been like that with eric before. this is more like my interpretation, though, it’s not necessarily stated by canon or anything.

anyway this got depressing!! i do have fun jenny and eric feelings, i promise. i bet they listen to music together and when they’re studying together, they draw in each other’s textbooks. they probably wasted time doing online quizzes together, and there’s definitely a trash tv show that is Their Garbage Show (probably much to dan and serena’s bemused annoyance in the sense of like ‘do you HAVE to quote that again?’). jenny and eric dyeing jenny’s hair together sounds like something they’d do!! (incidentally, in a script of the pilot that didn’t make it, eric had BLUE HAIR. it could’ve been canon and i am so sad that it was not!!! we came so close to getting it. blue haired little eric lives in my head rent free.) 

i think jenny and eric’s friendship is so special because it is SO normal, and literally nothing else in their lives is normal (im pretty sure i said this in some way/ form earlier) - in the sense of like. family issues. kids at school being mean. their own mental health being challenging. their lives are so complicated and heavy, both of them often end up needing to be more mature / adult than they actually are (lily comments during e’s 18th that eric has always been so “serious”, and i always think of how JENNY went to hudson and brought alison back because rufus & alison couldn’t resolve their marriage without their 14 year old daughter’s intervention, apparently). so yeah i do think they’d do all those bestie things - like, sleepovers, friendship bracelets, buying  matching clothes together, sending each other pictures of things like “should i buy this” - wrong generation, but if they were gen z kids they’d definitely have the biggest snapchat streak ongoing, and not in a performative way - they would genuinely talk to each other THAT much. 

also, for your consideration: imagine jenny and eric baking together!!! i think they’d be really serious about it, and they’d also have so much fun.

[inevitably-johnlocked]

Hiiiii. I really love your blog and I want to thank you for your work, and for helping me and others :') Really, thanks you 🌟. Now, do you know some PTSD! Sherlock? And if its after his time away, much better. I need John helping him :(, I recently watch season 3 again, and... I feel horrible for the way John treated him and Sherlock' s scars :( Oh, oh, and do you know some fic about Sherlock s scars? Thanks you so much again ❤️

Hi Nonny!

Ahh, I actually have a lot of PTSD fics, though John and Sherlock’s are combined:

Nightmares, PTSD, Panic Attack, & Mental / Emotional Turmoil

Nightmares, PTSD, Panic Attack, & Mental / Emotional Turmoil Pt. 2

Nightmares, PTSD, Panic Attack, & Mental / Emotional Turmoil Pt. 3

And I do have Scars fics here:

Scars

Scars Pt. 2

But here’s the Sherlock fics separated for the PTSD fics, as far as I can recall:

SHERLOCK’S PTSD

Quite Contrary by Hollyesque (T, 1,805 w., 1 Ch. || HLV Fic, Sherlock Whump / After Mary Shot Sherlock, Hallucinations / Flashbacks / PTSD, Hospitalization, Hurt/Comfort, Lestrade POV, ) – A short one-shot, alternate scene to Greg's hospital visit in HLV. Instead of Sherlock disappearing, Greg is faced with an unexpected reaction to a hospitalized Sherlock and winds up figuring out something that he really would have rather not known.

We are all together alone by Mildredandbobbin (M, 10,461 w. || Mutual Pining, Implied Torture, PTSD, Child Loss, Post-S3) – John is back at 221B but his relationship with Sherlock is not what it used to be.

The Yellow Poppies by SilentAuror (E, 34,952 w., 1 Ch. || H/C, Nightmares, HLV Fix-It, PTSD, Trauma, POV Sherlock, Doctor John) – Sherlock is threatened and assaulted in the hospital immediately after having been shot in the heart, first by Mary, then by Magnussen. As he recovers at Baker Street with John and plans the attack on Appledore with Mycroft, he fights to work through the trauma caused by these two visits. Set during His Last Vow.

Lunar Landscapes by J_Baillier (M, 57,046 w., 21 Ch. || PODFIC AVAILABLE || S3/TAB Fix-It, Slow Burn Angst, Drama, Hurt/Comfort, Confessions, Drugs, Pain, Medical, Injury, Sherlock Whump, Mental Health Issues, Panic Attacks, Romance, Secrets, Tragedy, Trauma, BAMF John, Doctor!John, Drug Addict Sherlock, Injured Sherlock, Grieving John, Idiots In Love, Protective John, POV John Watson, PTSD Sherlock, Sherlock is a Mess, Medical Realism) – An accident forces John to face the fact that Sherlock's downward spiral had started long before his flight to exile even left the tarmac.

Not Broken, Just Bent by Schmiezi (E, 87,585 w., 43 Ch. || Pining, Love Confessions, Rape/Sexual Assault, Torture, Hurt/Comfort, Heavy Angst, Villain!Mary, Suicidal Ideations, Main Character Death, Sherlock First Person POV, Parentlock, Sherlock’s Mind Palace, Grief/Mourning, Emotional Love Making, Possessiveness, Depression, PTSD, Kidnapping, Virgin Sherlock, Eventual Happy Ending) – "For a second, I allow myself to remember teaching John how to waltz. There is a special room in my mind palace for it. A big one, with a proper parquet dance floor. For a second, I go there. I remember holding him, closer than the World Dance Council asks for, excusing it with the fact that we are training for a wedding, not for a competition. For a second, I feel his hand on mine again, smell his sweat, hear the song we used. For a second, I allow myself to love him deeply. For a second, only a second, that love reflects on my face." Fix-it for S3, starting at the end of TSoT. Evil Mary.

Kintsukuroi by sussexbound (E, 91,823 w., 20 Ch. || S4 Compliant / Post-TLD, Grief / Mourning, PTSD, Internalized Homophobia, Therapy, Past Abuse, Alcohol Abuse, Nightmares, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Depression, Anxiety, Bed Sharing, Love Confessions, Cuddling, Suicidal Ideation, Masturbation, Minor Character Death, Sexting, Frottage, Inexperienced Sherlock, Rimming / Anal / BJ’s) – “I love you.” Sherlock sees the words hit John with almost physical force. He reels back a little, jaw twitching and eyes filling. “I love you,” he repeats, a little softer, a little more gentle, as earnest as he possibly can. Because they’ve been teetering on the brink of this thing for years, and it had become painfully obvious over the last few months that they were at a tipping point. This had to happen. Now it has. Now they can see where they end up. The tears in John’s eyes spill over, and he wipes at them angrily. “Do you even know what that means?” (currently reading, does have both of them with symptoms so far)

The Summer Boy by khorazir (T, 94,706 w., 6 Ch. || Post S3/Post TAB/Alternate S4, Friends to Lovers, Asexual Sherlock, POV Sherlock, Flashbacks, Bullying, 1980′s Kid Sherlock, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Inexperienced Sherlock, Grief/Mourning, Pining Sherlock, Case Fic, Sherlock’s Past, Awkward Conversations, Anxious Sherlock) – About half a year after the fateful events at Appledore, Sherlock and John embark on a private case in Sussex. For Sherlock, it’s a journey into his past, bringing up memories both happy and sad that he has locked away for almost thirty years. For John, it means coming to terms with the present – and a potential future with Sherlock. Part 1 of the The Summer Boy series

Against the Rest of the World by SilentAuror (E, 151,714 w., 20 Ch. || PODFIC AVAILABLE || Post-TRF, Hiatus Fic, POV First Person Sherlock, Present Tense, First Kiss/Time, Big Brother Mycroft, Escaping from Capture, Soft Sherlock, Toplock, Insecurity, Infidelity, Travelling, Introspection, Pining Sherlock, Depression, Fantasies, Yearning for the Past, PTSD Sherlock, Suicidal Ideation) – Sherlock has been away from London for nine hundred and twelve days and counting, and has no idea what sort of reception to expect when he finally returns.

-------

If anyone has any they’d like to add or that I’ve clearly missed, please do add them! <3

[sol1056]

What are your overall thoughts on Castlevania season 3? So far the season, particularly the last two episodes (especially the 9th episode), have been controversial.

Well, that penultimate episode definitely put me in mind of the famous quote…

Obiwan: “I feel a great disturbance in the force…”

Half of which was probably screams into the void over this seeming betrayal, and the other half was shrieks in delight about confirmed OT3 potential.

On a more serious note, I’ve got a bunch of asks about S3, so I’m covering them all in this one response, because my thoughts come down to one thing.

This season was all about trust.

If we can consider this season (much like S1) to be setup, these episodes are for getting characters into the places and mindsets that the following act will require. So whatever we get in S4, it’ll require that Sypha be accustomed to Trevor’s life as an outcast demon-hunter, that Trevor accept his choices impact more than just him, that Alucard repell intrusions on his solitary guardianship, that Carmilla has a bound forgemaster and solid plans to grow an army, and that Issac has a full-sized army of his own. 

A pedestrian approach would have been all plot: a whole lot of running from one place to the next while shouting exposition. It could’ve ended up a truly jarring tonal shift between what’s basically four separate storylines: Alucard and Cho’s former prisoners, Sypha and Trevor and Saint Germain, Isaac’s journey to find Hector, and finally Carmilla and Hector. Though given they hardly interact after the first episode, we could treat this as two parallel storylines: Carmilla and her sisters, and Hector and Lenore.

(Spoilers behind the cut.)

Instead, Ellis uses these four (or five) storylines to explore different issues with trust, betrayal, and isolation. Sypha and Trevor recognize that St Germain’s unexpected willingness to trust wasn’t born of seeing them as trustworthy, so much as a symptom of St Germain’s overwhelming isolation and loneliness – and they even remark on the similarity to someone else, implied to be Alucard. Who – after his highly guarded and distanced interactions with Sypha and Trevor in S2, followed by a month (or a year, Alucard’s lost track) of total isolation – has come to the same place as St Germain. 

In both cases, those finales pivots on whether this third, isolated person can be trusted, as well as whether that person can trust the pair that claims to be helping. St Germain isn’t a fighter, and goes into the finale clearly terrified as to whether Sypha and Trevor can even keep him safe, while Sypha and Trevor have to take it on faith that St Germain’s intentions are good. (If you take Alucard’s animation to indicate that he has no experience as a lover, then the parallels are even more stark.)

Meanwhile, Isaac – as the captain so insightfully points out – remains fixated on the offenses done him, easily dismissing the kindness of an unexpected gift from a stranger. Hector’s issue, on the other hand, is too much trust, given too easily, with no questions ever asked (as Lenore drives home, first through interrogation and second through manipulation). Isaac’s determination not to trust anyone makes his way more difficult, while Hector’s determination not to question his immediate trust in the latest authority figure is what eventually traps him. 

Even the four vampire sisters (an element I really loved, almost making up for the first two seasons’ near-dearth) pivot around issues of trust, but in their case, it’s whether they can trust that Carmilla’s grand vision is feasible. They don’t distrust Carmilla, or her ideas – they distrust that they can fulfill her visionary plan to its fullest extent. But they’re also intrigued by the idea, and clearly competent enough to make it happen – and despite a few times where it seems there might be fractures (more of Lenore’s diplomatic manipulation, in hindsight), the four really do trust each other pretty firmly.

There’s a secondary theme threaded through the storylines, too, although we only hear it stated explicitly in the Isaac and Trevor/Sypha storylines. 

the captain: “If you don’t have your own story, you become part of someone else’s.”

The context here is whether one’s motivation comes from an external source, or is internal to the person. Isaac’s motivation (at least at the midpoint of this season) is clearly stated as revenge on Hector – that is, to rectify Hector’s wrongs that undid Dracula’s story. Alucard, too, is trapped in someone else’s story, as his motivation first is that he thinks helping two lost souls would please his mother, and later that training new demon hunters would please Trevor. 

Sypha’s motivation is simpler: action! adventure! excitement! And in not stopping to consider the source (or the results) of her motivation, she ends up being accessory to not one but three stories (with Trevor along for the ride). The Trevor/Sypha storyline could be seen, in this light, as one in which they’re tools in other peoples’ stories. They fail to warn/assert/react fast enough to prevent the mad priest’s actions, they learn of (and then tackle) the church problem due to the town mayor’s need, and they learn of (and then tackle) the thing in the basement due to St Germain’s need. 

In the end, St Germain (like Dracula) goes onto the next chapter of his story, with Sypha and Trevor left to handle the aftermath (like Isaac). They don’t even reclaim their story with the final discovery of the mayor’s depravity, as they end up (if understandably) destroying the evidence, as the mayor had requested. 

When Trevor echoes the captain’s words (which could be Ellis wanting to drive the point home, or could imply that at some point, Trevor also met the captain), Sypha deflects his point. She’s quite certain she’s been living her own story, and enjoying it immensely. In the aftermath, Trevor turns the point around, saying that for the past few months, they’ve been living Sypha’s life, all action and adventure. 

Trevor: “And now, we’re living my life.”

Trevor’s origins, after all, lie in the destruction of his family – but that destruction wasn’t at the hands of the demons they fought. Instead, it was at the hands of the church, its people, and the larger community. His storyline in S1-S2 was of someone who’d seen the worst of humanity, and ended up deciding to fight because he chose to, not because humanity deserves it.   

With the possible exception of St Germain (which is more of an open question than a certainty), they trusted and discovered their trust wasn’t misplaced, so much as… that taking everything at face value meant they remained blind to what lay beneath. Their story halts with Trevor reminded of why he originally kept people at a distance (through snark and alcohol), and Sypha now enlightened as to how sometimes humans are far worst monsters. 

That blindness is also present in Alucard’s story, when he takes the two young prisoners-turned-hunters at face value. He opens his house (well, most of it) to them, trains them, and tells them secrets of how to hunt his father’s race. It’s a radical shift from his original reaction to the Belmont hold, as a museum dedicated to the extermination of his race.

Which brings me to Ellis’ choice to have the finales as parallel battles, but he manages to have them reflect each other, as well. For Isaac, Sypha, and Trevor, it’s an external battle against an overwhelming foe. Sypha ends with literal blood on her hands, and other than St Germain’s departure, the rest of their victory is literally pyrric.  

For Hector and Alucard, their storylines peak (ahem) at what should be a moment of trust and connection, which is why I can see the choice to have those storylines turn sexual. (Honestly, I thought the two young hunters were just going to cook Alucard dinner in return, or something – I had zero expectations that any story would ever go there.) 

First, five separate battles would’ve been just a lot of chaos, compared to the contrast of apparent happy-endings (or happy-middles). Second, it drives home that Alucard has defenses all over the place, but none to seduction, while Hector simply clings to whomever is willing to call the shots, and only thinks to question later. They’re in the stage of their story that the captain raises to Isaac: after you’ve achieved this goal, what next? What is left for you? 

Which is why I think their parallel endpoints – Isaac’s final battle, Alucard and the hunters, Hector and Lenore – all come to a head at being bound in some way. They’re still playing out someone else’s story, so they run headfirst into situations where that tunnel-vision can be used against them. Isaac may be the least trusting of the lot, but even he shows a remarkable tendency to take things at face value: to trust the gift from the seller, to listen to the captain, to sit and converse with the old witch who tells him about the possessed city. With as little foreknowledge as Alucard or Hector, Isaac rushes in, eyes too fixed on achieving someone else’s goal to see the trap ahead. 

None of the bindings are shown as simple, easy to break, or without lasting effect. At the same time, it’s striking that Isaac and Alucard do manage to force their way free, while Hector can only flail about in pain. To me – given the theme of trust – that implies that somehow, both Alucard and Isaac do have the potential for a balanced trust. That is (unlike Hector) knowing when to take it away, even if both struggle with learning to give it.

Oddly, that’s why I think the season managed to position things beautifully for a next season, because we’ve come full circle. 

It’s a curious thing about Alucard: when we first meet him in S1, he’s recovering from his father’s betrayal (of attacking humans); in S3, he’s recovering from the grief of loss (his parents, his only two friends) – and S4 ends with him shivering in pain/hurt over the betrayal of two people. Gotta wonder how much more Ellis will see fit to break this character down.

In S2, Hector was a valued lieutenant, if terribly blind to the implications of what Dracula wanted. Now those illusions are gone; he’s enslaved, wanted only for his skills (in the forge and in bed) – and the deal is quite explicit. Lenore has the grace to say that Hector should be getting something out of the deal, but that doesn’t change that Hector can’t pretend there’s no deal being made. 

Isaac begins cast out, grieving Dracula (not entirely as a mission, but more as a friend, I think) – and ends with the resources and experiences to go in a new direction. He doesn’t have to take out Hector, who could be seen as small fry, anyway. (Especially given Hector’s now just a shell of a controlled man.) If Isaac chooses to go after Carmilla in S4, that’ll be the first step towards making his story his own. Note also that although Isaac may seem alone, he’s accompanied by a host of creatures. He has allies.

It’s the trust in those allies that seems to determine who ends well, and who does not. Although Trevor and Sypha (especially Sypha) were dealt an emotional blow by the post-battle revelations, they always had each others’ backs – and they leave the town behind, relatively unscathed. Isaac ends victorious, with a few of his army intact and the material to make more. 

But the storyline that ends in the ascendant position is Carmilla’s. With her visionary ideas and her sisters’ abilities to make those visions real, Carmilla is positioned to go exactly where she wants. Which is why it’s also striking that (other than Lenore’s sex scene), neither Carmilla nor her sisters really have a ‘final’ battle. They’re effectively a season ahead of everyone else – the trust between the four is already established, solid, and reciprocated equally. 

So you could say that being foolhardy about trust will land you in hot water – which pretty much covers all the central protagonists. But the story’s not that bleak, despite its final scenes, because it’s also saying that sometimes, to get where you want to be, you do have to take that leap – as illustrated by Isaac and St Germain. Or even that you trust, and if betrayed, you deal with the consequences, learn the lesson, and move on, like Trevor and Sypha. 

Or you learn a different lesson, one preached by dear old dad: put the bodies of your conquests out front on stakes, and lock the doors, and trust no one. Which is a legitimate reaction to betrayal, don’t get me wrong, but one that S3 seems to be firmly saying will only end badly.  

[agentmanatee]

AOS 30 Day Challenge

Since I'm late to the party, I will be using this post to catch up.

Day 1: Favorite Season: S4 had the tightest story-telling with the pod structure. For a 22 episode season not to have a filler episode is quite a feat. Aida/Ophelia/Madame Hydra is my favorite Marvel - not just AOS - villian. Mallory Hansen's ability to play 4 different characters in one season in one show (sometimes multiple characters in the same scene) should have won her an Emmy hands-down. All of the cast should have won Emmy's for the performance in Self-Control (Everybody was on their A-game). My love for Robbie Reyes knows no bounds, and Gabriel Luna has mad chemistry with everyone (I pretty much ship Robbie with everybody he's not related to).

Day 3: Favorite story-line: Maveth. When I told my niece the story of FitzSimmons, she declared it "too much!" when I got to Maveth, specifically Hive and we stopped there. In a lot of ways it was the writers dipping their toes in adding more focus to Fitz and Simmons, who are portrayed by the show's strongest actors. I know a lot of people don't like the Will Daniels twist, but other than some hand-waveable plot holes, it really wasn't that bad. It was literally a "only two people on a planet" situation, and they thought that they would never see another human being again and that they were effectively dead to anyone on Earth; so their actions were understandable. Jemma didn't show interest in Will until she gave up seeing Fitz again, and Will initially did not act on his attraction because he respected and even appreciated Jemma's feelings for Fitz; he knew - even if Jemma didn't - that if given the opportunity to choose she would ultimately choose to Fitz ("No wonder Jemma loves you" was Hive channeling Will). If he survived and wasn't a villain I would ship him with either Joey or FitzSimmons (Fitz is canonically bi, Jemma deserves all the love, and the way Will talked about Fitz could be interpreted as romantic interest. He couldn't help falling for Fitz with the way Jemma talked about him), but I never submit prompt requests because I know how people feel about the character.

Also the planet of Maveth was a character unto itself, which is so cool. I really want to know what the light under its surface is; I don't but that it was a only heat source. Since sandstorms turned out not to be one of Hive's powers, Maveth or the cloaked figure (the personification of the planet a la Ego?) Jemma saw had to be the source of those. I suspect the civilization they saw evidence of were tied to the Confederation in season 5. Did they try to settle down and it backfired due to their culture? It very likely was how they knew there were Hydra leaders on Earth for them to manipulate. Will they ever confirm this? Doubtful. Finally, the mystery of Hive and what he was worked and exceeded expectations (his power set of terrifying!).

Day 2: Favorite episode: Inescapable. I was so excited for this episode I paid for it because Hulu was taking its time posting the episode. Of course a FitzSimmons episode would be amazing. The mind prison forced FitzSimmons to deal with issues they've avoided and together to boot. Seeing the turning point in their friendship at the academy and Coulson Recruiting them prior to season 1 was a hoot. I love how they revealed the other Fitz's death to him; he needed to see how the team mourned for him, to understand how much they loved him. Of course the whole scene was painful from him opening the bodybag to seeing the wedding ring to learning of Coulson's passing, but it was necessary and reflected how everything happens at once irl. Seeing their trust and loyalty in their bffs was heartening. And there is no doubt how much they are meant for eachother than when their darksides fall for and on eachother. They certainly learned some things there.

Honorable mention to Self-Control. That was the first episode I have ever purchased. It felt like a movie, and the story is insulated enough I think I may suggest it as the episode to watch when trying to get people to watch the show (either this or Orientation). The entire episode was so gripping I held a pillow to my chest the whole time once it was revealed that either Jemma or Fitz was an LMD. It was such a good Daisy and Jemma episode team-up and jump-started a whole arc of them supporting eachother. It was also a phenomenal Daisy episode. She showcased her powers, and Chloe knocked it out of the park. The scenes between May and Coulson's LMD-selves were so very moving. Ming did such a good job of portraying how May's LMD differed from the others. The episode also revealed what Fitz and Coulson would change if given a choice (not that AIDA gave Fitz such courtesy).

I just realized I switched Days 2 and 3, but don't want to bother with copying/pasting on my phone

Day 4: Favorite male character: Leopold James Fitz. Fitz was my favorite early on and hands-down my favorite character after FZZT. I saw myself in his mannerisms and could relate to his hesitancy to throw himself in the field but doing so because it is the right thing to do. His passion and loyalty to his friends is unparalleled. I also wanted to give Ward a chance. And it's interesting that Fitz was the first of the bus kids to understand how "No one is born evil." It took the Framework arc for Daisy to really understand that. He even has a leg up on Mack here since Mack's first instinct with anything alien is to kill it ("I'm the guy that kills Gordon" is not something someone who values all life, whether he views it as human or not.), which is understandable given his experiences. Fitz was the first person to show Daisy acceptance after terrigenesis, even if he was mistaken to hide it. I didn't realize it the time season 2 aired, but I get a similar aphasia during migraines (it's actually the first and last symptom when it happens). Seeing any appearance by the Doctor makes me feel sick to my stomach because I know how frightened and sick Fitz feels to have that as a part of himself. Fitz loves with his whole heart and he is always driven to do what he believes is the right thing, which is unfortunately what made the Doctor such a formidable villian. He also is always willing to give second chances but not third. He was the first person to joke around with Daisy after the Miles fiasco: he forgave Mack and Bobbi for the real Shield thing; he accepted Daisy back into the fold in seasons 2 & 4 despite how much her abandoning the team felt like betrayal; he formed a father-son relationship with Radcliffe after what he did for Hive; he trusted and befriended Enoch, knowing he kidnapped and sent his closest friends to a freakin future hellscape. Fitz is such a good person. Of course, all my love for Fitz doesn't mean I don't love the rest of Shield's men + Robbie Reyes.

Day 5: Favorite female character: Jemma Anne Simmons. Jemma is a close second for all around favorite (I just don't relate to her as much as Fitz). On a superficial note, Elizabeth Henstridge is so beautiful and hilarious, I have a giant girl crush on her (her smile is dang radiant). I love how they flipped gender stereotypes by making Fitz the emotional one who wears his heart on his sleeve and Jemma the practical one, who shoves her feelings in a box rather than express them. Jemma's cockiness is more real than Fitz's cocky front, too. I wish I had her confidence. Jemma also loves with her whole heart, as much as she has to hide it to function sometimes, and does what she believes is the right thing. She even revealed herself in the future dystopia because she could not stand aside when a stranger was hurt and she knew how to help/save him. Jemma jumped out of the Bus to save her team and jumped at a grenade to help them not thinking she would survive either occasion. She blamed Lash's murdering of inhumans on herself as she has the tendency to hold herself accountable for things that aren't her fault (she shares this trait with both Fitz and Daisy). She doesn't get lost exploring the details within the big picture, which is why she's so good at problem solving. She learned to kickass physically and has always done so mentally. She knows how to let her foes know to fear her. She has the self-awareness to know what traits she needs to work on to complete any mission. She does and would do anything for her team. She's also an incredible leader whether in the field, in the lab, or for the entirety of Shield. She is incredible.

Daisy Johnson is a very close second. And I can't rank May, Bobbi, and Elena. I also have girl crushes on all four of these ladies.

Day 6: Favorite relationship: S3 Shield Team (Coulson, May, Daisy, Fitz, Simmons, Mack, Bobbi, Hunter, Yoyo, Joey, Lincoln and Andrew). OK so I cheated here; we didn't even see everyone be in the same episode. So what? Season 3 had some of the best dynamics from the main team to Daisy's Secret Warriors it's no wonder people love season 3 so much. How can I pick just one? You have Coulson interacting with everyone (except for Joey), Lincoln's fear of May, Her mentorship of him, Fitz and Bobbi, Fitz and Hunter, FITZSIMMONS, Jemma and Andrew, Daisy and Mack, Mack and Huntingbird, MACKELENA, Doug, Fitz meeting his dad Holden Radcliffe, Radcliffe and Hive's "children"...Now I'm getting into characters that weren't on a Shield team. The characters and their relationships with eachother is what this show does best and what makes it such a good and beloved show, not the action or plot twists.

[mrs-evadne-cake]

I have this irrational fear that Steve is gonna have a less than satisfactory storyline in S4 just because i feel hes already peaked in S2 and S3 (infact it was specifically S2, i did have some minor complaints with the way he was written in S3 but its nothing worth making a huge issue about). Idk, is that weird? Am i just being paranoid for no reason? 😅

I don’t think it’s for no reason, since as far as I was concerned he had a way less than satisfactory arc in S3 so I wouldn’t be shocked if it happened again- but I can’t say I agree that he peaked. I wrote a little about the idea here but it ultimately comes down to that a character only has no where else to go if the writers stop putting any effort into writing for them. One of the things I love about fanfic is that it shows objectively that there are a million different directions a character COULD go at any given point and that them getting sidelined because they served their purpose or their arc is ‘finished’ is just a symptom of the writers losing interest in them. 

So I guess the question is more do I think the writers have lost interest in Steve. I’m going to say no, since even though I didn’t love it over all I think the Scoops Troop had the best storyline by far in S3- although there does seem to be a pattern of the writers sort of falling backwards into gold with him (’Eh, we like Joe Keery too much, let Steve save them at the end instead of Lonnie. Eh, who’s not paired with anyone? Steve and Dustin? Sure why not. Eh, Joe and Maya are insisting on this scene, lets go for it I guess.’) it still seems to me that a lot of the writers room is very fond of him.

So I am cautiously optimistic. Gonna go with cautiously optimistic.

[sersumdeorsum]

MAX MAYFIELD VERSES.

MAX MAYFIELD MAIN (S3): 

max is 18, a senior in high school who transferred to hawkins last year after moving with her mom, neil and billy. they hate the situation they find themselves in with their home life, and max leans on her friends heavily throughout her time in hawkins to escape it. she misses her dad, who she hasn’t heard from since approximately six months after her move to hawkins. things with billy are the same as always; treacherous. though she sees neil, and what he does and how he thinks he’s above everyone in the family, in the entire town. max hates it. and though she tries not to let billy know, if there’s a chance for her to intercept neil on his way to beat the shit out of his son, or interrupt a beating, she’ll do it. billy is an asshole, but even assholes don’t deserve abuse.

when starcourt happens, and billy dies, max feels her entire life implode. she had thought that they were finally getting somewhere, that they were learning to be siblings even if they didn’t get along. she had wanted to save him, and in the end he sacrificed her life for all of them. immediately they distanced themselves from everyone. neil stayed long enough to bury his son in a town he hated with a gravestone that displayed a name he hated then he fucked off, in true father fashion. her mom became an alcoholic, and max didn’t graduate like she was supposed to that year.

MAX MAYFIELD ALT (S3):

when startcourt happens, and billy defies the mindflayer to protect eleven, max thought for sure that he was dead. neil couldn’t cope seeing his son broken - which surprised max considering that it seemed to her that’s all neil ever tried to do - and he left town. but her brother is alive, and that’s what he is - her brother. it was difficult, it was never going to be easy but things were better than they were. 

MAX MAYFIELD S4+:

the events of season 4 are pretty canon for max’s verse, except the things she said about having wished billy dead. sure, there were times that she didn’t like him and she had wished her mom had never met neil, but she hadn’t ever wished him dead. she felt a lot of guilt after his death/injuries (verse dependent) considering he got hurt protecting her and her friends. max blames herself, blames what her and her friends got themselves into. they were never going to understand how she felt, and that just became more and more true as time went on. most of them lived in fancy houses, with both of their still-married parents and siblings; perfect little nuclear families and max would never have that... now she didn’t even have a house, just a trailer roof over her head and she was repeating senior year.

after season 4, max is in a coma for 8 months. by the time she wakes up, her muscles have atrophied and her injuries were only just becoming known. she has to go through intense physiotherapy to be able to even walk properly again. she has trouble with her vision, but it’s better than blind which is what the doctors thought she was going to be. the worlds a little duller and darker through her eyes, and has a huge light sensitivity issue. she gets blackspots and other things in her vision often, experiencing new and scary symptoms everyday but that’s all part of getting used to what her life is now. 

still, max is determined to finish their senior year at the very least. it’s hard, and she’s missed yet another opportunity at graduation thanks to the coma, but she’s committed to graduating. there’s only a few credits left that she needs, and she’s hoping to be able to complete all the work without having to actually go back to school as an almost 20 year old after finally convincing them to let her try to get her diploma.

[coldtomyflash]

What do you think about Killer Frost? Like the concept of her... of Caitlin becoming evil... maybe not what the show has done with her, per se, but... the idea of her.

Thanks for your patience on this one. I’ve been collecting my thoughts on it, because it’s a broad question that actually cross-sects a couple of seasons, different versions of a character, and there’s the issue of the meta-textual analysis of the character versus the within canon one.

I’ve broken them down below the cut, but the tl:dr for anyone who doesn’t want to read a full analysis: the metaphor for dissociative identity disorder that Killer Frost represents is ableist and bad, but the narrative for the character is unarguably the best she’s had and lends something to the team and the conflict. There are ways they could have navigated all of this better though, and them chickening out of making Caitlin into Killer Frost full time is where we lose the most in canon from what this story could’ve been.

Metatextually, I’m not sure I like what they’ve done with Killer Frost. This is largely because it’s ableist, and it’s sexist.

On the ableist front, Killer Frost represents the science fiction version of dissociative identity disorder. It’s pretty blatantly the case - she’s an alter who takes command and who’s actions Caitlin has little to no recollection of, though Caitlin is aware of her prescence and some of what she gets up to (e.g., that she went to Burning Man). She comes out to protect Caitlin more often than not, and when Caitlin ‘sleeps’. And she remembers all of what Caitlin does.

They are distinct identities sharing the same body, and not in a way where each has ever existed separately but where Frost explicitly developed out of Caitlin. 

It’s science-fictiony because it involves metahuman powers, hair colour changes, and isn’t really that in keeping with actual practice of people who have DID, and it’s ableist because it’s a very toxic representation of DID. Pretty much everyone who has DID has suffered typically pretty severe abuse and pretty much always in childhood. Symptoms manifest through that and over the lifespan, and not when a person gets magical (metahuman) powers. 

Also, representing what basically amounts to DID as evil and villainous and uncaring? Not good. People with DID are victims, not violent and cruel and cold-hearted. This issue is repetitive across most representations of DID in media, including the movie Split. 

So… I have issues with that, ultimately. Mostly in the “stop making mentally ill people evil” vein. Even if it wasn’t a perfect representation of DID, I know they’re basically trying to pretend it’s not DID - “she’s a metahuman, it’s different, that’s why it is this way”. Which to me falls a bit flat, particularly with how they’ve done it, but if she wasn’t evil then the overall connotations wouldn’t be so bad.

(And yes, she might be ‘less’ evil moving forward, but she started as a villain and it’s only because she has a ‘good’ side that she stopped hurting people and trying to kill them, so???)

And it’s sexist too. Why? Because The Flash has done this before, but only with female villains. Remember Magenta?

Basically the same deal, though at least they represent her storyline of abuse in a much more accurate and respectful manner. The DID likely existed before the powers, but her powers manifested largely through only one of her alters and gave that identity the power to fight back against the abuse instead of just suffer it. 

But guess when else we also saw this?

Anyone else sensing a theme here? Eliza’s (Trajectory’s) issues came about as representing an issue of addiction, but it seems like Velocity made her have hallucinations of an alternate identity that she became after she took the drug. Also just a really terrible and ableist way to represent drug addiction, hallucinations, and potentially alters.

Note that we’ve never seen any men on this show have quite this same pattern of issues. Like women, powers may exacerbate their underlying angers and resentments, but they don’t seem to manifest these issues on The Flash the same way that female villains do. And I’ve talked about this before with these three characters, but let it said again:

“…things like Velocity or meta-powers… make (in this case) nice and sweet women turn into demon harpies but it’s not “their fault, that’s not who they really are, it’s the drug/powers.”

Basically, it’s a tired trope, and given that they’ve only had it play out with female characters, it smells a little like “all women are [secretly] crazy/hysterical” misogyny.”

So that’s… one side of the Killer Frost coin. And of The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly, it’s definitely the Ugly. But a within-canon and narrative evaluation goes in a few different directions instead.

Within-canon, Killer Frost is the most interesting thing to happen to Caitlin and was narratively necessary to make her add to the story instead of being sidelined by it.

First off, Caitlin’s narratives were… floundering, before this. I don’t think I need to explain why rehashing her constantly finding love and losing it and grieving over and over became a very tired plot and ultimately made her character feel like she wasn’t even that secure on the team eventually.

Earth 2 Killer Frost was (to me) the most exciting part of S2 for Caitlin. An evil version of her, one who became conflicted, one who disavowed even her own name, one who saved the team but was still selfish. One who was so diametrically opposed to Caitlin as this intense foil.

This was interesting. This was fresh.

So when, in S3, they set Caitlin on the path to being Killer Frost, I was pretty excited. The team was (is) overpowered in terms of metas, and losing Caitlin and making her a villain was an exciting way to balance that out. Not to mention that she finally got a story that didn’t revolve around falling in love and grieving, but which was about herself and an internal struggle. While I still hate the “powers make you evil / powers gave her DID and her alter is evil” element they went with, the narrative balancing act gave her character more purpose to the main/ongoing story than she had had in a long time.

For the first time since helping find Ronnie in S1, Killer Frost as part of Caitin meant that she was driving her own story and driving the plot instead of helplessly strapped to whatever direction it took her.

And then, of course, Caitlin died, and to ‘save’ her, Julian stole her meta-dampener and caused her to go “full Killer Frost”. This isn’t just my idea, I read someone else say that Caitlin truly died at that moment, and I think that’s something to consider. 

The problem with the narrative moving forward is that this was a turning point for Caitlin and should have remained The turning point, the definitive one.

Narratively, I think it would be useful if we could conclusively think of this moment as the death of Caitlin and the birth of Frost, full stop and forevermore. It would take care of a lot of the DID stuff, to be totally honest. It wouldn’t be that Caitlin and Frost are two separate identities or that Frost is an alter of Caitlin, it would be that once the cold (her powers) gripped Caitlin’s heart, she was fundamentally altered and became different. Still kind of a “powers make you evil” story but that’s at least balanced out by how many people we’ve finally seen with powers who aren’t evil (though seriously, more benign metas, please).

This complete change into Frost wouldn’t have ultimately changed much in S3, if anything. We’d seen Caitlin use her powers for good ends, before becoming Frost, and we’d seen E2 Killer Frost use her powers to help the team and for semi-altruistic acts (well, mostly helpful revenge) as well as selfish evil ones. We also saw Frost help the team get Barry’s memories back, and hesitate more than once. It was often like she was trying too hard to be evil, to be ‘Killer’ Frost.

It was too much. Even Savitar knew she wasn’t truly evil.

So we could have accepted after the end of S3 that it wasn’t that she was evil, it was that she didn’t know what else to be or how else to live up to this legacy and navigate the powers she didn’t want and which changed her. This would be especially with all the anger and resentment she’s built up over years of job loss and grief and being used and having some post-traumatic stress from being kidnapped (thanks Zoom), not to mention not being fully in control of her own brain and body once she got powers, and then Julian disrespecting her wish to die without becoming this.

So this scene at the end of S3…

…would still stand. Everything pretty much stays the same until then, I would argue. The only thing I would add is that she would say that no, she’s not Killer  Frost. She’s never going to be her E2 counterpoint. She’s just Frost. And that would be her proper name moving into S4. 

So the major problem now is that Season 4 is missing the boat again with this character.

Because now we have Caitlin ‘back’. We lost her and thought she was dead and forever altered and now that’s been essentially retconned. Her saying she isn’t Caitlin and isn’t Killer Frost was pointless. That duality is back.

And because of that, we’re essentially re-hashing the S3 struggle between her and Frost, though Frost isn’t ‘evil’ per se at this point. Her and Caitlin manage to navigate their differences in a much better manner. But honestly? I don’t know they wrote it as there being anything to navigate. I don’t know why we saw this:

Cold without powers. What does it add? 

I mean, I understand: Caitlin is a team member, and there is sentimentality there. It’s a hard pill to swallow if she were truly ‘dead’. But it was the implication of S3. And the best scenes of her in S4 so far have been Frost. It’s been Frost interacting with other ladies in particular, but especially Frost interacting with Iris.

This shit, right here. I would have preferred a narrative where Frost listens to Iris and almost no one else, because Iris is the person who’s death she almost orchestrated and Iris is the one who killed Savitar and set Frost free of his manipulation in doing so.

Wouldn’t it be so neat to see Frost slowly become friends with Iris and make amends to her for that? To become genuinely close in a way that Caitlin never managed to be with Iris? To tell it like it is and have more cutthroat ambitions and comments than Caitlin did, not because Caitlin didn’t think them, but because Caitlin was too soft to voice them. Have it become more clear over time that Frost is so much of what Caitlin was, just without the inhibition. Have it become clear over S4 that Caitlin isn’t dead (but she is, but she’s not) because Frost is still her. 

Caitlin the bartender was dull. Frost the team anti-villain (antihero?) is narratively rich.

And can you imagine Cisco and Caitlin in this scene in episode 1 if she was still Frost instead?

Him basically saying “I know that you’re different, but you’re still my friend” and her accepting that yeah, okay, she is different, but maybe she can still help the team. Note, this wouldn’t be Caitlin saying it, it would be Frost. The identity, the person, who wreaked all this damage, acknowledging that yes, despite the cold in her heart, she is willing to help them.

And I mean… maybe Cisco wouldn’t go to her immediately, in that case. Maybe he’d wait until they unstuck Barry from the speedforce and he was unwell, and then Cisco would ask Caitlin to help him with that, to see if something was wrong with Barry that she could detect or figure out. 

And that’d be when she realizes that even though she’s hurt these people, she can also still help them. (And wouldn’t that say something more about culpability and about making amends and learning to be a better person despite your anger and coldness?) The rest of her arc with Amunet and everyone else would still hold true, it would just be all Frost all the time.

(Of course, in a perfect world such as this, Dibny wouldn’t be a main/recurring because Frost would already create enough friction on the team as-is, especially the first time she meets Harry. Not only did she help cause HR’s death, she’s also so much like the Killer Frost from E2 who helped Zoom, and Harry might have a Reaction to that. In my dream world we’d also still have Wally around but now I’m getting off track. I’m also super curious how Cynthia would respond to Frost, to be totally honest. See, there’s just so much potential!).

So that’s… all I have to say about that. :)

[chocolatequeennk]

Forever and Never Apart, 25/42

Summary: After taking a year to recover from the Master, the Doctor and Rose are ready to travel again. But Time keeps pushing them forward, and instead of going back to their old life, they slowly realise that they’re stepping into a new life. Friends new and old are meeting on the TARDIS, and when the stars start going out, the Doctor and Rose face the biggest change of all: the return of Bad Wolf.

Series 4 with Rose, part 7 of Being to Timelessness; sequel to Taking Time (AO3 | FF.NET | TSP)

Betaed by @lastbluetardis, @rudennotgingr, @jabber-who-key, and @pellaaearien. Thank you so much!

We are finally to the Library, which gets a major rewrite. And that means this is still a prompt fill for @doctorroseprompts–imagine Doomsday didn’t happen, and rewrite one S3/S4 episode or scene.

AO3 | FF.NET | TSP

Ch 1 | Ch 2 | Ch 3 | Ch 4 | Ch 5 | Ch 6 | Ch 7 | Ch 8 | Ch 9 | Ch 10 | Ch 11 | Ch 12 | Ch 13 | Ch 14 | Ch 15 | Ch 16 | Ch 17 | Ch 18 | Ch 19 | Ch 20 | Ch 21 | Ch 22 | Ch 23 | Ch 24

Chapter Twenty-five: Donna and Jenny Have Been Saved

Jenny knew as soon as her dad hit the teleport button that something had gone wrong. Even as she caught a quick glance of the TARDIS console room, she felt a tug, like something had grabbed a hold of her and wasn’t going to let her into the ship. She heard Donna scream as she gritted her teeth against the sensation, and she hoped that either Donna had made it to the TARDIS, or that they’d be together, wherever they were going.

Ten seconds later, her eyes blinked open in a large, airy bedroom painted in soothing pastels. She looked down at herself, and instead of being dressed in her own jeans and t-shirt, she was wearing flannel pyjamas.

What is going on? How did I get undressed and where am I?

Jenny took a deep breath and closed her eyes, focusing on the telepathic presence of her father and Rose. They were still there in her mind, just like they should be.

Her dad had told her that if she were ever abducted or lost, she should reach out for him and Rose so they could start looking for her. When she’d asked the first question to come to mind—rather practical she thought, to wonder if it was possible to block telepathy—deep, remembered pain had echoed in her mind from both of them.

She’d quickly gathered that while it was possible, most people wouldn’t have the means or knowledge to do so. And lying in this strange bed, it only took her a moment to find their telepathic signatures and ask them to find her.

The heavy wooden door swung open, and Jenny jumped to her feet as a tall, bald, black man entered the room. She scanned him quickly, taking in the crisp white shirt and the placid smile on his face. His non-threatening posture did nothing to reassure Jenny, since, as far as she could tell, this perfect stranger had yanked her away from the safety of her home.

She crossed her arms over her chest. “Who are you, and how did you bring Donna and me here? Where’s the rest of my family?”

Brown eyes blinked behind rimless glasses. “I’m Doctor Moon. I’ve been treating you and your Aunt Donna since you came here.” He tilted his head. “What do you remember, Jenny?”

Jenny drew herself up and wished she had her boots on—they would have added a few inches to her petite size. She copied the way Rose would tilt her head back when people dared condescend to her and reached for the confident tone of voice her dad always managed.

“My name is Jenny Tyler. My dad and mum are the Doctor and Rose Tyler. We live on the TARDIS with our friend Donna.”

Doctor Moon circled her as she talked. “Interesting,” he mused quietly. “Integration seems to have failed entirely with you. I’ll have to try again.”

He walked back to the door and smiled at her. “I’ll see you tomorrow, Jenny.”

Jenny shook her head slowly after he left, trying to understand what had just happened. Integration?

She blinked, and when she opened her eyes, she was in a cafeteria. Doctor Moon sat across the table from her. “Hello, Jenny. I’m glad you could join me for coffee today. Are you feeling better than you were yesterday?”

Jenny stared at him. “That was less than a minute ago, Doctor Moon. You left my room, I blinked, and then we were here.”

Doctor Moon pursed his lips. “No, Jenny. You’ve forgotten the last twenty-four hours. That’s a symptom of the trauma you received.” He gestured at her. “Look, you’re even wearing different clothes.”

Jenny glanced down and realised her hospital issue pyjamas had changed from red to blue-and-white plaid. She raised an eyebrow—she knew there was no way she’d been in the hospital for more than ten minutes.

“Can I see Donna?” she asked, ignoring his lie. “You said she was in a room like mine. I’d like to see her.”

The doctor shook his head. “I’m afraid I can’t allow that, not when your mind is still so affected by your accident. Your Aunt Donna has had some false memories as well, and if the two of you met right now, you would only reinforce the fiction your damaged minds are trying to create.”

Jenny could feel her forehead scrunch up in a frown. “I’d really like to see her,” she pressed.

Doctor Moon smiled regretfully. “When you’re feeling better, we’ll see what we can arrange.” He looked down at the watch strapped to his wrist. “I’m afraid I need to cut today’s meeting short. I’ll see you tomorrow, though.”

Jenny watched him stand up and walk away, then she closed her eyes. When she opened them, she wasn’t surprised to find herself walking with the doctor across a plush lawn. A surreptitious look at herself revealed she was finally dressed in normal clothes, instead of pyjamas.

Her first instinct was to ask how they’d gotten outside, but then she remembered what Doctor Moon had said. If she wanted to make sure Donna was all right, she had to pretend to buy into the lie.

“It’s a lovely day for a walk,” she said, not commenting on the time or location at all.

She felt Doctor Moon looking at her, but she kept a smile on her face as she looked up at the sky. The sun didn’t even feel warm. How did they expect people to believe this was real?

“Have you had any more dreams?” he prodded. “About the Doctor and Rose, and the blue box you flew in through time and space?”

Jenny’s temper flared at the casual, condescending way he referred to her entire life. But she reminded herself that the goal today was to see Donna, and she shook her head. “No, Doctor Moon,” she said—and it wasn’t a lie. She hadn’t even slept, so how could she have dreamt?

Doctor Moon smiled. “It is a lovely day,” he agreed. “I’ve asked a nurse to bring Donna out, if you would like to talk to her.”

Jenny swung her gaze around to look at the doctor. “Yes, please!”

A second later, they were on the patio, sitting at a table sipping tea. Donna reached across the table and grabbed Jenny’s free hand. “I’m so glad you’re all right, Jenny,” she said. “This lot wouldn’t tell me anything about you, except that your head injury was worse than mine and it was taking you time to heal.”

It was hard to smile when Jenny knew Donna didn’t really know who she was, but somehow she managed it. “I’m doing so much better,” she promised Donna.

“As soon as they let us out of here, we’ll get a place together,” Donna promised her.

“I’d like that,” Jenny managed to say. She wanted to grab Donna and shake her until she remembered their real life on the TARDIS with the Doctor and Rose and all the running, but she just smiled instead.

“Donna,” Doctor Moon said, “would you like to go for a walk down to the river with me?”

Donna smiled beatifically and stood up. Then she looked at Doctor Moon, now wearing an overcoat and holding a bag of bread crumbs while ducks quacked noisily.

A steady breeze came off the water and they sun had slipped behind the clouds. Donna looked around, fighting her disorientation. “You said river, and suddenly we’re feeding ducks.” There was something not right, but she just… couldn’t put her finger on it.  

“Doctor Moon. Morning.”

Donna turned and suddenly felt a little breathless when she spotted a man who was the epitome of tall, dark, and handsome walking towards them carrying fishing gear. And he’s got some meat on him, too, she thought, admiring his solid physique. Unlike that skinny bloke… She closed her eyes quickly and shoved the errant thought of the Doctor into the back of her mind before Doctor Moon could pick up on it.

“Donna Noble, Lee McAvoy.” Doctor Moon smirked, then moved off to the side.

Donna smiled at the newcomer. “Hello, Lee.”

His eyes were warm when he smiled at her. “Hello, D, D, D…”

“Ooo, you’ve got bit of a stammer there.” She looked over at Doctor Moon. “Bless.”

“D, D,” Lee persisted.

Donna waved the attempts away with a hand. “Oh, skip to a vowel. They’re easy.”

What felt like just a second later, she was back on the hospital grounds with Doctor Moon. The sun had come back out, but it was still cold enough that she was comfortable in her winter coat.

Donna bit her lip as she looked up at the doctor. She thought she liked Lee, but no matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t remember anything about the rest of the afternoon.

“How did we leave it, him and me?

Doctor Moon smirked again. “I got the impression he was inviting you fishing tomorrow.”

oOoOoOoOo

The next twenty-five minutes were a nightmare and a headache for Jenny, as she watched Donna progress rapidly through her relationship with Lee McAvoy. Jenny had no real objections to Lee—he seemed perfectly nice—but was he even real? What if she and Donna got out of wherever they were, and Donna had fallen in love with someone who didn’t even exist?

But she couldn’t say a thing to warn Donna—Aunt Donna, she reminded herself—or she’d be back in the hospital faster than you could say… well, most things.

Jenny looked around at the cosy bungalow she’d moved into sometime around minute eighteen in this strange, pocket universe. Her act had successfully fooled Doctor Moon, and he had declared her fully integrated and stopped visiting her, thankfully. It was harder than she’d thought to continue pretending in front of him.

Pretending was how she was allowed to be part of Donna’s life, though, and that let her offer some kind of protection, at least. Today, she was supposed to be going to Lee and Donna’s wedding, but she knew there wasn’t any reason for her to try to get ready, because in just a minute…

The pew was hard against her back and the pale blue dress didn’t fit well. But despite her discomfort and misgivings, it was almost impossible not to be happy for Lee and Donna as they ran up the aisle together.

Twenty minutes or eight years later, Jenny was sitting in her own garden, listening to the shouts of Donna’s children echoing over the wall. She pressed a hand to her forehead; how had this gotten so out of control?

Suddenly, she realised there was another person in her garden—a tall, veiled woman dressed all in black. Jenny jumped up and pressed her back to the wall. “Who are you?”

“You don’t need to be afraid of me, Jenny Tyler,” the woman said, and the voice was familiar. “You are not like anyone else who has been in this computer simulation.”

“Is that what it is, then?” Jenny looked around, and it all made sense. Everything was perfect. The computer could program them to skip time, and then Doctor Moon would fill in the gaps of what had happened with his narrative explanation.

“Yes. You are in the central computer of the Library. You remember the Library, don’t you, Jenny?”

Jenny pressed her lips together to withhold a sob. Even though less than an hour had passed since her dad had activated the teleport, sometimes it really did feel like she’d been trapped here for nine years. Time is meaningless in the Vortex, Rose, she remembered her dad saying more than once. She didn’t really think this was what he’d meant.

So after being trapped in a bizarre virtual reality for an hour, hearing someone else talk about the real world was almost more than she could handle. But the other woman was waiting for an answer, so she nodded. “Who are you?” she asked.

The woman tilted her head. “I think you know the answer to that, if you really think.”

Jenny stared at her, trying to place the voice. She’d heard that voice before… she’d heard that voice dying, she realised suddenly.

“Miss Evangelista!” she gasped.

“Yes, or at least, I am what’s left of her,” the woman said.

Jenny frowned and started to ask what exactly she meant by that. But then the air next to her flickered, and she watched a figure appear out of thin air—a figure she knew very well.

“Dad!”

He had his head bent down so he could listen to the sonic, but when he heard her voice, he looked straight at her. “Jenny!”

She held out a hand and he ran towards her, but he disappeared before he reached her. Staring at the blank space where her father had been just a moment before, Jenny swallowed hard.

“How can we get out of here?” she asked Miss Evangelista.

oOoOoOoOo

After Rose reminded Melody of the squareness gun, she used it on every wall they came to. The Doctor crossed his fingers that it wouldn’t run out of battery power, though she didn’t seem to having the problem Jack did.

Finally, they reached a room with a large open space under the skylight, giving them plenty of light. “Okay, we’ve got a clear spot,” Melody announced, motioning for everyone to pile into the room.

The Doctor immediately let go of Rose’s hand and slid down to the floor, pointing the sonic at the shadows.

“In, in, in!” Melody continued. “Right in the centre. In the middle of the light, quickly. Don’t let your shadows cross. Doctor.”

“On it,” he replied, scanning for Vashta Nerada.

“There’s no lights here,” Melody said, pointing out what he’d noticed as soon as they entered the room. “Sunset’s coming. We can’t stay long.” The sonic flickered. “Have you found a live one?”

“Maybe. It’s getting harder to tell.” He tapped the sonic against his hand and scanned again. “What’s wrong with you?” he asked his tool.

Melody stood up and spun around. “We’re going to need a chicken leg. Who’s got a chicken leg? Thanks, Dave.”

A moment later, the Doctor watched a chicken leg fly through the air and hit the ground as only a bone.

“Okay,” Melody said as she stumbled backwards. “Okay, we’ve got a hot one. Watch your feet.”

“They won’t attack until there’s enough of them,” the Doctor said, brushing off her concern. “But they’ve got our scent now. They’re coming.”

You’re being rude, Rose told him gently as she rubbed his shoulders.

Behind their backs, both of Melody’s assistants were peppering her with questions—questions about them.

“So who are they?” Other Dave asked. “A group of people we’ve never met show up on our expedition, and we’re just supposed to trust them?”

“That’s the Doctor and Rose Tyler,” Melody said. “And yeah, you’re supposed to trust them.”

The Doctor stared into the shadows as he shamelessly eavesdropped on the conversation between Melody Pond and her team. I’m being rude? At least I’m not talking about her where she can hear me.

Only ‘cause she’s not telepathic, Rose retorted, and he glanced up to see her teasing grin.

The results from the sonic screwdriver were getting spottier. The Doctor tried pulsing the button to see if that would help while Mr. Lux asked Melody who he and Rose were.

Oh, I feel so hurt that Mr. Lux isn’t impressed by our credentials, Rose snarked.

“The only people I’d want with me in a life-and-death situation,” Melody shot back. “Trust me, there’s a reason I asked them to meet us here. If there’s anyone who can get us out of here alive, it’s them.”

The Doctor knew Rose was trying to make light of the situation, but as he watched Melody out of the corner of his eye, he couldn’t let it go. Listening to someone he’d never met talk about him and Rose as if she’d known them forever had been mildly curious before. Now that Donna and Jenny were gone because he’d followed this woman’s message to the Library, it was infuriating.

“You say they’re your friends, but they don’t even know who you are.”

The Doctor moved to the next set of shadows and nodded vigorously with Anita’s salient point. Exactly! They didn’t know who this woman was, so how could they trust her?

Melody looked up at him and shrugged when they made eye contact. She didn’t even look surprised that he was listening in. “Listen, all you need to know is this. I’d trust those two to the end of the universe.”

Really? the Doctor thought sarcastically. And have you been to the end of the universe? Because I have, and you weren’t there.

Stop snarking at Melody Pond and focus on finding Donna and Jenny, Rose ordered sharply, clearly tired of his sour disposition.

The Doctor shuffled over to the next set of shadows, but he didn’t get any better results there. I’m trying, but something’s interfering with the sonic.

“The Doctor doesn’t act like he trusts you,” Anita said astutely. “Rose might, but I don’t think he does.”

Melody tucked a strand of straight, brown hair back behind her ear. “Yeah, there’s a tiny problem. They haven’t met me yet, and the Doctor is extremely protective of his family.”

“What about Rose?” Anita asked.

They heard a smile in Melody’s voice when she answered. “Rose is extremely protective of the Doctor.”

You have to admit she’s right about that, Rose told him as she traded screwdrivers with him. They both heard Melody walk towards them, but ignored her while the Doctor tried Rose’s sonic on the shadows. To their consternation, her screwdriver seemed to be having the exact same problem.

“What’s wrong with it?” Melody asked.

The Doctor ignored her, tapping the screwdriver lightly and tried it again, but the violet diode only flickered briefly.

Rose sighed and looked at Melody. “There’s a signal coming from somewhere, interfering with it.”

Melody nodded once. “Then use the red settings.”

The Doctor’s gaze flicked over to her, then he went back to fiddling with Rose’s sonic. “It doesn’t have a red setting.”

“Well, use the dampers,” she said as she took her gloves off.

“It doesn’t have dampers.” The Doctor was already disinclined to be civil towards this woman who claimed to be from their future, and the way that she was now pretending to know everything about his sonic screwdriver, the tool he had designed and perfected over the years, grated.

She pulled the sonic screwdriver she’d used earlier out of her pocket. The diode that had been blue now looked red. “Hmmm. I guess mine has a few extra features then,” she said.

The Doctor snatched it from her hands and stood up. “So, some time in the future, I just give you my screwdriver.”

She snatched it back. “No. At some point in the future, you give me my own screwdriver.”

He rocked back on his heels and glared at her. “Why would I do that?”

“Present when I graduated from uni,” she said breezily. A hint of nostalgia entered her voice, but her smile was still smug, like she knew something they didn’t. “I’d always wanted one, but I’d never dared to ask. And then you came up to me, just the two of you, and said you had a special gift for me.” She arched an eyebrow. “I guess this is when I told you I wanted a sonic screwdriver.” A smirk crossed her face. “You know, if you’d told me before that this was what you meant when you said time travel had its up sides, I might have been more interested.”

The Doctor’s agitation washed over Rose, and combined with her own worry for Jenny and Donna, her temper sparked. She stepped in between the Doctor and Melody, standing with her feet shoulder width apart and her arms crossed over her chest.

“Oi! Leave ‘im alone!” The Doctor put a hand on her arm, and Rose took a deep breath but didn’t back down. “You just told Anita and Other Dave that I’m protective of the Doctor, and now you’re teasing him for your own amusement when you can tell how upset he is?”  

Melody opened and closed her mouth, then shook her head.

Rose sighed, and some of her anger drained out of her. “I know you’re upset and stressed and this has got to be difficult for you, when you were thinking you’d get the versions of us that you know. But we just lost our daughter and our friend.” Her voice cracked and she swallowed hard. “Neither of us are in the mood for jokes right now.”

The smirk disappeared from Melody’s face. “You’re right. I’m sorry, both of you.” She smiled wryly at Rose. “I’ve never been on the receiving end of one of your protective tirades. Think I’ll try to avoid it happening again.” She blinked rapidly as she turned back around to the rest of her expedition crew.  

There was a short, awkward pause, then the Doctor held up Rose’s screwdriver. “Know what’s interesting about our screwdrivers?” he asked as he started walking in circles around the group. “Very hard to interfere with. Practically nothing’s strong enough. Well, some hairdryers,” he allowed as he looked up at the skylight. “But I’m working on that. So there is a very strong signal coming from somewhere, and it wasn’t there before. So what’s new? What’s changed?”

“The moon is up,” Rose said immediately. “I noticed it when I looked through the skylight when we walked into this room. There wasn’t a moon in the sky before, and now there is.”

The Doctor spun around and bounced on his toes. “Oh, very good, Rose!” He turned and looked at Mr. Lux. “Tell me about the moon. What’s there?”

The company president shook his head. “It’s not real. It was built as part of the Library. It’s just a doctor moon.”

“What’s a doctor moon?” he pressed.

“A virus checker,” Mr. Lux explained. “It supports and maintains the main computer at the core of the planet.”

“So it’s there to make sure that CAL is safe,” the Doctor mused. Now that he knew what to look for, he could scan for a connection between the planet and the moon. Unlike his attempts to scan for Vashta Nerada, that worked almost immediately.

“Well, still active. It’s signalling. Look.” The sonic’s steady buzz pulsed slightly as it picked up the signal from the moon. “Someone somewhere in this library is alive and communicating with the moon. Or, possibly alive and drying their hair.” The Doctor put his screwdriver to his ear, listening to the signal. “No, the signal is definitely coming from the moon. I’m blocking it, but it’s trying to break through.”

He twisted the top of the screwdriver and heard a funny pop, then a very familiar voice called out, “Dad!”

The Doctor looked up up, and his throat caught when he saw a flickering projection of his daughter. “Jenny!” he called back, pushing her name past the lump in his throat. He ran towards the projection, but it disappeared just as he reached it.

He stared at the blank spot, blinking back tears. A moment later, Rose wrapped her arms around his waist and hugged him tight. She’s there, love, one of them said, though he couldn’t tell right now if the thought was his or hers. Jenny’s there, and she’s fine.

Rose pulled back and wiped tears from her eyes. “Can you get her back?” she whispered hoarsely.

“I can try,” the Doctor said, his voice thick. His hands were shaking when he raised the sonic to his ear, but they were steady enough to adjust the settings, trying to lock onto the frequency coming from the moon. Please, let me see Jenny again, he pleaded with the universe.

But it seemed like the universe wasn’t listening. No matter what he tried, he couldn’t interfere with the signal between the doctor moon and the planet.

He growled and tapped the sonic on the heel of his hand. “I’m being blocked!”

“Doctor Pond?” Anita said, a tremble in her soft voice.

“Just a moment,” Melody replied. The Doctor heard the buzzing from her screwdriver and realised she was trying to locate Jenny, too.

“It’s important,” Anita insisted. “I have two shadows.”

The Doctor’s stomach fell when he spun around and saw that the young archaeologist did indeed have two shadows.  

“Okay.” Melody took charge. “Helmets on, everyone. Anita, I’ll get yours.”

“It didn’t do Proper Dave any good,” Anita pointed out practically.  

Melody shook her head. “Just keep it together, okay?”

Anita rolled her eyes and snorted. “Keeping it together. I’m only crying. I’m about to die. It’s not an overreaction.”

No one could argue with that, so Melody was silent as she put the helmet on the scared woman and did up the seal.

“Hang on.” Using the sonic, the Doctor turned the filter on the visor all the way up, making it black.

Melody gasped. “Oh God, they’ve got inside.”

“No, he just tinted her visor, Melody,” Rose explained. “But why, Doctor?”

The Doctor shrugged. “Well, I thought maybe they’ll think they’re already in there, leave her alone.”

“Do you think they can be fooled like that?” Melody pressed.

The Doctor pressed his lips into a thin line. The constant questioning was grating on his nerves. “Maybe. I don’t know. It’s a swarm. It’s not like we chat.”

“Can you still see in there?” Other Dave asked.

Anita nodded. “Just about.”

When the Doctor turned around to look at Other Dave, he noticed something they’d all missed. A seventh figure, standing in the shadows.

Other Dave and Mr. Lux both took a step forward, and the Doctor waved his hand for them to stay still. The last thing they needed was for the shadows to cross, spreading the infestation.

“Just, just, just stay back.” Then he took Rose’s hand and looked at Melody. “Rose, Melody. Could I have a word, please?”

Both women frowned, but nodded, and they took three steps away from Anita, careful to stay in the light.

The Doctor lowered his voice. “All right, both of you. Without being obvious, I need you to take a quick head count.”

He watched them casually glance around the room before they looked back at him. “Seven,” they whispered in unison.

“Right. That’s the three of us, Anita, Other Dave, Mr. Lux, and…”

Their eyes widened.

“Hey, who turned out the lights?”

“Run!” the Doctor ordered, and the six still-living people raced out of the room, chased by the form of Proper Dave.  

oOoOoOoOo

The Doctor led the group to the stairs, thinking they might be harder for the swarm in a suit to navigate. Sunlight streamed in through the windows, keeping them safe from other shadows as they climbed over two dozen flights.

Finally, they reached a floor that indicated a skybridge could be found on this level. “This way,” he said in a low voice, straining his ears for the shuffle-clomp of the Vashta Nerada, several storeys below them.

They ran through the sky bridge from one skyscraper to another. The Doctor slammed the heavy wooden doors shut behind them and hustled everyone towards the stairs, but some twinge of curiosity caught Rose’s attention, and she stopped and looked at him while Mr. Lux and Anita ran on.

His eyes were bright with anger and curiosity as he stared back at the closed doors. It only took a moment for Rose to figure out what he wanted to do.  

She looked at Melody, who’d slowed down when they’d stopped. “Keep running. We’ll be right behind you.” Melody looked hesitantly at the two of them, then nodded sharply. “Mr. Lux, Anita, Other Dave—stay with me,” she barked, then ran for the door marked ‘Stairwell.’  

From behind them, the shuffling noise of the swarm-in-a-spacesuit got louder, and Rose mentally counted off the minute or so she reckoned they could stay there safely.

“Rose…”

She cut him off with her hand held up. “No. I sent them away because every second counts. But you’re not going to stay here with that… You said the only thing to do with Vashta Nerada was to run, Doctor.”

“I know, but…” He looked at her, then back at the doors, just as they burst open. “Why did they come to the Library to hunt?”

“Hey, who turned out the lights?”

Rose rolled her eyes. “Does it matter?” she asked. “Would finding out how they got here and why get us any closer to the TARDIS? Would it help us find Jenny and Donna?” She held out her hand for the Doctor, and he took it. “Come on. Let’s get out of here.”

“Hey, who turned out the lights?”

The Doctor looked over his shoulder at the Vashta Nerada, just crossing the threshold of the room. Rose’s heart stopped until he looked back at her, and she could see the decision in his eyes. She let out a slow breath when he took her hand.

“Thank you.”

With the Doctor’s hand in hers, they raced down the stairs. “I’m still curious about where they came from, but you were right,” the Doctor admitted as they ran. “It wouldn’t make a difference in the end.”

Rose squeezed his hand. “I’m curious too,” she panted as they turned a corner. “But I’d rather spend our time finding Jenny and Donna and getting the hell out of here.”

The Doctor snorted. “Right you are.”

They both looked out the window as they reached the ground floor of the building. The sun had very nearly set by now, which would make it almost impossible to avoid the shadows.

“I don’t know how we’re going to make it out of this,” the Doctor admitted finally.

Rose pulled him to a stop. “Don’t,” she said sharply. “Don’t talk about giving up, not…” She took a deep breath and smiled up at him. “Have you forgotten, Doctor? We’re the stuff of legend.”

It was all bravado, and they both knew it. There was a significant likelihood that they would not make it out of this adventure alive. The possibility of regenerating teased the edges of Rose’s mind, but she could tell by the level of the Doctor’s fear that it probably wouldn’t be possible if they were consumed by Vashta Nerada.

She shook her head and rested her hands on his elbows. “We are going to rendezvous with Melody and her team, we’re going to find Jenny and Donna, and we are going to make it home,” she said firmly. “That’s the only conclusion to this day that I will accept. All right?”

The Doctor smiled, then pulled her close. “And I reckon even the Vashta Nerada don’t dare thwart your wishes,” he said, his voice muffled by her hair.

Rose nodded. “Exactly. Now, are you ready to find Melody?”

He kissed her quickly, then took her hand. “Oh, I’m ready.”

oOoOoOoOo

They found Melody, Anita, Other Dave, and Mr. Lux back in the main circulation area, where he had first explained the Vashta Nerada only a few hours before. Melody was crouched on the floor, using her sonic screwdriver to scan the Library seal in the middle of the floor.

None of them heard the Doctor and Rose enter the room silently from the mezzanine level, so the Doctor took advantage of the moment to shamelessly eavesdrop.

“You know, it’s funny,” Melody said as she checked the results of her scan. “I keep wishing the Doctor and Rose were here.”

“The Doctor and Rose are here, aren’t they?” Anita said. “They are coming back, right?”

Melody sighed and pushed herself to her feet. “You know when you see a photograph of someone you know, but it’s from years before you knew them. And even though it’s them, there’s something just… missing. A familiarity that isn’t there yet.”

Rose squeezed the Doctor’s hand. Like meeting your first incarnation, she told him. It was the first time meeting you since meeting you the first time when you looked at me without knowing me.

Down below, Melody continued her explanation. “Well, yes, the Doctor and Rose are here. They came when I called, just like they always do.”

The Doctor raised his eyebrows and filed that piece of information away.

“But they aren’t the Doctor and Rose who pick me up every year for Christmas. Last year, we had dinner at the Tylers’, but they don’t know that Jackie spiked the punch with ginger ‘because it just isn’t fair that himself doesn’t get drunk like the rest of us.’” Anita laughed, and Melody nodded. “You see what I mean? They’re here… but they aren’t.”

Rose’s hand had tightened around his at the mention of her family, and the Doctor pulled her close. “Spoilers,” he warned, unable to keep the bite out of his voice. If Melody wasn’t who she said she was… if she was just playing them and she’d just given Rose false hope of seeing her mother again…

Rose reached up and stroked his jaw. Don’t get so upset before we know, she chided. You can be my protector later, if it’s necessary.

Melody’s expression was stricken, though, and for the first time, the Doctor really believed she was who she claimed to be. “How much did you hear?” she whispered.

Her guilt was obvious, and now that he’d allowed the possibility that she truly was someone from their future, he could more fully appreciate how difficult this would be for her. Meeting someone you obviously knew very well before they had even met you was a tricky tightrope to walk, and he’d clearly impressed upon the young woman the importance of maintaining the timelines.

Impulsively, he jogged down the stairs and pulled her in for a reassuring hug. “It’s fine, Melody,” he promised. “A little foreknowledge won’t damage the timelines.”

She drew a shaky breath and looked up at him. “Yeah?”

“Yep! And I’ll let Jackie get me drunk, even though I know it’s going to happen.”

Melody rolled her eyes and shoved him away from her, and he knew everything was going to be fine.

He turned and looked at the rest of the group—Mr. Lux and Other Dave, looking scared as they hovered awkwardly in the space between the shadows and Anita, who still had two shadows.

“How are you doing?” he asked her as he walked over to her.

“Still alive,” she said, a hint of defiance in her voice. “But Doctor. Proper Dave only lasted what, five minutes after they latched onto him? How come they haven’t taken me yet?”

“I don’t know.” The Doctor looked at her two shadows. “Maybe tinting your visor’s making a difference.”

Anita snorted softly. “It’s making a difference all right. No one’s ever going to see my face again.”

Her grim pragmatism made him wish he could do something for her, and despite the fact that he really couldn’t, he found himself asking, “Can I get you anything?”

“An old age would be nice,” she quipped, and her brave wit in the face of death made this hurt even more. “Anything you can do?”

The Doctor nodded, even though she couldn’t really see him. “I’m all over it,” he promised. If there was any way he could persuade the Vashta Nerada to let go of Anita, he would do it.

“Look at us,” Rose said, and he silently thanked her for changing the subject. “Six of us, still safe after running from the Vashta Nerada for two hours.”

The Doctor grinned and stuck his hands into his pockets. “Yep, still safe…” He lingered on the word. It felt significant, and he quickly filtered through his memory of all the times in the last two hours that he’d heard the word “safe” or any variations of it.

“What is it, Doctor?” Melody asked.

“Safe.” As he repeated the word, the thought finally unlocked. “You don’t say saved,” he explained, his mind still working out the ramifications of his realisation as he talked. “Nobody says saved. You say safe.” He spun to point at Mr. Lux. “The data fragment! What did it say?”

“Four thousand and twenty-two people saved. No survivors.”

“Doctor?” Rose asked.

“Oh, it’s been staring us in the face, Rose!” He grabbed her and spun her around. “Because people don’t get saved, not unless you’re talking about the preachers on street corners. But computers—computers save things. And that’s what it did. It saved them.”

oOoOoOoOo

Something about the world was wrong. Donna usually managed to shove that faint awareness into the back of her mind, but a moment ago, when she’d been talking to Doctor Moon, it had flared to life for just a few seconds.

Now, as she made tea for her guest, she felt like she’d forgotten something really important. It felt like she’d had it, just for a second, and then it had been lost again.

She sighed when the tea was done and shrugged her shoulders. I’m not going to figure it out by standing in the kitchen, she told herself as she picked up the cups and walked back to the living room.

“Here we are, Doctor Moon.”

Donna’s smile faded into a confused frown when the doctor was nowhere to be seen. Ella and Joshua ran through the room, and she held the teacups up to keep them from getting bumped into.

“Mummy, I made you!” Ella held up a thick body made of plasticine with two arms, two legs, and no face.

“Oh, that’s nice, Ella,” Donna said. She was determined to praise her daughter’s artistic endeavours, rather than belittling them like her own mother had. But… “Where’s the face?” she couldn’t help but ask.

Ella looked down at the doll and shrugged. “I don’t know.”

Donna sighed and carefully bent over to put the teacups down on the coffee table. “Did you see Doctor Moon? Did he leave?”

Before Ella could answer, the door swung open and Lee stepped inside, wearing his regular suit and carrying a briefcase. The kids went crazy, calling his name and running to him, and for the briefest moment, Donna thought that the timing of his arrival was certainly convenient, the way it interrupted any answer Ella might have given her.

That cynical thought disappeared when she watched her husband set his briefcase down and open his arms to their children. “Hey! Hello, you two. Come here. Big hugs. Big Daddy hugs.”

“Look what I made.” Ella held up her doll.

“Oh.” Lee looked at it, then glanced at Donna, his eyes dancing. “It’s Mummy.”

“Uh, it hasn’t got a face,” Donna pointed out again. There was something off-putting about the idea of her face being… taken, and try as she might, she couldn’t let it go. “Did you see Doctor Moon?” she asked, wanting to change the subject.

“No. Why, was he here?” asked Lee.

“Yeah, just a second ago.” Donna walked over to the window. “You must have passed him.”

She pulled the curtains back, expecting to see the tall figure of Doctor Moon, maybe disappearing around the corner. Instead, she spotted a flash of black lace as what looked like a veiled woman in a long, black dress walking behind a tree.

“You all right?”

Lee sounded a little worried now, and despite Donna’s growing feeling that something was wrong, her reassurance was automatic.

“Yeah. Yeah, I’m fine,” she said as the last of the woman’s train disappeared. “It’s just…”

“Just?” Lee murmured in her ear.

The quiet neighbourhood Donna had always loved suddenly seemed eerie. Wind blew clouds in, and the sun slanted in at the wrong angle for the time of day. Even the birds were quiet.

Donna sighed and shook her head. “Nothing.” She turned around and wrapped her arms around her husband. “It’s been a long day, that’s all.” She pulled back and smiled up at him. “I’m just tired.”

She blinked, and she and Lee were in their bedroom, dressed for bed. The feeling that the world was wrong strengthened, and she shook her head, hoping to either get rid of it, or get more insight into why it seemed so wrong.

Lee put his hand on her arm. “You okay?”

Donna felt a hint of panic welling up inside her as she tried to remember exactly what they’d done for the evening. She hadn’t had this many problems with her memory since she’d been released from the hospital, and the idea that she might have to go back terrified her.

“I said I was tired,” she began slowly, trying to remember what had happened next. “And, and… we put the kids to bed, and we watched television.” The memories came as she talked, and the knot of tension in her stomach had eased by the time she finished.

Lee smiled at her, and Donna was just about to suggest they get into bed when they heard the distinctive sound of the mail slot being pushed open.

Donna looked over her shoulder at their open bedroom door, then back at Lee. “Was that a letter?” she asked.

Lee shook his head. “It’s midnight.”

Donna pushed him gently towards the bedroom door. “Go and see what it is,” she requested urgently.

He sighed, but left the room, patting her shoulder reassuringly on his way by. After he was gone, Donna stared at the red accent wall behind their bed for a moment, wondering yet again what had led her to paint it that way. It had felt familiar and right, somehow.

She shook the thought off and wandered over to the window. If someone had dropped a letter in the slot, maybe she could catch a glimpse of them as they walked away.

The flash of lace was familiar. This definitely seemed like the dress she’d seen earlier in the afternoon, though this time, she caught a much better glimpse of it, enough to see that it was a Victorian gown, with a bustle and train.

“The world is wrong.”

Donna’s skin tingled when she heard the words she’d been thinking from Lee’s lips. She dropped the curtain and looked back at him.

“What?”

He held up a letter. “For you. Weird, though,” he added, raising his eyebrows before reading the entire note. “‘Dear Donna, the world is wrong. Meet me at your usual play park, two o’clock tomorrow.’”

Donna looked out the window again, and Lee wrapped his arms around her waist and looked over her shoulder as they watched the woman in black walk away.

“Nutter,” she muttered, earning a laugh from Lee.

Still… the world was wrong, and despite the tremor of foreboding she felt when she considered what the woman might have to say, Donna needed to know if she actually knew something, or if she just liked dropping notes in letterboxes at half twelve at night.

The rest of the night and the morning passed in an instant, and the next thing Donna knew, she was walking hand in hand with Ella and Joshua to the big park down the road. She brushed off the part of her that wondered when she’d decided what to wear, and if she’d had coffee or tea with her breakfast, and even how she and the kids had gotten to the park. Those weren’t important questions.

She spotted a woman dressed in full Victorian mourning, completely with veil, sitting on a weathered park bench. Donna took a deep breath and nodded once, then looked down at her kids.

“All right, you two, off you go,” she told them. “No fighting,” she added as they raced off to play with the other kids.

She watched for a moment, and when she was satisfied they were having fun, she turned back to the woman and slowly circled the playground equipment until she was able to sit down beside her.

“I got your note last night.” It was cold enough that Donna could see her breath when she talked. “‘The world is wrong.’ What’s that mean?”

“No, you didn’t,” the woman said.

Something about the voice sounded familiar, but Donna ignored it in favour of addressing the direct contradiction she’d just received.  

“I’m sorry, what?”  

“You didn’t get my note last night,” the woman elaborated. “You got it a few seconds ago. Having decided to come, you suddenly found yourself arriving.”

Donna sucked in a breath, thinking about all the times she’d felt like time had just magically passed, all the times she’d had to struggle to remember how she’d gotten from one place to another.

The woman’s head tilted. “That is how time progresses here, in the manner of a dream. You’ve suspected that before, haven’t you, Donna Noble?”

She added emphasis to her name, but it wasn’t necessary. Hearing someone she’d never met address her by name was enough of a shock.

“How do you know me?” Donna demanded. The world was wrong. This was all wrong.

“We met before, in the Library.” It was strange listening to someone talk when she couldn’t see their lips moving. “You were kind to me. I hope now to return that kindness.”

“Your voice. I recognise it.” Flashes of memory returned to Donna, moments Doctor Moon had told her were only dreams and hadn’t really happened. But this voice had been in those dreams, calling her the nice woman.

The woman turned slowly to look directly at her. “Yes, you do. I am what is left of Miss Evangelista.”

[aspiestvmusings]

SCORPION S4: STORK PLOT THOUGHTS (MASTER POST)

Here are some new, additional thoughts about the Quintis Baby (STORK) plot. Things that can now be added to the old thoughts. (there are still things that cannot be added to these posts, but will...later. And things I still haven’t fully figured out...hence need more clues to figure out before adding to the post)

You can check out my QUINTIS BABY PLOT MASTER POST & ALL THOUGHTS RELATED TO THE TOPIC 

Here is a list of scenes/moments/things from past episodes that might or might not be foreshadowing for the Quintis baby plot

4x04 Airman’s daughter’s photo 

The airman’s daughter had a circulation issue, when she was born. The baby had to have surgery to fix the issue. 

Possible foreshadowing 1: Quintis baby being a girl 

Possible foreshadowing 2: The baby being born with some kind of health issue & needing extra care (preemie, medical condition)...but surviving it all,  and turning out “healthy” after “treatment”. 

4x04 “Death omelette” 

Happy & her eggs demonstration... (Happy’s got eggs on her mind) Why would she use eggs for this demonstration? (a little too convenient, though demonstrates the situation with the case...so well)

Possible foreshadowing 1: Possible reference to simply her wish for a baby and hence doing the demonstration with eggs OR something more...like some problem with her eggs or something similar (”problem” with her “eggs”, fertility issues, complications during pregnancy) 

4x03 Jane Doe, the deer & her baby 

A spotted munt deer (named “Jane Doe” by Sly), who is shot by poachers, is pregnant, and Team Scorpion saves both the animal mom & baby (girl). Toby, the doc delivers the baby deer by a C-section (Happy cuts the umbilical cord), and they create an artificial womb for the animal baby to survive until she can be taken to a “hospital”. Both animals make it to the vet/hospital and survive.

Possible foreshadowing 1: The Quintis baby being a girl 

Possible foreshadowing 2: The Quintis baby being born as a preemie (having to have an emergency C-section at ?-weeks) and having to spend some time in NICU/ICN. #Iwillwritemoreaboutthisoptioninthefuture #iftherewillbeapregnancyplotinsteadofadoptionplot

Possible foreshadowing 3: The Quintis baby delivered by Toby (the team), during a mission

Possible foreshadowing 4: The Quintis baby being born via an emergency C-section. (extreme version: delivered by Toby..not in a hospital)

3x25 Toby & Scotty: fathers & children talks

Scotty: “You know... It’s just that...my baby must’ve been born by now. Not being there for him or her - like my father wasn’t there for me - is something I swore I’d never let happen to my child. I just want to feel useful to someone.”

This parallels to Toby’s own life story - his childhood & his son/dad relationship with his own father. As learned in 1x12 & his own personality and wishes...as learned in 2x19. Scotty’s & Toby’s stories & “wishes” are similar. 

Possible foreshadowing 1: The Quintis baby being a girl

Possible foreshadowing 2: Toby (almost) not making it to the birth of his child (Collins? Bruno?...either cause someone “kidnaps” Happy & they find her last minute or because someone/something is holding up him...)

Possible foreshadowing 3: The Toby & Scotty talks about his child (when Toby reveals that he noticed the pregnancy book, the photo & the weightgain, and the nailbiting) & about wanting to be the kind of father who wants to be there for their kid... were foreshadowing of Toby becoming a dad...soon(ish)

Possible foreshadowing 4: Toby wanting to be there for his kid...not be like his own father was (”absent”). Be there for the birth, and all other times... Whether he gets to...or not... be there for the birth.

3x24 Toby & Scotty: pregnancy talks

Toby: In reality... there’s a really good chance you’re gonna be home to see your baby be born.

Scotty:  I didn’t tell you (that) my wife was expecting.

Toby: Well... you’ve got 9 perfectly manicured fingernails, except for your left thumb, which has been bitten to the quick - clearly from stress. And that photo on your pilot’s licence...its less than a year old -- (yet) you look 20 pounds lighter on it...and I know... men often gain weight when their spouses are pregnant. It’s called the “Couvade effect” -- But mainly..you’ve got that book in your pilot’s bag there.” (book title: “What to expect when you’re expecting”

Scotty: You saw that, huh? You know... my wife is due in 3 weeks. I don’t even know if it’s a boy or a girl.

Paige:  Scorpion doesn’t fail. You will be in that delivery room. (SPOILER ALERT: Sounds like he wasn’t...but he made it there just after the birth)

Possible foreshadowing 1: The Quintis baby being a girl

Possible foreshadowing 2: Toby (almost) not making it to the birth of his child (Collins? Bruno?...either cause someone “kidnaps” Happy & they find her last minute or because someone/something is holding up him... making him be late or almost miss the birth of their child)

Possible foreshadowing 3: The Toby & Scotty talks about his child (when Toby reveals that he noticed the pregnancy book, the photo & the weightgain, and the nailbiting) & about wanting to be the kind of father who wants to be there for their kid... were foreshadowing of Toby becoming a dad...soon(ish)

Possible foreshadowing 4: Toby wanting to be there for his kid...not be like his own father was (”absent”). Be there for the birth, and all other times...

3x04 - 3x07 Quintis & Cd- baby 

In season 3... ep 3x04 Happy’s pregnancy (blood) test at the doctors is positive for pregnancy. She probably goes to the doctor, because she has pregnancy symptoms (missed period, morning sickness/nausea, etc)... Three weeks later in the Scorpion Universe, in 3x07 she goes to her next appointment and has new test, which is negative. Turns out the 1st test was a false positive, and it was because of Cadmium  poisoning that she had. 

An interesting parallel  in season 4 would be if Happy didn’t have any traditional pregnancy symptoms and hence think she is not pregnant (when she will be), and her home test showed negative (and since this is a TV show, they tust a single home pregnancy test... 100%... when in reality no1 should, especially if they’re geniuses, and especially if one of them is a genius doc) ... but then during a medical check-up (maybe even during a check-up they have to find out if there are any” fertility issues” with either of them)... a month or few later... she/they find out that she is pregnant, and was already pregnant during the “false negative” test. That would be a kind of a REVERSED version of last season, and parallel...in an opposite... way what happened last year.  (also..since the Cd-baby wasn’t really mentioned during the 4x03-4x04 talks, I hope to have it brought up...in some way...later during this “Quintis Baby” arc)

And since it is early  October in the shows universe in 4x04 & 4x05 (it’s around Oct 22nd in 4x05, so it’s 2-4 days earlier in 4x04), when they decide to start trying, then I fully expect them to have no positive results after the first try/month...in November (that’d provide also some angst for Nov sweeps...with Happy being not happy that it’s not happening...”now”...but this is TV, so unless they go with major fertlity issues or baby not born in s4, there’s not much room for options left here...), so that’d also give an opportunity for a Xmas ep reveal...and it’d make perfect sense to reveal the pregnancy in Xmas ep... so that’d be 2 months after they started trying. (I’m using broader terms here, not going into details about gestational age and everything else. I don’t expect any TV show to focus on such “details”)

Because unless the show will use extra timejumps, then a reveal after the Xmas ep makes it impossible for the baby to be born during S4. So... if we go from “pregnancy plot” & “baby born during s4″ (and not other options (adoption..due to “infertility”, baby born in s5) then the time is running out, and there aren’t many other options left. I’d say that we’ll know the answer (latest) when Xmas ep ends...either way. Cause if no reveal then, then it’s gonna be adoption or baby not born in s4. Or the show completely ignoring time issue (gestation period: 40 weeks) or using some serious time jumps during season 4B. I don’t expect the last option...though I do expect a bio kid/pregnancy plot with some “minor” timejumps during season 4B, and then between s4 & s5...

I mean... for me it’d go under “(a bit) hard to believe these geniuses would do this” category, but this is not anywhere near the level of unbelievable  what this show usually does (with cases/science). So I’d be willing to believe that the geniuses rely on some single  test or think no missed period means for sure that she isn’t pregnant...etc etc. But as I learned in S3... they relied on the results on a single test, and went from there. Why wouldn’t the show do that again...only in reverse? They’d now again believe a single test...and not question it...in any way.  Just like they did in S3.  The writers did it last year, why not this year? (it’d be even funnier, if that “test” was made by/done by the geniuses themselves... so it should be absolutely accurate...because Scorpion “always succeeds”) 

Foreshadowing 1: Quintis pregnancy issue - the Cd-poisoning...or some other case of exposure to certain toxins/materials, could be used as a “reason” for fertility issues. Either making it harder for them to conceive, or impossible to. 

Foreshadowing 2: A fake positive test VS  Fake negative test. The opportunity to do a reversed parallels story. 

2x10 Toby/Quintis delivering Baby Ashna 

During a lockdown in a hospital... Toby & Happy have to (help) deliver a baby, when a woman goes into labour, and there is no-one else to help. They have to put together their own supply of needed items (boil water, collect “blankets”...) ...using things available...not having access to modern medical technology...or even a bed... Everything goes as well as possible..in such situation, besides the umbilical cord being wrapped around the babies neck...which Toby “fixes” with “somersault technique” and a healthy baby girl is born.

Possible foreshadowing 1: The Quintis baby being a girl

Possible foreshadowing 2: The Quintis baby being born during a “major crisis” situation, with Toby/The Team having to deliver the baby...with no other help 

Possible foreshadowing 3: Toby delivering the Quintis baby 

Possible foreshadowing 4: Complications during the birth...that Toby/the docs have to overcome... (and will) 

HAPPY’S PAST: Happy’s birth & childhood. 

1x02, 1x07, 1x12, 2x13, 2x18... etc: We learn that Happy’s mother died in childbirth - during giving birth to her. (There is no indication or info about any prior health issues either before or during her pregnancy. And there is no info until now about what went “wrong” during the childbirth, and why did she die.) That leads to her dad having to raise her on his own, and not dealing well with his wife’s death, and raising a genius kid alone... which leads to drinking, and giving the baby up, when she’s about 3-years-old. This leads to Happy spending most of her childhood/youth in an orphanage/foster care system, and having serious psychological wounds related to... all ..this... that she’s only been dealing with & “healing from” in the past few years... 

2x13: We see a VHS video of Happy’s parents, being happy, when they were expecting the baby. Her dad being sure that the baby is a girl (turns out he was right)

Possible foreshadowing 1: The Quintis baby being a girl. Basically every baby being born or being mentioned on this show has been a girl, except the one in 2x13...(a boy, named after Ralph). #Pink #Itsagirl #Icanfeelitinmybones

Possible foreshadowing 2: The Quintis baby being named after Happy’s late mother, Grace (first name, middle name). Other options: Cabe’s (their “dad’s”)  daughter’s name - Amanda or Ada (for Happy’s only non-work friend outside of “TeamScorpion”)

Possible foreshadowing 3: Complications during childbirth - baby and/or mother being in danger (but unlike Grace, Happy, too survives, just like the baby)

EXTRA:  Toxins

In 3x04 Happy announces that she is pregnant (after she’s visited a doctor... because she had certain symptoms, and the blood test was positive for pregnancy...but before she’s revealed this she’s already taking steps to protect the baby & stay our of harm... by wearing protective mask/gear...to avoid toxins in the air, etc) & in 3x07 she announces that she is not pregnant. In fact she never was pregnant. The test was a false positive... and all her symptoms and the positive test were caused by Cadmium poisoning. (it’s unclear how exactly & in which capacity she was exposed to Cd... but its due to working on solar panels). 

Happy has been exposed to toxic gases/materials before, and after that: in 2x23 the team goes to Chernobyl, and is exposed to a certain level of radiation. In 3x05 she wears protective gear to protect her from the radiation during the case. In 4x01 she is exposed to toxic gas.. in the icy “cave”. In 4x04 she’s exposed to other toxic gases in the missile silo. 

In 4x04 she reveals that she is ready to have a child/baby. This is about a year after the Cd-poisoning. And just after two instances of exposure to toxins...

Random or not random? Who knows... But toxins/toxic gas (chemicals) have been a continuous theme in several eps.. And again recently... just as this new plot is starting... 

Possible foreshadowing 1: IF the show would decide to go the infertility route...and have it be medium or big issue, instead just a small one, then it is possible they could use the exposure to certain toxins and all that as a “reason” why they’re having trouble conceiving. (I can see a TV show doing a plot like that). If it’s written as “difficult, but not impossible to conceive” plot, then finding a solution to this would be just another problem TeamScorpion encounters. 

SO HERE WE ARE... 

I AM READY FOR A QUINTIS BABY! BIOLOGICAL OR ADOPTED. (NO, I DO NOT THINK IT’S TOO SOON. THOUGH THEY NEED TO START SAVING... & BE CREATIVE WITH THEIR FINANCES AND ALL - BUILD ALL THE BABY FURNITURE THEMSELVES, etc. AND NO, I DO NOT BELIEVE AT ALL THAT “BABIES RUIN TV SHOWS”. I WANT THESE GENIUSES, THROUGH THE WRITERS OF THIS SHOW, TO PROVE THIS TO THE DOUBTERS) 

i AM ROOTING FOR A PREGNANCY PLOT...BECAUSE WHILE I DO HOPE THEY’LL ADOPT IN THE FUTURE (WHEN THEIR FINANCES ARE BETTER), THEY REALLY “NEED” A LITTLE BIT OF HAPPINESS IN THEIR LIVES...AND THEY BOTH WANTED THE CD-BABY TO BE REAL LAST YEAR, SO DESPITE BEING SURE THE WRITERS WILL MAKE THIS BABY PLOT AS BUMPY RIDE AS POSSIBLE... I AM REALLY HOPING FOR A BIO BABY/PREGNANCY PLOT...WITH BABY BORN IN S4 FINALE.  

These thoughts were written without taking into account what happens in next episodes (in canon), just looking at the scenes already aired. And analyzing the possible options and meanings. Several other fans have made comments/posted about many of these “moments” & their possible meanings, including Ermanda 

Post created/Last update: Oct 23rd, 2017/Nov 11th

[bpd-dennis-reynolds]

Dennis Reynolds: Borderline as Fuck

So I only really pushed for one from each season because like… everything he does pretty much is borderline as fuck.. Though if you have BPD and want to add some more of your faves or other observations, please go for it.

S1: -Storming away and nearly crying when he is told Tim Murphy banged is prom date and is made to feel like he wasn’t The Total Coolest. Also him getting pissed at the end when Mac says “that guys is gonna bang your prom date” (Underage Drinking a National Crisis)

S2 -When Dee destroyed Mr. Tibbs and he refused to look weak in front of her, then causing him to have a much bigger breakdown to Mac about it (and then instantly shove it aside when something Important came up.) (Charlie Gets Crippled) S3: -desperately seeking validation and friendship because his “legacy” needs to be maintained also hes lonely (Dennis and Dee’s Mom is Dead) S4:

- Insisting he is both the looks and the brains and becoming frustrated when it is implied anyone may be more attractive OR competent than him (The Gang Solves the gas crisis) S5: -Having a full breakdown over an unpeeled apple because he has been convinced it will bring him harm and being fine the instant it’s resolved (Mac and Dennis Break Up)

- Leading the gang to restart a rivalry, destroying a house, and poisoning people to avoid the risk of him looking Bad” or lame (The Gang Reignites The Rivalry) S6: -Saying he was having feelings like “Some sort of 14 year old” after marrying Maureen (Likely also tied to being raped by the librarian) (Mac Fights Gay Marriage)

-“She always has to one up me” and refusing to be out done while still saying things he doesn’t mean (Dennis Gets Divorced) S7: -Clearly romanticized high school and himself (A Golden God) and then sought to make things even based on that, despite substantial evidence he was a loser who remembered things wrong. (High School Reunion) S8:

- “The Cancer thing? Just not grabbing me right now.” “I’m having trouble feeling things” “I want to see if I can knock some emotion loose” “No, I meant none of it” and then the Instant snap to feeling way too much the second he sees Barbara’s corpse (Charlie’s Mom Has Cancer) S9: -Being sick and quarantined but still demanding control, yelling at others, and persistent that his goal is the right one. He also pushes the gang to continue practicing and stays in deep denial of his own weakness (sickness) until it is far too late. (The Gang Gets Quarantined) S10: -Him splitting on Dee and (graphically) describing how he is imagining killing her only to instantly calm back down and resume another conversation. (Obviously, as this led to his diagnosis) (Psy*ho Pete Returns)

-Screaming because his car was called a “starter car” and he took it as a direct insult to the person he is (The Gang Misses The Boat)

-The entire breakdown at the end of Family Fight? S11: -the entirety of Mac and Dennis Move to the Suburbs… Literally the whole episode… -Keeping and onion to elicit tears (The Gang Goes to Hell pt. 2)

Some general things:

Frequently we see Dennis feeling intense emotions that either go neutral or shift to a different strong emotion quickly. We also see him go long periods of time without feeling anything. He is constantly aware of how others perceive him though how much he cares seems to fluctuate depending on the circumstances. When he is in his comfort zone and with the gang to support him, he is able to ignore criticism better as they can instantly validate his perspective. However, when he is in environments he has little to no control we have seen Dennis is prone to emotional outbursts, shutting down and feeling Nothing, and more impulsive decision making. He often feels cornered and acts quickly based on his emotions before fully considering the implications of his actions. We also have seen that his place in the gang is a huge part of Dennis’ identity. Everyone in the gang has Something else, but his biggest endeavor outside of the bar seems to be sleeping with women. Mac has the gym and working out, Dee has/had her acting and comedy, Charlie has keyboards and his music, Frank has his stuff with Charlie and honestly has lived plenty so he just messes around now. Dennis shows frequently how much the bar means to him and is the one generally pushing them to actually Try and make it run when anyone tries at all. He comes up with several promotions and ways to expand the bar over the years, and seems the most genuinely invested in the bar as more than just a place.

His relationships with people are outwardly expressed very inconsistently. He is constantly putting Dee down, but also frequently stays close to her and gets defensive when she has been wronged. He calls Charlie stupid and demeans him but also listens to him and pays attention to when things are getting really bad. He gets clearly annoyed by Mac constantly but still lets him live with him and helps pay his bills and is just generally co-dependant. His intense loyalty mixed with negative outbursts could reflect a fear of abandonment but is more likely a product of being unable to adequately express his emotions. Emotion can often be equated with weakness and it’s clear that Dennis views himself as someone above weakness. By constantly distancing himself from people or sending mixed signals about how he feels, from his perspective it likely makes it harder to find his weaknesses and it’s also impossible to attack his weaknesses if he destroys them first.

We also see in his relationship with Maureen, and to an extent in Mac and Dennis Move to the Suburbs, that Dennis has a tendency to destroy himself and relationships when he feels cornered. Yes being domestic could be the issue, but it is likely more that both of these situations required him to fundamentally alter his lifestyle. Maureen took over a lot of his space and his time, she demanded he not do things that brought him joy, and tried controlling his schedule which all lead to him resenting her and ultimately their divorce. Mac and Dennis have very little else to do in the suburbs and he is cornered into a mundane routine full of things he wasn’t genuinely interested in and over time grew angrier and more bitter from lack of stimulation. Personally, I feel the issue is much more restrictions than being domestic.

TL:DR: Frequent mood swings, dissociation, impulsive decisions, altered perception of self, intense loyalty, aversion to outsiders, and issues maintaining relationships are some Big Ass BPD symptoms and Dennis does shit like every episode that is borderline as hell.

[kinetic-elaboration]

April 27: Thoughts on 4x09 DNR

[spoiler alert: I didn’t like it and most of what follows is me ripping it to shreds]

Okay, just finished watching 4x09 DNR. And I’ve basically come to the conclusion that I cannot be pleased by this show anymore. I’m sorry, but S4 had a good start that has now devolved into…I’m not going to say worse than or on the level of season 3 but basically into one big nonsense mess. That’s what this episode was, imo, a big old mess.

One thing—and I am being completely literal, this is the ONLY thing I liked in this episode—Miller/Jackson is going to happen and I am on board. I love Miller/Bryan and I always will, and in a way I’m bummed because I’m pretty sure this spells the end of Briller but I can’t be upset because I started writing a Miller/Jackson piece weeks ago and I thought it was a crackship and now I’m like well wow Jackson is definitely queer and he and Miller are gonna hook up it’s completely inevitable COMPLETELY. (If this were an m/f couple I’d say it was out of nowhere and random I admit that but the rules are different for minor character same-sex couples and anyway this was just the initial seed being planted, we’ll see how it goes but so far I’m all in.)

Now for how much I think everything else sucked:

Clarke and Polis

What to say besides I thought this was boring and stupid? First of all, war is boring. War has always been kinda boring but at least in season 1 it was new. But it’s been so fucking constant in every single season and I just cannot care. I have far surpassed the outer limits of fucks I give about martial story lines of any sort. I am not one of those people who has whole shelves of books about WWII in my library okay (and, frankly—are most of the people watching this show that sort of person? I would guess not but what do I know about the cw core audience?). And war story lines are even more dumb now when, much as I disagree with her a lot, you have Clarke there literally spelling it out in great big shiny colorful letters for everyone to see that the radiation is coming in less than a week dumbnuts, put aside the squabbling for like five seconds for the love of all things!!!!!!! I mean she’s not wrong. At one point I just thought, hey, how about everyone who thinks war is a good idea just goes out and fucking slaughters each other—try to get it done in like 2-3 days please, tops—and then everyone who’s smart enough to not want to slaughter each other can live in the bunker. Win-win.

Speaking of Clarke, though, I’ve said it before that I have a supremely complicated relationship with her character but she is at Peak Insufferable Levels when she gets all up her own ass about how she’s the only one to be able to solve everyone’s problems. This was something Lxa cultivated in her—not that I blame L entirely because I think we see the seeds in S1, I mean there was something to cultivate in the first place—and she’s gotten a bit better over S3-S4 but every now and then that side of her that once said “you’re the Chancellor but I’m in charge,” to her own mother, at the ripe old age of barely-18, rears its ugly face and this was one of those episodes. I get that smart-girl frustration of seeing everyone else being So Fucking Dumb and just wanting to knock some heads together until the sense floats up to the top but still the outstanding hubris of her wanting to become the Commander I mean !!!!!!!!!!!!! Which she like apparently off-screen convinced Gaia to go along with because it was only Roan that stopped the whole thing? Oh Roan. You’re often quite boring and your voice annoys me but every now and then you have your moments.

I will say, I did like the way Abby said “WITH SCIENCE!” though.

I wouldn’t say the fight to the death is the worst idea anyone’s ever had but four complaints:

1.      The radiation is coming in literally 6 days MUST WE WASTE TIME WITH THIS SHIT?

2.      Obviously there are counter-arguments to this and I’m necessarily biased but imo Arkadians researched the bunker (Jaha), found the bunker (Jaha et. al.), and figured out how to open the bunker (Monty) so, like—shouldn’t they automatically get some of the spots? They can’t possibly have many people left after the multiple massacres their original 2k population has taken over the last year or so--the clans can have their 12-way brawl for the rest of the space after Arkadia has taken what’s already theirs.

3.      Next episode is going to be so boring I already want to weep,

4.      Is this the fucking Hunger Games now? Just like I didn’t sing up to watch Game of Thrones, I didn’t sing up for the Hunger Games either. JFC

 Raven, Murphy, and Emori

I liked Murphy and Emori both in this episode. I thought Murphy had some good lines and there was a lot to like in his last scene with Raven. And I liked that Emori’s story in this ep was about learning to trust the Sky People. That was a nice little narrative flourish.

But the rest…I don’t know. I just don’t know. I liked how Raven’s story line was thematically consistent with the DNR kids’ story line, how she is, in fact, another person who is literally saying Do Not Resuscitate, except that her case is more…it’s closer to how these issues really play out in real life because she is, personally, because of something in her actual physical body, not outside of herself, going to die, and now she’s preparing to do it on her own terms. I mean it was a little on the nose but they earned that because they’ve been building this Raven story for a while.

I couldn’t really get into it, though. I can’t explain why I couldn’t. Maybe it’s that Becca’s lab has been so off-putting to me this entire season. Maybe it’s because I have such a deep hatred of all of this going into space bullshit even if I’m a little more open to the possibility of just blasting off the rocket the one time for a suicide mission. (It’s a little less totally-out-of-left-field-versus-previous-seasons utterly-batshit-implausible and more along the lines of within-suspendable-disbelief ranges.) Maybe it’s just bad luck on my part that it’s not resonating with me even though there’s nothing wrong with it. I want to like the concept of a fucked up code getting into someone’s brain and setting up a home there and messing with them, but something that I can’t pinpoint in the execution is just off for me, like a barrier between something I feel I would enjoy and my actual enjoyment.

 DNR

THE DISAPPOINTMENT OF THE CENTURY. Heavens me this was the MOST SHALLOW TREATMENT OF SOMETHING I’M INTERESTED IN THAT I HAVE EVER COME ACROSS. I demand my fucking money back. (IDK what money in particular...my internet bill I guess? My law school tuition? The monetary equivalent of all the time I’ve spent thinking about The 100 or at least this story line? Something.) I probably put more effort into my rambly Jasper meta than they writers did in writing this episode or possibly this entire arc. If I ever need evidence for my contention that this show is shallow af and the PTB don’t know how to write philosophical or even meaningful discussions lasting more than a dozen lines, I’m going to point to this episode.

First, it bothered me that no one thought to ask themselves or each other: hey, why do we want to take these people with us? Like hear me out because maybe it is or should be obvious, but I think this is the time to ask that question. Why do we want to force people to live? Because we do, we force people to live all the time. You can be very simple about it and just say “because all life is good and all death is bad and suicide in particular is bad and our moral obligation as people/the state’s moral obligation as the guardian of the people is to ensure that everyone stays alive even against their own will absolutely no matter what.” I mean that’s a legit position, even if I think it’s a bit simplistic.

You could say that you want them to live because it’s all hands on deck to keep humanity itself alive—which is the argument Jaha hints at initially in his conversation with Jasper, and exactly the type of argument the DNR group could most easily and most fairly reject. I’m always 10000000% on board for discussion of the Ark or comparisons of the current situation to the Ark but we get only a tiny itty bitty hint at this, instead of a long discussion. (TALKING’S BORING RIGHT WHERE ARE THE SWORDS.) (I’m sorry to anyone who actually reads this; I just can’t contain my bitterness.)

You could say that a desire to kill oneself is generally a symptom, not a disease, and a general, moral, human compassion obligates us to interrogate that suicidal urge when we see it in others, and would especially so obligate us if we saw that urge in a large group of people such as the DNR group. Which is pretty much my position but if that’s the position anyone on the outside of the door were taking they’d probably not want to solve the problem by blowing up the door and taking everyone prisoner so.

That Jasper is literally using the phrase DNR—which generally applies when the person in question can only be saved by some kind of extreme and immediate measure—should have prompted some sort of discussion. Another term for DNR is “allow natural death.” To use that phrase is, first, to say that the bunker is a life-saving measure akin to CPR, something that you do at the last moment to stave off what would otherwise be your (natural) time to die; second, it is to say that Jasper and his followers view the bunker as, in some sense, unnatural (not a way to live, as Jasper puts it); and third, it is to say that they consider themselves right on the verge of death--as in, this is an emergency situation. I just…I’m so frustrated that they used that phrase, they made it the title of the episode, they put it forefront in the trailer, and then it’s like…never dealt with!!!!! There’s so much material there!!!! Whoops sorry guess we gotta budget in about ½ the running time for fight scenes and talk of war lol. Wherever are my priorities???

All we really got was a knee-jerk “life is good, survival is good, you kids are bad” from Jaha and friends.

Second—it only gets worse from there because then, as soon as Bellamy says, “Hey, um, maybe it’s kinda understandable what they’re doing??” everyone just throws up their hands and goes “Hey, you’re right. I guess we’ll just let them die.” Like what!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! There aren’t enough exclamation marks in the fucking universe. I’m sorry but that’s literally just straight up immoral. THESE CHILDREN ARE SUICIDAL. Does that not fucking bother you, any of you??? I’m disgusted. I’m even more disgusted that the narrative seemed to stand with the death squad, like it allowed only the rational arguments to stand without interrogating at all the bitter pain beneath them.

Third, and this is a smaller point but… Bellamy’s the male lead, and he was definitely flirting with Jasper’s philosophy a mere episode ago. Now he’s all back on the survival train. Just like that. I know we don’t have time to go deep into everyone’s head here but Bellamy’s in such an interesting place—I think he’s one of the few people who is really, honestly torn between Team Survival and Team Fuck It—and not only is he a character with a unique vantage point but there is literally only one character even arguably more important than him so if we’re going to give a few extra minutes to ANYONE shouldn’t it be him? Does he not deserve that? He got like 2 lines and 3 minutes of screen time this week and that was pathetic.

Also—not be shallow—but—I’m gonna indulge in a bit of supremely bitter ranting here. As I’ve said repeatedly, I hate (TRULY TRULY HATE) Monty/Harper. So the fact that 80% of Monty’s story was about Harper and maybe 20% if I’m super generous, was about Jasper pisses me off. Monty being all “Harper you’re the only thing more beautiful than the hydroponic farms” made me want to vomit. Monty’s “I love you” made me literally scream NO YOU DON’T YOU CHILD at the screen. Look, I’ve started a relationship with a random hook up in real life, and it’s a sham, I can speak from deeply personal experience, this relationship is a sham. And that Monty’s emotion is all being shoved into this Random Het Nonsense with the minorest of minor delinquents who has pretty much no personality and has only had the screen time she’s had this season because she had the good luck to be shoved into a ““““““romance”””””” with a main while actual main character since the fucking pilot Jasper has been shafted at LITERALLY EVERY TURN is just SO MADDENING I MIGHT LITERALLY SCREAM. (Yes I consider Harper and Jasper to be zero sum. It’s one or the other for screen time and Monty’s heart and I know where my allegiances lie.)

I don’t feel much of anything about Monty staying behind. Like… I probably should, but by that point in the story I was just exhausted with disappointment and counting down the minutes until it was over. On the one hand, what other choice did he really have, narratively? Like he wasn’t going to leave the most important people in his life behind. But then on the other hand, I can’t help but think it was sort of dumb of him. This is just about as high stakes as it gets. And he’s going to die for what, like, to make a point? To be nice? Hmmmm, suspicious. Further, and to go along with my rant above, I was pretty pissed off that all of his emotion in his last scene was reserved for Harper and he and Jasper just got a bro moment LIKE WHAT THE FUCK. I guess on the upside, if Miller/Bryan is any indication, we’re probably supposed to take from that that they’re in love (get it? Because Miller and Bryan bro-hugged in S3? I’m still not over that btw).

Finally, and more seriously… I don’t believe that Monty has really engaged with his friends’ arguments. Am I supposed to think he somehow did off screen and that’s why he’s there? I think not, first because Monty is SO HARDCORE on Team Survival that that would be a massive mental undertaking and one we should really see at least part of on screen, and second, and more importantly, because he literally says he’s just there to help them out when they change their minds, lol. He’s loyal but he hasn’t learned anything.

I did like the Bellamy/Jasper hug. I was waiting for it, I was literally saying “hug him, hug him, Jasper loves hugs, he’ll love this so much” the entire time they were talking. And then they did hug and Jasper DID obviously love it so much and it was sweet. Unrequited Bellamy/Jasper hero-worship-crush (head) canon (further) confirmed.

A few other little things I did like: the call back to Mt. Weather (especially because it came in the form of Monty pointing out that Jasper’s good at this barricading himself in shit, but also because it invited the viewer to remember the Mt. Weather situation and maybe do what I’m not doing right now and dig deeper into the comparison); the shot of Wells in the door that Jaha sees. Both of these things were examples of this show’s occasional ability to be Deep but tbh these moments of depth are always just moments and the general shallowness of everything surrounding them almost makes me think they just luck into these gems.

 Octavia

Oh yeah and Octavia was in this too. Almost forgot. I still don’t buy her and Ilian for a hot second. I did have a literal second of thinking Ilian COULD have been interesting, but heavy emphasis on could: if he’d been introduced as a farmer and we got some good farm-society world-building, it would have been nice as something actually different in Grounder society for once. But…first Ilian was too boring at the beginning and between that, and the completely unforgivable burning of Arkadia, I’m never going to like him. And second, he’s apparently a warrior too, quelle surprise, so I guess that “oh look something different” thing I was talking about is actually a no-go.

Similarly, I’d like to see Octavia try out a farmer identity. But for more than two scenes lol. She could have been interesting. She could have had an interesting arc. But it’s all just too little too late for me at this point. They clearly don’t know what to do with her. TBH if we’re going to continue insisting that main/important characters need to die to give the story weight (lol this story’s problems are way bigger than “not enough deaths” I mean…. That’s so ludicrous I can’t even find the words)…maybe it’s her time to go. Just a suggestion.