#'season 2 revelations that change how you view everything that came before' you will always be peak screenwriting

[toadlessgirl]

when you guys said Interview with the Vampire was good I thought you meant like 'horny campy melodrama' good, not 'prestige television 2x5 may be the single best tv episode i've ever seen everyone involved in this deserves an Emmy HOLY SHIT' good

[jonsa101]

Episode 3x14: A Reflection of How Max Stepped Into Love After A Season of Suffering

Gif credit @supagirl

Hey guys! I can’t believe the season finale has come and gone! I think my mind is just taking time to comprehend everything that has happened! Sharpwin is officially canon! As I’m typing this out, it feels strange writing a meta on the other side of things. Since season one, I’ve been writing metas about how these two belong together and making predictions about the trajectory of their relationship. Now, to be on the other side of things where I know longer have to do that because these two are finally together is kinda crazy. I feel so elated!

Now y’all, I’m not going to lie to you, I had a totally different meta planned out and that meta is still in my drafts. I will probably release it because it was a general review of the episode but I thought it was more important that I put this meta out first. When I was watching the finale live, I didn’t love it. I just didn’t. I loved that Max and Helen finally got together at the end of the episode but I had a major issue with how it unfolded. The issue my friends was this scene right here: 

Baby!!! When I tell you this scene TRIGGERED me, it did! Now mind you, I wasn’t upset with Max’s storyline of searching and struggling to take off his wedding ring. It is human nature for Max to still have an emotional attachment to his ring. He’s not still grieving but essentially that ring is the only thing he has left of Georgia and represents a life he once had. Him taking it off was always going to be a monumental moment for Sharpwin and for himself. The issue that I had was Max casually telling Helen that he freaked out about losing his ring!!! To me, after the voicemail he left her, after Helen flew standby and was in a six hour flight to see him, it was an incredibly CALLOUS thing for Max to say. I know Max wasn’t thinking in this moment. I know his intentions were clearly not to hurt her but words matter and him being careless with his was a complete disregard of Helen’s feelings. She was deeply hurt and upset when he said this and rightfully so! I mean just look at her expression here:

Helen’s entire being read like

“I can’t believe you”

And girl same, because neither could I!! He knew he fucked up and he obviously made up for it in the end but y’all when I was watching it live, everything that came after that elevator scene was was tainted for me. I had a hard time believing that Helen would let what he said slide so easily and in the moment, I couldn’t appreciate the beauty of them finally coming together! 😩 In my personal opinion, there were so many other ways that scene could have played out without Max having to literally tell Helen to her face that he was worried about his wedding ring! I know they were trying to build up to the “big moment” where he finally takes his ring off and runs back to Helen’s apartment but man, that moment did not sit right with me in my spirit! It still doesn’t and I don’t think my opinion will ever change on this.

With that said, I’ve now done several rewatches of the finale where I specifically watched the scenes after that awful moment by the elevator. As I’ve had time to reflect, my perspective has changed. I no longer view the moments after the elevator scene as tainted but as something deeply profound and beautiful. Hell, even as I reflect on that scene by the elevator, I still don’t like it, but in a way I understand it in how it relates to Max’s overall journey when it comes to Helen. To me, Max Goodwin is a man who fell deeply in love with Helen in the midst of the most complex situations and a season of him suffering. It’s been deep rooted, complicated and messy from the start and over the past three years we’ve seen Max navigate through the complexities of his feelings for Helen and the circumstances he’s found himself in on our screens. I think when you look at season three finale and specifically the journey of Max finally making a choice to be with Helen, you have to put into context Max’s history and how it influenced what that looked like. So y’all that is exactly what I want to do in this meta so let’s dive in.

One thing I think we need to acknowledge is that, even though as an audience we have loved seeing Max and Helen’s journey unfold, the road has been so TOUGH for them. As Helen said in 3x13, it’s been a fight! Especially for Max. The suffering he has endured over the past three years has been unfathomable and much of his relationship with Helen and his feelings for her have been developed under these traumatic and tragic circumstances. 

At the very beginning of the series, when Max and Helen first meet they clash but it doesn’t last for long. It’s his first day at New Amsterdam and as the new Medical Director, he wants her to stay at the hospital and treat patients instead of doing press tours. Helen on the other hand wants to continue doing press and for the most part ignores his demands for her to return to the hospital. When she finally does return, she does so because she learns that Max has cancer. This bonds them at the onset as Helen is the only person in his life that knows about his diagnosis. As an audience, when we first see them interact, we instantly saw the sparks fly between them. Their chemistry and natural witty banter made us immediately take a look at their relationship and what potential they could have in the future. Though we were shocked by his cancer diagnosis, I think the fun and lightheartedness of Sharpwin’s first interactions really masked how traumatic this must have been for Max. On the first day of his dream job, that he sacrificed his marriage for, he learns that he has cancer while having a baby on the way. Those are the awful circumstances that first bring Max and Helen together. 

As Helen becomes Max’s doctor and he swears her to secrecy about his diagnosis, their friendship and bond grows deeper. His passion and drive to help his patients, reignites Sharpe’s love for medicine again and inspires her to put her patients first. They become vulnerable with each other more than anyone else in their lives. He confides in her about his broken marriage and she tells him that she wants a baby. When he almost dies, she becomes his deputy medical director so that he can focus on his care. All of these moments are significant to them because somewhere along the way they develop feelings for each other. They didn’t plan for it and it’s something neither of them are consciously aware of but unknowingly, they both start to fill a place in each other’s lives that was clearly more than a doctor and patient relationship or a friendship. This “place” wasn’t called out until episode 1x16 were the clairvoyant called out their feelings for each other. When episode 1x17 comes around, after a night of revelations and a scramble to get the power back on in the hospital, Helen decides to step back as his doctor. If she wasn’t aware of her feelings before, in this moment, she’s fully aware of them now. This is an effort to safeguard her heart and set boundaries because the lines of who they are to each other were already so blurred. When she “triages” their relationship Max’s reacts badly and honestly they’re both devastated and are on the verge of tears:

As viewers, we loved this moment but when you peel back the layers of what’s actually going on in this scene, it’s gut-wrenching. The subtext is so clear here yet their situation is so complex and layered. We know for a fact that Max wasn’t trying to lose her in ANY CAPACITY. We also know that in the way he TRULY wanted her he couldn’t have her and Helen knew that too. Not when he was married, had a baby on the way, and fighting cancer at the same time. Y’all that’s hard and profoundly painful when you think about it and it makes this scene all the more tragic. 

When Helen steps back as his doctor, at first Max seems to be handling it well but as his cancer starts to get worse, he completely breaks. Like I said earlier, over the course of his cancer treatment, Helen filled a place in Max’s life that was so much more than just his doctor or his friend. So when he’s dying and no longer has the person he feels deeply for play an active role in his treatment, he lashes out. He’s dealing with a range of emotions he can’t handle or properly process. Things only get worse from there and at the end of season one Georgia and Luna’s life are on the line and Bloom and Helen scramble to save them. When it seems like everyone was able to come out of that traumatic event unscathed, they get into a devastating ambulance crash that changes everything. 

Season 2 brings another level of pain and suffering for Max when he loses his wife after the crash and is thrust into single fatherhood. Not only is he grieving but he’s also dealing with guilt of falling in love with Helen while he was married. The complexities of his feelings is something he struggles with throughout this season and it affects his relationship with Helen. At some points he pushes her away and at others he desperately needs her. Once again, Helen and Max’s relationship is caught up in the most complex of circumstances that is riddled with agony and trauma. 

By time we head into season 3, Max doesn’t even have time to breathe or think about his relationship with Helen because they’re both thrust to the frontlines of the pandemic. 

I bring all of this up again to emphasize that there has never been a time where Max and Helen’s relationship hasn’t been wrapped up in trauma or some sort of suffering. It has always been one thing or another with them. It’s been A LOT and Max has tried to navigate being in love with Helen through his suffering and under these crazy ass circumstances. So after rewatching the finale, the questions that run through my mind are:

How do you step into love when all you’ve known for the past three years has been suffering?

How do you love openly and freely when for so long you’ve emotionally suppressed your feelings for someone because it was “wrong?” 

How do you let go, heal, and move on with your life?

To me, answering these questions is what the season finale for Max was all about. When you’ve suffered so much and endured so much it’s not easy to step into a new chapter in your life that’s hopeful and filled with love and possibilities. For Max, I don’t think in his wildest dreams that he ever imagined that he and Helen would be in a place where they could actually be together. Considering everything they’ve gone through, quite frankly it’s a fucking miracle! So when he actually makes it to the other side and not only SURVIVES but has a chance for happiness, I don’t think he knows what he’s doing. Pursuing/having feelings for Helen from a place that isn’t wrapped up in trauma and tragedy, where there are seemingly no obstacles in his way, is totally and completely new territory for Max. I think he’s clueless in how to do that in the right way and as he navigates through that, naturally there are hiccups.

That’s evident with what he said by the elevator and also in this moment here: 

Max doesn’t have a clue but he wants to make sure that he doesn’t fuck it up because he DESPERATELY wants this! I also think there’s something to be said about how we as human beings can self-sabotage ourselves when we finally have an opportunity to get what we want. Fear, guilt, worthiness usually comes into play with that and I think for Max there was definitely a fear with moving on with his life, guilt of surviving it all and having a chance to be with the woman he’s loved for so long, and a question of if he’s worthy of actually having happiness.

Their walk in my mind perfectly embodies him self sabotaging while also trying to navigate his feelings of desperately wanting to be with her. At the beginning of their walk, you see that at one point he clearly wants to hold Helen’s hand but he doesn’t (I would use a gif here y’all but I literally only have room for 10 😩). I’m focusing my attention on Max here because essentially this whole moment between them is a part of Max’s “mini story” in the episode. The ball has always been in his court and truly what we are witnessing is his journey to step into love because Helen is ready and has been waiting on him. 

The most compelling moment in their walk scene for me was this one: 

I find it strange for Max to walk so far ahead when he was the one who asked her if he could walk with her. My first thought while watching it live was “what is he doing” and I think Helen’s expression reads the same way. After analyzing this for a bit, I genuinely think that’s the point of this scene. Like I said earlier, Max doesn’t know what he’s doing. To be with Helen like this is, where its romantic, peaceful and drama free is probably blowing his mind and he doesn't know how to navigate this. He doesn’t know how to receive this second chance at happiness. 

The internal war of Max stepping into love or allowing fear, guilt, and unworthiness to hold him back becomes all the more evident when they get to Helen’s door: 

He knows he wants to come in. Helen know he wants to come in too. This man literally says goodnight twice and when Helen responds with “you said that,” it perfects this scene. She wants him to come in as well but she’s not going to ask him to. In this moment, she sees his internal struggle and she knows that he has to make the choice himself on whether or not he wants to move on with his life with her.

When he walks away, for a moment that was Max choosing to hold onto the pain and trauma of his past. That was him choosing to hold onto the guilt that was keeping him from healing and moving on. With the suffering he’s been through, it makes sense. In many ways he’s been conditioned to fight, to suffer and to endure. It’s what he’s used to. But praise the lord, he thinks of the moments he just shared with Helen. 

The joy he has with just being in her presence. 

The opportunity he has to freely be with her and have a life with her after loving her for so long.

He is not condemned to a life of suffering. It was only for a season. He’s in love with Helen and wants to be with her. Like hell is he going to let this opportunity at a second chance of love and happiness slip away from him. So guys, he slips off that ring, runs back to Helen’s apartment and makes a choice to step into love. Step into this new, uncharted, chapter of his life with Helen Sharpe. 

Anyway guys! I hope y’all enjoyed this! I might be releasing one more meta but we will see how it goes.

As always feel free to reach out to me on Tumblr and on Twitter @oyindaodewale. Love you guys!

[life-rewritten]

WE BEST LOVE (Fighting Mr Second) Deyi And The Role of Family, Duty/Obligation and Responsibility.

Let’s get to it, oh my, We Best Love just keeps on getting better and better the more I break it down. Seriously I am so surprised by how much I can write about this show especially when it comes to these two, they’re so incredibly written in my perspective just because they hit all the right things I want from writing; they are 3 dimensional, they’re flawed and realistic, they are relatable (the more we get to understand why they do what they do) and their romance is both sweet and entertaining but also deep and serious. There’s nothing else I can say when it comes to praising this show especially season 2 which is very polarising to the audience because they feel whiplashed by the sudden seriousness and change of tone with the goals the show is trying to achieve. My thing is if you don’t understand the show properly, and how the characters have been planned and written from the start, you end up in season 2 just being sad and frustrated by how many mistakes the characters make, how stupid and illogical their actions seem when they do something or they respond to something. For example in episode 3 Shide is seen as an idiot, a noble idiot, his actions by pulling away and refusing to communicate and be open with Shuyi is seen as stupid and annoying because it caused a lot of pain, suffering, anguish for them that could be avoided. And yes it was uncontrollable situation to him that he tried to deal with but because there are other ways he could have dealt with this more maturely, smarter and better, there is this struggle to try and forgive and understand his perspective for why he decided to stay away from Shuyi for 5 years. It’s very sad and upsetting to know the reason is again a basic trope used in BLs and romance stories. But again I keep saying We Best Love isn’t trying to do something different it’s using the same tropes in this genre but writing it better. And I know it doesn’t seem like the choices made so far in the show is smart but there is understanding when you finally break down what the writers are trying to say with this story, why the writers are choosing this path. So again I come with another essay (my second one this week) focusing on Deyi and why it’s more complicated than just what we saw in episode 3 about the truth of Shide’s reason for why he chose to give into Shuyi’s father. Let’s break it down shall we?

The Theme of Family in WBL

The first thing about this essay is going to be focusing on the role of family, duty, obligation and responsibility in We Best Love. Family is something that has always been important in the show since we started of our couples first reason for talking to each other being that they both have lost a family member. The effects of Family in the show is very prominent and shown in season 2 of WBL. But also it’s always been hidden and hinted at how the environment that Shuyi and Shide grew up in (Nature vs Nurture) had made them become who they are in both seasons. So the reason why Shide is  seen as responsible, always in control and strong is because of him having to replace his father’s role when he was younger to want to be the one to protect and take care of his family. For Shide Family means everything to him it’s what makes him who he is, his focus is his duty and obligation to them to make sure they are living peacefully and safe. This started of just as his mother and him but later on as we see in season 1 he also then takes the responsibility (In America) over his stepfamily as well, we don’t know exactly why he’s the one who has to deal with a lot of struggles to protect the family again, but everything he does is to keep them safe. The reason why we see him in season 2 in his company is again to do with Family. And Shuyi is not different, Shuyi is also shadowed by the influence, control and hold of Family, he has a legacy he has to protect, but also someone he has to impress and become like his father who he was left with. Whilst Shide takes on the role of protecting the family’s safety and happiness by ensuring they’re taken care of and at ease, Shuyi also takes on this role to protect his position, his heritage and his father’s riches and company by being competitive and determined to be on top. So this has always been there since season 1, it explains a lot about how these two think and how they act. They’re both feeling pressured by the responsibility, duty and obligation they have to the role they play in their family to succeed.  And what season 2 does is it brings that to light, it shows the struggles that they have been going through but also it makes us see the sacrifices and choices they have to make because of this influence of Family and pressure of Duty.  The idea of having to both hold a weight of responsibility which clouds people from them, their wants and needs, and leads them to make constant sacrifices.

The Introduction to Shuyi’s Father

 So that’s important to notice because episode 3 brings in a revelation that Shuyi’s father is very important to the break down of our couple’s relationship and the reason for why they’ve both entered a state of misunderstanding and miscommunication.  It’s because he pressured and made Shide separate from Shuyi for 5 years that we are in this well of pain and anguish and toxicity. Shuyi’s father is not introduced to us immediately in season 1 but his shadow is there. The mentions of how Shuyi has an easy life, his wealth, having people keep an eye on him, having a very privileged easy life is hinted throughout the whole season until finally it’s after Shuyi and Shide fall for each other, the father shows up from the dark. He’s been keeping an eye on Shuyi and looking out for any hints or clues for obstacles to his goals, but also when we first see him he’s shrouded in dark lit room, he’s cold, has a powerful aura and demands to know more about the situation. We can already see from how he reacts that he’s angered by the situation. So we know he is going to be our villain in season 2, it’s not a surprise to realise that he’s always been the reason for why our couple is separated, it’s not a surprise to see that he’s an obstacle to them. But the thing about him is that as much as he is at first just a typical one dimensional homophobic BL parent, he’s more than that, in fact at the end of this analysis you will see he’s not even the villain the writers want us to focus on because he’s not a villain, he’s actually so more than that. Let me explain more.

A Lovers Game or A Long Lasting Commitment?

The first time we see him as an obstacle is when he calls Shide,  after Shide returned back to America to find Shuyi and know what’s going on. Shuyi had misunderstood and thought Shide was married with a kid and had left him. So Shuyi was not speaking to Shide and Shide after dealing with his own family issues, finally returned to Taiwan and came to face to face with the father instead of Shuyi. The father is determined immediately to stop their relationship, the first reason he gives is because he thinks it’s not long lasting, it’s fickle. He calls it a game. Of course our mindsets and Shide’s start to think he says this because he’s phobic, he’s belittling what they have, he’s refusing to take it seriously and he thinks it’s doomed to end. He doesn’t think the relationship is strong or right enough to help Shuyi, he sees it as a waste of time and an obstacle that needs to be stopped. He’s determined. This is quite contrary to what Shide and Shuyi believed about what they had, they believed especially Shide that they would have forever, because that’s how devoted he was to Shuyi which is what he tries to say.

Shide tells the father that he’s serious about what they have but also that Shuyi can leave him but  he won’t give up on Shuyi. Again this is a huge hint to one of the reasons for why Shide is lacking, or what was his first mistake, his doubt in Shuyi. In that sentence it’s him that is chasing, he believes it’s his strength and determination to make their relationship succeed because that’s how he’s always been since they were  together and  that’s what always got Shuyi’s attention. He doesn’t trust fully Shuyi’s commitment to him because he always believed for so long that it was one sided. In a way Shide views Shuyi’s feelings for him as weaker than his, it can change at anytime, it’s not as strong as his, hence the consequences of his actions is that he hurts Shuyi’s pride and feelings by  holding back the truth from him because he wasn’t confident in what they had.

A Volatile Fight For Survival and Peace 

But this is not just what the father uses as his reasons for why they shouldn’t be together. Again connected to phobic beliefs he focuses on Shuyi’s future in the company. Remember this is what Shuyi’s character outline is connected to, his duty and obligation to protect his position as the heir of his father’s company. So we find out that the father believes that the environment is harsh and inhospitable for Shuyi if he’s found out by the shareholders of the company that he’s with Shide. The father views Shide as an obstacle to Shuyi’s peace and comfort in the future. Shuyi has been told this before and also Shuyi knows he’s being watched by the shareholder, he’s under pressure by them and he mentions how much he is in this season.

Shuyi’s initial reaction is also always focused on control and protection of the position he has, because he was constantly told he had to be more stronger and better to be in a great position where he was safe, his father made him active, agile and more but that only always broke his spirits, broke his trust in others and broke his heart because he also constantly felt like he was never enough because he was           always losing. It’s actually his father’s constant push that makes Shuyi determined to always become first because he was always told he had to be ahead to get to where his father was. His father’s shadow always covered him and led him to always distrusting and misunderstanding people’s actions, he always felt babied, and without freedom to actually do what he wants until he fell for Shide. This is why he states to Shide I didn’t want to fall for a guy after he confesses to him. Not because he didn’t know what he was or he was in denial but because of the exact reasons that his father gave to Shide, because of the pressure of taking over and being watched by people and the shareholders, of being used as a weapon to take him down in the homophobic society he was in. Shuyi saw competition even in season 1, it was always his focus because his life has always been about that, Shide saw wanting attention and notice to ensure that he was never seen in his protector role as weak or vulnerable  to get what he wanted, to make a name for himself, and to be something more.

. It’s the reason for why Shuyi has to fire half of the company because it makes the Shareholders trust that he’s in control and isn’t weak. The father also mentions how it’s family that are also enemies to them, because they’re also looking for reasons to see Shuyi’s downfall. (hence why Shuyi is so distrustful of people because his own family also wants to see him fail).  This is when we start to see the intentions of the father’s actions, yes he has a phobic mindset but the focus is on Shuyi’s protection, the focus is on making sure Shuyi is safe. The father believes that the shareholders all are phobic hence showing the environment that he was raised in but also his mindset that has been framed by ignorance, tradition and society. The father doesn’t want Shuyi to struggle with the company because he won’t be able to manage the shareholders’ power if they do have something to say since they also affect the stocks and how the company runs. In a way his business is also in jeopardy in his head, he wants to have an heir to his company to secure the safety of it but Shide might be an obstacle to that because of how society and the environment they are in is.

What’s ironic is that Shide is remarkably similar to the father when he mentions his past in terms of struggling and trying to make it to be something. The father talks about how he started from scratch to make this company hence he knows the struggles, the chaos, the vicious environment surrounding them, which is why he constantly wanted Shuyi to be strong, to be seen as successful, to be seen as in control, because he knows what Shuyi will have to go through  with that role. He doesn’t want  Shuyi to struggle with the same stuff, it’s ironic because Shide is actually in the father’s position when he was younger, where he is struggling with responsibility, and work and making a company stay safe and being someone in society. That’s why it’s sad but also funny that both Shide and the father in their acts of always wanting to protect and keep Shuyi safe they actually just hurt him and they make him feel insecure and less than because of what they do to him. But again it’s understandable why they are so determined to protect what they love because its what they love, Shuyi is precious to them both, and they don’t mean to make him feel the way they do, to hurt him, or to push him away. The father is not meant to be seen as the villain of the show; it’s society that is the villain of WBL, how society acts, how they pressure people to think, how they control our ways we view ourselves and our freedom, that’s why the father is shown slowly to be just jokey, funny and  sweet in his own way to Shuyi, he’s not cold he’s warm despite being such a suffocating shadow over Shuyi. So that’s a very important thing to notice about the show with what they want to show with the father. It’s society that’s making him act the way he’s acting.

The Distance Of Two Different Worlds Apart

The father also mentions another reason for why he thinks Shide and Shuyi are unfit. He claims they are from different worlds. This is so eye opening because again Shide has the same ideas in his head about the struggles that they face (it causes his insecurity of why Shuyi’s feelings may be weaker). Being from different worlds is why Shide is determined to be number one. When Shuyi’s father mentions that they are from different worlds it puts a perspective again on understanding why Shide feels insecure about what he is to Shuyi but also why he’s so determined to by himself make sure that what they have is safe and okay. It’s why he’s so focused on protection. Because there is a slight insecurity about what he lacks in terms of economic status, reputation in general, and position. He’s always been trying so hard to make it and that’s another thing he focuses on for the 5 years they are separated; to keep trying to make it to become someone in Shuyi’s world. In order to be with Shuyi he has to ensure that he can be in a place of protection, safety, security and ease which he feels he can’t provide by just being himself.  It’s so important because it’s this insecurity plus other things that will be mentioned later that makes him give into the father, seek the father’s approval, and proceed to sacrifice what he wants, for Shuyi’s happiness. He always hoped that even after 5 years even if there has been a distance he’d be able to be stronger to get back to Shuyi. Because he was never going to give up.

The Problem With Insecurity, Doubt, and Fear

1. Insecure about their relationship;

As mentioned Shide is insecure about what he is to Shuyi, he has been in an 8 year unrequited love for Shuyi and he still struggled to believe and trust that what they had was strong enough to withstand anything.

This is sorted in his head because he always believes that his determination will win over Shuyi. As long as he can fight for Shuyi and as long as he doesn’t fail chasing after Shuyi he will be successful in ensuring he makes Shuyi want him. This is why he automatically thinks in season 2 the reason why Shuyi is angered is because he disappeared for 5 years, he failed at his determination to make sure Shuyi’s attention was always on him, because he thought it could be stolen if he was weak. The father tells Shide that if Shuyi has a girlfriend after 5 years then he needs to give up. As long as he doesn’t have someone by that 5 years then there’s hope. But also if he does have someone and is happy then Shide who is self-sacrificial will be willing to sacrifice his own happiness for Shuyi’s happiness. Even in season 1, he’s always been self-sacrificial because he didn’t even want to win over Shuyi whenever he had a chance to, he was only trying to get a friend, instead of doing what he wants and trying to elevate their relationship. He always chose whatever Shuyi wanted over himself as we saw in season 1 when the truth came out in the hospital and Shuyi said he didn’t want to fall for a guy. Even the reason for why he chooses to give into the father’s demands even though he knows it’s a trap and has no chance of escaping, is because of Shuyi. He says it’s to protect how Shuyi views his father, and their relationship (and that hurts because he understands the value of the relationship between father and sons because he lost his father, so he wouldn’t want to put Shuyi in that position when he knows how it affected him)

2. Insecure about himself

Shide although he tries to have a mask of being in control and being strong all the time. Although his goal is to always ensure he’s number one to everyone and Shuyi, there are parts of him that does not see that in himself. It is because he does not think he can be loved/helpful by just being himself, being vulnerable or being weak that he takes on everything and works hard constantly to make sure he is ahead always. Especially for Shuyi in Season 1, the reason why he thought Shuyi wanted him was because he was number one and he got his attention by always defeating him.

This is treated in his head by becoming something or someone just the like the father requested so they end up in  the same status. Because he’s determined to be someone to his family and protect them he takes on the responsibility of taking care of the company but he also does so because the father gave him an ultimatum to get a career and be someone to be with Shuyi.

3. Insecure about society and how they are treated

Shuyi being the heir of his father’s company also makes Shide become insecure about what to do to protect them. Again Shide wants to be viewed as a helpful addition not a burden, someone who protects not destroys, he didn’t want to be the reason why Shuyi ends up losing the relationship with his father, and his position as the heir.

 This in his head is removed by staying away for 5 years to ensure that Shuyi  has enough time to focus and get the company, become CEO and defeat the shareholders. Once Shuyi passes the test of the shareholders and takes over, they wouldn’t be as big of a threat. This is what both Shide and the father believe.

Society: Mindsets, Environments, and Prejudice

The father’s focus on wanting children is also stated when he later goes to the bar with Shide. Again him being phobic is problematic but it makes sense that he is, he’s ignorant and again warped by the ideas in the environment he’s in. His phobia isn’t from nature it’s caused by nurture, it’s caused by what he’s been shown, told, since he was young. His automatic mindset for success and stability is for the typical path that society wants ‘men’ to follow in his time to become; to be masculine and strong, ( hence why he forced Shuyi to do a lot of athletic activities which ended up breaking and hurting him in different ways),  to make a legacy happen, to have a wife and kids, it’s all old-fashioned ideas because he is old-fashioned because he wasn’t taught better. Again he’s not the actual villain of the show. Society is.

 The cheating misunderstanding is what causes the catalyst that makes the dad try to break them up. He tried to listen and accept Shuyi’s threats of leaving but then when Shuyi showed back up after America he was furious. Because he already had an idea formed in his head about how fickle their relationship would be  because of phobia, and now it was being shown to him because the way Shide is perceived to cheat is to choose the right path that he wanted for Shuyi. (a wife and kid).  Not only did Shide cheat but Shuyi cried about like being ghosted for 6 months, because Shide wasn’t texting. The most important thing to discover about the father and understand his character outline is that although his flaw is having closeminded ideas based on society and environment, his actual focus is protection of Shuyi’s happiness, the reason he really wanted them to separate, the reason why he formed that trap was because he thought Shide was not serious and that Shide was harmful for Shuyi because of the cheating scandal, because he made Shuyi cry so much, because he hurt Shuyi, because he essentially was mocking Shuyi’s devotion and heart by cheating in America. It’s also about the  pride of Shuyi being protected. Again just like Shide the father’s prime goal is protection of Shuyi.

So now knowing Shide’s mindset and why he did what he did, we can revisit the couch scene in episode 2 and discuss more about how the show shows him dealing with the consequences of his actions.

The Consequences of Actions and Mistakes

Ahh the couch scene, I’ve been thinking about it. I know people want me to break down why it was wrong they had the romantic music playing when they slept together, what message it showed, I know people want me to talk about how uncomfortable we all felt in that scene (you were meant to feel that way), I know people want to talk about the trigger warnings in that scene but there are so many other comments about why non consent/ dubious consent is an issue that should be taken seriously when being shown in BL. You can find them in the tags.

I’m going to focus on the writing of the show and analyse why the scene happened the way it did. This is not me defending non consent, this is just me laying out what the writers wanted to achieve with the scene. You weren’t meant to find it healthy, you weren’t meant to want a relationship like that, you weren’t meant to praise the actions of both characters, because Shide and Shuyi are problematic as of this time because of the situation they are in. So from this show we can finally can say that Shide and Shuyi did sleep together, how do we feel about that, probably not great right? I feel like, I didn’t think they would sleep together because I was holding out for hope that Shuyi would punch Shide. So yeh it was an interesting thing to see not fully discussed or explained in the new episode. However these two’s relationship are in the stage of miscommunication and misunderstandings (which can lead to toxicity and escalations)  mixed with the longing, pining and passionate love they’ve both been trying to hold back for each other for 5 years. The theme for these two has always been about control as from my previous analysis and the couch scene no matter how morally wrong or right it was, was always going to happen because we finally see both of them  break down and lose that control they’ve been trying to have on each other, and of course before that happens it’s done with a fight, with breakdowns, with confusions, with questions.  

The loss of control of the heart

Shuyi loses control over his heart because he can see Shide in his most broken state. Remember this isn’t like Shide.  Shide is normally calm, in control, always trying to salvage the situation, Shide has never cried in front of Shuyi apart from their first confession and even after all that he’s always come out looking better and in control of everything because it’s like him to do so.Shuyi was frightened; one because of trying hard to keep himself from giving into his wants and longing for Shide that he’s been trying so hard to not lose to, he was frightened because Shide was being aggressive and he wasn’t sure if he was messing around with him or not, he was also frightened lastly for Shide. Because Shide was screaming like someone who was drowning on the inside, someone close to just giving up on everything, someone who was so broken and desperate to have something to hold on. Shuyi was frightened for Shide because he realised that there was something more to what happened, he also realised that Shide was not willing to let him know, he saw Shide grapple with confusion and wanting to say it, and he couldn’t understand but he was worried and understood that Shide wasn’t happy, wasn’t a victor in their breakup like he thought. Shuyi also recognised Shide’s pain because it paralleled his at the beginning of the episode when he cried over the broken phone and his heart break. Shide was also heart broken like he was, Shide was also struggling like he was, Shide was also lost like he was. That’s why even though he tried so hard to fight it, his walls fell and he let him self be with Shide that night. That’s the first part of this equation for why Shuyi let himself sleep with Shide although he was drunk, (dubious consent,).

The loss of control of the mind

If Shuyi was fighting losing control over his heart, Shide was losing control of his mind. As much as it pains me to say, Shide wasn’t in the right state of mind, this was a Shide who was being the worst version of himself because he was exploding, he was losing control, he was confused, he was also very angry at the mess he and Shuyi were in, he was lost because all his efforts, (which is pointing to the title of episode 3; Self Righteous Efforts Are Wasted).  His energy, his work, his heart was wasted because of situations he couldn’t control. Shide was so affected because he realised just like Shuyi also realised seeing him drunk, that what he did to Shuyi was so much more worse than he thought, he was doing everything he could to protect Shuyi, to prove himself to Shuyi’s father, to let them have a happy forever later on, he was doing all he could to stay with the one thing that was his ultimate priority and happiness, he was doing everything he could to protect that and he found it so unfair that he couldn’t even let Shuyi know about that, he probably also hated life its self, because there was so much he had to struggle with those 5 years without Shuyi that he couldn’t control.

He couldn’t control the situation in America in his head (why he didn’t text Shuyi is his own fault but it’s a flaw of Shide to always hold back his truth so he’s suffering consequence of his actions), he couldn’t control in his head Shuyi’s father’s requests because Shuyi’s future was more important, Shuyi’s relationship with his father was more important, Shuyi’s peace and calm was more important (what he failed to see was that he was also Shuyi’s priority, happiness, future, peace and calm so again because he had self-doubt about how important he was to Shuyi he put himself in a situation where again he held back the truth which again is his flaw). Basically Shide was exhausted, and hurt because to him it was so unfair it was like all his efforts for the past 13 years when he finally got hope with Shuyi fell down the drain, because Shuyi no longer saw him as someone even worth being real to. Like Shuyi really was going to go so far in his heartbreak and hurt to also break Shide even more, Shuyi must have hated him so much to want to use him and toss him after. Shuyi’s care for him had ended. And all Shide could do was blame him self, wrap himself up in self-hate, self-doubt, insecurity and anguish as he drank with Shouyi.

Even when drunk he tried to be in control he wanted to go home, that’s what he told Shouyi, he was going to choose to keep up the façade with Shuyi and let Shuyi have his revenge or whatever with him but he couldn’t because he was no longer able to hold back because of the influence of alcohol. That’s what alcohol does, it disinhibited all his inhibitions, It made him explode with everything he was feeling, pain, suffering, longing, anger, tiredness and defeat. He was split into two people. One the Shide that was angry and upset at how Shuyi wanted to treat him, at how much everything he’d done was for nothing, but two, the Shide that had just been biding his time to be with Shuyi since 5 years, the Shide that ever since they reunited had just wanted to hold and go back to how they used to be with Shuyi hence the kissing, hence the skinship, hence the breakdowns and tests and everything that happened. That Shide was not meant to be liked, that Shide was the most vulnerable form of Shide that he was trying to hide so much.

The Problem With Gao Shide

Shide’s actions is not right but it is understandable (I mean he’s dumb and stupid for always reverting to holding back the truth and himself, and emotions from people it’s his downfall, but it’s always been his character, it’s loyal to how his character was written).  He’s always been invasive, always been secretive, always shoulders all the burden on himself so of course he does the noble idiocy trope with Shuyi’s father, of course he doesn’t tell Shuyi when he’s suffering in America, of course he doesn’t; for Shide his problems are his problems and he doesn’t want to be burden to people, he always wants to be seen as number one, now this can be anything, seen as a success to people ( wanted by people), proper and responsible for others (so they feel safe and protected with him) to be seen as strong and happy (so the people he cares about feel happy and loved). Because he lost someone that was like that to him (his father) and so he felt like he had to replace his role since a young age, he had to be that person for his mother, he had to fill up that space and do things right, and make sure he’s not a burden, he’s not weak, he doesn’t fail. Because of this he never wants to show when he’s struggling, to anyone,  even Shuyi.

It’s a flaw that he formed because it was the only way for him to stand up and take the role that kept the people he loved safe in his head. But the thing with character flaws is that they have to go through a development, so Shide has to suffer the consequences of his flaws, hence why season 2 is the way it is because it’s unveiling how he is and what he does to himself constantly, how he hurts himself because of his flaw and how he also hurts others. Again Shide and Shuyi are flawed characters since season 1, but season 2 is when we finally see them mature and have to grow from all of that just like people have to also grow and learn about their flaws and compromise when they get in a relationship. Remember the goal is pure covenant love at the end (they don’t have that yet) which is at the end of it all unconditional love. These two need to be able to learn and work through both flaws and communicate and show each other the truth, it’s only when we finally let ourselves be vulnerable with the one we love, that’s when you get that healthy, relationship, you get that healing, you get that pure love. So give them time; the truth is slowly being unveiled, this couch scene, episode 2, is the worst versions of both Shuyi and Shide. Shuyi because he’s vengeful and cruel and obsessed with wanting control and Shide because he’s Shide and he finally enters a state where he can’t do that no more, alcohol had to be the thing to finally make him stop hiding and doing everything on his own. That’s why the couch scene happened, you can argue they shouldn’t have slept together (I agree with this) we could have had the punch, we could had a different outcome or a discussion shown about why it was wrong, or even add  a trigger warning to the episode. I agree but it’s not going sway me from seeing how good season 2 is with story telling and character development, and character writing. Say what you want to say about the show but this writer hasn’t changed anything about her characters. About her aims of the show, about these twos journey since season 1. She’s always left these clues, she’s always shown what these characters are like, she’s never hid their flaws and it’s not surprising that Shide does all the things he does that are harmful to himself and Shuyi but that’s the part of learning and seeing their relationship finally tackle these issues and get to the healthy place they will end up at. And I still commend the show.  

[gentrychild]

BNHA chapter 291 reactions

That’s one adorable child and that’s also one horrible way to die.

Not that we’re sure that he actually die, since 1. He is here and living his full theater kid potential. 2. For anyone who is reading BNHA vigilante, you would know that it’s not the first time AFO grabbed a hero student who may or may not have died.

Now, my question is “Where do that lower jaw bone came from?” Can you still extract DNA from something that was practically cremated? If not, does AFO have a room with a bunch of bones that he can drop on his way out?

Also, how old is Touya here? I know he looks younger than he is but is he old enough to be in UA?

I. Need. Answers.

That’s the second kid who got white hair after a ridiculously powerful quirk appeared and I now have other questions.

Such as, will I get a white-haired-Izuku anytime soon?

By the way, can we consider that Tenko and Touya have quirk singularities?

1. I can hear half of the writing community weeping because Touya had red hair. And at least one other person grumbling because Touya changing hair color with the seasons.

2. It’s incredible how tiny Touya doesn’t look like the Touya we know. He had a completely different demeanor.

3. Good to know Endeavor was not always a dick. 

Don’t mind me, I am just fascinated at seeing tiny Touya looking at Baby Fuyumi (while clutching my chest because them being twins is jossed). That’s the most adorable thing I have ever seen.

Also, very relieved to know that Rei agreed to have several kids.

Now, I need to know what happened to make that family collapse.

Touya is wearing different clothes than in the first image so that means he might have some resistance at first but his fire grew too hot for his body.

Now, my question is: how come he couldn’t regulate the temperature of his flames like fire users in his family?

Am I... feeling bad... for Endeavor?

Oh my.

You know, you might have been invited if he had known you were alive.

I love Dabi’s face here. He is such a little shit.

Reminder that they are all stuck here until Shigaraki actually tells Machia to move. 

I don’t know about you but I find it absolutely hilarious that Gigantomachia picked them up, brought them to the most dangerous place in the whole combat zone as the number 1 hero and the craziest hero students around are here, and is now refusing to move.

Honestly? If Dabi wasn’t accidentally holding the floor, they would have been incinerated.

What are you trying to say, Harima Oji? 

Are you a secret Todoroki family member too?

Or did you hear Shigaraki call Izuku little brother and you’re now trying to wrap your mind around everyone around here apparently being related and this war being the messiest Sunday family dinner ever?

I actually wanted to talk about that because this DNA test is absolutely useless. I can assure you that people probably can’t even read those pages and even if they can, it would be just so easily to fake.

Actually, you know what? If Dabi didn’t do that on his computer on his own, I would just be so disappointed because waving a DNA around is just pointless in this situation.

Especially as I don’t see when he had the time to get some blood from the Kyushu fight? He only had the time to take two steps in Endeavor’s direction before running like hell when Miruko arrived (which was a rare sign of common sense, so kudos to him, I guess.)

You hear that sound?

That’s the sound of Dabi destroying his family every chance at being normal once again. Forget all the progress they made, they will now be under public scrutiny forever, everyone having an opinion on their family.

That will wreck them.

And I am not even talking about Rei.

I see that at this point, Dabi is just ending for everyone’s career...

I am just going to stay there and stare at the wall as I am thinking about Dabi broascasting a murder on every screen of the country.

That’s just so disrespectful to Twice. He fought for his friends and instead, Dabi turned his last moment in him desperately pleading.

Also, that was a really dumb move.

Listen here, kids, when you throw a mind-breaking revelation at someone, you stick as close to the truth as possible because if people find anything that doesn’t make sense, your whole story will be doubted.

Also, casual reminder... 

Hawks recorded what was going on. 

That means that if this recording thing is found, they can discredit Dabi’s entire story.

At this point, I am just trying to see if he still has his wings. That’s all I am asking. A confirmation that his feathers will grow back.

Just... stay asleep, Hawks. Rest for a week or two so someone can sort this mess. That’s your best course of action because if you woke up now, you would probably crawl back into a coma.

Was that a bird pun?

Now, that’s just being mean.

I think I remember than in Japan, being related to a criminal is not good, but since BNHA is set in the future, maybe things changed?

If not, I am curious to see how this revelation will affect Hawks. You know, just for sociological purposes.

*hangs on to Izuku who is related to the worst villain this country had ever know, and who actually destroyed Kamino and almost murdered All Might not too long ago*

*squints as I am trying to know what they are advertising*

Dabi: “Think more critically! Try to see things through my point of view, right after I admitted I killed 30 people!”

Reminder that the OG group who fought Shigaraki sacrificed everything to stall him, they are half dead, and they are now facing the end of their society as they know it.

That’s what despair looks like.

Be careful what you wish for, Todoroki Enji.

Shouto is just breaking my heart right now. This is a nightmare. He is the boy who made sure that they were alone when he told Midoriya about his family history. He is the boy who was just started to consider forgiving his father, or at the very least, working so their family would be happy. Things were starting to get better, and now, he has to deal with imminent death, his, his friends and his father.

He isn’t even asking Endeavor to fight Dabi. He will do it. He must know that Nejire and him simply can’t win against the LoV and Gigantomachia but it’s not like there is anyone else.

Everyone is down and right now, the number 1 hero is too shocked to even blink, and if he doesn’t pull himself together in the next second, they are going to die.

Damnit, Shouto actually called him father.

Hey, remember that attack that incinerated a noumu with Regeneration? That attack that Endeavor had to use high in the sky or the collateral damage would have been hellish, in every sense of the word?

Yeah, they almost all died right there.

WE STAN ONE HERO.

BEAST JEANIST, BACK FROM THE DEAD, READY TO JUDGE DABI FOR HIS CRIMES AGAINST FASHION (and also the war crimes, if you insist). 

THAT’S WHY YOU FACT CHECK EVERYTHING, DABI. SO YOU DON’T LOOK LIKE AN IMBECILE AFTER YOU ACCUSED THE NUMBER 2 HERO OF KILLING THE MOST FABULOUS MAN OF THE COUNTRY.

[legendarymasterwolf]

My Top 10 Favorite Video Games

Now that The Last of Us Part 2 and Ghost of Tsushima are out and I’ve finished both, I’ve decided to finally compile a list of my top ten favorite games I’ve played and have revisited over time. This is my own personal list, make no judgments based on what is here.

And awaaaaaaaaaay we go!

10: Ghost of Tsushima

I’ve never played a game that scratched that samurai itch before, and this one totally did it for me. Whether it was the standoffs straight out of a Kurosawa film, or the ability to scare the shit out of Mongols, or riding through a beautifully rendered world viewed through one of the most natural HUDs I’ve ever seen, I loved this game. Sure, it may be leaving this list once Cyberpunk 2077 comes out, but for now, it takes the tenth spot.

9: Star Wars: The Old Republic

Still one of my favorite Star Wars games. This was the first MMORPG I played where my character actually had a voice. I know, it’s a little thing, but I still like it. Whenever I have a spare moment on the road, a decent connection, and some time to chill, I fire up this game. Plus, it’s still operating even with Disney owning the franchise now, so there’s that.

8: Wolfenstein: The New Colossus

Still scarily relevant at the time of writing (hopefully not for much longer) and one of the best modern reinventions of a protagonist from a classic series. Also, shooting, hacking, and exploding Nazis and Klan members will never get old, no matter how many conservative man-children say otherwise. Plus, there’s one of best female characters in gaming, Grace Walker, who’s got some of the best lines in the game and some great commentary on masculinity.

7: “Assassin’s Creed” Series

I’m cheating here, but I can’t just choose one game from this series. One of the first games I played when I got a PC was Revelations. I played through the rest of them in the year that followed and I became hooked. So hooked, that I got both the Ezio Collection and AC3 Remastered for PS4 when the opportunity came (though the latter was just because it was on the Odyssey Season Pass). Odyssey was the first AC game I platinumed and, barring a few missteps here and there, I loved it. I can’t freaking wait for Valhalla.

6: “Persona” Series

I was just going to have Persona 5 Royal in this spot, despite still not finishing it (damn Okumura boss fight), but I’ve also got Persona 4 Golden and am loving it, so now I need to get Persona 3 whenever Sega decides to port the game to PC. Each game is set in a high school with an other world where your inner self is revealed. The social links system is great and you're basically playing an anime, complete with filler and everything. Some of them have surprisingly relevant themes, too(P5 fans know what I'm talking about). Now to finish them at some point.

5: Marvel’s Spider-Man

A game better than Spider-Man 2: The Game? No one thought it was possible until this came out. The web swinging has weight to it, the acting is great (props to Yuri Lowenthal), and the story, which Dan Slott contributed to, is a fantastic original Spider-Man story. Also, this happened to be the game that convinced me to buy a PS4. Can't wait for Miles Morales.

4: Disco Elysium

When I heard about this game, I knew I had to play it. It's not like any other isometric RPG I've played. In it, you play as an alcoholic detective waking up after a three day bender to find himself with amnesia and 24 distinct personalities that are always clashing, especially when you’re in conversation with an NPC. The story progresses as you try to piece together not only the case you were assigned to, but why you drank for three days straight to forget the case altogether. It’s batshit nuts and I love it. It also runs fairly well on my laptop, with a console port on the way. Also, still need to finish it. I know, my backlog is huge.

3: Red Dead Redemption 2

I never really got into the original RDR, mainly because I didn’t get a console until Christmas 2018. Thankfully, RDR2 is a prequel to the original game, set in the last years of the Old West, so it was easy to get into. While it did take a while for the game to get going and its storage size is massive (105 GB, WTF), when I finally powered on through and played the rest of the story, I was treated to some of the best characters I’ve seen in a game along with a story so heartbreaking, I was tearing up by the credits. Sure, the realism did become annoying to an extent, I could have done without the Guarma chapter, and the epilogue was four hours too long, but regardless, this is still one of my favorite depictions of the Wild West I’ve ever played.

2: “The Last of Us” Series

If the story for RDR2 was heartbreaking, then this series shattered my heart, pieced it back together, shattered it again, and then gave me hope to mend it in the future. I can’t choose between either Part 1 or Part 2, because I think both games are not only brilliant, but oversimplified when it comes to their themes. If we’re being simple about it, Part 1 is about Love and Part 2 is about Hate. In actuality, Part 1 is about the lengths we are willing to go for the ones we love and Part 2 is about the cycle of hate and how love can break it. Beyond the story (going to finally do that Part 2 breakdown in the future), the gameplay in both games is entertaining, the graphics look breathtaking (Part 2 has ruined all other games for me when it comes to graphics), the music is on point, and the performances are some of the best ones I’ve seen for a video game. This series set a new standard for how we see games and I can’t wait to see what the future holds for it. I don’t even mind waiting another seven years or so for the next one!

1: The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt

While the other games on this list are fantastic, they don’t hold a candle to the game that first inspired me to start thinking about making this list. This was the first game where, when I got to the credits, I felt not joy at completing another game, but sadness at the story finally being over. Geralt of Rivia’s final tale is still my favorite for its choices with no clear terms of morality, monster hunting missions that kept me enthralled even if some of the creatures scared the shit out of me (fucking Aracnomorphs), and the chance to have some fun with several members of the opposite sex (I regret nothing). Oh, and Gwent. Can’t forget Gwent. CD Projekt RED still remains one of my favorite developers to this day and I can’t wait for Cyberpunk 2077 to finally release in December (when it’s ready!!!).

And there you have it, my Top 10 Favorite Video Games I've played so far. This list is definitely going to change in the next couple months once I finish Watch Dogs: Legion and Cyberpunk 2077, but for now, this is how it is (AC already has an entry here, and Valhalla won't change that).

I may be putting my energy into that TLOU Part 2 Breakdown of my thoughts along with that Ellie/Dina fic I've been working on, so expect those at some point.

If you haven't already, go out and vote! Stay safe!

Lemme know what you think!

Until then!

[kurtbastian-land]

Hi! I'm currently on Kurtbastian fics binge read, so I was wondering if you could share your 10 favourites?

Wow, my top 10 favorites. That’s going to a tough one. I’m obviously going to skip the major well-known ones that this fandom knows - A Change In The Weather - cacophony, Don’t You Remember -  discordandrhythm and Glad You Came - daftydraw and JWMelmoth. With that being said, any other stories from that authors are bangers as well! But off to the actual list (in no particular order)

TOP 10 KURTBASTIAN FICS (MULTI-CHAPTERED, COMPLETED)

1. Europe Is Our Playground [Explicit] - GlassParade

Summary: Eight years and half the world away from home, a chance encounter in a Paris club leads Kurt and Sebastian - each running from the ghosts of their pasts - into the diversion of chasing each other across Europe.

2. A Shot In the Arm [Explicit] - somebetterwords

Summary: Kurt Hummel was a catch. Kurt was a catch, and Santana didn’t know what she was talking about. That’s what he’d tell himself until he believed it. But actually, talk was cheap. Kurt was going to go out and dangle himself at the gayest nightclub in the tri-county area and watch the men clamour to catch him. He wasn’t having a slutty meltdown or anything. His self esteem was not dependent on the attentions and opinions of strangers. He just needed an ego boost, one single night of his life for recalibration and encouragement from unbiased observers and also drinks. He just needed… a shot in the arm.(Though it wasn’t exactly a needle he was looking to stick in himself, and he didn’t want it going in his arm either.)

3. Live Without Shame / Call Me Anything You Want [Teen and Up Audiences] - Walden_pond313

Summary: Kurt is fed up with being heartbroken or disappointed when it comes to guys. Maybe it's time for some fun... / Sequel to Live Without Shame. Basically, season 2 if Kurt/Blaine never happened

4. Barista Confessions [Explicit] - TheFirstMrsHummel 

Summary: Unsure of his future following graduation, Kurt finds the status quo impossible to maintain. And when Sebastian Smythe comes crashing back into his life, it gets even more complicated. PLEASE NOTE NOT KLAINE/BLAINE FRIENDLY

5. The Boys of Summer [Mature] - MoreThanTonight

Summary: A camera. A jacket pin. A phone. Lemon balm leaves. A bottle cap. A box of condoms. A bottle of sleeping pills. On the last days of summer before college, Sebastian remembers the most eventful summer of his life and the items related to it. Kurtbastian.

6. Before You Met Me [General Audiences] - ellodoctor

Summary: When Kurt goes to Dalton to spy, he meets Sebastian Smythe who then points out lead singer Blaine Anderson, his latest “goal.” After Kurt runs into him again at sectionals (and actually meeting Blaine), he suddenly finds himself to be a fast and slightly coerced friend to them both. He’s thrown right into figuring out how much Sebastian cares about Blaine, how Blaine feels about Sebastian, confessing his bullying problems and dealing with Sebastian’s ego. And it actually seems to be worth it. But will that last?

7. give your heart (a break) [Mature] - drunkonwriting 

Summary: Post-TBU AU. Life moves on after heartbreak: Kurt knows that more than most. As he tries to put his life back together after Blaine, he finds an unexpected ally in his new coworker and Isabelle's nephew: Sebastian Smythe. As Kurt goes through his new life as a single man, he finds an unexpected depth to Sebastian and realizes that losing the first love of his life doesn't mean he'll never love again.

8. (Let’s give them) Something to talk - MemeKonGlee (MemeKonYA)

Summary: “I need you to—”“I heard you the first time,” Kurt interrupts, putting his fork and knife down on his plate and pushing his half-finished pancakes aside. “What I meant was: what the hell?”He points towards the neglected pancakes, trying to stall in the face of Kurt’s reaction.“Are you sure you don’t wanna finish that first?”The look in Kurt's eyes tells him in no uncertain terms that no, he doesn't want to finish his pancakes, Jesus.And so Sebastian has no option but to take a deep breath in, exhale slowly through his mouth and just… get on with it, internally cringing at how unbelievably ridiculous it all sounds when he puts it in words, all out there for the world (and more importantly, Kurt fucking Hummel) to judge. It all boils down to: I fucked up and I'm too proud to deal with it the mature way.

9. Twitch Verse [Teen and Up Audience] - sincerelyjessy*

*A series of oneshots that explores Kurt Hummel and Sebastian Smythe’s relationship

10. Would You Hold It Against Me [Mature] - deliriumbubbles 

Summary: The Warblers discover that they and McKinley will be doing the same musical during the fall semester. After a spot of espionage against their rival school McKinley, new Warbler Sebastian finds himself fascinated by one of the young auditioners… and unintentionally becoming the Warblers’ nefarious leader.

TOP 10 KURTBASTIAN FICS (ONESHOTS)

1. The Daily Grind - orphan_account

Summary: Kurt Hummel is a bored barista, and Sebastian never gets off his phone.

2. The One with the Amusement Park [Teen and Up Audiences] - a_storm_of_frustration

Summary: “It was the only place I could think of where we could have 'fun’”, he grits his teeth.Snorting indelicately, Kurt rolls his eyes as he fixes the lapel of his sky blue pea coat. “And by 'fun’ you mean snark at each other and insult each other’s weak points until we feel like murdering the other? And whoever gets to do it first wins?”Sebastian immediately grins. And he had to bite down that grin the minute that he sees Kurt grinning at him. “Well, I did pick a public place. Full of people. Potential witnesses.”“There are rides that provide some sort of privacy. I’ll take the chance, however brief it is.”“There’s always the Tunnel of Love.”Kurt gives him a look. Sebastian bites his tongue so hard he could taste blood.--In which Sam thinks that his best friend and his boyfriend should get to know each other better and…Well, bond.

3. Weather With You [Teen Audience and Up] - chocoholicannanymous

Summary: Kurt Hummel might not exactly be the last person Wes expects to see at the club, but not far from. Who he's with, and what he's doing however... Yeah, that might the last thing he expects.This is a fic-of-a-fic, showing a scene from "A Change In the Weather" from another point of view.

4. The Truth About Sebastian Smythe [Mature] - DasWarSchonKaputt

Summary: Sebastian Smythe does what he wants. Fuck the world. Now, if only the world would quit fucking him back. AKA: Sebastian Smythe's therapy journal, ages 17 to 18.

5. Misery Loves Company [Teen and Up Audiences] - prettypurpleflower

Summary: Kurt and Sebastian keep getting ill and it messes everything up. Especially their feelings.

6. One Shots, Drabbles and Prompts (Oh My!) [General Audiences] - bastiankurts (orphan_accounts)

Summary: A collection of various pieces of written work for Kurtbastian that are either too short to upload individually or that I just felt worked better archived in this bundle. The majority of these have been shared on my own tumblr in the past and are labelled with their titles and the blurb they originally were given when first uploaded, and they include different scenarios for Kurt & Sebastian as well as a few familiar faces along for the ride!

7. Joysticks and Glitter [General Audiences] - supercanaries

Summary: Series of daddies!Kurtbastian drabbles and oneshots going through Kurt and Sebastian's path as parents and their choices that drove them towards this direction.

8. First Brick [Teen And Up Audiences] - supercanaries

Summary: It’s only when he has almost managed to suppress any thought about his boyfriend’s unusual silence that Sebastian speaks, his breath heavy and preceding a revelation Kurt has been aware of for a long while now."I’m gay."

9. Let Them Look [Not Rated] - AnarchyWretch

Summary: Sebastian observes his boyfriend in his element, surrounded by adoring NYADA boys. It's kind of an inflation to his ego, really.

10. The Textactive Stalker [Teen And Up Audiences] - Wednesday Thunder (wednesdaythunder)

Summary: Sebastian: Ever since he started getting text messages from an unknown number, it becomes evident with every new text that the other person knows exactly who he was. Yet, even the creepy stalker factor wasn't enough to stop Sebastian from forming a real connection with a friend he only knows by written words. Or does he? Kurt: Never the one to go down without a challenge, he anonymously starts texting to Sebastian Smythe, trying to find any weakness in his armour. But never was he prepared for the boy he got to know, or the feelings to grow stronger with each unopened message...

Honorable Mention (if you truly want a binge)

1. Lady Divine (fhartz91)

[stevenuniversallyreviews]

Episode 127: Are You My Dad?

“This might be serious.”

Those of y’all that check out my episode rankings at the end of every post know that my favorite “normal” episode of Steven Universe (so not Steven and the Stevens or Hit the Diamond, which are in their own category of perfect character studies) isn’t Lion 3 or Alone Together or Jailbreak or The Answer or Mr. Greg or Mindful Education. And, spoiler alert, it won’t be Jungle Moon or A Single Pale Rose or Reunited or Change Your Mind. It’s Mirror Gem. 

So it’s not a shocker that I’m drawn to another episode that’s the beginning of a two-parter closing out the first half of a fifty-odd episode chunk, which starts out goofy but grows increasingly ominous and ends in a confrontation with a new blue Gem. In terms of tone, Are You My Dad? is an incredible exercise in tension, albeit one that benefits from two prior episodes’ cliffhangers in a way Mirror Gem manages without (but to be fair, Mirror Gem arrives when we still don’t know there are other Gems, which gives its mystery a major advantage).

The silly beginning here is strengthened by the return of all three original Crystal Gems, who haven’t been in a room together since Rocknaldo. They’re increasingly out of focus as we get into more Steven-centric storytelling, and I’ve heard this lobbed as a criticism of latter-day Steven Universe; while I agree that these characters are terrific and am always down to see more of them, I can appreciate that their big moment is Act II (Seasons 2/3), and Steven’s is Act III (Seasons 4/5). If Act I is about creating Steven’s universe, and Act II is about developing Steven’s family, it’s because Act III, which the other two have been building towards this whole time, is about Steven.

Episodes like Storm in the Room and Lion 4 fundamentally don’t work with the Crystal Gems around, and our last two episodes place Steven among Beach City citizens to prime us for a finale about Beach City paying for Steven’s past. So I get why we haven’t seen the trio as a whole for a while. But I sure am glad to see them again.

Amethyst’s offer of beans and suggestion to barter them for donuts is great, but come on, nothing beats Garnet and Pearl’s sand castle. I love glimpses into the Crystal Gems’ leisure time independent of Steven (he’s around, but clearly wasn’t involved with the construction): because the Gems are so often characterized in relation to Steven and/or in big personal ways, it’s a pleasant change of pace to just see them reading the paper in Watermelon Steven or assembling furniture in Shirt Club. Doug Out and The Good Lars are celebrations of the mundane tainted by the supernatural in their last moments, so it’s perfect to ease us into this new story with more slice-of-life lazing.

Still, this beach day is a backdrop for Steven wondering where his mail is (in the first of many callbacks, we get his Mr. Postman song from all the way back in Cheeseburger Backpack). On its own this might not be a big deal, but we know that Onion and Sadie were being stalked by new Gems and that Lars didn’t show up at the potluck (which, for now, we can lump in with other disappearances), so even though Steven doesn’t know anything sinister is afoot, Jamie’s absence sets off warning bells for us. 

The scenes that follow build dread with masterful efficiency. First we get an uncharacteristically worried Sour Cream, which stands out even more than normal because we just saw him behaving as usual in The Good Lars. His concern is tempered by fun visuals: our MISSING poster is a repurposed WANTED poster, and we get a neat flashback aesthetic as Onion’s haunts are seen as if through an old-school View-Master (calling back to Onion Gang, Arcade Mania, and Onion Friend). While the audience knows new Gems are to blame, Steven is able to write this off as another weird Onion thing, and is more disappointed than concerned when he hears the Big Donut is closed.

Even now, Steven thinks things are probably fine, assuming Lars and Sadie are blowing off work to watch scary movies (calling back to Horror Club and The New Lars). It’s here where we’re introduced to the most clever element of this first act: Barb Miller. She’s connected to Sadie, so she can reveal that her daughter never came home after the potluck, but is also connected to Jamie, who she sent out that morning with Steven’s package. And she’s overprotective enough that she doesn’t make rationalizations like Sour Cream and Steven did for Onion (although she does reference Island Adventure, finally acknowledging how weird it is that three kids went missing for days and nobody seemed to care). In one fell stroke, Steven realizes that this is an alarming pattern, and starts looking for answers at last.

But he still hasn’t caught up to us. Sure, he knows his friends are missing, but he hasn’t seen the looming shadows from the end of Doug Out and The Good Lars, so when he comes across Aquamarine he has no reason to suspect her of kidnapping. A lesser show might build suspense making its characters too thick to put obvious hints together, but Steven Universe makes it clear that none of these threads are obvious to Steven. A more cynical version of the character might deduce earlier that this new Gem is bad news, but despite everything he’s been through in Season 4 he’s still empathetic to his core. After all, the pivotal event of this season was his own dad’s disappearance, so he’s primed to help a kid in a similar situation.

But finally, after knowing more than Steven from the beginning of the episode, Aquamarine asks the titular question and brings us back into the unknown with him. “Are you my dad?” is a brilliantly weird question: of course it’s odd for anyone to ask this of Steven when the answer is so self-evident, but it’s even odder for a Gem to do so. As Steven later tells Connie when she suggests the stranger might be a hybrid, this is a full Gem, and Gems don’t have dads.

Steven’s council of Garnet, Amethyst, Pearl, and Connie shows that his instinct isn’t to go it alone, lending weight to his solo sacrifice at the end of this two-parter. But for now, it offers a moment of respite by reveling in the artistic differences of these characters; on the one hand, it makes little sense for Steven to not just draw Aquamarine himself, considering he’s the one who saw her and we know he likes drawing from Shirt Club and Open Book and Barn Mates, but on the other hand, this scene is a delight. Connie draws a manga-influenced figure using an amateur ball and plane method, Amethyst goes abstract, Pearl undersells her dramatic flourish, and Garnet just draws herself; I actually think Pearl’s is closest, but we go with Connie’s and set off.

This is the second time since Lion 4 where we’ve explored the potential for other half-humans like Steven, and in my first viewing of Are You My Dad I saw it as foreshadowing for fellow hybrid. The trend never really continued, and while it seems like a red herring in retrospect, the close proximity of two stories about Steven maybe not being alone shows just how alone he really is. There’s nobody else like Steven, and while this makes him special, it adds to his burden as a bridge between worlds, a burden that’s partially thrust upon him and partially created by his own sense of outsized responsibility. 

Connie lightens the mood as they search by inventing exciting new scenarios to explain this new Gem, contrasting her further with Pearl. Connie’s art is cutesy while Pearl’s is dramatic, and where Connie sees hope for a new friend, Pearl is the only member of the team who advocates preparing for a fight. We don’t go very far down the “optimism is wrong and cynicism is right” road, because that isn’t at all what this show is about, but I love that youthful innocence from both Steven and Connie isn’t championed as an absolute positive in this story.

The light mood of two friends hoping for the best leads to Steven making a game of looking through Onion’s woods, and his facetious search of an empty log ends up getting him trapped. Again, this show isn’t here to build suspense by dumbing down the characters: Steven needs to be out of commission for Connie’s kidnapping to work the way it does, but getting stuck comes from realistic playing around rather than stupidity or ineptitude. And it continues the thread of others getting punished for Steven’s perceived mistakes, which of course adds to his guilt complex (and is furthered by Connie getting kidnapped because Steven shouted her name). These are small moments of getting us from Point A to Point B, but it’s so important that this crew pays attention to such details for the story and themes to flow smoothly.

Aquamarine’s questioning becomes even more confusing when she corrects Connie, saying she’s not looking for “your dad” but “my dad.” Connie’s condescending Tarzan speak is a bit out of character, but it at least makes sense that she wants to simplify her language for someone who doesn’t seem to understand the meanings of words. Aquamarine’s hidden nastiness emerges, with a wicked snicker at Connie’s “Me Connie” routine before she calls for Topaz.

While I prefer Mirror Gem to Are You My Dad? in most regards, the reveal of Topaz takes the cake in the horror department. She’s announced by thundering footsteps that clear birds from the surrounding trees, and emerges first as a shadow before we see our missing friends trapped inside her body. None of the captives’ mouths are free except Onion’s, and he's nonverbal, so their struggles are joined by muffled and incoherent screams while their captor lurks in silence. The soundtrack lurches into unnerving strings as Connie panics at the sight, substitutes more typical digital music as a moment as Topaz splits up, and returns to even tenser strings as Connie is viscerally absorbed into the giant Gem. As with the Ruby Squad’s giant fusion, it’s a brutally practical application of something the Crystal Gems have made beautiful, and Steven is as helpless as Connie to stop it.

A key element of Steven’s martyr complex is that his sense of ownership over everything bad that happens around him is unwarranted, and this sequence is a perfect example. Yes, he’s stuck in a log when Connie is taken, allowing him to blame himself for the kidnapping, but once he’s free he doesn’t stand a chance against Aquamarine’s magic wand. In the best-case scenario, where he and Connie manage to fuse and fight off Topaz, Stevonnie would still lose: as we see in I Am My Mom, even four Crystal Gems working together are beaten with ease by the wand’s ridiculous power. If anything, getting stuck in a log was the only reason Steven was able to regroup and fight back later in the first place. But in the moment, it seems like he made an avoidable mistake that cost Connie her freedom, which is certainly on his mind when he makes his sacrifice.

Aquamarine follows the Holly Blue Agate mold of brief but memorable villains, and while both are petty monsters, Holly Blue Agate’s Professor Umbridge has nothing on Aquamarine’s Eric Cartman. It’s one thing to let middle management power go to your head, but Aquamarine is cruel for the simple joy of being cruel, an attitude captured magnificently by Della Saba’s refined British accent. She taunts Topaz as readily as her enemies, and unlike the fiercely loyal Homeworld villains we’ve seen before, she sees her duty as a waste of time that she begrudgingly fulfills because she’s the best. Like Kevin, this is a troll who’s just mean to her core, but she unfortunately has a lot more power than your everyday toxic douche. 

As is standard for two-parters by now, we end with a cliffhanger, this time evoking Steven’s Dream (another first-parter that ends with a new blue Gem). A loved one has been taken, Steven blames himself because he put this person in harm’s way and couldn’t stop it, so now it’s time for a rescue mission. An unprecedented streak of consecutive serialized episodes already began with Doug Out, but now we get a proper two-parter, then a four-parter, then a six-parter, then another two-parter all in a row. It’s a special time in the series, highlighted by Earth plots and Homeworld plots colliding in ways that backdrop Steven’s role as a child of two worlds, and Are You My Dad excellently escalates the plot.

In closing, I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention that this is the final episode from the amazing Raven Molisee. Other veterans like Joe Johnston and Kat Morris ended their roles as lead-credit writer/storyboarders to fulfill other roles for the show, but this is it for Molisee’s tenure as an active member of the Crewniverse. Her work speaks for itself: she helped introduce Lapis in Mirror Gem, Peridot in Warp Tour, Jasper in The Return, Yellow Diamond in Message Received, and now Aquamarine and Topaz in Are You My Dad?. She helped bring to life the comedy of Kindergarten Kid and The New Crystal Gems, the tragedy of Rose’s Scabbard and Monster Reunion, the horror of Frybo and Keeping It Together, the wonder of An Indirect Kiss, the catharsis of Earthlings, and so much more. We were lucky to have her, and I really hope she didn’t leave because she was abducted by aliens.

Future Vision!

Steven is down to watch a movie about an orphaned Gem whose parent figure left for Beach City and never came home. So were the fans, apparently.

If every pork chop were perfect, we wouldn’t have inconsistencies…

The ages of Lars and Sadie were nebulous at first, but it’s more or less been established that they’re teens of sorts by now, which makes Barb’s declaration that Sadie’s an adult confusing in a way that I find surprisingly annoying. It’s really not a big deal, but it bothers me way more than your average nitpick.

We’re the one, we’re the ONE! TWO! THREE! FOUR!

It’s not unheard of for first-parters to make my greatest hits list: Mirror Gem is certainly one of them, and we’ve also got The Return and Steven’s Dream. But it’s hard to put an episode without a proper ending up with the best, and despite its wonderful tone, meeting Aquamarine lacks the conclusive impact of meeting Lapis, we don’t get a huge moment of Steven summoning his shield and protecting his team, and Aquamarine isn’t a Big Deal like Blue Diamond. I still love Are You My Dad a lot, but this is a hard list to crack and it does feel like half an episode when viewed alone.

Top Twenty-Five

Steven and the Stevens

Hit the Diamond

Mirror Gem

Lion 3: Straight to Video

Alone Together

Last One Out of Beach City

The Return

Jailbreak

The Answer

Mindful Education

Sworn to the Sword

Rose’s Scabbard

Earthlings

Mr. Greg

Coach Steven

Giant Woman

Beach City Drift

Winter Forecast

Bismuth

Steven’s Dream

When It Rains

The Good Lars

Catch and Release

Chille Tid

Lion 4: Alternate Ending

Love ‘em

Laser Light Cannon

Bubble Buddies

Tiger Millionaire

Lion 2: The Movie

Rose’s Room

An Indirect Kiss

Ocean Gem

Space Race

Garnet’s Universe

Warp Tour

The Test

Future Vision

On the Run

Maximum Capacity

Marble Madness

Political Power

Full Disclosure

Joy Ride

Keeping It Together

We Need to Talk

Cry for Help

Keystone Motel

Back to the Barn

Steven’s Birthday

It Could’ve Been Great

Message Received

Log Date 7 15 2

Same Old World

The New Lars

Monster Reunion

Alone at Sea

Crack the Whip

Beta

Back to the Moon

Kindergarten Kid

Buddy’s Book

Gem Harvest

Three Gems and a Baby

That Will Be All

The New Crystal Gems

Storm in the Room

Room for Ruby

Doug Out

Are You My Dad?

Like ‘em

Gem Glow

Frybo

Arcade Mania

So Many Birthdays

Lars and the Cool Kids

Onion Trade

Steven the Sword Fighter

Beach Party

Monster Buddies

Keep Beach City Weird

Watermelon Steven

The Message

Open Book

Story for Steven

Shirt Club

Love Letters

Reformed

Rising Tides, Crashing Tides

Onion Friend

Historical Friction

Friend Ship

Nightmare Hospital

Too Far

Barn Mates

Steven Floats

Drop Beat Dad

Too Short to Ride

Restaurant Wars

Kiki’s Pizza Delivery Service

Greg the Babysitter

Gem Hunt

Steven vs. Amethyst

Bubbled

Adventures in Light Distortion

Gem Heist

The Zoo

Rocknaldo

Enh

Cheeseburger Backpack

Together Breakfast

Cat Fingers

Serious Steven

Steven’s Lion

Joking Victim

Secret Team

Say Uncle

Super Watermelon Island

Gem Drill

Know Your Fusion

Future Boy Zoltron

Tiger Philanthropist

No Thanks!

     6. Horror Club      5. Fusion Cuisine      4. House Guest      3. Onion Gang      2. Sadie’s Song      1. Island Adventure

(It took some serious sleuthing, because the amazing Are You My Mother parody image is unsourced on Google Images and comes from a TeeSpring shirt that is no longer available, but I tracked down the artist as Zaccrim.)

[youknowmymethods]

Content Creator Interview #7

Welcome to interview number 7! Guys, this is a two-parter with fandom friends @ellis-hendricks and @geekmama posing a similar set of questions to each other. Ellis won the coin toss, so she’s up first -- discussing why her husband is to blame for her Sherlock obsession, fluffy realism, and why John reminds her of a sad walrus -- with geekmama’s turn coming next week. 

Ellis_Hendricks (interviewed by geekmama) 

We are, respectively, a Californian and a Geordie, and we got to know each other through reading and reviewing each other’s fics (geekmama’s ‘Time of the Season’ series was one of the first fics I read and loved). Geekmama has been writing in the fandom for around 3 years, and I’ve been doing the same for around 2 years, spurred on by the end of series 4 (and the ILY scene in particular). We started beta-reading each other’s work around a year ago, and are always discovering new and unexpected words and phrases that don’t translate across the pond! Although we’ve used the same set of questions for these interviews, we haven’t seen each other’s answers – so it does mean that if nobody else is interested, at least we will be!

Questions about the series

geekmama:  Was there a particular moment in the series that set the ship sailing for you?

Ellis_Hendricks: It happened as soon as I started paying attention properly! I missed series 1 when the BBC first showed it, and when it was repeated, it was my husband who wanted to watch, and I was just casually joining in. But I think it was probably ASiB that did it for me - the contrast between Irene and Molly, and the manner in which Molly stood up for herself.

geekmama:  What's your favourite episode and why?

Ellis_Hendricks: I know it’s considered by some to be the least ‘Sherlock’ of Sherlock episodes, but it’s got to be The Sign of Three. The Best Man speech alone is an amazing piece of writing and performance, but then you’ve got the Worst Stag Night in History (™), Sherlock’s Mind Palace interactions with the women caught up with the Mayfly Man, and of course, Molly stabbing her fiancé with a fork! But it also reveals some of Sherlock’s secrets (his love of dancing) and vulnerabilities (his loneliness), and they’re so deftly woven into the action and the comedy. From a Sherlolly point of view, the ‘planning the stag do’ scene is always going to be a classic (I particularly love how Molly has the upper hand here), and then there’s the look on Molly’s face during Sherlock’s speech that so clearly shows that she only has eyes for the Best Man.

geekmama:  If you could ask/tell the series writers one thing, what would it be?

Ellis_Hendricks: Very hard to pick one thing, as there are so many moments when you really want to interrogate the writers’ intentions, particularly when they (deliberately, infuriatingly) leave things vague! I have always wanted to know, though, how Janine came to be Mary’s chief bridesmaid - was Janine a pawn used by Magnussen to befriend Mary and gain her trust, was she in on it in some way (seems unlikely), or were she and Mary genuinely just friends and the connection was just a massive coincidence?!

Oh, and at what point did Sherlock realise that Molly was engaged? The way the camera zooms into her engagement ring implies that this was the moment he noticed (and his previous behaviour would largely support that) - but it’s hard to believe that Sherlock would miss a detail like that.

geekmama: Do you have a controversial opinion about the series? E.g. a character who everyone else hates, but who you love?

Ellis_Hendricks: I’m not keen on Irene, although that’s probably not a controversial opinion. But it’s not particularly for shipper reasons - I just don’t like what the writers did with the character, which, to me, was quite tired and hackneyed. I do have a soft spot for poor Tom, though - and actually, I don’t think his ‘meat dagger’ idea was that idiotic! In other circumstances, if Sherlock had come up with that, it would have been hailed as genius!

geekmama: Have you ever, when watching an episode, cracked a case before Sherlock?

Ellis_Hendricks: Ha! No. Although I did notice right away that the same actress (Sian Brooke) was playing multiple roles in TLD - not that I worked out why, though!

geekmama: With whom would you rather be stuck at a wedding table - Janine or Irene? Donovan or Anderson?

Ellis_Hendricks: I would be massively intimidated by all three women, for different reasons, and Anderson would obviously be intolerable. It’s probably got to be Donovan - she’d have some good police stories, at least, and she probably wouldn’t try to make me dance.

geekmama: Who would you rather bring back in series 5 - Mary or Moriarty?

Ellis_Hendricks: I really like Mary, but I would throw something at the TV if it turned out she’d faked her own death somehow. I was sad she was killed off, but once it’s done, I think it has to be final. Moriarty has probably had his day now, too, especially in the light of the revelations about Eurus - although his suicide was a brilliant shock, I do wonder whether Moftiss killed him off too soon.

geekmama: Whose house would you prefer to live in - Sherlock's, John & Mary's, Molly's or Mrs Hudson's?

Ellis_Hendricks: If the rest of Molly’s flat/house is as nice as her kitchen, then Molly’s (although the kitchen wasn’t at all what I would have imagined for her). Although it has some nice quirks, I would generally see 221B as a horrible regression to student filth.

geekmama: In your opinion, who has been the best series villain - Jim Moriarty, Charles Magnussen, Culverton Smith, or Eurus Holmes?

Ellis_Hendricks: I think it has to be Jim, if only because he was the most fun. Magnussen and Smith were clearly despicable human beings in their own way, and they were both incredibly chilling. Although Eurus is a fascinating prospect, as a character in this particular show (and with the history she was given), I found her harder to buy into - it was all a bit too Silence of the Lambs.  

Questions about your writing

geekmama: What was your first fic? What prompted it, and how do you feel about it now?

Ellis_Hendricks: It was ‘Completely Backwards’ - aka, Sherlock hatches a plot to get Molly pregnant, because he somehow thinks it will make her happy. It ended up being part of a much longer series, although I didn’t plan it that way. In fact, I wrote it more or less freeform, and it wasn’t beta-read, so I guess it’s a bit rough around the edges - looking back, there are a few small plot points I would change (mostly due to my relative lack of grounding in the series at the time), but it more or less stands up. Two years later, people are still reading and liking it, so it must work okay!  

geekmama: Which fic are you most proud of/most attached to, and why?

Ellis_Hendricks: I’m genuinely quite proud of all of them, but I’m really pleased with the way both ‘In Loco Parentis’ (which follows Sherlock and Molly through 18 years of godparenting) and ‘A Knockout Christmas’ (Sherlock does A Christmas Carol) turned out. Both were quite big challenges. ‘In Loco Parentis’ involved thinking about how Sherlock and Molly would develop as a long-term married couple, how everyone’s lives might change and move on, and also both creating and sustaining original characters (in the form of their kids - and to an extent Rosie, who is not mine, but who we only know as a baby, and therefore have to take a guess at!). ‘A Knockout Christmas’ was an idea that came to me in a moment of insanity, and which I wrote fairly quickly - but I felt as though it had to strike a balance of being true to the series, and close enough to A Christmas Carol so that it followed similar beats and themes. Oh, and getting the choice of Sherlock’s ‘ghosts’ right was vital as well!

geekmama: In what ways does that old rule, “Write what you know” affect your writing?

Ellis_Hendricks: Quite a bit, I think. Or if I want to write about something that I don’t know, I do sufficient research so I can at least bluff that I know about it! My background is totally arts-based, so I feel very out of my depth when writing about anything sciencey (Chemistry was my worst subject in high school - I felt like doing a victory parade when I passed that exam!). I’m also not well-versed in fantasy or sci-fi literature, so I would also feel a bit of a fraud attempting something in an AU along those lines. Most of my fics are straightforward family/relationship pieces, and I suppose that’s my comfort zone. Generally speaking, my life is far too uneventful to actually inform plotlines - although Molly’s medical emergency in ‘Under One Roof’ was based on the birth of my younger child (and writing it served as cheap therapy!)

geekmama: What are your worst writing habits? What are your most overused phrases, plotlines, etc.?

Ellis_Hendricks: I’m not so hot on writing beautiful, detailed description, so I feel it’s something that’s lacking a bit in some of my fics - and it’s kind of out of laziness, and an impatience to get to the bits I do like! I think that I’m a bit repetitive when it comes to describing people’s gestures/facial expressions/reactions, and I’m also guilty of burdening characters with the same old verbal tics and quirks. In terms of plotlines, you could probably argue that all of my fics are basically the same story written from a slightly different angle!

geekmama: Do you have a writing routine? Where and when? And is everything digital, or are things ever handwritten first?

Ellis_Hendricks: Oh, for a writing routine! When I come up with an idea, it’s a case of frantically jotting down notes (usually on my PC or phone, but occasionally on paper if that’s more convenient at the time) - I then try to work those notes into a story plan in bullet points, usually including bits of dialogue if it occurs while I’m thinking. I generally have to write in short bursts, as and when I have time - at my desk during my lunch hour, on my phone while commuting (by train, I hasten to add - not while driving), at home once the small people have gone to bed. But if I had more time, I know I’d only procrastinate!

geekmama: Who do you enjoy writing the most?

Ellis_Hendricks: I’d love to give a more interesting answer, but it’s probably Sherlock - although writing his parents is also a lot of fun.

geekmama: Who do you find easiest/hardest doing first person POV?

Ellis_Hendricks: I think I’ve written from Sherlock’s, Molly’s, John’s, Mary’s and Mycroft’s POV, and to be honest, I’ve loved doing all of them, because each presents a different writing challenge. Mary was possibly the hardest, because she’s such a closed book in a way, and so much is unknown - and because I want to be sympathetic to her, at the same time as finding some of her choices questionable! Writing ‘A Dead Man in the Family’ really got me into writing Mycroft - to the point that I actually started to feel an affinity with him, which was a bit disconcerting!

geekmama: Which fic would you recommend to someone who has never read your stuff before?

Ellis_Hendricks: Hmm, if someone wanted a quick taster, maybe ‘The Wedding Planner’ or a recent one, ‘A Piece of That’. Most of my fics are multi-chapter, so if you’re willing to get your teeth into something longer (so to speak - that sounds wrong!), you could try ‘Not What it Looks Like’ (only 3 chapters), or start with ‘Completely Backwards’ and then see whether you want to keep reading that series for the next five months!

geekmama: What do you value most when it comes to feedback?

Ellis_Hendricks: All feedback is wonderful (except for the time a 12-year-old tried to start an ALL CAPS fight with me about Eurus!). For me, the greatest compliment is when people say that the characters feel authentic, and/or a story feels like a missing scene from the series. Anytime that someone says a story made them laugh, cry, or otherwise have a spontaneous outburst of emotion, that’s amazing, too. But having that dialogue with readers is what is important - the feeling that you’re not just throwing out stories into the void, and the encouragement that keeps you writing.

geekmama: Would you ever go back and revise old fics - or do you consign them to history once they're published?

Ellis_Hendricks: No, I’m pretty much of the feeling that what’s done is done. The only changes I’ve made are spelling/grammatical ones that I’ve spotted later on - or when I’ve spotted a glaring error that might throw people out of a story. I don’t think I’d ever do a wholesale rewrite.

geekmama: Do you - or would you - write other pairings?

Ellis_Hendricks: I write other established pairings, e.g. John and Mary, and have written post-TFP fics where Mycroft and Lady Smallwood are a couple in some way, but I haven’t written other fan pairings. Everyone is totally free to ship who they like, but I guess I just write the ones that appeal to me.

geekmama: How would you define your style?

Ellis_Hendricks: One reviewer described it as ‘fluffy realism’, so I think I might pinch that! Generally, my fics are fairly close to canon, and use events in the series as a hook or jumping-off point.

geekmama: What's your method in approaching a story? Do you plan methodically, or wing it?

Ellis_Hendricks: I used to wing it, but I’m better at planning these days - it at least means that if I lose momentum or have a gap between chapters, I’ve got something to fall back on. When writing a multi-chapter fic, I used to publish a chapter and then write the next, but now I tend to try to write the whole thing first (or at least get a few chapters ahead) - much less stressful that way!

geekmama: Who do you write for? Is it you, or are you thinking about trying to please your audience?

Ellis_Hendricks: Certainly in the early days, I was just writing things that I would like to read, as there was no guarantee that anyone else would be interested! That’s probably changed a bit now, but I go by the rule that if I don’t find something engaging and entertaining, then I’ve got no right to expect that other people will!

geekmama: Do you have any WIPs, and do you think new chapters will ever see the light of day?

Ellis_Hendricks: No, I don’t have any WIPs - I’m not good at juggling more than one idea at a time, and I’m a bit of a compulsive completer, too. If I get a new idea while writing a fic, I make a few frenzied notes and then bury it until I’m ready.  

geekmama: Are you working on anything at the moment?

Ellis_Hendricks: All I have is an outline for a one-shot, which I’m hoping will see the light of day before too long.  These days, it’s really hard to come up with something that hasn’t already been done (and done well) by someone else!

geekmama: What’s harder for you - writing the start of a fic, or coming up with a decent title?

Ellis_Hendricks: The start of a story, because of that need to grab people (hopefully a reader might forgive a crap title?!). I had a teacher who said that once you’ve written something, you should always go back and jettison the first paragraph, because it’s usually a pointless preamble - not sure whether I agree with that entirely, but I do always check to see whether there’s a better way of just jumping into a story.

Reading other people's fics

geekmama: What are your favourite tropes in the fandom?

Ellis_Hendricks: Lots of the old favourites. Off the top of my head...bed-sharing, Molly as ‘the missus’, secret dating/marriage, being lab partners, accidental pregnancy.

geekmama: What things are likely to turn you off a fic?

Ellis_Hendricks: I try to be pretty open-minded, but I’m not keen on fics where Sherlock is portrayed as insanely jealous or aggressively dominant, or when Molly is a bit of a teenage fangirl, usually with little or no backbone. Another is where Tom turns out to be a total bastard, either before or after Molly breaks up with him - I know we don’t see a lot of him, but I don’t read him that way at all, and I like to think that (even after Jim from IT!) Molly has better judgement.

geekmama: Can you recommend 3 fics that are not your own?

Ellis_Hendricks: No, because I’ve read too many good ones. But I’m always excited when I see something new from geekmama, MizJoely, Writingwife83, waitingtobedistributed, OhAine, Quarto, sunken_standard, miabicicletta, forthegenuine or hobbitsdoitbetter.

geekmama: What compels you to leave comments on top of kudos?

Ellis_Hendricks: I don’t know exactly - but it does feel like a compulsion. If something has really impressed me, moved me, made me laugh, or has prompted me to go and read the whole thing again, then it definitely warrants a comment.

Quick-fire questions!

John's TEH moustache or his TAB moustache?

Ellis_Hendricks: TAB moustache, because it’s acceptable for the period setting. TEH moustache makes him look like a sad walrus.

Sherlock's purple shirt or white shirt?

Ellis_Hendricks: Can’t say I’m fussy in this regard, but...purple. Or the all-black get-up from ASiB.

Molly's stripy jumper or cherry cardigan?

Ellis_Hendricks: Stripy jumper - it looks cosy (although I would snag it on everything).

Mary's christening outfit or black-ops gear?

Ellis_Hendricks: Black-ops. I’d wear it when I’m surreptitiously moving my neighbours’ bins.  

Submitted by @thisisartbylexie: Your way of presenting Mary and Molly's friendship is so realistic and rich. What made you want to write about it?

Ellis_Hendricks: Thank you - and that’s such a great question! (I also had no idea that artbylexie had read my fics, so that made my day.) Well, I’m a feminist, and I think that female friendships are worth celebrating whenever you can. Also, Molly and Mary are both such brilliant characters in their own rights, and I was keen to think about their lives outside of their relationships to the men in the series. It always fascinated me that Molly wasn’t a bridesmaid at the Watsons’ wedding, but she was made a godmother less than nine months later - so a strong friendship must have developed in that time. I tend to think that, because of her past, Mary wouldn’t have fostered many genuine friendships, but that she can’t help but make an exception for Molly. Makes me want to write something else for them now!

Submitted by @ohaine: this is a joint question for Ellis and geekmama: Do you feel that working together as betas has changed the way you both write?

Ellis_Hendricks: Yes, I’m certain it has made me up my game! The quality of geekmama’s own work (both creatively, in terms of plot, and technically, in terms of grammar and structure) is very high, so I suppose I have that to aspire to when I write, too. She’s great at spotting my errors or opportunities for improvement - I guess that could make me lazy (knowing she’ll pick them up), but I think it makes me more determined to do a good job first time around, so she doesn’t have too much to do!

Next week, April 5th 2019, the shoe is on the other foot and @ellis-hendricks puts her questions to @geekmama

[eldunea]

you know one thing that has been missing from both this blog and my previous blogs is…where the fuck do i headcanon the plot goes after my cutoff at which i start going canon divergent? so, i will be adding the following plot details to lotor’s bio in its own section. note that some of the plot points below had been plotted with my ship partner mani/@empathicleo. she has now left tumblr, but i still wanted to credit her anyway since some of this is stuff that we came up with together. 

in writing this, i have attempted to keep all the protagonists’ development + their most important actions the same as before--as much as i possibly could--so as to cause minimal disruption to the muses of muns who rely primarily on canon events to build their characters’ development. rp partners can choose to change parts of this timeline while rping with me to be more consistent with their muses. 

a note to allura RPers: it’s canon to this timeline that lotor has feelings for allura, but i left things open-ended so those feelings don’t have to be reciprocated. a further note to RPers of lotor’s generals: just because the generals canonically start working with the paladins and this is more or less retained in the timeline, doesn’t mean that the generals and lotor have to be friends. whether or not your character chooses to reconcile with him, the choice is yours. 

if any other RPers (or people in general really) have any questions about this timeline, feel free to message me.

enjoy! <3

CANON DIVERGENCE

♕ canon divergence starts after s6e3 (the dungeons and dragons episode). there’s no big colony revelation bc spoiler alert my boi never did that shit. lotor and allura come back from their quintessence harvest and do their kiss, everything is hunky dory. until.

♕ lotor discovers kuron is a traitor soon after returning from the harvest and has the same response to him as he did to narti betraying him--he just knifes the bitch without even asking for his alibi. kuron is badly wounded, but survives. lotor is imprisoned again for “betraying” the team.

♕ kuron is caught working for haggar (somehow). far from clearing lotor’s name, this only makes things worse. while under haggar’s mind control, kuron claims that he and lotor had been working together the entire time to lead haggar to oriande. he also claims that lotor had only attempted to dispose of kuron 1) once he no longer needed him and 2) to make himself look better to the paladins. honerva makes him do this so that lotor will be cut off from his allies, the paladins, and will have no choice but to return to her side. she predicted that he might hate her because of what she did as haggar, so she wants that extra insurance to make sure she can nab her son back. not to mention, she is one possessive bitch, and wants her son all to herself instead of having him hang around with the people she perceives to be enemies.

♕ keith decides that lotor is too dangerous to be left alive and plans to kill him. the other paladins agree. visibly distressed, having lost his composure for the first time since he worked with the paladins, he tells them he is panicked because if he dies, his altean colony won’t have a leader anymore. when asked why he never said anything about the colony before, he tells them that he didn’t say anything because he was afraid that the paladins, if captured, might reveal the colony’s location under torture. the paladins don’t believe him at first, but he agrees to be hooked up to that funky device the castleship has which reads memories, and when his thoughts are downloaded into the database they can see that the colony is real; they can also see that he and kuron had nothing to do with each other. though some of them suspect that he has been able to fool the thought-reader, the paladins allow him to take them to his colony.

♕ when they arrive at the colony, they see (surprise surprise)…honerva. she has long since known about it thanks to the way she has stalked her son’s movements over the ages, and now she’s revealing herself to them as the mother of their savior who will help protect them. she lies to lotor that she is not haggar, that haggar had her imprisoned for ten thousand years and only now has she broken free. lotor believes her and in tears, he embraces her. everything seems happy again.

♕ lotor completes the sincline mech while he is in the colony.

♕ shiro is also brought back at this point.

♕ the paladins soon sense that something is seriously wrong with the colony. after some investigating, they see that experiments have been carried out in the colony--but these were done by honerva, not lotor. lotor, horrified, privately confronts honerva, but honerva says that if he stops loving her after this, she’ll pin the crime on him and mind control the surviving victims to say that it was he who experimented on them, not her. lotor, unwilling to lose his mother’s love, ultimately sides with his mother against the paladins and insists to them that their evidence must be mistaken--someone else must have been doing the experiments. when the paladins accuse honerva of being haggar because only haggar could have wielded the advanced magiscience that they saw in the experiments, lotor also vehemently denies this even though he knows it in his heart to be true.

♕ the sincline vs. voltron fight ensues. allura drops the “you’re more like zarkon than i ever could have imagined” and lotor fucking loses his shit. lotor does a giant rant about how when voltron was formed, it was used not to liberate people but actually to keep them oppressed as per my headcanon here--which is why he created a new mech, a robot that was free of such an imperialist history. he says that he had always intended sincline to replace the voltron mech, but none of the voltron paladins appear to be worthy of it—in fact, he doesn’t even think the paladins are worthy of life. keith counters that he’s making the history of his new mech just as shitty if he’s using it to defend honerva’s actions. they fight some more and lotor is about to give the paladins the death blow, destroying them along with voltron. but affected by keith’s words, he stops and backs away. voltron gets up and all the paladins yell at him about what an ass he’s being. pidge tells him that he claims to care about his alteans soooooooo much, yet here he is, throwing them all under the bus in order to protect an abusive monster. allura asks him why the hell he is chasing after the love of a mother who never loved him in the first place and never would, when he has people who would have grown to love him right here. these are what finally get him to disarm and disembark from his ship. the fight is over.

♕ honerva is pissed. she was counting on her son to destroy voltron for her, but clearly he had a change of heart. out of pure rage she attacks him right then and there with the intent to kill. voltron fights her and barely escapes with their lives, nevermind the fact that honerva isn’t even in a mech at this point—she can fight them all on her own because she’s just THAT OP. three-way fight between lotor, voltron and honerva ensues; honerva appears to have been killed. but the thing is? they never saw the body. >:3

♕ voltron is distracted meanwhile, because sendak has just declared himself the rightful emperor and the galra have just invaded earth. sendak chose earth specifically to get under lotor’s skin, because he knows that humans are part altean—not to mention, he wants to commit genocide against the “last alteans” in order to cement the fire of purification’s legitimacy. and yes, lotor is racist toward humans, but he doesn’t view them as vermin who need to die. instead he views humans as helpless, clueless beings that he has to protect, and he will protect them just as much as any full-blooded altean. cue season 7 starting at “the last stand, part 1″ but with 100% more lotor. any threads with MFE pilot muses begin at this point in the timeline.

♕ as for how romelle shows up at this point in this timeline? she and her brother bandor sneak aboard the castle of lions because she thinks lotor is up to no good. they are discovered. lotor scolds them for coming so far from home by themselves and insists on sending them back, but the paladins think that he’ll be more accountable with a pair of his citizens watching his every move, so the two of them stay. at some point, though, sendak kidnaps allura, bandor and romelle and tells the paladins and lotor that if they try to rescue allura, bandor and romelle will be killed. lotor doesn’t even hesitate to jump in and save in allura, resulting in sendak killing bandor. romelle blames lotor for her brother’s death.

♕ lotor kills admiral sanda for betraying earth to sendak. that musty bitch can go die.

♕ back in the colony, honerva is up to no good. to punish lotor for his “betrayal,” she does exactly what she blackmailed him with: she tells the entire colony that he had been secretly carrying out experiments on the altean people, and that he tried to use voltron to kill her—his own mother! the shock! the horror!—because she had threatened to expose him. she tells them that only she can be trusted to lead them now; many alteans stay loyal to lotor for one reason or another, but a massive chunk of them are now on honerva’s side and she springs into action. immediately she imprisons everybody who disagrees with her. then she gets a ton of alteans to travel to oriande to carry out her next plan: build a mech that can kill lotor, then search every reality for another lotor to replace him with—a “perfect son” that will love her in spite of all her atrocities and obey her every whim.

♕ for a short while, lotor and the paladins take some time to chillax on earth and help rebuild after stopping the invasion of it. lotor’s friendship with the paladins and the MFE pilots deepens, and he starts to abandon his racist beliefs about humans. he feels at home here—he feels like earth, even in its destroyed state, is the closest thing the universe has to the lost altea, and it’s certainly the closest thing he has ever had to a home planet. they can’t go back to galra HQ because hepta and the fire of purification have taken that over whoops. casual threads that take place on earth can take place at this point in the timeline.

♕ some s7 events (including discovering macidus + hearing about the fracturing of the galra empire, the feud, the “little” adventure, the fight in “the journey within”) also occur at this point in some way, shape or form. at the end of each, they return to earth as their base.

♕ luca and tavo, the two defected alteans in canon season 8, escape from oriande and find their way to earth. they come to warn lotor and the paladins of what honerva is doing, and that they must come immediately. cue the battle in oriande which happens in s8e6, except lotor is fighting alongside the paladins.

♕ s8e7 (“clear day”) happens as usual, except this time allura takes in the rift creature after the clear day festivities, not during. allura asks the paladins whether she should take it in, all of them say no but lotor says yes—he states that no great victory came without a great cost, and this is no exception. at first she doesn’t, but after a while of considering lotor’s words, she does. the creature grants her the ability to enter honerva’s mind, but when she and the paladins do enter honerva’s mind, it comes at a huge price just as lotor predicted.

♕ s8e8&9 (“knights of light part 1 and 2”) happen, except with a twist, and also without the bullshit redemption of zarkon—HE COMMITTED GENOCIDE ACROSS THE UNIVERSE FOR FUCK’S SAKE WHY DID HE GET A HAPPY ENDING LIKE THAT. when honerva flips her shit that the paladins have entered her mind, she takes control of allura, and makes them vessels of hers so she can attack the paladins through them. it looks as though the paladins will be forced to kill allura in order to protect themselves, but knowing this is not an option, they simply retreat. but lotor, not wanting to lose the one he loves, intercedes. honerva’s curse on him that took away his magic breaks, and he is able to use magic to extract the rift creature from allura and banish it himself. as in canon, allura is rendered comatose by this, but survives.

♕ s8e11 (“uncharted regions”) happens but with a twist. honerva manages to take the sincline mech from lotor and fuse it with her own ship to pierce the many realities.

♕ s8e12 (“the zenith”) happens, with lotor inside the voltron-atlas and coran piloting the castle of lions. honerva goes to the perfect reality where she can be with her “perfect son,” only for him to reject her just as he does in canon.

♕ s8e13 (“the end is the beginning”) happens, except there’s no bullshit redemption for honerva after she destroys all realities except for one. instead, when honerva and the paladins are alone at the collective consciousness of all reality, the paladins are alone at first. allura tells the group there’s only one way to bring all of reality back, and it’s to sacrifice—specifically, they will need to give up the sincline, the castle ship, and honerva. lotor tricks his mom, telling her that if she just goes toward the bright light in the background and brings the sincline ship with her, she will finally be able to reunite with zarkon, and that he will be willing to be her “perfect son.” he appears to follow her in the castle ship, but disembarks from it at the last minute, sending the castle of lions to its final rest. honerva is at peace at first when she sees zarkon in the distance, but when she sees the rest of the old paladins staring angrily at her she realizes she’s been tricked and sent to her death. she begs zarkon forgiveness but he turns away, dooming her to an eternity alone.

♕ altea and daibazaal come back, as in canon--but unlike in canon, there isn’t much rest for the paladins. given how much the galra empire is steeped in a culture of prejudice and violence, and given how many galra don’t accept lotor as their emperor, the paladins emphatically still need voltron to ensure peace across the universe. as such, the blade of marmora cannot transition to a humanitarian organization, although it can start carrying out more humanitarian missions. as much as i wanted to believe that the happy ending at the end of s8e13 could be true, i’m just being realistic here.

♕ oh yeah and just to be real specific about this, allura doesn’t die. she deserves to be alive and happy!!!

♕ the end :P

[novarasalas]

Second Look Review: Battle Scars

Hey, guys...remember me? I make Voltron fan content and stuff. That is, when I’m not working an insane amount and end up too tired to think.

So...yeah.

I’ve been working on this one in my down time. It’s a bit shorter than usual, but I’ve still got a few thoughts on the whole thing.

-

Wide Open Spaces

They don’t tend to speak about it in depth, and the science is always simplified (almost too much), but one thing I’ve always appreciated about this show is that they acknowledge how far away everything is in space.

Pidge: Also, this celestial quadrant is 230,000 light years in diameter.

I, being me, did some research.

I’d like to know how they’re calculating these “celestial quadrants”, because our milky way galaxy is 100,000 light years across. The Andromeda Galaxy is 110,000 light years across.

Are they really searching an area the size of two, average sized galaxies?** In that case, they’d be lucky if they found anything at all. And as it happens, they’re having that particular kind of trouble here.

Once again, I say: space is huge and scary.

**The largest galaxy that we’ve detected so far is IC 1101, a supergiant elliptical galaxy that spans 2 million light years at its widest point.

- -

Forgotten in the Chaos

Raise your hand if you had a bad feeling about Olkarion this season.

Yeah….same.

I’ll be honest, I’ve had a bad feeling about Olkarion’s fate since the last battle there in S5.

I’m still a bit confused about the apparent lack of communication here. Had they contacted Olkarion at some point before the Atlas set out? You’d think so, as they’re arguably Voltron’s greatest ally.

I suppose that they may have been in contact before Volton split from the Atlas, and that this is a very new  development.

But why haven’t the Olkari alerted them to the situation? Have they actually gone into hiding?

That’s the feeling I get now that I’ve looked at things again.

We have to remember that the first time we meet the Olkari, they’ve been enslaved by the Empire and forced to make the cubes. And here, we end up seeing that the Robeast absconds with those same cubes. I can easily see them, at least for the time being, disappearing from the galactic stage until they feel safe again.

Shiro: How many years have you lived like this?

Ryner: Many decafeebs.

It hasn’t been that long since they had been freed from years long occupation. And now this thing comes and takes the weapons that they were forced to build. I can assume that at this point, they’re hiding not just to protect themselves, but everyone else. They have a unique kind of power. In the wrong hands, it’s devastating.

Removing themselves from view removes the possibility of others using the Olkari people for their own gain.

- - -

Girls, Girls, Girls

I’m never going to shut up about this, ok?

This episode gave us some great Allura and Pidge moments. I just wish we’d gotten more throughout the series.

Of all the paladins, other than Shiro and Hunk, they’ve interacted the least on screen. I wish it had been under better circumstances...but eh.

But this was the episode that I started realizing that this last season was going to be female driven.

This episode has the aforementioned Pidge and Allura interactions, but also:

The two girls Pidge sees playing, and:

Ryner, who I’m going to imagine is their grandmother.

The first episode of this season featured some great female interactions of all kinds. The big bad is Honerva, and her most notable cohorts are also women.

It’s something that means a lot to me. Even now, you don’t see many shows with a number of diverse female characters. And even though this series had to get a running start at it, I still appreciate what they’ve given us in this case.

Who run (and destroy) the world?

- - - -

The Lessons Learned

“The old must give way to the new.”

That’s a good lesson to learn. Nothing lasts forever, no matter how much you might want it to.

Personally, I have difficulty letting go. Objects and people...if I lose them, it causes major anxiety. Learning to accept change and loss is an ongoing process for me, as I’m sure it is for a lot of people.

So, what Hunk says here:

Hunk: If you think about it, this isn’t really the end of Olkarion. Weblums eating dead planets is just the first step in a process that leads to the growth of new stars, planets, and galaxies.

...not only is it the truth of things, it’s an idea that can help quash those bad feelings that come with change and loss.

It’s healing, in a way.

So when I saw these faces:

...I figured that maybe something significant was to come.

Looking back...well…

In Keith’s case, maybe he’s remembering their first trip to Olkarion. He was still reeling from the realization that he was most likely half Galra and had a few things to say about acceptance and sameness.

Pidge: I guess it’s like Ryner said. We’re all made up of the same cosmic dust.

Keith: So, that means we’re all related. This ship, those stars, the Olkari. Even the Galra.

So when I see that contemplative look on his face, I can easily imagine that he’s remembering this moment, and how he had may have felt at ease with himself for the first time since his revelation.

Allura, on the other hand…

At this point, I was convinced that the end was going to see her finding happiness with a new family. Between this episode (that look!), and “Launch Date”, I took it as a given.

After all, old gives way to the new.

As far as loss goes, losing not only you’re family, but the entirety of your people is more than I can even imagine. The amount of loneliness and pain she must’ve been feeling this whole time is sure to have weighed her down.

I was so, very hopeful that the end of all this would see her happy and surrounded by the people who loved her.

We all know that didn’t happen.

In fact, I’m now lost on the meaning of this lesson within the plot.

No old gave way to new. The old came back. The old just kinda...hecked off back into space.

Where was the new? What’s my take away from this?

I’ve been working on this piece for a month. I’ve rolled these thoughts over in my head, trying to tumble them into smooth stones of reason.

And I got nothing.

...I mean, it’s still a good lesson, but….

- - - - -

A few good things, cause I promised.

One, this move is fire!

It’s speed up because Tumblr’s gif limit is still shiat, but that’s Allura and her lion working together.

They never really did the whole “remote-piloting” thing again, but they’ve learned to do things like this, and I think it’s pretty cool.

Second is something not so much related to this show, but within the theme of the episode.

There was always something I would try to remember when I was feeling particularly down on myself. And there’s a post going around on here saying the same thing, and I was absolutely thrilled to see it.

The idea is this:

A supergiant star can burn for billions of years. Eventually, though, it will begin to run out of fuel, and within its core, it’ll fuse heavier and heavier elements, until eventually, it begins fusing iron.

This is how a star dies.

If the star goes supernova, all of the elements contained within will be blasted out into space to eventually become new things. Maybe the hydrogen will help form a new star. Maybe the helium will help create a new gas giant, like Saturn.

And the iron?

That iron is in your blood.

So if you’re feeling small, maybe a little worthless, remember: a part of you once killed a star. What could be more bad ass than that?

------

In summary:

This episode featured a lot of loss, as well as a lot of hope.

In the end, I’m not sure what it did for the overall story, though. Unless I’m forgetting something that happens later on that acts as a call back to this “old is new” concept, I’m just kinda eh on the whole thing.

Next up: 

Wish you weren’t so fuckin’ awkward, bud.

[travllingbunny]

The 100 rewatch: 2x06 Fog of War

This episode has one major character introduction (and one minor one), which might have been a cool reveal the first time I saw it, if I hadn't been always spoiled on it; some really tense moments involving major revelations for the characters themselves, which made me think for a moment I'd give this episode a higher rating; and a very questionable follow-up to the major storyline from the previous episode, which made me rate it lower than the previous few episodes, but nowhere near as low as an upcoming episode all focused on that storyline, and that's just because it's still a minor part of this episode.

Rating: 7.5/10

You've probably guessed what I meant already: the way the show deals with the aftermath of Finn's mass murder in the Grounder village is full of problems and annoying character behavior. Which gets even worse in episode 2x08, but it starts here, when we learn that Finn was questioned by the Council*in Camp Jaha and fully cleared, because, according to Abby: "He thought he was rescuing his friends". Sorry, what? Usually it's the Grounders that get on my nerves with their dumb decisions and attitudes, but this time, this storyline always made me extremely irritated with the Arkers. WTF is wrong with their judicial system and their moral views? They used to give death sentences on the Ark for any damn thing, from smoking weed to stealing medicine for your kids to giving birth to a second child to getting born as a second child; they announced they aren't doing it on the ground, but then were insisting on maintaining law and order by locking people up for hitting someone, or shock-lashing them for letting some of them go on an authorised mission; but killing 18 unarmed civilians who weren't posing a threat, all on your own - that's what they're OK with?

*Speaking of which, who’s in the Council now? Not any of the old members, since they died in Diana’s terrorist attack last season. We never see any of the new council members and I don’t we ever even hear about the council again. It’s always apparently just the Chancellor – whoever it is at the time (Abby, Kane, Pike) – making decisions on their own.

Now, if they had released Finn on the grounds of him suffering from PTSD, having diminished capacity - that would be a different matter. But they didn't. No one ever says explicitly that Finn is suffering from PTSD or has any kind of mental issue, and if they do think he has, why haven't they tried to help him? Do they even know anything about mental health? Do they have psychologists and psychiatrists? Going by everything we see in this and the following seasons, they have no clue. But in this case, the writers didn't seem to have much of a clue, either. (The show did much better with Jasper's storyline later on, though characters in-universe treated it just as poorly.) They even let Finn carry a gun and go on a recon mission with everyone else, and this time I’m totally with Octavia when she says she can’t believe they did it. (But does this mean that Octavia is the only one bothered because she is the only one who knew one of the victims?)

There are just mentions of how Finn has changed, etc. And then Raven even tells Finn "We all have battle scars, Finn. Suck it up and build a brace for yours." Um, no, no, Raven, you cannot do this with mental scars. That's not how it works. But, ironically, she'll find that out herself with what she will go through in seasons 3-4.

When I binged the show for the first time, I thought Finn’s character was a big failure because he was supposed to likable and a good guy, but never really came off that way. On rewatch, I realized he works much better as a character if I assume he was never meant to be all that likable in the first place. But “did they actually expect me to find him likable here, or not?” is something I’m still not sure at many points, and that’s the case in this episode. If they did, they really failed. It would be different if Finn was showing real guilt over what he had done, instead of going around trying to talk to Clarke and complaining because she’s not comfortable around him. “You don’t look at me the way you used to.” Duh! What did you expect?

The episode starts with an interesting scene where Clarke and Bellamy are making plans how to save their friends from Mount Weather. Bellamy actually says at one point that, if the Council doesn’t authorize the mission to save them, he’ll go there on his own. Which he seriously meant as that’s what he does in 2x09. Bellamy then asks about Finn (the second and last time the two of them ever talk about any of each other’s love interests) and Clarke replies she hasn’t talked to Finn, while Bellamy is trying to make lighter of Finn’s actions, saying “We’ve all done bad things” - .obviously to try to make her feel better, and because he feels guilty for allowing Finn to continue the mission with just Murphy to look after him, since we know from before that he’s well aware of the gravity of Finn’s actions. Then Finn arrives, his body language saying: “Go away, I need to talk to Clarke, since my relationship with her is the most important thing in the world”. Bellamy is understanding and walks away, while Clarke is following him with her eyes until he leaves, her body language saying “I much preferred you company, why did you have to leave me with him?” She’s obviously creeped out and doesn’t know how to act around this new, murderous Finn, who appears to be so much different from what she thought the guy she fell in love was. The time they spend together – hiding from the acid fog – in the house, where Finn killed Delano, the Grounder prisoner, doesn’t help – Finn takes a chance to give her Jake’s watch, but the moment is obviously spoiled for her by Delano’s dead body she sees lying there. What do you mean, murder isn’t a great way to say “I love you”? But it seems like I’m supposed to feel sorry for him, when he and Clarke have an exchange about how war has changed them all:

“I don’t even know who you are anymore.”

“Neither do I.”

“What have we become?”

With how I feel about this storyline, it may seem odd that I’m still rating this episode rather high, but 1) it is still a rather small part of this episode (and I’m going to pour all my hate for this storyline into episode 2x08), 2) Clarke’s extreme discomfort with Finn is character and makes sense –they may have released him, but that doesn’t mean people really feel like nothing has changed, and 3) the other storylines in this episode are really good.

I really like the scenes where Bellamy and Octavia go on their own to find an entrance into Mount Weather to save Lincoln -together with some Arker guards who decided to help them rather than listen to their orders - and are shocked to find him as a Reaper, who doesn’t recognize them but seems to have some sort of a reaction to Octavia’s voice. Those scenes are really intense, and the literal darkness of the Mount Weather hallways combined with the cheesy Christmas song that starts playing all of a sudden from a wind-up toy, just before a Reaper attack, makes for one of the creepier and more effective season 2 scenes.

(Season 2 was by far the most harmonious one for the Blake sibling relationship. Or rather, the only one. Their relationship is usually extremely dysfunctional.)

Major developments happen in Mount Weather itself. This is when Jasper, Monty and the other Delinquents finally learn the truth about their hosts – thanks to Maya, who has found out that her “accidental” radioactivity contamination was planned, and realized that the 47 may soon meet the same fate as the Grounders caught in MW. I’ve always liked Maya – I trusted her since first seeing 2x01. She’s one of the most underrated characters on The 100, IMO.

The scene where Maya shows Jasper and Monty the cages with people in them and people getting drained, is a really strong one. I love this dialogue where she tries to explain the mentality of the ordinary Mountain Men and their silent complicity in what their regime is doing:

Maya: “Everyone knows, we don’t talk about it (…) Look, without the treatments, we die. What were we supposed to do?” Monty: “Die.”

It’s one of the times when the show really successfully did moral ambiguity. Monty’s answer is kind of harsh, but completely understandable since he’s just seen the horrors happening, and he’s kind of right, but he’s also kind of wrong… Because it’s not exactly easy for people to ignore such a basic instinct as survival, for the sake of morality and humanness. But as we later learn, Maya’s mother did make that choice, refuse the treatments, and die. And Maya herself will help the Arkers, and die, as a result – kind of killed by Monty himself, saying “None of us is innocent” as her final words.

We also get more insight into the Wallace father-son relationship, with signs of their upcoming conflict, and some more info about MW. Though Dante’s title is President, we learn that every president of MW has been a Wallace. They’re basically a dynasty like the Kims in North Korea. We learn that the initial plan for the 48 was to “assimilate them into our gene pool”, which explains the chocolate cake and all other attempts to charm them. Dante must have been happy to see Maya and Jasper get close, in that case all he needed to do was let nature take its course, but how did they intend to do that with the rest of the kids? Arrange marriages/relationships? Ask them for sperm/egg cells? Dante is against draining the kids and says he “won’t put them in cages like animals”. You mean, like other people you already have in cages? Mount Weather will, in Dante’s opinion, eventually will be breached by radiation, which is an explanation for the panic of the Mountain Men, but Dante insists that it’s not just important to be able to go the surface, but that he won’t deserve to survive if he allows it. Um… you already don’t deserve it. Why does he draw the line with the kids? Is it because he thinks of the Grounders as “savages” and finds it easier to dehumanize them?

(BTW, what on Earth made Dante give his son the name Cage, of all the things he could have possibly named him?!)

At the end of the episode, the kids in MW have decided to pretend and work within MW to get out, with Jasper and Monty have decided to volunteer for blood donations to fool their hosts. Raven has meanwhile discovered the secret MW channel, realized that it was MW that crashed the Exodus ship and that they are jamming all radio communications. She and Abby discussed whether to destroy the Mountain Men tower that does the jamming, which would allow them to get in radio contact with other possible survivors from other Ark stations, or to not do it and listen in to the Mountain Men conversations instead, which would allow them to rescue the kids from MW – and Abby finally made the decision to do the latter, which means she’s finally supporting Clarke in her determination to save her friends. The consequence of this is also that the Farm station survivors (including Pike, Hannah Green and Bryan) will only join the other Arkers in season 3.

The big character introduction in the episode is, of course, Lexa. Her right hand man/bodyguard Gustus is also introduced, and he utters the line “Blood must have blood”, talking about retaliation for Finn’s massacre, which is the first time we hear that line. I’ll never know if the twist at the end of the episode that Lexa is the Commander would have been a surprise for me. I was already spoiled, long before I started watching the show, that there was a character called “Commander Lexa”, that she has a relationship with Clarke at some point, and gets killed by a stray bullet after the first time they had sex – because that was a huge controversy in 2016, which you couldn’t avoid if you were visiting any online fandom sites, even if you knew nothing about The 100. So, when she introduced herself as Lexa, I knew “oh, so she’s the Commander”. The show did a good job playing against expectations by introducing her as a frail-looking young servant girl, playing on her youth and looks, so I might have been fooled otherwise, or I might have gotten suspicious after she was just standing there listening and observing Jaha and Kane all the time? Or maybe I would have thought she was someone spying for the Commander. In this episode, we just learn she’s smart and can be sneaky and likes to get a measure of her opponents/enemies – but we don’t really get more sense of what she’s like as a person and leader until around 2x09.

The thing with Kane and Jaha being made to fight to the death to supposedly decide who will live and be set free, reminds me of the Blodreina gladiator fights in season 5, except those were actual fights to the death, while this was just a ploy, and Octavia got the idea from the Roman history. But I guess that type of death match wouldn’t have been a foreign concept to the Grounders from the Wonkru.

The show tried to play with expectations for a second with Kane taking the knife to do something, as if he was going to kill Jaha, but at that point, we already knew what Kane was really like, so his attempt at self-sacrifice, in order to end the war, was not a surprise. He is still haunted by guilt for the culling (Jaha: “You didn’t order the massacre” – Kane: “Not this one”). One of the reasons I started liking him is that he is one of the few characters, alongside Clarke and Bellamy, who show genuine remorse for their actions. Another good piece of dialogue is when Jaha says that the things they did on the Ark were for survival of the human race, with Kane pointing out that the human race was, in fact, surviving without them anyway – to which Jaha replied that they are, then, doing everything for their people. Which is the justification/guiding motive Jaha has from this moment on: “for my people”.

I’m still not sure what exactly Lexa’s take from all of this was, since she declared to Kane“Your intention are honorable, and your desire for peace is true”, so apparently, she appreciated his conviction – but then she let Jaha go to be a messenger and deliver the dramatic message to the Arkers to “Leave or die!”, while detaining Kane to further talk to him, or observe him (?), or keep him as a hostage? What exactly was she planning to do with him?

Anyway, this is the only time that Lexa and Jaha ever interacted. It would have been interesting to see them talk about leadership some time, since they strike me as similar type of leaders: both are ruthless, believe that the end justifies the means and justify their actions by saying it’s all for their people, but their concept of “their people” is an abstract one, because they are less concerned with the welfare of individuals that make up the collective called “my people”, and are ready to sacrifice quite a few of them if their goals require it.

Timeline: 2 days after Human Trials. This is one of the few times we actually get some pointers about the time that has passed – and one of the few times we get a.. mini time jump. It’s weird to call 2 days a time jump, but most of the episodes start right after the previous one. It was only late in season 3 (after the “Six months earlier” tag in 3x13) that I realized how condensed the show’s timeline was.

Body count: 1 Arker guard killed by the fog, other two killed by Reapers, a couple of Reapers killed by Bellamy.

[motogpfanpage]

ROUND 14: ARAGON

Last round in Europe before the huge month of flyaways, Aragon marks a turning point in the season as Marc Marquez gets closer to clinching another World Title.

1) Captain Marquez

On thursday Marc Marquez stated he still had the title in mind, even though his lead is already huge, and would be willing to lose 5 or 10 points to his opponents.

On saturday he went even further into this state of mind saying a top 5 would be his goal after failing to take pole position against fellow spaniard and future teammate Jorge Lorenzo.

Once sunday came, and after a good night sleep, gone was the careful Marquez and back was the crazy beast: “ I got up this morning I say okay, I want to take a risk today ”. And many risks he took indeed running wide and taking Lorenzo with him at turn 1, fighting on and on with Dovizioso, giving back every attack, switching places multiple times in one lap and finally pushing for the win in the final laps to escape the Desmo’s power in the straights.

Marquez believe the reason behind his race win at Aragon was a tire gamble he decided to take. Supposed to race the hard once again, the spaniard went against all odds and favored the soft as he believed he would be his only chance against the Ducatis: “ In the warm-up I didn't feel well but I pushed, I crashed and then I start to think why I crash. Then we speak together with Santi [Hernandez, crew chief], with my technician and I say to him 'I want the soft rear'. Then started a big meeting, discussions inside the team, with HRC because I did not try that soft tyre in the afternoon in hot temperature but I say I believe on this one, I can manage. Another thing is, was the only chance to fight against Dovi because with the hard I felt good but for my riding style was not working in a good way, especially on the entry. ”

Aragon GP win helped Marc increasing his lead advantage and even though he cannot win the title next time out in Thailand, his first match point will come right after at Motegi.

2) Two side of the same coin

The Aragon GP may have been won by Marquez and Suzuki may have got a podium but the image of the weekend certainly was Jorge Lorenzo’s monstruous highside at the first corner right after the start of the race.

An horrific incident leaving the spaniard with a dislocated a toe and fractured second metatarsal on his right foot. After being checked by the clinica on Sunday, and again in Barcelona on Monday, Lorenzo’s participation to the Thai GP is all but certain. Forced in resting his leg and foot for at least the 10 coming days, the spaniard will be checked again by the medicals later this week to see how the situation is evolving and if he could be fit enough to take part to the next grand prix in Thailand. 

Lorenzo’s foot might be hurting but so is his tongue. On sunday night the spaniard put some of the blame for his crash on future teammate Marc Marquez’ lines and block pass at turn 1: “From the outside, [it looked like] I entered too fast, I lean too much and I entered too wide in the dirty part, that's why I crashed. From what I lived, what I experienced, I entered in the normal line, entered the corner as I did in the seven last years here in Aragon, but I watched Marc go into the inside, very aggressive, not making the corner because you saw where he finished, in the green [paint on the outside]. And when he saw that I was there, he tried not to let me pass into the corner, and I didn't have any options [but] to go to the dirty part. Because we were very wide and already the other riders were coming, if I didn't want to lose five or six positions, I had to open the throttle.“In Misano [last time out] the crash was completely my fault, this time Marc destroyed my race, destroyed my foot, destroyed also the big possibility that I have to win and probably also [the] Thailand race.”

Lorenzo’s words were greeted with many criticizes, most people thinking it could only be his ego speaking and blaming Marquez for a mistake he did on his own. Body language though doesn’t lie and watching MotoGP dot Com’s video clip of JL’s post race debrief only shows someone who genuinely believe what he is saying. 

Is Marquez to blame ? Is Lorenzo to blame ? Is it 50/50 ? Everybody will have their own opinion on the matters but reporters can put their clickbait headline about the “Dream Team Already Fighting” to rest as both Lorenzo and Marquez went on to show what Gentlemen are made of.

On Monday night, the oldest spaniard made a twitter thread explaining his view of the incident with a more calm and resting head. He then added: “This is my version, But I want to inform you that this afternoon I received a call from Marquez checking on me, which honors him.”  

Something to which Marc Marquez replied: “Get well soon! We will see each other in Thailand”.

They might not always agree and they will definitely have moment of fight next year at Honda, but when you have respect for one another, it makes everything else easier. Even the reconciliation of two great champions. 

3) Best of the rest

Failing to stop Marquez from winning his home GP, Dovizioso was pretty happy with the result anyway once in the parc fermé on Sunday. The Ducati, clearly shaping into the best bike on the grid, is so good that even Marc Marquez’ riding skills needs helps from a few tricks and gambles to win: “In Misano it was very important, but here even more because this confirms our improvement, and this improvement is the reality but is even better for the future. This is the way I want to look at the weekend, Because we come here with a lot of confidence from the [other] competitors, they thought we could win easy the race. But it's never like this, and I'm so happy how much we improved from last year – this is the point. Unfortunately we couldn't win, we try until the last lap, but we have to study and analyse the reality, and the reality is we did a good step – a huge step.”

With Jorge Lorenzo and Crutchlow out of the race and Yamaha struggling at the back, Iannone, Rins and Pedrosa decided to give everybody a quick reminder of just what they capable of.

Showing a fairly good pace all weekend, Andrea Iannone was the revelation of Sunday’s race. The maniac, more used to playing bowling with other riders when fighting with them was the cleanest we’ve seen of him in a long time. Sharp but never on the edge, the italian gave his everything and never let a mistake made by the leader being unnoticed. After sandwiching Marc Marquez with Dovizioso though, Iannone realized he could keep up with the Honda and Ducati and settled for 3rd: “It was a really great race for us and in many cases, a real battle because first of all, I fight a lot with my tyres, especially with the rear because it is really important to manage for all the race. During the practice we worked in a good direction with the used tyres and in the race I tried to not push a lot and push the bike on the side, and I think this is a really good strategy. At the end, the last five or six laps I started to recover the gap a little bit. The Honda and Ducati are more faster than us on the straight and I think this is the negative point for the race of today, but it was a good race.”

Behind him his teammate, Alex Rins, was struggling to keep his older teammate’s pace but not for lack of trying. In the end he was 4th and very happy to bring home a good result: “I’m really happy, I think we passed these expectations that we made yesterday. Mostly during all the race I was riding very comfortable with the first group. But then when there were twelve laps to go I started to feel something strange on the front. Since the beginning I believed in Suzuki, I was saying we had a competitive bike, no? In some races we’ve been a little bit at the back, for the setting or I don’t know what. But for sure our bike is very competitive and very good. Sure, we need to improve a little bit in the top speed and the small things, but I’m very happy with my bike.”

A little further back, Pedrosa almost looked like his older self riding with perfect line in a way only him can. Getting the benefits of a few new pieces given to him from Honda after asking for them since Jerez, the spaniard had what seemed to be his best shot at a podium since the start of the season. A 5th place isn’t was he was hoping for but soon enough will came Sepang and we know just how strong the little samurai can be there: “I think today in the race everything was quite well, we were able to start with the front group and i was able to do some passing, but unfortunately the hard rear had no grip. I was unable to carry the corner speed and the acceleration out of the turns with the hard, and that make me lose a bit of the gap per lap that I was unable to stay in the [lead] group.“I think with a little better grip in the rear I was able today to be in the podium or fight for the victory.”

4) Debacle and Disaster

If you thought the Austrian GP was a disaster for Yamaha then the Aragon GP was purgatory. At a track where former Yamaha rider Jorge Lorenzo used to make it onto the podium, the Rossi and Vinales duo barely made it into the top 10 after both qualifying way too far on the grid for a factory team.

If Marquez changed his mind from Saturday to Sunday, the same happened to Vinales. Not on the pace, in Q1 and struggling to get into Q2, the spaniard was penalized with a 3 places on the grid penalty for cruising on the racing line while Bradley Smith was on a hot lap. On saturday night he tweeted “we’re still motivated”.

On sunday and after a disastrous race result, there was no motovation left for box 25. Still not getting any better at race start the spaniard struggled to get closer to the top 10: “We have lost all our objectives, we don't know what to aim for. The feeling on the bike is very bad. Now we have the Asian tour and I just hope to get it over with fast. Zero motivation, zero expectations. For me it is the worst race I've done in Yamaha, and the worst time on the bike, when the feeling was worst on the bike. I can't tell really the precise problem because every area was working bad, was not even one area that was okay. I was comparing myself with non-factory bikes and they were even better than me.”

Side 46 of the box wasn’t partying either. For the first time in i don’t know how many year (if it even ever happened before) we got ourselves a VR46 waiting for a tow during Q1 saying there was no way he could have had the pace for Q2 alone.

Failing to find one, the doctor qualified at a very anonymous 17th place on the grid. Only his sunday racer skills would help him get into the top 10 and beyond.

It is now 23 races since Yamaha last one a race and even though anything can happen during the flyaways one could think everybody should prepare themselves for a year without any yamaha win: “I started very much behind, but I could keep a constant pace for the race and I can take some points, I can make the top 10, that yesterday I wasn’t sure [I could do]. It’s like this, this is our potential now. We hope to improve.”

Both sides of the box are hoping to see the light at the end of a very dark tunel, if only heads in japan would start doing something to solve a problem Rossi believe will not go away even with the 2019 engines: “I hope it’s important for Yamaha to react.“Maybe some top guys see the number, and somebody asks: ‘Why?’ ”

5) Honorable mentions

Aleix Espargaro’s 6th place in the race with the Aprilia felt nothing less than a win!

Danilo Petrucci in 7th continues to be a disappointment. 

Zarco cannot do better than 14th which comes as no surprise when even the factory riders struggles to be in the top 10.

Pol Espargaro’s was forced out of the race weekend due to a crash when he was just coming back from a severe injury. 

It was nice having Jordi Torres back in the paddock. The famously #kneedown rider made a respectable job out of a great opportunity replacing Tito. 

[love-takes-work]

Steven Universe Podcast: Volume 2, Episode 7: Earth Gems

Season 2, Episode 7 of the Steven Universe Podcast, released March 8, 2018, is about the so-called Earth Gems, and it covers Jasper, Bismuth, and Rose Quartz. The official description:

Rose Quartz, Bismuth, and Jasper are the focus of this episode of the Steven Universe Podcast as take a closer look at Earth Gems! Steven Universe creator Rebecca Sugar, former EP, Ian Jones-Quartey, Director Joe Johnston, and Supervising Director Kat Morris detail Bismuth's origins (including how she came to be in Lion's mane), Jasper's personality development, and Steven's complicated view of his mother, Rose Quartz. Discover which characters have been around since the pilot days, who was added as the series developed, and how Rose's storyline gets factored into each episode's planning.

Since as usual my summary is long, I will provide a highlights list followed by a cut which you can follow for a more in-depth narrative. Enjoy!

Highlights:

Jasper's main root as a character is her identity as a decorated soldier from humble origins.

Jasper, a so-called "perfect" Quartz from a Kindergarten known to produce flawed Gems, won't accept help from others because she's so determined to prove she's capable. She may be the best Gem from Earth, but she's still from Earth.

Joe Johnston was the artist who drew Bismuth's Gem bubbled in Lion's mane, but at that point they did not yet have the story of who she was figured out, though they did know there would be a "lost Crystal Gem."

Steven Sugar's tendency to add Gem artifacts into the world, most notably weapons, gave rise to the writers' need to give the Crystal Gems a weaponsmith, so Bismuth as a character grew out of that hole needing to be filled.

Bismuth adored Rose Quartz and was never allowed to understand why her leader rejected her contribution, which Rebecca and Ian compare to the trope of a villain mistreating her subordinates. 

Bismuth, in Rebecca Sugar's words, was "screwed over" epically by Rose Quartz.

Rebecca and Ian specify that Rose was wrong to do what she did to Bismuth, and that it was significant because it's so clear for the first time that Rose could have made such a clear mistake.

Rebecca makes a lot of charts to help understand what story elements need to be doled out when.

Ian loves that Pearl tells us Rose has LOTS of secrets.

Rebecca loves that all of Steven's compassion actually comes from Greg. Steven is described as a compassionate warrior, with "compassionate" coming from Greg and "warrior" coming from Rose.

Jasper is a corny anime villain at first, and we can credit Paul Villeco's love of shonen anime and manga for this.

Joe Johnston finds it refreshing that Steven couldn't turn Jasper's alignment around, and says it's because Jasper held onto her anger and couldn't be forced to be someone else.

Jasper's tendency toward bullying is rooted in feeling heartbroken over the loss of Pink Diamond. She identified very strongly as a servant of her Diamond.

Joe and Kat are pretty sure that Lapis was Jasper's first fusion experience ever.

Joe Johnston often puts "breadcrumbs" in his episodes; he puts in stuff he doesn't have plans for and figures maybe it will be something later. Bismuth's Gem in Lion's Mane was not dictated by Rebecca Sugar like the tee shirt or Rose's flag; it was a Joe breadcrumb.

Twenty-two-minute episodes were the network's idea, not something the Crew specifically wanted to do.

Joe Johnston can't say enough good things about Uzo Aduba's voice acting as Bismuth; every read was "perfect," according to him.

Early character designs of Bismuth included black eyes (to indicate her Gem's inverted state) and some early designs had her with very skinny legs. She always had dreadlocks.

Kat emphasizes that Bismuth is not and was never intended to be "a bad guy." She has different ideology, and her episode shows a situation where the audience is meant to see the value of her point and nobody's 100% right.

Jasper and Bismuth are more different than similar, despite both being big and strong and partial to bludgeoning weapons. Jasper is highly respected and wants to preserve the order of the Diamonds, while Bismuth is a low-class blue-collar worker who has realized things don't have to be this way and dedicates herself to destroying that order.

You can read the detailed summary below!

[Archive of Steven Universe Podcast Summaries]

McKenzie Atwood opens the podcast by explaining this episode's title: "Earth Gems" refers to three very different characters who are connected through the Gem War on Earth.

Rebecca Sugar and Ian Jones-Quartey on Jasper:

McKenzie asks Rebecca and Ian what effect they intended Jasper's arc to have on the audience. Rebecca says she really wanted Jasper to SEEM one-dimensional even though she isn't; her behavior has a "root" and we at first only get the foliage. We don't realize at first that Jasper has become involved in this plot due to her connection to Rose Quartz, feeling that she has unfinished business on Earth. Obviously her connection is quite personal even though she really doesn't show anyone those feelings.

McKenzie mentions Jasper being described on a previous podcast as a decorated soldier with humble origins, and Rebecca claims that description is Jasper's "everything." She's from Earth, but very different from Amethyst--Amethyst was from a pretty successful Kindergarten, while Jasper is from the worst Kindergarten on this awful failure of a planet. Jasper burns to prove her worth because everyone around her knows she's from Earth's Beta Kindergarten and therefore must be flawed on some level. Jasper feels she can never escape being associated with Rose Quartz even though she was supposedly the best thing that came out of Earth.

Ian remarks that Jasper chooses her words to show off pride and bravado, with no hint of the emotions beneath--that she feels she's fundamentally wrong and that she doesn't deserve the reputation she has. She thinks she's horrible, but Rebecca and Ian say they love her. Ian says Jasper is an example of how the system on Homeworld can fail Gems who don't quite fit the mold; externally she is a model Gem, but she never internally feels she deserves her reputation.

Rebecca Sugar and Ian Jones-Quartey on Bismuth:

McKenzie asks her guests to discuss when they started talking about introducing Bismuth. She mentions seeing the bubbled Gem in Season 1 (in "Lion 3: Straight to Video") and how fans recall that first exposure. Joe Johnston was the one who drew that in, knowing later they'd do SOMETHING with it, and then also there were early talks about a lost Crystal Gem. An early idea included Bismuth being not fully conscious, but they decided not to use it. They did figure out Bismuth pretty early on. Ian says Steven Sugar was always dropping weapons around the backgrounds, and they figured they needed a weaponsmith to explain where these things came from. From there, Bismuth was easy to develop. She's described as a "gooey center of the team."

McKenzie wants to know why they decided to unbubble Bismuth in Season 3. Rebecca says everyone's feelings about Rose Quartz were being examined at that point, and a turning point included the perspective that Rose could be a "really awful person." Ian likes the trope about a villain mistreating their subordinates, and wanted to show Rose as the person who was bad to Bismuth. Rebecca says Rose did such wrong to Bismuth--that Bismuth would have done anything for Rose, and when she came up with a weapon that supposedly served her agenda, she rejected it and rejected Bismuth for reasons she never understood.

Unlike Jasper's history with Rose being built on their being enemies from the start, Bismuth IDOLIZED Rose and was, as Rebecca says, totally "screwed over" by her. It breaks Rebecca's heart that Bismuth still speaks of Rose with such love, still crediting her for changing her life in such a positive way. Rebecca loves giving Bismuth "little triangular eyelashes" during the scene when she talks about what a difference Rose made for her. 

Ian says Season 3 was the best time to include Bismuth's arc representing a break from the lore they've been establishing regarding the Crystal Gems' mission. From a writing standpoint, you have to build up the status quo for a while before you break from it. It would have had no meaning to reveal Bismuth earlier if you didn't already have an understanding of what it would mean to be a lost Crystal Gem and didn't already have some feelings about who Rose has been drawn up to be. Ian thinks of it as being one of the first "Rose wasn't perfect at all" stories. Rose was WRONG.

Rebecca also feels that this is a huge turning point for Steven because he is so confused and guilty over Bismuth, balanced against what he's been taught about his mother by his family. In "Mindful Education," he's shown to still be devastated by how he's failed Bismuth--he isn't afraid of her attacking him, he's disappointed in himself for being unable to help her. He knows he needs to carry baggage from a former life he didn't really live, but Bismuth was the first indication that he has inherited something "wrong with the Crystal Gems." McKenzie thinks it's interesting for a character who isn't present to have a character arc.

Rebecca Sugar and Ian Jones-Quartey on Rose Quartz:

When discussing pacing of all these story elements attached to who Rose Quartz was, Rebecca describes writing it like building a tower; they have to have given you all the pieces when they decide to reveal something so it will make sense when they tell that story, so they have to be very careful about the order in which they reveal the pieces. Rebecca makes a lot of charts. General ideas had to be developed into specific pieces of information they have to show us. The viewer doesn't get the story about Rose in order, either. Steven is told what he is "supposed to" think, but he slowly realizes how many revelations there are out there that revise his perceptions. This is complicated, Rebecca says, by the fact that half the people giving him information think he IS his mother.

Rebecca loves that everyone is SINCERE about how they talk to Steven about Rose, too; no one is actively trying to trick him, even though they may have incomplete information. Ian specifies that he loves that Pearl reveals Rose has a LOT of secrets. Rebecca specifies that Steven's compassion is all coming from GREG. Rose was interested in that; she knows she didn't understand it, but you see how she fails at compassion during "We Need to Talk." Steven is a compassionate warrior. The compassion is Greg's. The warrior is Rose.

Joe Johnston and Kat Morris on Jasper:

McKenzie was wondering about how animation is like acting with regards to writing dialogue or choosing expressions, and asks Joe and Kat to discuss this in relation to Jasper. Joe says they'd never had a traditional villain before Jasper, and despite that she is NOT really a traditional villain, she comes off as "menacing" and "corny" at the beginning. This is credited to Paul Villeco's love of shonen manga and anime--she's sort of a JoJo-inspired bad guy. (This refers to JoJo's Bizarre Adventure.)

McKenzie thinks it's interesting that Jasper is the first antagonist who has not been traditionally redeemed and converted to the other side. Joe thinks it's refreshing to have someone Steven wasn't able to recruit in his traditional way, and suggests it's because Jasper wanted to hold onto her anger. She didn't want to change, and couldn't be forced. Jasper has been told since she emerged that she was perfect, and that's what she wants to be--not Steven's band of uplifted flawed Gems. McKenzie asks if it was impactful for Steven to see Jasper refuse to be reached, and Paul thinks he didn't really get to process that since he also had a Pink Diamond-related reveal to deal with. Joe points out that Lars also stubbornly resisted Steven's influence for a very long time, though at least Lars hasn't tried to kill Steven. (Yet! No, that was a joke.)

McKenzie brings up how Jasper gets a lot of love from fans because she has so much beneath the surface, even though she isn't onscreen often. Kat says that's done by treating her like a person; no one is 100% evil all the time, and Jasper isn't evil so much as having a set of values that are not shared by the protagonists. Jasper bullies others because of her pent-up feelings, and she expresses her heartbreak over Pink Diamond's shattering through acting aggressively toward others. It made her relationship with Lapis really complicated, too.

McKenzie brings up "Jailbreak" and asks Joe to discuss his first time drawing Jasper in action. Joe says he was really ready to do it; there had been no "main antagonist" until Jasper and he really looked forward to it. He thinks they started boarding "Jailbreak" before "The Return." Kat thinks Jasper had been written some before they began work on "Jailbreak," but since Rebecca had pretty clear ideas about who she was, it was possible to board out of order. Some work had been done on Jasper before Paul had to board her introduction in "The Return." Rebecca sometimes writes a sheet with some character points and drawings for each new character.

McKenzie then brings up "Alone at Sea," asking Kat to discuss how different that was from "Jailbreak" where Jasper was a physical threat versus how she presented more as an emotional threat to Lapis in this later episode. Kat says she consulted with Rebecca and Hilary a lot to push this story out. Jasper has had a lot of time to think since hanging out in the ocean after her Fusion broke up, and now she's concluded she has a different perspective than she used to about fusion. Jasper realized she could become more powerful through fusion and became "addicted to it." In "Jailbreak" they just needed her to present as an uncomplicated villain (and they didn't have room for much more), but in "Alone at Sea" they could show the why, the how, of her actions.

Kat boarded acts 1 and 3--"the boat stuff," she says. She says there were many versions of the episode. They initially called the episode "Boat Murderer." The boat was supposed to keep breaking down and eventually you find out Jasper was doing it. The episode kept shifting until it became what it finally was. Kat usually doesn't board--"Alone at Sea" was, as she describes it, her stepping in as a pinch hitter. McKenzie asks about whether she had any issues with drawing Jasper, and she says she draws on every episode so it wasn't really anything new for her, especially since she was in charge of the arc associated with Amethyst's season 3 arc. Kat felt that Amethyst was due for some development after they'd already tackled some Pearl and Garnet stuff in the Sardonyx arc. Jasper was a great opposite to Amethyst in that arc because Jasper was big, strong, and a soldier--what Amethyst was supposed to be. She thought she was okay with not being what she was made to be, but then she gets "annihilated" in "Crack the Whip" and realizes maybe she's not okay with any of it. Steven helps bring her through that rough personal place.

Joe Johnston and Kat Morris on Bismuth:

Everyone agrees that they loved Bismuth on first sight. Joe brings up throwing Bismuth's bubble into Lion's mane in "Lion 3: Straight to Video." He had no plan at that point. Kat says Joe LOVES to do stuff like that, and calls them "breadcrumbs." He initially thought maybe it would have been a Gem device or a portable warp. They agree he didn't need such a thing because Steven is pretty OP actually. Rebecca wanted "pieces of lore thrown about the living room," so this was part of it. Rebecca then developed who Bismuth would be. McKenzie loves how before Bismuth's reveal, fans would wonder about who Bismuth might be whenever they'd see her Gem in Lion.

When prompted to discuss what they love about Bismuth, Kat says she loves how much Bismuth loves the Crystal Gems, and Joe loves how Bismuth and Jasper are both "patriotic" for their side. Joe likes to play with how Jasper and Bismuth are both so dedicated to their cause. (It is agreed that a shouting match between them would be very loud and not end well.) McKenzie wonders how difficult it is to develop such a big character, and Joe describes having a chance to all have a pass at the character to finalize new characters. They credit Lamar with her humor and how her voice is delivered, and Kat thinks it's really cute when Bismuth was getting emotional.

McKenzie brings up "Bismuth" being the first 22-minute episode and the 99th/100th episode, and asks how that's different from the usual 11-minute episodes. Kat says there's more post to do. Joe thinks it's twice as hard. Kat says there are more board artists to "wrangle" and more picture to lock, sound effects to add, etc. Joe felt it was harder to adjust to the flow of 22 minutes after being used to squeezing for 11 minutes, and that sometimes it almost seemed like too much time, but Kat also likes that it could "breathe" a little and have some important quiet moments. They think the little bumpers were Joe's idea, but he says he won't take credit for the idea--just for drawing them.

McKenzie wants to know about the decision to do a 22-minute episode, and Joe and Kat said it was the network's idea; they wanted at least two half-hour specials, maybe three but they only got to do two. (The other was "Gem Harvest.") They then discuss having a special guest voice actor for an episode like this. Joe heaps praise on Bismuth's voice actor Uzo Aduba, saying every read she gave was perfect. Kat says it's disappointing when they can't meet great voice actors like her because their involvement is so brief.

Kat remembers Bismuth's initial character design having black eyes, intending to reflect the style of her inverted Gem, but they scrapped the design because it looked too suspicious. Joe says Bismuth was written to be very aggressive and gung-ho and got "put away" for how she expressed that. They recall Bismuth always having dreadlocks (they may not have always been rainbow), but some designs having very skinny legs early on. (Same with Smoky Quartz.) 

Kat wants to specify that Bismuth is NOT a bad guy whatsoever; she just has a different ideology. Her ideology is relatable, actually; she thinks half the audience probably agrees with Bismuth. Rose, being a "gray" character, punished Bismuth for not aligning with her own philosophy, but Kat and Joe think nobody was clearly right or wrong in the episode and that was the point of telling that story in the first place. Moral ambiguity is very important, and Rose isn't All Things Pure. Joe thinks Steven believed there was one "right" way to see the situation, but wasn't willing to fight Bismuth over it.

McKenzie asks Kat and Joe to say what is similar between Bismuth and Jasper. "Size," says Kat. Joe adds, "Muscles. Bludgeoning weapons." They're more different than the same; Bismuth is basically a blue-collar construction worker, in the dirt, while Jasper is a super-respected warrior. Bismuth rebelled when she found out she didn't have to be that way and wants anarchy, while Jasper wants the order to remain forever. Joe expresses that Bismuth's anarchist tendencies are cool, and Kat jokingly scolds him for inciting anarchy. But the Rule of Cool indicates that if something's cool, it's just cool, and it stays.

[Archive of Steven Universe Podcast Summaries]

[liskantope]

Recently I finally got around to watching the episode of Sam Harris’ podcast where he debates Daniel Dennett on free will. This is definitely one of the more unusual episodes: they were holding a back-and-forth discussion sharing a single microphone in a noisy bar during a conference, and Dennett in particular seemed quite halting and unpolished. It’s also a very striking example of two debaters mostly talking past one another, but I’m not going to hold that against Harris and Dennett -- from what I’ve seen it’s pretty much impossible for anyone to actually engage with one’s opponent in the battle between hard determinism and compatibilism, especially given that it’s mostly a question of defining terms.

Anyone who has read enough of my posts on free will might rightly guess that I’m completely on Dennett’s side here. Not that Dennett managed to fully articulate his position -- he was mostly focused on rebutting or deflecting particular points coming from Harris -- but just about everything he said strongly reflected my way of thinking about free will. Harris, on the other hand, kept making arguments that came across to me as weak or confused, which is uncharacteristic of my usual impression of him.

Below the cut are a couple of points in the conversation where Sam Harris brought up arguments which I’m pretty sure are quite wrong but are still interesting to mull over.

The first one is starting right before the 45-minute mark, when Harris says:

[T]his notion that the tiny micro-adjustment in the universe only really spells the difference in cases it’s a decision that could go either way [...] it wasn’t a diversion of that great consequence because it wasn’t something you were fully committed to, but I think there are probably many actions -- maybe “decisions” are the wrong category, but certainly actions -- where the difference between a life-changing action and not is just a matter of a tiny piece of real-estate in the brain being otherwise. So the difference between thinking something and saying it out loud to the person you’re thinking it about, or the difference between sending that angry e-mail you wrote to your boss or to your best friend and just deciding to scrap it -- that can be one of those tiny moments where, but for a little more sleep the night before, your life would be very different.

I don’t quite know what point Harris is trying to make here, and I’m not sure Dennett knew either, but it seemed to me when I first listened through the full podcast that Harris was bringing it up to suggest that our traditional sense of moral responsibility really doesn’t make sense in a deterministic world: some of our most character-defining moments are the ones most reliant on randomness. Except what he actually said above was that some of our most life-changing moments rely on near-randomness. I agree with the obvious truth of this! But I would say that just on the face of the examples he gives, it would seem like (in isolation) these are not particularly character-defining events and therefore don’t imply a strong degree of moral responsibility. On the other hand, it’s easy to see why Harris is tempted to say that they do! If you think about it, major character-defining moments in fiction are typically portrayed as climactic events where the character is feeling very torn between two choices, it’s almost 50-50, and then some slight but significant factor tips him/her one way or the other.

I think we could interpret those character-defining moments as they’re portrayed in fiction in another way, though: they are showing someone (let’s say, an emergent hero, although an analogous view works for emergent villains such as Walter White at the end of the second season) overcoming some major obstacle in the form of temptation and an emotional struggle. The odds were stacked against them in the first place, in the sense that doing wrong is the far, far easier path and the one that lesser people would almost certainly take. Our hero, representing the best among us, is able to overcome this obstacle, but in order for us to appreciate just how hard it is to overcome and perhaps also to make them both more relatable and more inspiring, we see that the hero just barely overcomes it. Thus, we witness a character-defining moment, but the character-definingness comes not from the fact that something tipped our hero to the right choice when their internal conflict had the choice at around 50-50, but the fact that the hero managed to get the choice between what’s right and what’s easy up to 50-50 in the first place when most of us would have simply taken the easy choice, no contest.

I’ve pondered this in particular for the case of Luke Skywalker, after seeing a lot of criticism of his portrayal in The Last Jedi where the critics argue that his momentary impulse and aborted attempt to murder Ben Solo is inconsistent with his character as established in the original trilogy. My response has always been to point out that his character-defining moment at the climax of Return of the Jedi was a case of an internal conflict reaching 50-50 and Luke just barely being pushed into choosing the light side -- after cutting off his father’s hand, he very nearly finishes the job at the Emperor’s urging. The right revelation passes through his mind at the right moment, and so he doesn’t, resulting in what’s certainly a life-changing moment not only for him but possibly for the whole galaxy. (And of course a similar thing could be said about Darth Vader’s character-defining moment shortly afterwards where he just barely manages to overcome the evil and hatred he’s been entrenched in for so long but that makes all the difference.) So Luke isn’t a god or a saint; he just managed to marginally swing in the right direction at a crucial moment. Therefore, the fact that Luke so nearly goes the other way makes it perfectly plausible, in my opinion, that sometime later on, Luke might still slide in the other direction, at least momentarily.

Now there are two ways to unpack my argument there. First, we can say that my argument implies that Luke isn’t really a hero after all -- his most consequential act doesn’t say that much about his character because it happened in a moment where things could have gone either way and luckily, some semi-random fleeting thought pushed things in the right direction. This argument would annoy the critics and for good reason: the original trilogy clearly didn’t intend the audience to come to such a lukewarm conclusion about Luke Skywalker. So I prefer a second unpacking, which is to consider what I argued in the paragraph above, and view Luke as a hero just for overcoming temptation (the Dark Side -- anger, hatred, greed -- is not stronger but the more seductive path!) and pushing the balance up to 50-50 in the first place, both when confronted by the two Sith lords at the end of Episode VI and when confronted with the titanic threat of his wayward nephew a generation later.

The other of Harris’ points that I thought seemed kind of confused was just after the 1:00 mark when he presented what he called “a bit of a paradox”. For this thought experiment, you take the “most competent agent”, say Tiger Woods at his peak strength in a golfing context, and you imagine that he’s attempting a 2-foot putt, for which it’s reasonable to assume he’ll have a 99.9% success rate, but this is the one time he doesn’t get it. Harris says that “on its face”, Tiger Woods is the one you can hold most responsible for missing such a putt, “the most culpable of any person on Earth”. And yet at the same time, since Tiger Woods is the most skilled golfer in the world who would normally always make the putt, luck must play a bigger role in his missing the putt than it would for you or me -- as Harris puts it, it “says the least about him” -- and makes Woods the least responsible person on Earth for missing it.

I’m pleased that Daniel Dennett responded by repeatedly affirming that there’s no paradox, but his explanation sounded garbled and in my opinion missed the point. The point is quite simply that Harris’ two interpretations that seem to contradict each other, the Most Responsibility view and the Least Responsibility view, are each arrived at through different external assumptions on how the event of Woods missing the putt unfolded. The Least Responsibility view is explicitly based on the assumption that Woods must have missed the putt through terrible luck. The Most Responsibility view is one that might instinctively be taken by most outsiders, precisely because such terrible luck seems vanishingly unlikely, so they assume that Woods didn’t have terrible luck and therefore must actually be at fault in some way: perhaps he was being lazy or careless, or starting to rest on his laurels out of a complacency brought on by his recent success, or made the foolish choice of staying out too late the night before (as Dennett suggests), or something else that we think of as implying moral culpability. Objectively speaking, Woods bears some well-defined degree of responsibility, which depends on the actual causes of his failure. But since none of us onlookers have complete information on those causes, we tend to assign high or low degrees of responsibility to him depending on our default assumptions as to whether either extremely bad/careless behavior or really terrible luck should be eliminated as possibility.

[perditaalottachocolate-blog]

One of His Best Kittens (4) - Plag Appreciation Week, Day 4: Secret Softie

Day 1  Day 2  Day 3  |Day 4|  Day 5  Day 6   Day 7

Warning: Contains spoilers to season 2.

Also on AO3 / fanfiction.net

Day 4: Secret Softie

Green grass, soft breeze, sun warming his old bones. The afternoon at the park was everything Plagg could hope for. And more, as Adrien sneaked a generous slice of camembert to his bag. He left the lid open, allowing the kwami to bask in the sunshine and smell the wonderful scents of the city. They were seated a little bit away from other people who chose to spend their Sunday picnicking outside.

Adrien was in a thoughtful mood, one typical for him as of late. He excused himself from his friends and opted for a quiet time without any company. Plagg’s charge sat silently under a tree, his head resting against the trunk, eyes closed and right hand clenched over the lucky charm bracelet he always carried around. The black cat decided to give him this time. The boy could definitely use it with all the things that were happening in his regular and secret life.

Instead of teasing his Chosen Plagg crawled slowly to the edge of the bag, carefully checking around for prying eyes. When he didn’t find any, he risked a peek towards the group of Adrien’s friends. He knew she was there. The thought of her beautiful blue eyes took his breath away. Whenever he was near enough to smell her wonderful one-of-a-kind scent he felt his little kwami heart skipping at least three beats. Her laugh was music to his ears. She was – he realized he was no longer afraid to admit it – almost as good as camembert. It was spring again and Plagg was in love. He had been waiting five long years and his patience was growing thin.

‘Why are you looking at Marinette like that?’ Adrien’s confused voice brought Plagg back from cloud nine.

‘Like what?!’ The kwami whipped his head away from the view. ‘And I wasn’t looking at Pigtails.’

‘You were staring for quite some time,’ the boy pointed out, but without any trace of tease. He sighed and gazed at the girl himself.

Marinette chose that moment to slip a chocolate chip cookie into her purse and to take a bite of a second one. Both Plagg and Adrien simultaneously licked their lips.

The gentle wind blew past the bluenette and carried a collection of scents towards the enchanted duo. They both took a good sniff of the mixed aromas and exhaled with satisfaction.

‘This smells like…’ Adrien whispered dreamily.

‘Luck,’ Plagg breathed, closing his eyes and reveling in the most beautiful scent in the world (bar properly ripe camembert, but let’s not be petty).

‘Happiness,’ Adrien supplied before his ears registered his kwami’s input. ‘What?’

‘What?’ Little green eyes popped open to cast a horrified look at the boy. Plagg was clearly out of it if he didn’t realize he said it out loud.

‘Are you okay, Plagg?’ His charge frowned. ‘You seem a bit off today.’

‘Ah, maybe I’ve had too much sun,’ the kwami replied quickly, deciding it would be best to get out of Adrien’s sight. One last time his eyes swept over the little dotted purse. He saw it trembling slightly and he imagined Tikki excitedly nibbling on her treat. Warmth spilled over his limbs and lit his eyes. It took every bit of his demigod strength to tear away his eyes from the pink hideout and move back to Adrien’s bag.

Plagg’s thoughts ran straight to his other half, his Lady. He missed her. All the more at times like this. He was no longer a lone kwami, with Nooroo and Duusu as frequent guests at his cat-nap zone, but it wasn’t the same with them. They were good company and fun to be with, but they weren’t Tikki.

They didn’t smell as good as her. They weren’t filled with joy. They didn’t make his stomach do little somersaults. And when they cuddled together, they definitely didn’t make him purr. That happened only with Tikki and only when she hummed her Ladyluck tune. With her he felt complete. There was no other way to put it.

Plagg cast a glance at his Chosen. Adrien froze against the tree again, thumb grazing over the beads of the lucky bracelet, gaze fixed on Pigtails. His forehead wrinkled with the effort. He looked like he was on a verge of a major breakthrough but somehow couldn’t – oh god, this was contagious – connect the dots. The boy still wasn’t aware that he kept his promise from the day of the battle against Stone Heart and Hawk Moth five years prior. That he fell in love with the girl behind the mask, just like he vowed.

He’ll get there eventually, the black kwami felt it in his bones, and sooner than he would have hoped. Good. Plagg wanted to finally be with his Tikki. But musing upon the mess Adrien’s home life had become, of which the boy still had no knowledge, for the first time Plagg didn’t regret his charge’s obliviousness. For the first time he agreed with Tikki, that it was better the boy didn’t know. He got the chance to find his love, and fall for her at his own pace, inevitably but freely. He could see the girl behind the mask and love her for who she was. And once they get together, neither of them will be haunted by the question of “what if” or “what could have been”. There would be no doubts about how they felt.

For now Adrien was safer that way. Still not acknowledging his attachment and still unaware of the true identity of his Lady. Should his charming parents decide it was time to take his ring away, or to try to convince him to change sides, he would be safer not knowing, so they couldn’t use that knowledge as an angle.

Plagg wiggled impatiently. Many times he had witnessed the moment of reveal between Black Cat and Lady Luck. Each was different but they all were significant enough to ripple time-space continuum. Those were the moments the world came to a balance, when two halves of the whole met. The black kwami felt another such moment approaching and he both dreaded and cherished the thought. As an eternal magical creature he always existed on the edge, just like his Chosens lived on the edge. And the problem with edges is, more often than not, you get cut. The little cat closed his eyes and wished, wished with all his might, that this time his Lady’s luck would smooth it enough for those two to prevail.

[moonlitgleek]

Can you tell me why do you enjoy Glee? I'm not one of those who hate on the show for being LGBT-friendly, it's just that the characters are so inconsistent, the pairings are often forced and the storylines can be cringeworthy to really bad. Not that there isn't talent on the cast. I liked the earlier seasons, but I thought it became so nonsense later on... Maybe I'm not watching the way it should be watched, idk...

I’ve been sitting on a similar message for months now, trying to figure out how to respond. The problem with these messages that always leave me in a bind is that I do not think my answer would be really satisfactory to you. We all respond to media in different ways, have our own lines in the sand as to how much we can suspend our belief, like different things, etc. So I don’t know if I can really give you a different perspective on the show or anything; all I can offer is my own viewing experience.

I did not like the first season of Glee. I almost quit so many times during that first season but I was always pulled back and convinced to give the show another chance. Every time I planned to stop, a magical moment would happen - Mercedes singing I Am Beautiful, Burt telling Kurt that his job was to be himself and Burt’s job was to love him no matter what, the kids pulling a setlist out of thin air as Will listened and cried, the Glee club singing Lean on Me to Finn and a pregnant Quinn, Quinn giving birth to the tune of Bohemian Rhapsody, to name a few - and I’d be so moved that I’d decide to stick it out with the show for a little while longer. That’s not to say the first season was necessarily bad, I just did not enjoy it. The Will\Sue rivalry did not sustain the season on its own, I hated the Will\Teri story, I did not think the team gelled, and I wasn’t pulled by any of the characters.

Come season 2, things changed. I fell in love with the characters. My starting point in any show is the characters - if I can’t even like the characters, I can not go on watching even if the story is phenomenal. Season 2 got me interested in these characters as people, really delved into the characterization of the students and their stories which was a million time more interesting than Will, Teri and Sue. They introduced my favorite character, the writing got tighter, and they did a marvelous job with Kurt’s and Santana’s arcs. This was the season that cemented my love for Glee, aided by how much I started relating to these characters. I started to watch the show between seasons 3 and 4 when I was fresh out of college and feeling pressured to make it, scared that my academic success would not translate to a good career “in the real world” or that I just was not enough. So I understood these characters and their struggles. I saw my own fears in theirs. I related to them and rooted for them.

Now, I know that lots of people did not like the latter seasons but honestly, seasons 4 and 5 are my absolute favorites in this series. I genuinely enjoyed them despite some glaring problems. See, I watched Glee with my eyes wide open. I knew its problems and was infuriated by some of them: storylines that didn’t really go anywhere, stories that were set up perfectly but wrapped up sloppily, some obvious pace issues, big name guest stars that tended to become a plot black hole - if a big name guest star appeared, often the plotlines of the regulars got shelved in favor of showcasing said guest star - the writing even became reactionary at one point as some shippers took to social media to hound the writers over their ships, and Ryan responded by making a point through the writing. I saw all of that.But while I admit that there were issues worthy of criticism in Glee, I also think that there came a point where it became “cool” to disparage the show, and that fed to a widespread feeling of negativity towards it. I’d see someone lamenting how Glee stopped being silly and fun and now took itself too seriously but when the show did a cracky ridiculous episode like the ones it used to do in earlier seasons, it was criticized for being too silly and not taking its audience seriously. The writers got flayed for doing PSA episodes and I’d read think pieces on how they should employ subtle storytelling and not throw their themes in our face, but when they did so with their story about race - one of the subtlest and longest running storylines - it largely got dismissed because people simply did not notice it since Glee did not wave a red flag saying “this is a race story” (though honestly, when it did explicitly tell us it’s a race story in Asian F, some still failed to understand that yes, this is about race.) At one point, there was no winning for the show, everything was criticized.

One of my favorite things about Glee, though, is that it managed to sell me on things I thought I’d never accept and made me love characters that I wasn’t a big fan of even four and five seasons in. For the love of god, Glee somehow managed to make me really care about Dave freaking Karofsky which is a damn feat. Like, Finn and Santana were two characters that I’ve always struggled with. I outright disliked and resented Finn at the end of season 3, and then season 4 happened and my god, did I fall in love with Finn - that goofy, stubborn, supportive kid who stepped up, learned from his mistakes and became a rock to the younger generation. Santana was just intriguing in that season and she drew me in in a way that she hadn’t done before. Season 4 had its problems, but it’s the season that genuinely made me so attached to Glee. Blaine was a bloody revelation and a joy to watch. Sam somehow managed to steal my heart. Tina had really good material that I enjoyed to death to make up for three seasons of sidelining. The NND had a very rough start and the show struggled in the beginning to give the newbies distinguishing characterization that did not echo the graduated characters’ but once they found their groove, they became a team that I loved with all my heart, one that I enjoyed seeing interact far more than I ever did the previous team. Season 4 was primarily about friendships and support, it allowed the characters to fly their nerd flags and they felt like real teenagers in their silliness. And hey, very little Will. That was always a plus.

While season 5 was heavily impacted by Cory’s death, and despite how that forced the writers to throw away their plans for the season which unfortunately led to some storylines getting axed, I found it a solid season with some excellent episodes that capitalized and improved on the relationships they set in season 4, and that did a much, much better job with its pacing. I find it admirable that they managed such a good season after a heavy personal and professional loss as Cory’s death.

As for characterization, I disagree that it was inconsistent. Obviously I have no idea which characters you have in mind but the two characters I often saw this criticism directed at are Blaine and Tina, and I just don’t agree. The bones of Blaine and Tina’s later characterization are laid in seasons 2 and 3 if one looks for them, and can we really call them inconsistent when they were only truly fleshed out in the same season that prompted people to criticize their characterization? Because both characters were underdeveloped in earlier seasons. Butcharacters are constantly developing and I can’t expect the characters to be the same four or five seasons in as they were in season 1. As long as the change falls in line with previous storylines or expands in them in a non-contradictory way, then it’s not inconsistent. That’s not to say that I enjoyed every bit of characterization from every character (I was very vocal in my dislike for s4!Rachel’s characterization), but just because I did not enjoy it does not necessarily mean that it was inconsistent. That’s a line I had to find while watching.

But it all comes down really to the fact that I still found magic in Glee despite its problems. I found as much joy in On Our Way as I did in Ride Wit Me and as much beauty in If I Were A Boy as in I Am Beautiful. NND were even more important to me than OND were, Blam meant the world to me, as did Blaine’s struggle with his insecurities, Kitty’s journey, Jake’s anger, Ryder’s ridiculousness, Marley’s steadiness, Unique’s bravery, Rachel’s stumbling, Tina’s resentment, it all meant something to me. I loved these characters and was invested in their happiness and their success. I started watching Glee for the story of these underdogs standing up to the world around them and picking themselves up after they were knocked down again and again, I stayed for the sense of community and support they built against all odds which is something the show never lost, and I ended it with them, with Rachel Berry accepting that Tony, with Kurt and Blaine happily married with a baby on the way, with Mercedes successful and fulfilled. It ended with a show of friendship as these kids who stuck by each other through thick and thin gathered to support one of their own, and with that weird, crazy, dysfunctional, flawed group of people coming together to honor the person who made Mckinley just a little bit brighter for many of them. Perhaps he never got the chance to walk these halls as a teacher, or to become the teacher that future Mckinley students deserved, but he still left a legacy behind.

Moments like these are why I enjoyed Glee, and why, despite all of its problems, it remains one of few shows that touched me the most.