#(I really hope the writing team for S3 finds a balance for this. They are very good at using time travel powers in interesting ways!)

[fortune-maiden]

Finished Link Click Season 2!!

I still think it's not as good as Season 1 and the pacing has issues, and there is just too much focus on characters who are not our main three but I still adore the plot and the cliffhangers and especially what we learn about Lu Guang in the very final episode.

THERE'S THAT TWIST THAT GOT ME HOOKED ON THE SERIES :D

SEASON 3 WHEN!

[lemonhemlock]

also sorry to ship discourse on your account, please protect your peace and no one get mad at miss lemon for this!!! all opinions my own!!! but addressing prev anon: the difference is helaemond was always disliked by TG as a whole, but early on they didn’t really push helaegon b/c of how aegon was done in s1. so the argument against helaemond was it would give TB “propaganda” b/c it makes TG hypocrites (as if coveting your sister is assigned to one color team). but as this new, whitewashed concept of hotd!aegon began to gain popularity, helaegon became more popular as a “correct” ship b/c it’s canon. like you said, neither of these ships get much air time. there is no development or characterization given to these dynamics. but people liked both helaena and aemond as characters and thought that would be interesting to explore, so the ship seemed popular to the very intense TG stans. the “problem” is most helaemond shippers also love helaegon, but mono helaegon shippers tend to hate helaemond and view that as a ship war. so anon is right and wrong; the helaemond vs helaegon aspect is more recent, but helaemond has always been public enemy #1

to end on a normal note, i thought it was very sweet both phia and ewan seemed excited people liked helaemond! it’s always kind of a gamble when actors find out about noncanon ships but they both spoke about it kindly and it came across like they were glad the audience picked up on some choices. i loved the interviews with all 3 of them, they all worked so well together and it was fun to see their different interactions!

thank you for your kind message, anon! 🙏 it seems like we're just going to have to live with this animosity for the rest of the show's duration, aren't we? 🙂‍↕️ i definitely remember the discourse and the factionalism

and i think you kind of nailed it because there are certainly enough helaemonds that DO like aegon too (i = one among many, he's my no1 boy forever), but mono helaegon shippers started to branch out against helaemonds because of the ridiculous tb propaganda argument. and they didn't even do it bc they disliked the character of aemond or thought he was not fit for helaena, but bc they were either pissy or had some notions in their heads about "hypocrisy" (LOL) or moral purity in regards to helaena. well how do they like them apples now?? 😂 after the writers spent so many episodes hammering on the concept on green hypocrisy (justified or not)

also agree on the ewan-phia reactions! i hope some scenes of them survived and we can enjoy the subtextual helaemondism they intentionally infused. i'm lowkey amused at how all the actors seem to have no problem with wacky targcest combinations bc they understand it's all FICTION and meant for ENTERTAINMENT, not for a sunday sermon at the church of righteous fandom

that being said, both ships will survive and be FINE. the fandom has enough resources to play with and create their own content, even if the three of them never interact again. i like BOTH and i stan BOTH, even if aemond's writing has been really frustrating for me this season. it must have been his turn or something, since last season aegon's writing was driving me up the wall and s2 has been much better in that regard. maybe in s3 we'll get more balanced writing for both of them at the same time 🍏

[variousqueerthings]

okokok I was gonna talk about the structure, but gonna say smthin about ethos instead with structure folded in I guess, which isn't going to be coherent

for me, I can say that ted lasso is not a perfect show (and then I can go on a tangent about there being no perfect shows) and also that actually comedy isn't my favourite genre anyway and include there that I think that it couldn't always balance the comedy, sincerity, and the reality it was attempting to challenge, especially in s3 -- I think an egregious example was rebecca talking about the love of football to a bunch of billionaires, it just stretched too much disbelief and therefore came off less as a natural development and just out-of-nowhere preaching

but then I was having a good time peeking into a little of rupert and rebecca's past relationship when it did work, and it being a scene that makes her able to let him go entirely (and generally I am fine with taking the good out of the bits that don't overall work for me)

anywhomst, there are things, and it also plays into the oddity of s3 not being two seasons (which I had been so sure was going to be the structure, and I was right to think it might not work out and seriously, are they covering up that it was cancelled, conspiracy unlocked)

there were a few things that happened very quickly and weren't explored in the writing (ex. jamie's dad going to rehab, nate making up with his dad after one talk and generally some nate things in s3, part of keeley's narrative in s3, etc.), which was a problem of structure rather than ethos in my opinion. there's story to be explored there, as there is in a fair few things that came and went too quickly on this show, which tbh I'm sure fanfiction can cover (except for the womens team feat. trent crimm show, that needs to happen On My Screen!)

it has gaps in how it can make the points it wants to make -- I've mentioned that in terms of romance too -- but it really really wants to make them nonetheless, flaws and all. it wants to tell the story about a man with mental health issues, who's scared that he'll fuck up his son in the way his dad's suicide affected him, who runs away and finds himself coaching a London football team of men who grow to be better with each other and the world beyond, and its vehicle is football, an intensely international and adaptable sport, with so much fluid potential for expression!

along the way it comes across limitations (either in the amount of time it has to tell the story or in the lack of in-depth knowledge I presume the creators have in radical kindness and community healing politics and philosophies and how they intersect with queer intersectional concepts), but it's made the story despite them, with all its messiness and it ends well. characters heal, start their attempts to heal, continue their journeys to help others around them

I cannot stress enough either how messy league football is, the level that this fictional team plays on. as someone who's been directly affected by the exclusionary ideals that are promoted by the FA it was good to see this fantasy, it was exhilarating to imagine this kind of change happening at that level in the way I have experienced it happening at grassroots levels. its subject matter is so in need of more of this, I hope it inspires more stories with the same core ethos, and I hope these go further and further with its radical ideas

colin kisses his boyfriend at the end! would I have loved to have seen more time to get to there, to have seen it folded into an arc about challenging homophobia in football at an institutional level, to have also had him apologising to nate for his bullying as part of toxic masculinity masking his homosexuality? all of these yes. do I appreciate what the show wants to do here about something that is barely beginning to be properly challenged in reality? yeah yeah yeah!

any of the gaps I think one can play with in fandom, and if that show about the women's team gets made we gently slide them some bell hooks and get megan rapinoe involved somehow

[crossovereddie]

Actually, here is an alternative thing for you to occupy your time with, and a question I have been meaning to ask you for a while. I have finished 911 finally! So I'm ready for the new season. And I wonder, realistically, what do you think the roadmap would be for a buddie endgame?

I absolutely see how their story has been framed and filmed in a lot of parallels to how a romantic storyline would be set out. But there has been no outright mention of either of them being bi - although the conversation about Maddy setting Buck up with whassisface was very casual and could very easily have been an example of canonically bi Buck - and they are both at the end of season 4 in 'relationships' with women.

So, in your estimation, what's the timeline? What's the transition? How do they go about this and how long does it take? I wanna know your thoughts 👀

okay yes i have lots of thoughts on this and it's actually one of my fave questions i get asked. I've always watched a lot of tv shows so I'm just estimating on what I've seen before and what I would personally do. IMO this love story is a slow burn. We only have four seasons so far and only three of those seasons have Eddie in them. This unsurprisingly got long so ill put it under the cut.

So I'll go by seasons bc to me its important to look at everything that has happened so far by seasons and by love interests and not as a whole. Its the best way i can form a timeline that I think would make the most sense and why

S1: So we don't get any hints at Buck being anything other than straight and I think this is because he was supposed to be. They hadn't planned for Eddie yet and they definitely hadn't planned for the chemistry Oliver and Ryan were gonna have. S1 Buck was this reckless kid who didn't take anything serious. He was definitely super immature. Then he meets Abby and he starts to get serious about his job and his love life. I'm not gonna say "Abby changed him" because she didnt. He saw the person he was and the person he was becoming and decided on that change himself.

S2: Eddie!!!! So we get introduced to this army medic turned firefighter in the least heterosexual way. Then Buck is angry because Eddie is hot and really good at his job. they work together and Eddie compliments Buck and now they're smiley bffs. Seriously wtf was all that? Anyway this is all sus bc from what ive seen before in other shows when a main love interest leaves and a new main character replaces them, that means something. JLH replaced Connie Britton as far as big name actress but i really believe Eddie replaced Abby as far as importance in Buck's life. Do i think they brought him in with the intentions of turning him into a LI? No but they sure fueled the narrative from the get go. I think they saw fans reactions and started testing the waters.

Moving on to LIs in this season. We find out Eddie has a kid and the mother is not in the picture (eddie made sure buck knew that right away). Then later on we find out he's technically still married. shannon comes back and we get Eddie finally getting to confront this head on. He tries to get his family back together for the sake of his son. Its big for Eddie's character bc all he does and all he's ever done is for his son. Then Shannon asks for a divorce then she dies bringing this arc to an abrupt end and leaving eddie heartbroken.

meanwhile Buck is still waiting for Abby. Then he finally accepts that shes not coming back and decides to move on. He goes right back to being "Buck 1.0" with Taylor and feels bad about himself because that really isnt him anymore. He wants a real relationship. So then Ali calls and asks him on an actual date and he agrees. This is his first try at a relationship after a heartbreak. in tv these don't usually work out but are used to develop the main character's growth. We don't really see much of her but she breaks up with him so.

S3: This is Eddie finally dealing with his feelings/guilt season. This is also the season I think we really see how important Buck is to the Diaz boys. S2 had cute buckley-diaz family moments but those could still be interpreted as a best friend and his best friend's kid. This season though... after the tsunamic episode was when i really started to fully believe buddie was going canon. This season is solidifying their bond not only as Buck and Eddie but as Buck Eddie and Christpher. As I'm writing this I realized neither of them really has a love interest in this season do they? Ana is introduced but then is clearly presented as definitely NOT the right choice for eddie and especially for Chris. Then they counter that with Buck helping Eddie build a skateboard for Chris that he can use as opposed to Ana's ablest remarks about how he can't do it so just move on to something else. Then we get Buck's reaction in Eddie Begins. Buck has seen his team his friends his family get hurt on the job before but he has never reacted the way he did when it was Eddie in danger. Again solidifying just how much these two mean to each other. Don't even get me started on this season being when Eddie changes his will offscreen. Anyway we get Abby back and Buck finally gets the closure from that relationship that he needs to move forward into a serious relationship.

Now S4: jfc s4....IMO this is the only logical season to get the ball rolling on Buddie and they sure did that with 4x14 despite everything else. So i never thought they would be the first serious relationship for each other after the heart break theyve both experienced. It wouldn't be fair to their character developments. Buck tries dating Veronica and that clearly doesnt work but we know hes now open to dating again. We get Buck Begins where we see why Buck is the dare devil he is. The only way he got his parents attention as a kid was to put himself in danger. They bring back taylor and how to they ultimately get together after she friendzones him? She thinks hes in danger and suddenly wants him. As much as i hate it this is really gonna be a relationship where Buck finally stands up for himself and sees his own worth and realizes he deserves more. He deserves someone who sees him and loves him for who he is. He deserves to be chosen, something Abby Ali his parents dont do and what i think taylor wont end up doing. I feel like shes gonna choose her career over him. Maybe not in a "I'm breaking up with you" way but maybe she takes a new job and want to do LD (hes tried that twice and it didnt work for him. hes not gonna want that) or she could ask him to go with her but he wont. His family is in LA. His job is in LA. Eddie and Chris are in LA and he won't leave them. Then we have Eddie finally deciding to move on and try dating again so they bring back ana. To me it's not gonna work out so I'm not bothered at all lmao. It's interesting that they'd choose her though. Someone we already know Eddie doesn't trust with his son. There's also more buckley-diaz family scenes of them being coparents. The hildy episode, Chris running to Buck when hes mad at eddie, Buck being the one to tell Chris Eddie got hurt, then Buck staying with Chris and taking on the guardian role without him even knowing just how much that role really does belong to him. He didn't do it out of obligation. He didn't do it because he was asked to. He did it because he thought it would be best for Chris. Finally to 4x14. This is by far the biggest "Oh shit this is it. This is the beginning of buddie". We find out Eddie changed his will a year ago and has just been sitting on this info. I think Eddie knew back then what it meant but he wasn't in the right mindset to accept what it means so he kept it to himself. I think he finally started allowing himself to go there during treasure hunt. The man was jealous yall. Carla coming back and her comment about doing whats best for him and not chris is his oh shit moment. I think he wouldve broken up with Ana a few days after that if he had the time lol. He gets caught up in the mother/son sl then this poor mf gets shot by a sniper. The way that whole scene was filmed btw was not in a bff way. That was a lover watching his beloved almost die in front of him. Buck again puts himself down and Eddie decides this is the moment. He needs Buck to see how important he is. He wants buck to know how loved he is. So he sits there talking himself up to it and finally lets Buck know just how big of a part he is in Eddie's family. Buck's previous scene is him saying he wants someone who wants him back then here is Eddie saying he needs him...Chris needs him. wtf.

So with S5: I think Eddie knows and Buck has a feeling but he's not sure so what i would do is spend s5 with Eddie basically showing Buck his feelings but not exactly getting in the way of Buck's new relationship because Buck has to be the one to make that choice. Id also have chris feeling the different shift with buck having a gf like he did with Eddie. This newfound info wasnt just dropped on us for a "Aww so sweet" moment. This will business is gonna be a part of a bigger storyline. I'm hoping its with Eddie's family during maybe 5b.

So what I think would be the best timeline for canon buddie is 5a eddie already having either broken up with ana or is gonna break up with her, Buck choosing himself and ending things with Taylor by midseason finale, them bringing in Eddie's family in 5b and maybe then being when Eddie confesses his feelings for Buck. Then 6a we could get them walking on egg shells around each other not really knowing what to do bc this is all so new for both of them. This could bring just the right amount of comedy and angst especially them awkward and flustered around each other at work. A big blowup can happen between them for added angst (maybe an arguement before one of them or both of them is put in danger) then a midseason finale kiss. Then trying to find the balance between their personal relationship and their work relationship during 6b.

I don't know how long Fox shows last but procedurals can last a long time. I'm not sure thats gonna be the case for 911 especially with all the main cast staying that long so i think this would give us at least a whole season (S7) of canon buddie.

As far as then being presented as straight, there's been more seeds planted about buck being bi. A few i can remember off the top of my head: all of 2x1 lmao, maddie's comment about bucks boy crush on eddie, buck hinting at thinking eddie is cute when he thinks maddie is talking about him, the christmas elf, the comments on the instagram livestream, idk if youve watched it or not but TK's comment to Buck in the crossover episode, and like you mentioned Maddie's casual comment about setting him up with Josh. All we really know about Eddie's love life is he married Shannon when they were young and is trying with Ana so it could turn into a whole storyline for him.

I'm so sorry this is so long and took forever but i I hope i actually answered your question and didnt just get lost in rambles lmao.

[thegoldielocks28]

what’s your favorite headcanon of SergeixMathilda?

Thank you soo much for this ask! It´s a hard one, because I have quite a few headcanons I love for them. Might not be able to only pick one to be completely honest ;^; I ended up writing an essay, it has been too long since I wrote anything like this outside the RP.

The reason I ship them is because I see their differences really balance each other out well. To me, Mathilda is a very passionate person who is close to her own emotions. She cries when she´s sad. Laughs when she´s happy. Can quite easily describe how she feels to those close to her. Her shyness is a bit of a bump in the road for her when it comes to expressing herself however. When she was younger I imagine her shyness and anxiety made it almost painful to deal with strangers at times. Voicing her thoughts. Wanting to join others, but not being able to. Chest hurting all the time. Sergei on the other hand, unless very provoked, I see him as calm itself. He doesn´t understand, or is close to, his own emotions like Mathilda is and quite a few is new to him around s3 in the beyblade anime. Only what helped him survive he kept close. Others were a weakness. Yet, if someone or something angers him hell can break loose and with a body as big and heavy as his he can create a lot of damage. Compared to Boris and Yuriy, it´d take a longer time to get anger out of the man though. Basically, I see it that once close, Sergei can offer Mathilda a calm she hasn´t felt before. Safety, protection. The same, yet different from her teammates. All while she would help him more on the emotional plane. Her growing feelings for him would battle her shyness as Mathilda would in the end feel that the chance of getting closer to him would be worth the anxiety, and the tight feeling in her chest. Out of the two Mathilda would end up being the more direct and forward one when it comes to intimacy, or feelings even though at first it really isn´t in her nature. Probably challenge herself to speak to Sergei while having the slightest stutter, cheeks turning a bit red. Used to think she stuttered a lot, but I don´t anymore. Just a slight sign of nerves when stressed or pressed. Just as her body language shows very easily how uncomfortable she is. Almost anyone would be able to read Mathilda´s emotions easily just by looking at her. Now maybe over to some real headcanons about the two of them ;^; Not sure if I got this idea from talking with someone else, but I imagine one of their first moments being in an elevator. Mathilda, along with some other girls, is waiting for the elevator to close and move up as they see Sergei moving towards them with quick determined steps as if in a hurry. The girls holds their breathes like hoping the elevator will shut the doors in his face, leave him behind, and breathes out when that does indeed happens but... after a moment of slight panic Mathilda sticks her arm out to stop the closing doors for him. Slight moment of other´s fear of him (the Russians in general) and Mathilda being generally sweet, starting to have her eyes on him.

Mathilda would be attracted to his looks, she would, but there would be his protectiveness of his brothers that also draws her in. How he can seem so brutal, yet look at his team with something warm and gentle in his eyes when no one seems to see it. To me, Sergei is far from “mainstream handsome”. At times I believe he might not be considered handsome at all by many. Strong jaws, square face, defined nose that has taken punches just like Boris´, dirty blonde hair that isn´t very unusual, cold calculating eyes, then a huge pale body probably covered by scars, bumps from untreated injuries. He´d be intimidating, and of course there´s people liking that and wanting a rougher kind of love, but I don´t personally see that working for Sergei. I want him to find calm, warmth, and a family in the long run. Not that rougher people can´t have that too, but I hope you get what I mean.

Always imagined both of them to be into reading. So when they hang out casually, they´d often end up sitting close while reading in silence together. Having tea, or sweet coffee for Mathilda, perhaps something a bit more bitter for Sergei. Being comfortable in each other´s silence, so much I bet at times Mathilda ends up falling asleep. Sergei would at first muse about how she can be so comfortable with him to let down her guard like that, only to feel more protective of her. This is something I share with the Kai and Salima ship as well, yet their silences together is a lot different. Their difference in height would annoy Mathilda at times. Especially when she wants to kiss him, and he doesn´t understand. She´s too short to be able to actually take the lead and start anything but handholding and asking him to lean down would end up embarrassing her a bit too much at times. Haha can see her puff her cheeks in annoyance and Sergei is confused for a moment or two before he gets it. Don´t need to get too deeply into it as I want to keep this SFW but when intimate they´d also have to be quite careful because of their differences until they´re more certain. Starting with little and slow, moving slowly forward. Just as he is taller, I also imagine he´s quite a bit heavier than Mathilda as well. Figuring out how to make things in the bedroom work, as well as other things, might become a bit troublesome  and it doesn´t help with her being shy and him a bit just a wee bit awkward. Okay lets stop here...

[appleciders]

personally, im also deep in the station 19 muck but like you i wish i wasn't. randomly watched it because pandemic and maya bishop is just so compelling, even with all the bad writing i still love her sm. is there anything you would want to see for season 4? your hair cut fic was so good and i cant stop thinking about how much better the season would have been had it ended like that instead.

first off, sorry to both of us for being here! but i guess let’s take escapism where can get it, hey. second, thank you so much for reading the fic!! i’m super honored you liked it <33

as for what i would want for s4...whew. a lot, lmao. i’ll put in under a cut to save my poor non-s19 followers.

mostly, i want them to please slow down the pacing. let story arcs breathe and build and develop. last season was so rushed—ryan’s death and rigo’s death and pruitt’s death all crammed in, andy and sullivan having a shotgun wedding out of nowhere, maya and carina fastforwarding to i love yous with only 30 second scenes and not a real date to be seen, vic hardly getting to process ripley—i could go on. it’s cheap and messy storytelling. cut it out. 

i also really want them to let relationships do the same. i want to see the friendships that were so strained last season to grow again. show me andy, maya, and vic being friends and supporting each other!! for the love of god!! (show me andy and maya being friends, period. for the whole season. the whole goddamn season. no drama between them, only supporting each other through outside drama. if i have to see another season where these ‘best friends’ are at each other’s throats half the time, i swear to god.) 

show me more team-as-family! a) i eat that shit up, and b) that’s supposed to be the underlying theme and premise of the show. show them laughing and goofing off together, show them holding each other up when things get tough, show them teasing each other to hell and back while they cook together in the beanery. invest in that again.

for the romances....develop that shit. honestly, i really hope andy and sullivan either break up or really do the fucking work to fix their relationship, because as-is, it’s a hot mess. and not a hot mess i particularly care to watch. i liked them fine in season 2, but the sullivan arc in s3 (which...not to out myself as having watched chicago fire, but which is a blatant rip-off of severide’s s1 arc in cf) puts him in a place where he’s not really ready for a relationship. and with the amount of shit they put andy through, she’s not, either. i know it’s impossible on a drama, but i would really like andy to be single this season? idk, i’m tired.

maya and carina better not be all sunshine and rainbows. they need to do the work! they need to show the work! after that rushed-ass ‘forgive me’ scene (where carina was...pressured into forgiving maya like the day after she cheated on her??? and that was framed as a good thing?? make it make sense), they deserve to show them actually navigating that broken trust and rebuilding something real. and as someone who doesn’t watch grey’s, i really don’t know carina very well? 90% of her scenes were her supporting maya through her ongoing breakdown (though a  totally understandable breakdown! not criticizing maya for having trauma), so i’d like to see more of a balance of support in the relationship and more development of her as an individual apart from maya. she’ll be sticking around, and that will be much more interesting if she bonds with other members of the team.

dean and vic...look, my hands-down #1 wish for season 4 is that they treat vic hughes well, with respect, with screentime, and with a good arc. she’s the absolute best. and as much as i love dean miller (hint: a lot), he needs to start guzzling his respecting vic juice if the writers are gonna try to set up anything. personally, i’d really like to see them move past it? awkward crushes between friends happen. putting myself in dean’s shoes, living with one of my best friends who i’m also secretly crushing on, watching her play with my baby...it’d be a lot too!! but that doesn’t excuse being a dick, so i’d really like to see them take some time apart, and then start their friendship back up on a foundation of honesty and communication. because they’re so good, guys.

individual character notes!!!

well. i want every person at this goddamn station to go to therapy. they won’t, but i want them to.

andy needs to go to serious grief counseling after season 3. compounded by what’s bound to be a shitstorm from the discovery that her mother is alive? please. in regards to the whole mother arc, i really don’t want it her disappearance to have been like...gang-related. i’ve seen that posited as a theory, and that’s just a whole bundle of stereotypes we don’t need to get into. i also want the mom reveal to be the main revelation that takes up the majority of her arc the first half of the season, just to have time to process it. the captain’s race took up all of season 1—you can give this twist time to marinate properly.  

vic hughes, my moon, my stars! i really loved the snippets of vic’s backstory that they gave us in s3. as someone who lost a family member to early-onset alzheimer’s in november, 3x09 was...oof. a lot. i love how they committed to fleshing out her past and her backstory more and i love the emotional depth barrett doss always brings to the screen. for season 4, i’d love to see vic get to process ripley and jackson properly. (and here i repeat my forever adage for female characters lol: let them be single for a hot sec.) i want her to move in with maya, because i think that dynamic is so fun and ripe for exploration, and then i’d love to see her digging in to her issues and getting help—going back to the firefighter group, actually talking, spending time with her found family. (sidenote: would love to see her help out with some like youth community theatre classes on her days off? developing connections with kids who have gone through losses, supporting them and in turn realizing the support she needs herself...tell me vic singing with kids wouldn’t be the cutest shit). anyway, i just rly want her to get a good storyline. but i’m not a screenwriter so like...hope they come up with one!

i’ve already written much more than i’m sure you wanted, so i’m going to condense the boys into one paragraph lol. i want jack gibson to heal himself and stop sleeping with taken women! his new found family is super sweet, so i really hope he gets to keep it throughout s4. i want travis montgomery to get only good and happy things, and the same goes for warren. actually, i’d love to see warren step into his new role as team Older Person a bit more? i think that would be a really fun and heartwarming dynamic to play with all the other characters. dean i think i already touched on, but i’d love him to take a breath, apologize to vic and explain, and lean on the rest of his found family. he’s gonna be such a good dad and i’m excited to see more of that.

finally: maya. oh, maya. she needs therapy. you can’t have a character say she’s been dealing with suicidal ideation and anxiety for nearly 20 years and just...magically make it all better. she deserves to get to unpack all the shit with her dad, and all the ways that’s impacted her. on some level, i kinda wish she’d not stayed as captain—i love her scenes so much when she’s allowed to be just chilling on the same level as her team. since that’s not the case, finding a right balance of her as captain and her as friend is gonna be super important. i want her to open up to her friends and lean on them. i’d love for mason to come back, too? i think her trying to heal herself, establish herself as a team member and leader, and rebuild her relationships with her brother as well as her found family and girlfriend would be more than enough material for an arc. it won’t always go great! this stuff isn’t an easy fix! but that’s why it’d be worth writing. plus, so many members of the team have shitty relationships with their parents that even though they won’t understand what maya went through, there’s some really fertile ground for compassion and cathartic ‘fuck our dads’ ball-busting i’d love to see seeded. bonus father’s day episode where literally none of them are happy and they decide to like...go play laser tag or something.

anyway, i’m sure that’s more than you wanted!! but thank you for the q lmao apparently i had a lot to say

[quicksilversquared]

The World’s Most Obvious Trap

As the new Guardian, Marinette wants to get a solid advantage over Hawkmoth, or- even better- defeat him for once and for all. That sounds like a really daunting task, but with a little creativity- and a little magical help from the long-lost Order of the Guardians- it might just be possible.

References S3 finale spoilers

Links in the reblog

Hawkmoth raced along the rooftops, eyes trained on Ladybug as she ran along in the street below. She was dodging between cars, clearly trying to throw him off and lose him, but with no luck on her end. She just wasn't fast or slick enough to give him the slip, which meant that soon enough, she would mess up and he would win. He would get her earrings and the Miracle Box soon enough, and then his akuma would take down the cat and get his ring.

Why Ladybug had made such an amateur mistake as to actually bring out the entire Miracle Box Hawkmoth didn't know- maybe she hadn't decided what other holders she would need to tap yet and panicked enough that she had just grabbed the entire thing- but frankly, he didn't care. All that mattered was him getting his hands on that box.

And then Ladybug tripped.

Hawkmoth could hear the gasps from the few foolish onlookers as she fell face-first on the pavement and the Box- if it could even be called that, it looked more like an egg now, or perhaps an strange attempt at a replica of her yo-yo- slipped out of her arms, first bouncing and then rolling away. Ladybug yelped and tried to scramble to her feet, but Hawkmoth was faster. In a flash, he was down on the street, snatching up the Miracle Box and racing away before Ladybug could come up with the presence of mind to try to stop him with her yo-yo. Back to the rooftops, then leaping over one street, two, three, racing along.

He wasn't going to lose the Box this time. No more handing it out to anyone else, except for Nathalie. That way, no dumb mistakes would be made, and he could make full use of the range of powers that the entire box of Miraculous would give him. He already had plans for several of them, power combinations that Ladybug and Chat Noir wouldn't be able to do anything about.

Second Chance, for one, would mean that their very next fight could very well be their last. Hawkmoth could keep resetting things until they went the way he wanted to. Voyage would let him pop up behind the superheroes without them noticing, too. And the Rabbit would mean that he could help himself in the battles, pulling a future him and Nathalie in to fight alongside their present selves, probably with different Miraculous. As for the others...

Well, Hawkmoth would look at them with Nathalie tonight, and between the two of them, they could come up with the best combinations for them to use. Perhaps they wouldn't get the other two Miraculous today- being too hasty to act could mean losing the Box again, just like they had before- but it wouldn't be long.

Several streets back, Ladybug dusted herself off and rejoined Chat Noir where he had been hidden in an alleyway nearby, ready to step in if Hawkmoth had gone after Ladybug himself. The two of them exchanged a triumphant look and subtle fist bump, trying to hide their smiles.

Hawkmoth thought that he had won this battle, but instead, he had fallen straight into their trap. It wouldn't be the supervillain's victory that would be happening soon, but theirs.

And they couldn't wait.

  It started several weeks after Marinette became Guardian of the Zodiac Box, after she spent an evening brainstorming ways to end the war with the flock of kwamis now under her guard. It was a big task, and a daunting one after only really countering Hawkmoth's attacks for so long, but it was a step that Marinette thought that they had to take.

After all, Hawkmoth had made gains with his thief of Master Fu's tablet (which Marinette had told her mentor to at least password-lock, but of course he hadn't), his fixing of the Peacock Miraculous, and his knowledge of most of their backup team. Meanwhile, the superheroes had lost their mentor and his knowledge beyond what he had passed down to Marinette. She had gotten a copy of the notes from his tablet to study before it was stolen, at least, so they hadn't lost everything, but there had been even more knowledge in Master Fu's head before he had gotten memory-wiped after renouncing his role as Guardian.

(And that whole bit was definitely a concern of hers, but- like a lot of her personal troubles and worries- it would have to wait until an undefined later to be dealt with.)

Their careful balance between superheroes and supervillains had been disrupted, and it was getting more dangerous for them to continue as they were. She and Chat Noir had to make some headway in figuring out who Hawkmoth and Mayura were, so that they could start some of their own offensive strikes before it was too late and so she wouldn't have to be so stressed out about balancing her superhero and civilian lives.

Thus, the kwami war-meeting.

"I would say to add more permanent holders, but you're still testing out new teammates," Ziggy said, sighing. "And it would probably be a good idea to find some people who aren't in your class, since Hawkmoth's going to have a close eye on you guys."

Marinette groaned. She knew that, in the back of her mind, but she had been ignoring it. After all, she had only been kind-of friends with people in other classes in previous years and didn't know them well enough to assign a Miraculous to them, so she had more or less defaulted to giving Miraculous to her friends. "That's a good point. Though!" She perked up as a thought hit her. "If people really switch up their transformation- because I know that the Miraculous can change what people look like- I might still be able to re-use some of our old teammates! Not Chloe, obviously, and they wouldn't be able to keep their Miraculous, just in case," she added. "But they have battle experience, which is helpful."

The kwamis considered that.

"It could work, but maybe give them some time to think of a new look," Wayzz finally told Marinette. "They'll want their hair color and style changed, for sure- and the suits! Those have to be changed up for sure. No two people are the same, and their suits will reflect that. It will have to be quite the conscious decision to change them."

Marinette nodded, writing that down on her to-do list. That made sense. "Okay. I'll try to do that this week- and since Chat Noir knows everyone, he can help, too. I'll just have to make it clear that we're definitely skipping Chloe. There's no point in getting her hopes up again, not when she made such a nuisance of herself last time."

There were noises of agreement at that, and even Pollen nodded her head sadly. She had clearly had hopes for Chloe, but Chloe just wasn't willing to let herself grow and learn at the moment.

"But that's still just a stopgap," Marinette mused, tapping her chin. "We tried following the butterflies back to Hawkmoth last summer, but that was a no-go. It's impractical to try to spot the akumas before they possess people, because it would take forever to even figure out where they were coming from. If we could make some sort of trap, one that we could deploy whenever Hawkmoth comes out, something where we could be sure that we wouldn't just accidentally trap civilians as well- that would be nice, but I don't know how practical that would be to even try."

The kwamis considered that.

"Well, you would definitely want something that relies heavily on magic," Trixx told her, spinning around in thought. "There's probably a spell that could do that somewhere! Not in the grimoire, though. It wouldn't be related enough to the Miraculous for that."

"And spells like that would take an experienced spellcaster," Wayzz chimed in. "I don't know if Master Fu would have been able to pull some of those off. He hadn't gotten to that part of his training when... well, when the temple was destroyed."

Marinette slumped, discouraged. "Well, it doesn't help much if I don't have the spells and wouldn't be able to cast them, either. I wish I had more mentors. I mean, Master Fu was great, but he had only been an apprentice, and now-"

"The temple is back!"

All of them swung around to stare at Kaalki, who was prancing around in clear excitement. After a second, Ziggy gasped and joined her, zipping around in circles. "The temple is back! The temple is back!"

"I- yes?" Marinette managed, blinking at them as two more kwamis joined the excited chant. "But it's in Tibet, and we don't know if the temple being back means that the monks are, too- oh, and if they aren't, that probably means that it would fall on me to make sure that the other Miracle boxes don't get stolen, and oh gosh, it's been weeks, people could have already raided the temple- but I can't leave Paris to go check on it, Hawkmoth could attack again and I can't leave Chat Noir alone, but I can't hope that Hawkmoth won't go over there unannounced- or what if he has Mayura do it? Ugh, this is too much to consider-"

"The old Guardians were brought out of limbo, too!" Pollen chirped loudly, snapping Marinette out of her spiraling. "We've been in contact with the other kwamis, now that they've been restored. We did tell Master Fu, but I guess we forgot to mention it to you."

Marinette settled back on the floor, suddenly boneless with relief and whiplash. "They- they are? Oh, good- but do they know about Hawkmoth? I mean, that footage of the temple was broadcast all over Paris, multiple times- he knows about them, I bet that he's planning on attacking them, too, and if they're not expecting it-"

"They know, and they've protected the temple!" Longg practically shouted, cutting off Marinette's second spiraling panic attack in just as many minutes before it could really get going. He waited for her to stop hyperventilating again, then continued. "They gathered up all of the boxes and scrolls and everything from the temple only hours after coming out of limbo and hid in their emergency cave nearby until they could get wards and traps up to protect themselves. I'm surprised that the news didn't say anything about the temple vanishing again after a couple days, because it's now shielded from the outside world."

"But I still don't see how that helps me," Marinette said, frowning. "They're in Tibet, and it sounds like I wouldn't be able to find them anyway, even if I could leave Paris."

Kaalki gave a delicate cough, and Marinette blinked at her for a moment before groaning. "Right, right, Voyage! But...the temple would still be hidden. And there would be a language barrier, too. I doubt that they would just happen to speak French."

"We could give them a heads-up that you would be coming, and then they can let you in," Sass told her. "And the kwamis could translate. We can make it work, for sure."

Marinette perked up at that, finally letting hope well back up. She wasn't alone anymore, not really. She could get new mentors, ones that were well out of Hawkmoth's range, were more than able to defend themselves, and had more training. She would still miss Master Fu, but she could soften the loss at least. "Oh! Great! But I want to come up with a trap idea before I go there. Maybe it's just a pride thing, but it's going to be my first time meeting them, and I'm a Guardian, too, and, like..." She let out a long breath. "I don't want their first impression of me to be of a blundering hero who doesn't know what she's doing."

"They won't think that, Marinette!" Wayzz assured her quickly. "They understand that the role of Guardian was thrust upon you when you weren't ready, and you were trained by a mentor whose training was less than complete. But if you want to go in with a little more planning in place, that's understandable. We can brainstorm more."

And so they all puzzled. Marinette tapped her pencil against her lips, trying to think of what kind of trap she could use. The kwamis had assured her that whatever kind of trapping spell she could think of, the monks at the temple either had a spell that fit that bill or would be able to develop one. She wanted something that could be portable, because Hawkmoth just turned up wherever the akuma fights were and those could be anywhere in the city. It had to be clever, because anything obvious Hawkmoth would figure out right away-

-or would he?

Marinette frowned at that. Hawkmoth had akumatized the same people over and over, with the same powers instead of adding on. He had missed really obvious openings, and given akumas powers that would destroy or hide the Miraculous instead of trapping them on more than one occasion, and not just when they were all just starting out. He had set-ups that seemed complex and like they should guarantee a win for him, but they fell apart around him. He got cocky and then messed up.

So something a bit on the obvious side could work.

Her fingers tapped at her notepad, trying to think. Best-case scenario, Marinette wanted to get both Hawkmoth and Mayura trapped at the same time, to finish up the fight for good. That meant that her trap would have to have a spell that wouldn't make it obvious that it was a trap- like, Hawkmoth couldn't be visibly contained- and the containment had to be in such a way that Mayura couldn't just let him go. Which meant that if Hawkmoth could be sucked into a sort of limbo, maybe, which suggested that he would have to touch something, maybe.

It hit her like a thunderbolt. What did Hawkmoth want- well, besides their Miraculous? The other Miraculous, which would give him a huge advantage. Obviously she didn't want to endanger any of the other Miraculous at all, so maybe she could make replica Miraculous to use in their place, and possibly a replica Miracle Box, too. If she could get some sort of trapping spell that would activate upon contact with skin, and then some sort of locator spell on the box, all the superheroes would need to do once the supervillains got their hands on it would be to wait for a bit to make sure that the supervillains weren't still roaming free, then stroll on in and collect it. Then, once they had had a bit of a rest, they could free the supervillains to defeat them and collect their Miraculous one at a time, in a time and place of their choosing, with all of the backup heroes they wanted. It was perfect.

Now, all they had to do was figure out how to make it work.

  Chains and cording and beads and clay and resin came together to one faux-Miraculous after another, banged out between akuma attacks and homework. Some pieces Marinette just bought from the store- the Ox's nose ring, the Horse's glasses, the Rooster's ring, and a pocket watch that she could modify into a decent enough replica of the Rabbit- but for most of the pieces, she put the pieces together herself.

Marinette still hadn't decided if she wanted to try to make a faux Miracle Box or if she just wanted to empty the real Miraculous into a temporary container and just use the real thing. If the box had stayed in the same shape as before it might have been straightforward- difficult and fiddly, but straightforward- to make a copy, but with her new box...

Maybe it was kinda cool that it was the same shape as her yo-yo, but it wasn't nearly as convenient.

"I think I should go visit the Guardians now," Marinette said, two weeks after coming up with her plan. "I mean, I'm nearly done with my Miraculous copies, and most of a plan in place. It seems like it's actually enough to show that I've done some of my own work, and I'm not relying entirely on the Order-"

"Which still would have been completely fine and entirely understandable," Tikki reminded her. "Which we did tell you. Are you going this afternoon?"

Marinette nodded. "Yeah. I don't have anything going on, I've told my parents that I'm studying at the library, and Alya is busy with Lila and the other girls. I don't have anything going on- and yes, I'm positive, because I've turned down stuff or canceled it ever since I came up with our plan so that I could get stuff done." She let out a long breath. "I'm ready to meet them. I just- I hope they aren't too strict, and that we can come up with a solution, and- Tikki, is it dumb if I'm worried about them wanting to come in and take over our fight in Paris? Like, it would be a huge weight off of my shoulders, sure, but it's been Chat Noir and I for ages leading the fight and doing it on our own, and for someone else to finish it..."

"I understand," Tikki assured her. "You've been the authority on the akumas since the start. But I don't think you'll have much to worry about! The other Guardians will probably be happy to play support. Just because they're older doesn't mean that they'll automatically assume that they know more about the situation."

"Good." Letting out a long breath, Marinette climbed up to her bed and unlocked the trunk where she was keeping the Miraculous, punching in the code for her inner box, then pulling out the Miracle Box. Three minutes later, Marinette was standing in the middle of her room with the Horse's glasses on, facing a last-minute bout of nerves.

"I have to know where I'm going to use the Horse, though," she fussed, fiddling with the top of her bag. "And I know what the temple looks like, but the wards will keep me out, I thought, and what if an akuma pops up- I mean, I know we just had one this morning, but two in a day isn't unheard of, just uncommon."

"I am also connected to the akuma alert system," Tikki reminded her. "Sure, your phone might be out of range, but I'll know. And Plagg can contact me, too, there's not a range limit on that. As for the temple, well..." She gestured to Kaalki. "She can explain better than I can."

"My last holder used coordinates, because that was a system that he was comfortable with," Kaalki told Marinette. "And sure, it you can picture a location, that's great, too. But for this- I would say just listen to your gut, and you'll end up there."

That sent Marinette into a round of giggles. "I'd rather not end up inside of my gut, thanks. That sounds cramped and probably breaks some rules of, like, time and space."

"Oh, you-" Kaalki swiped at her, clearly not upset at all. "You know what I mean! Just follow your gut feeling, and I'll get you just outside of the temple's wards. Let's go!"

Marinette nodded, letting out a long breath before calling on her dual transformation. Maybe it wasn't necessary- she didn't need to be transformed with Tikki, after all- but it was comforting to have her normal transformation and her yo-yo at her side when she was going into unfamiliar territory.

Besides, maybe the Guardians would be more likely to take her seriously if they saw superheroine Ladybug instead of normal civilian Marinette.

With one last deep breath, she relaxed and called on the feeling inside of her. "Voyage!"

The portal opened, and Ladybug stepped through. Her bedroom vanished, and suddenly she was standing at the edge of a valley bottom, looking out at mountains and a very, very empty field of green grass.

The portal closed.

"Okay, so I'm in Tibet now," Ladybug told the air, releasing the Horse part of her transformation. Kaalki spiraled free. "Uh. I guess I'll just...walk forward?"

"No, just wait!" Kaalki insisted. "Some of their wards aren't the friendliest, so you want to wait for a guide. They'll have a lookout who should see you soon enough. In the meantime- a snack?"

Ladybug nodded, reaching into her yo-yo to pull out the baggie of apple slices that she had stored there. "Of course. Here you go- oh, look, there's someone there!"

The old man who had appeared seemingly out of nowhere smiled, stepping closer and holding out a hand. "Greetings. You must be the newest guardian. Welcome to our temple- please, come in. We have a lot to talk about."

  The monks of the Order were friendly, if a bit formal, Ladybug decided as she talked with several of the eldest members of the temple. Their words were a bit stilted- apparently there was a translation spell in play- but they wanted to help her in any way they could. She had explained her idea for a trap right away, and already they had their best spellcasters on the job, looking through books and scrolls to find something suitable. While they waited, the monks answered some of Marinette's questions, getting a feel for what she had been taught and what Master Fu had not yet had a chance to touch on.

There was a lot that she still had to be taught.

"Not all of it is critical, of course," Master Tenzin told her, smiling. "I think that your plan to trap Hawkmoth will work well, and then you can call on your backups and us as well to defeat him and his assistant at your leisure. But it's good knowledge to have, so that we can build upon it and not lose it in the future, in case it's needed."

"Of course," Ladybug agreed. Everything was really interesting to learn, really, and it was nice to know what was possible so that she would know what was an option for plans in the future. "It will be nice to learn at my own pace, too. With Master Fu, we were rushing because we didn't know how much time we would have, and lessons with him plus my schooling plus akuma attacks and my regular civilian responsibilities..."

The monks around her nodded.

"That is why historically, we took in children and taught them here full-time," Master Sonam commented. "But I can see where that would be unpractical in this day and in your situation."

Ladybug smiled and nodded. She couldn't come here and learn in the same way that Master Fu had, even if she had wanted to. She had her own hopes and dreams beyond the Miraculous, and she wasn't going to give them up just because she had been picked to be Ladybug.

Before any of the other Masters could say anything else, one of the spellcasters stuck her head in, beaming. "We found a spell that's a perfect fit for what Ladybug wanted. It activates upon contact with skin and will suck the trapee into limbo. It's a fairly simple spell to release, and we can control how many people are let out at a time. And it will work with a small object such as the replica Miraculous."

Ladybug grinned, unable to help herself. "Oh, that's fantastic!"

"Will the replicas be ready soon, Amrita?" Master Tenzin inquired. "Or is it a multi-step spell?"

"It will take a couple days to cast the spell," Amrita told them. "There's a potion to soak the pieces in before the spell can be cast. But it will be less than a week, for sure. And we wanted to know, Ladybug- would you like us to create a replica Miracle Box with magic? It will take one more thing off of your plate. All we will need is a drawing. And the fake Miraculous, of course."

Ladybug perked up, flipping open her yo-yo so that she could pull out her baggie of replicas. She had finished the last one right before she came, which meant that everything was ready to go. "That's easy enough. Chat Noir and I found out recently that we can print out photos from our weapons, so if I just hit some buttons..."

The monks watched with interest as Ladybug punched several buttons, swiping to find the picture she had taken of her new Miracle Box. Another couple of buttons, and soon enough the yo-yo was spitting out a small photo, just like a Polaroid.

"Oh, that's different," Amrita commented as soon as Ladybug handed the photo over. "It looks kind of like your yo-yo! The spots aren't in the same places, of course, since there's a different number of them, but I can see the intention behind it."

Ladybug had to laugh at that. "That sounds like a nice way of saying that you don't like the design that much."

"No, it's just- I've gotten used to the Miracle Boxes looking a certain way, that's all." Amrita considered the picture. "We can do that, though. The kwamis will let you know when we've gotten everything ready."

"Thank you."

"On that note, we should probably let you go," Master Tenzin told Ladybug. "I had lost track of the time! We've been talking for quite a while. I can walk you to the edge of our wards."

"Of course." Ladybug sprang to her feet, making sure to do a quick bow to each of the monks and Amrita before following Master Tenzin out of the temple. He moved quickly for an older man, though she wasn't that surprised considering how speedy Master Fu could be when he wanted to.

"I am glad that you were able to come to us today," Master Tenzin told her as they reached the boundary of the wards. "It was great getting to meet you, Ladybug, and to learn more about the situation in Paris. I look forward to seeing you again."

"I- I had one more question before I go," Ladybug said quickly, trying not to sound as hesitant as she felt. It was just- well, maybe it wasn't exactly a pressing issue, but she had to know about the memory thing. "When Master Fu passed the role of Guardian down to me, he lost all of his memories. And I- I was wondering... I mean, I can understand it being for safety, but..."

Master Tenzin smiled, understanding. "Ah, yes. With Ladybug being such a big part of your life for so long and defining who you are, I can understand how the prospect of losing your Miraculous-related memories would be intimidating. But one size does not fit all; not all situations can be solved with the same solution. Likewise, there are many ways that a Guardian can pass on their duties, and most do not include full loss of Miraculous memories."

Ladybug's heart leapt. "There- there are?"

"Correct." He considered her, head tilting slightly to the side. "In this situation, Wang Fu knew your identity, and Chat Noir's, and the identities of a number of temporary superheroes as well. His identity, if the kwamis relayed the information correctly, was compromised. You were facing an active battle situation. If he did not renounce his Guardianship when he had the chance with you, he ran the risk of being taken hostage and being drilled for information. So he did a full wipe- which, I might add, is the type that we first drill into our trainees, because it is the most straightforward. In other situations, Guardians could opt for partial wipes or, if they were not in danger, no information wipes at all. We can cover different options the next time you visit, if you wish."

"That would be great, thank you." Ladybug bowed to him. "That is a load off of my mind. Thank you for taking the time to teach me today."

"It was our pleasure." Master Tenzin smiled at her. "Good day, Ladybug."

With one last bow, Ladybug called Kaalki to her, then summoned Voyage. In a flash, she was back in her bedroom in Paris. She was beaming as she detransformed.

"I take it that things went well?" Tikki asked, smiling. "You look happy."

"It was nice to get my questions answered," Marinette told her, grinning even wider. "It's a load off of my shoulders. And to have that last bit of the puzzle with the spells figured out- that was great, too. I have a whole support network there now."

Tikki spun in a happy circle. "That's great! I could tell that you got comfortable pretty quickly when you were there. I'm happy for you. What's next?"

Marinette considered that. "Well, I need to bring Chat Noir up to date for sure. He needs to know the plan, and that we're going to be ending the fights soon. I'd love to bring him along next time I go to the temple, too. He's my partner, after all."

"I think he'll like that," Tikki assured her. "And two heads are better than one! Maybe you'll have the temple to go to when you need it, but it's always nice to have backup that's close by, too."

  With the full power of the Order of the Guardians behind her and on the case, it was barely a week before Ladybug got the message that her trap-box with all of the cursed Miraculous replicas was ready to go. She and Chat Noir popped over to pick it up and visit the temple (and introduce Chat Noir to all of the monks, because he had been super curious and Ladybug wasn't going to deny her partner the opportunity to learn more) before being pulled away mid-visit by their akuma alerts going off.

It seemed as though they might have an opportunity to set their trap earlier than they had thought.

"Let me stash the box for now," Ladybug said, letting Kaalki free as she dropped the Horse part of her transformation. She smiled at the kwami, then took the glasses off and popped them in her yo-yo for the time being. "We don't know if Hawkmoth will come out or not this fight, so there's no point in carrying it around until we've seen it."

"Yeah, but where?" Chat Noir wanted to know. "It's not like your... yoyo...is..." He trailed off, staring in disbelief as Ladybug tucked the Miracle Box into her much smaller yo-yo. "How?"

"Magic?" Ladybug suggested, snapping her yo-yo shut before dangling it from her fingers, ready to throw. "I don't know. I wanted it to work, so it did."

It didn't take long for them to catch up to the akuma. There was no sentimonster to go along with it this time, which was nice, and it just seemed to be a rather run-of-the-mill akuma. It was strange that they could say that about an akuma that seemed to be directing an army of rubber ducks down the street, but- rather unfortunately- it was pretty similar to something they had seen before.

Of course, Hawkmoth had come out that time, too, so maybe it wasn't a bad thing after all. The sooner they got the faux-Box to him, the sooner they could bring all of this to a close and the sooner they could actually have at least some semblance of a normal life again.

Ten minutes into the fight, there was a shout from a civilian in one of the windows above, and the superheroes glanced up to see Hawkmoth on the rooftops, poorly concealed by a chimney. He sneered at the civilian, who slammed their window shut immediately, and Ladybug and Chat Noir took the opportunity to dash off, "retreating" onto a side street and then continuing their run away from the fight. Both akuma and supervillain let out shouts of frustration, and they ran faster.

They had to make it look convincing that Ladybug could have gone home and gotten the Miracle Box. If they could lose Hawkmoth for a few minutes, then zip back into his field of vision "accidentally", it would look much more convincing.

Hawkmoth might be dumb, but he wasn't so incredibly dumb as to think that it wasn't at least a little suspicious for Ladybug to vanish for only a minute before reappearing with all of the Miraculous under her arm. They couldn't drop the ball and take the easy way out now.

After a couple streets, Ladybug and Chat Noir took to the skies to move faster, then converged as though briefly discussing a plan before separating and dropping into different streets. Ladybug ducked down a manhole, following the sewer system for a short distance. Chat Noir joined her, wrinkling his nose slightly as they worked their way to another street. He would get into position a couple blocks in front of her, and then be on hand in case anything went wrong with their trap.

Her yo-yo beeped to let Ladybug know that Chat Noir was in place and hidden, and she checked her yo-yo to make sure she knew where he was before pulling out the fake Miracle Box and bounding out to the street, using her yo-yo to swing up into the sky a couple times to get Hawkmoth's attention before swinging lower, still fast but not as visible, and then dropping to straight running on the ground.

Out of the corner of her eye, she spotted Hawkmoth landing on the rooftops and starting to give chase. Ladybug sent a "panicked" look over her shoulder, then upped her speed, dodging and weaving among the abandoned cars in the street as though she was trying to confuse him.

She was closing in on Chat Noir's block. It wouldn't be the end of the world if Hawkmoth got the box early, but Ladybug would feel safer if she "fell" where Chat Noir could help if Hawkmoth decided to come after her instead of going for the box. With another glance behind her, Ladybug sped up. She could see Chat Noir's alleyway ahead of her, closer, closer-

Considering how often Marinette tripped over her own two feet, it was no great difficulty to do a convincing flying stumble, her arms flailing and sending the trap-box spinning through the air. Ladybug hit the ground with an oof and laid there for a second before scrambling to her knees, doing her best to look like she was doing her best to get the box again before Hawkmoth.

Hawkmoth looked thrilled as he scooped up the box, sending a smirk over his shoulder at Ladybug as he took off. Ladybug made to go after him, but as soon as he was out of sight, she dropped the act and headed for Chat Noir, making sure that they were out of sight of everyone in the street before exchanging a triumphant look and fist bump.

"Hook, line, and sinker," Chat Noir proclaimed, grinning. "Nice planning, my Lady. Now, what would you say to going and defeating that akuma to kill a bit of time?"

"I think that sounds perfect."

  Hawkmoth made sure to lose Ladybug on his way back to his lair, dashing through back alleys and hiding in several spots. It wasn't until a glimpse at the news told him that both superheroes had returned to the akuma battle that he felt comfortable making the final dash back inside, retreating to his lair and abruptly releasing his transformation. His akuma had been defeated, after all, and there was no point in holding Nooroo in any longer. Besides, it would be better to try out the extra transformations individually, in order to get a better feel for them.

"What to try first," Gabriel mused, tapping his fingers against the box. He pressed each individual spot-section, smirk growing wider as one drawer after another popped out with a Miraculous in it. The number of Miraculous at his fingertips... it was incredible.

There would be no trusting spoiled, irresponsible teenagers with the entire chest of magic jewelry now. Miraculously, the universe had given him a second chance with the Miracle Box, and he wasn't going to waste it again. Gabriel and Nathalie- and perhaps an akumatized minion, and a future Gabriel and Nathalie come back with the Rabbit to help out- would be the only ones using these extra Miraculous this time around.

There was the Fox, the Turtle, the Bee. The Snake, the Dragon, the Horse... Gabriel tapped his lips, trying to pick one. After another long pause, Gabriel reached for the Dragon. That was a nice, strong Miraculous, and the powers presented some interesting possibilities. His fingers closed over the Miraculous, excitement building in his veins-

-and then there was a flash of light, and then nothing at all.

  Nathalie checked the news feed on her tablet as the Gorilla drove her back to the mansion. She had had to take Gabriel's place at the latest Gabriel staff meeting, which had meant that she hadn't been on hand to help with the latest attempt to get Ladybug and Chat Noir's Miraculous. That was unfortunate but not avoidable, really, and Nathalie could only hope that Gabriel wasn't in too sour of a mood. Still, it wasn't looking promising- from the sounds of it, the akuma battle had been relatively short and Hawkmoth's appearance had been just as brief, with him vanishing almost as soon as he had arrived. That suggested that the superheroes had gotten the drop on him, perhaps, and he had had to retreat to make sure that he wasn't defeated. There wasn't much else that would cause such a short appearance, really-

And then Nathalie spotted a blurred photo of Hawkmoth dashing across the rooftops, a rather familiar-looking box tucked under his arm. The new Miracle Box, unless Nathalie's eyes were deceiving her.

Somehow, Gabriel had gotten his hands on it again. No matter how the rest of the fight went, if he had managed to get more Miraculous, he was bound to be in better spirits than normal. It was surprising that he hadn't texted her yet, perhaps, but it could very well be that he was too excited and focused on trying out all of the new Miraculous to remember to let her know.

Trying not to smile, Nathalie tapped her fingers against her tablet impatiently as the car picked its way through the midday traffic, brainstorming ways that they could incorporate their new powers. It wouldn't take more than a fight or two for them to take the superheroes down now if they played their cards right.

The car pulled through the mansion gates, and Nathalie thanked the Gorilla quickly before sliding out of the car and walking as briskly as she could up to the front doors. Through the doors, across the atrium- Adrien was still out of the house, right? Hopefully she wasn't meant to be checking in on him and forgetting- unlock the office doors before heading inside, re-lock them as soon as they clicked shut. As soon as she was sure that they wouldn't be interrupted, Nathalie strode over to the hidden elevator and punched in the combination for the lair, tapping her foot impatiently as the machinery whirred into motion and brought her down, over, and then up, up, up, slowing down slightly as she approached the lair.

The lair, which was empty.

"Gabriel?" Nathalie called, frowning as she stepped forward. He had left the window open and as Nathalie watched, a couple butterflies escaped. Based on the number that were fluttering around, either Gabriel hadn't harvested more lately or a lot of them had gotten free. "Gabriel, are you here?"

There was no response. Nathalie's frown deepened for a moment as she considered the scene, trying to figure out what might have happened. And then, all at once, it hit her.

Of course Gabriel hadn't been able to wait to try out his new powers, since they hadn't had the chance to do a test run of any of the other Miraculous the last time they had the box. He had probably picked one out and transformed, then gone out for a run or something. Maybe he had grabbed the Horse Miraculous and used it, and so he was somewhere else in the city altogether.

The smart thing to do, of course, would be to wait for Gabriel to return so that he could play the part of lead supervillain, the head of their team, and Nathalie could be the obedient sidekick. But what Gabriel didn't know couldn't hurt him, and Nathalie rather wanted to try out a couple of the Miraculous on her own. The Bee's powers, for instance, looked like they could be promising in the right hands (and the right hands were not those of Miss Bourgeois), and the Fox could be used for distraction, and then there were several Miraculous that they had yet to see in play...

With one more glance around, Nathalie knelt down next to the box. Her fingers tapped the side in thought, and then she reached out for the Bee Miraculous. That would be the best place to start, probably, and then while she was transformed she could try to figure out where Gabriel was. Plan decided, Nathalie grabbed the comb.

She didn't even have a chance to scream before she, too, was gone.

  Ladybug and Chat Noir had recharged and let the Guardians know that the box had been deployed, then retreated to a secluded rooftop to wait for the signal that both supervillains had been trapped. There was no small amount of excitement in the air, giddiness at a successful trap set making both of them a little giggly.

"I didn't think it would happen so soon," Chat Noir said again, leaning back on his hands. "I mean, sure, Hawkmoth has been coming out for fights more and more often, and Mayura too- who knows where she was today- but I thought that we would have to wait a couple days. And I was just kind of like, how am I meant to sleep if we're waiting for that to happen? I would be too wound up to actually fall asleep."

"I'm still not going to be able to sleep," Ladybug admitted, fiddling with the strings of her yo-yo. "Especially if we don't get the signal today. Like, what if one of them gets sucked in, but the other doesn't? If they're in the same room and are actually cautious about it, the second person might decide not to risk touching anything."

"And then we're kind of left in limbo ourselves," Chat Noir finished. He flopped onto his back. "Okay, that's fair. Ugh. Now I'm going to worry about that, too."

"Sorry."

They fell into silence again, eyes occasionally scanning the Paris skyline. They had been told- or, rather, shouted to- that once both supervillains were trapped, twin magic beams of light would be shot into the sky, no matter what barriers stood between the box and the sky above. The spells would use the lingering magic from the Peacock and the Butterfly to identify the two supervillains, so that they could be sure that it was actually Hawkmoth and Mayura who were caught, not just random unlucky civilians. It was a complex, multilayered set of spells, and they were lucky to have people on their side who could manage that.

"What's the first thing that you're going to do once this is over?" Chat Noir asked, his voice quiet and barely carrying over the sound of the normal Paris traffic below. "Do you have plans?"

Ladybug huffed out a laugh. "I've been too busy to come up with plans. But I guess..." She trailed off, thinking. "I want to spend more time with my friends and family. Recently, I've really been holding off on making plans with people because they notice when I have to leave, and it stinks to have to miss things. I want to spend more time on my hobbies, because I don't know when the last time was that I designed anything and that stinks. I know the Guardians want to teach us stuff, too, but I might need a bit of a break before I go jumping into more Miraculous stuff."

"Being a normal teen sounds nice," Chat Noir agreed. "I mean, with my family- I've never exactly had that normal to start with, but more normal than what I have now would be nice-" His voice trailed off with a choke, and then Chat Noir raised a trembling hand, pointing at something behind Ladybug. "Bugaboo, the- the light has gone off. Look."

Ladybug perked up, spinning around. Less than an hour after their akuma battle had ended, they had the supervillains trapped! Her excitement rose-

And then crashed to the ground, shock and horror taking their place as what she was seeing sunk in fully. Twin beams of purple and blue shot into the sky, unmistakably coming from the Agreste mansion.

Apparently their earlier theory about Hawkmoth's identity hadn't been wrong after all, even though she had hoped that they might be, just for Adrien's sake.

(Arresting her crush's father had definitely not been in her plans for the day.)

Ladybug sighed, pushing herself to her feet to join Chat Noir and pulling out her yo-yo to let the monks know that they had already been successful. There was no point in putting off the undeniably unpleasant task of retrieving the trap-box and getting the supervillains out and arrested, no matter how much she wanted to.

For now, she would focus on the positives- Paris, and by extension Adrien, would be far safer with Hawkmoth and Mayura behind bars. Their days would be less interrupted, everyone would be less on edge, and, well, maybe without an overly controlling father overseeing every part of his life, Adrien would be able to do more things that he actually wanted to.

Things would be good. They would all get past this together and come on top, she was sure of it.

[somethingtoconfess]

HIGH ON SKAM 2_Day 1 (Saturday)

Hi guys ! :)

I’m sorry, I wanted to post before but I was really busy and I still needed tme to process everything.

The whole weekeend was amazing and I don’t even know how to express my feelings with words. So thank you once agin to The Rainbow Team and to all the actors present !

My friend Alex (@thebipanfangirl ), whom I spend most of the time at the convention with, already posted about this so you can also check her posts to have other informations.

- So, I arrived early with Luna (@classypicklepatrolroad ) and we had the time to chat a bit with other fans and volunteers. Everyone was in a good mood and really excited !

- Before the opening, we saw the actors walk by when we were sitting in the room and everyone started to get so excited, it was really funny. The opening panel was really fun! Everyone was so excited and Michelangelo talked a lot spontaneously!! He was really confident. Fun fact : He drank a looooot of water! And even poured glasses for everyone. That was sweet !

- Then it was the DRUCK panel and I loved seeing all the actors interact with each other. You can clearly see that they all like each other and that they are quite close ! The questions were really interesting and the actors semmed to have a great time as well (you can watch the livestream on Twitter if you want to).

- After that, we went upstairs to go to the autographs. Hassan recognised me and hugged me while I was waiting in the stairs (and people looked at me weirdly aha).

- Luna and I didn't have a ticket for the autographs (I wouldn't know what to do with them tbh). But we had to give Louis, Arda and Jobel the fanbooks. We waited a bit and then we saw that Louis and Arda were free so we asked if we could give them the fanbooks right now. The volunteers said yes and we gave them the fanbooks. We started with Arda and at first he was confused. Then we explained to him that it was his fanbook and he was really happy ! I also gave Louis his fanbook and he was really happy as well. They both hugged us and Michi and Jule were just watching us and smiling the whole time, it was cute. At first we forgot to take a picture with them so we had to ask a staff member to take one for us and had to queue again but on the side. So we were directly next to Michi who was dipping biscuits in his coffee so I told him "bon appétit" and he replied "Merci" with a really sweet smile. We finally took the photos with Louis and Arda and then we gave Jobel her fanbook. At first, she was confused and thought only Alex did it so Luna and I stood anwkwardly on the side but then she understood and she all hugged us. We took pictures and then Luna and I went out because it was realy hot inside.

- We had lunch and had to hurry up to go back to the convention. Sadly, we missed the beginning of pannel for S4 and we didn't want to go there for just a few minutes so we waited for the photos.

- The photos started with Lukas. I had two photos with him. I hugged him tightly and he was so smily and sweet. I showed him the poses and he laughed a bit at the first one, which was the Titanic pose. We started with this one and then we did the second one, which was a hug with his hand on my face but he squished my face and pushed my hair on my face so the photo will probably be a bit weird aha. I hugged him again and told him I'll see him later

- Then we went to the panel for s3 and it was really nice! Before it started, Michi was already inside the room and was talking to some volunteers. Then Lukas arrived and they had fun together. Then Henrik arrived and fans screamed when Henrik hugged Michi and Lukas. And finally, Maxence arrived last. Michi seemed so confused when Henrik and Maxence talked because he didn't know what they were talking about since he hasn't seen any ot the shows (nor Druck) aha. Henrik talked so slowly and Mawence talked a lot as well. The four of them seemed to have a great time.

- Luna and I had two pictures with Louis and Arda. For the first one, we wanted to recreate memes so we showed them the pictures. They looked at us and did the pose asking us if it was like this so we laughed and said it was. It took us a few tries. For the second photo, we wanted to do like a yoga pose but it wasn't working because of the lighting so we had to change the pose. Instead, we just did a group hug.

- Then I had a photo with Tua and Hassan. So sweet! Tua is sooo cute. One of us had to squat a bit and Hassan wanted to do it because I was wearing a skirt but I said no because I didn't want him to dirty his pants.  So I ended up squating in front of Tua but the photographer took a long time taking the photo so I was shaking like crazy. I hugged them again and left.

- For the Lukas / Michi photo, I was actually really nervous because it was the first time I would be able to talk to Michelangelo in person (and if you didn't know, I went to Rome because I really wanted to talk to Michi). I hugged Lukas first and then I hugged Michi really tightly and told him it was nice to be able to finally hug him and he smiled. I showed them the pose I wanted to do and Michi seemed happy to do it (everyone was doing the same pose so I suppose he was happy to do something else). It was like a martial art pose and he looked at me doing the pose so I laughed. Lukas started to get in position as well and I asked them if it was possible to hold hands as well. They said yes so I went in the middle and held their hands. But the three of us were standing on one leg and we were shaking, trying to find our balance so it was quite funny ! I hugged them again and told them I'll see them soon.

- For the Druck photo, I wanted to do a special pose without the chairs and I waited until the end so it would be possible, and asked 3 different people and they told me it was but then the photographer refused... So I stood in the middle, between Lukas and Arda. I asked them to do a superhero pose but they were confused and I think I'm the only one who ended up doing like the Wolwerine pose so the photo will probably be quite weird aha

- Then I had a photo with the OG cast (my only extra not Druck related) and they were so sweet !! Henrik is sooo tall and his hugs are really tight! Iman and Ina are really pretty and they were smiling a lot. I showed them the pose and they looked at itfor a while (idk why, it wasn't a hard one aha). Henrik asked me if he had to bend and I said it was ok but when I stood behing him I noticed I was really short compared to him so maybe it would have been a good idea aha (as I'm writing it, I received this picture and it's really cute !! I will post all my photos here later as well). I hugged them again and left.

- I was sooo nervous about my photos with Michi. I was in the first ones and I started by saying that I came here just for him and he thanked me with a big smile. I showed him the two poses and he was a bit confused then laughed at the first one. He had to do the « Ma che cazzo » pose looking at me and I actually told him this in Italian (he must have been confused because he knew I'm not Italian aha). We ended up doing it but I don't know how it turned out. I was really nervous so I can't even remember if I looked at the camera or even smiled. I couldn't see him either because he was looking at me so Idk if he did the pose or not aha. Then we had to do the second pose but he forgot what it was so I had to show him again. It was a really tight hug with my head on his chest. The photographer had some issues with the photo so I ended up taking another one so I apologised to Michi but he smiled and said it was OK. I was about to leave but I saw that the photographer was looking at the photos so I talked a bit more to Michi and said he was an amazing actor and that I watched all his projects. He was really touched and smiled when I told him I'll see him tomorrow!

- Because the photos were talking a while and that I was doing my last ones with Michi, we arrived late for the closing panel but it was quite nice! The actors seemed to really have a great time. Michi arrived later. We asked questions and then we watched the closing video (I was in it and I cringed so hard). They took a photo and then they left. Lukas, Maxence and Henrik arrived so they quickly said goodbye (the said they were really tired) and we watched the closing video with them another time.

- We took our coats and ran into Lukas oustide. He was carrying a bag full of gifts that he fot during the autographs session.

And that’s it for the first day. I probably forgot some things but that’s the most important things I suppose. I’ll post about Day 2 (I have even more things to say) later or tomorrow!

I hope you enjoyed it :D

[icanhearyouglaring]

paris, or wherever we are - pt.1

summary: They get a second chance and don’t waste a minute of it.  pairing: wally/artemis (canon up to s3-midseason)  a/n: if i dont write a fix-it fic every six months, i will literally cease to exist. this is my burden and my curse. i’ve had this in my drafts for awhile and figured I’d post to help boost morale post-ep 23. this is part 1. 

“Victor, no!” 

Somehow, in all the chaos of battle, the sound of Halo’s cry catches Artemis’s ear. Artemis swings her sword upwards and cuts through the Apokoliptian drone that’d been heading for her head. She spins around quickly, trying to find Halo’s aura in the fray of the invasion, but all she can make out is Victor, firing a beam from his arm cannon into the giant boom tube in the sky. The beam grows in width, engulfing Victor in a blinding light. Artemis gasps.

"Oh, fuck.”

Artemis takes one step towards the light, but a hand grasps hers and pulls her back. 

“Run!” Dick shouts, tugging her along towards the relative safety of the city.

Artemis runs behind him, letting Dick guide her as she watches the light grow. Static flies past them, carrying an unconscious Jeff behind him on a metal door. Geoforce joins them in their mad dash away from the light, surfacing from beneath the ground beside them.

There, she thinks, catching sight of Halo, shining bright white, running straight into the light. No!

Artemis tugs her hand out of Dick’s grip, and starts turning back. “Halo!” 

The light fills the boom tube and the tube begins to destabilize. Streaks of light steam out of the tube, firing down on downtown Coast City. The tall buildings bear the brunt of the impact, and the earth shakes, and glass rains from the near infinite amount of broken windows. It’d be a magnificent sight if it weren’t so horrifying.

“Everyone down!” is all the warning Artemis gets before Dick tackles her to the ground. 

A beam of light strikes the side of the building beside them, and pieces of stone fall in the place they’d once been. Dick rolls off of her and helps her up, and it’s then they notice the stone that would’ve crushed them both is still hovering above their heads, and the ground they’d been standing on is a few feet lower than it had been a second ago. Brion cools down and leaves the ground where he left it as Tara moves the stone to build a barrier between them and the light. 

“Are you all alright?” Tara asks, running down a staircase of her own creation. 

“Yeah, thanks,” Artemis breathes out, staring at the sky. “Look.”

The white light turns to blue, then to green, to yellow, to orange, to red, until all of the colors start blending together in uneven waves and pulses. 

“That can’t be good,” Brion notes, his eyes wide.

He’s right. A second after the words leave his mouth, the boom tube collapses completely, and the light snaps. The sound is louder than anything Artemis ever heard before, and she clasps her hands over her ears just like everyone else. It bowls them over, leaving them disoriented and unable to hear anything but a low-buzzing in their heads. 

It takes a long minute but Artemis stumbles back to her feet and makes her way up the wall as fast as she can.

“Halo!” Artemis yells, hoping the girl will reveal herself in the stark darkness. There is no sign of Halo or Victor in the empty expanse that once was Liberty Park. 

Artemis jumps down from the wall and makes her way towards the epicenter with uncentered balance. 

“Victor!” Artemis calls, her pulse racing as the seconds tick by with no sign of either of them. No, no, no, no, no. 

She can feel Dick at her heels, shouting something she can’t quite hear or understand, but her focus remains on reaching the still-smoldering spot where the kids once stood. Shit, shit, shit.

When she reaches edge of the crater left behind by the blast, she falls to her knees. The vast crater is completely empty. Nothing. 

“No,” she says thickly, her brows pinched. “No.” 

A hand falls on her shoulder, and Artemis turns around, only to be engulfed in a tight hug. The familiar fabric of Halo’s suit brushes against her skin and it sends her into tears. Artemis hugs her friend tightly.

“You’re okay!” Artemis laughs, pulling back from the hug to see Halo’s smiling face. 

Halo speaks, but none of the words break through the buzzing in Artemis’s ears. 

“I can’t hear you–” Artemis points at her ears, “–the boom, it– I can’t hear– Is it over? Where’s Victor?”

Halo stops talking and takes Artemis’s face between her hands. She mouths some words, but in the darkness, Artemis is only able to catch the last word. She raises a brow. 

“Souvenir?” Artemis asks, tilting her head. 

Halo nods giddily before pointing at the others gathered behind her. All Artemis makes out is the back of Dick and Brion’s heads standing out above the heads of the rest of M’gann’s team. Victor is there, too, leaning against Forager. Artemis releases a small breath. Safe.

“What?” Artemis asks, turning back to Halo. 

Halo shakes her head, grabs Artemis’s hands, and flies up, pulling Artemis into the air with her. Artemis’s head spins from the sudden movement, and it isn’t until Halo places her in the center of the circle that her vision clears and the buzzing in her ears is replaced by the sudden silence of the people surrounding her. 

Artemis steadies herself, turns around, and freezes. Her eyes take in the bright yellow and red of the suit, the broken goggles around his neck, and the violent scar running along the right side of his jawline. It has to be a joke, a horrible, terrible, cruel, unforgivable joke, because this– this is impossible– this is unreal– this is–

“Artemis,” Wally says breathlessly, pulling himself out of Dick’s grip to step towards her. “Long time no see.” 

He closes the gap between them in two short steps but it feels like an eternity before he’s standing in front of her. Wally holds his hand just beside her cheek, hovering so close she can feel the heat radiating from his ungloved hand. He keeps his hand there for a long moment, and his eyes hold hers as though if he touches her she’ll disappear. Artemis’s own hand moves of its own accord, stopping a centimeter away from the flash symbol on Wally’s chest. They both exhale before making the slightest of contact with each other. 

It’s not a joke. Artemis bites at her lip to keep from crying out, but that does nothing to stem the onslaught of tears in her eyes. It’s not impossible.  

“No kidding,” escapes Artemis’s lips in the smallest of whispers, as she moves her shaking hand up his suit to his face. She cradles the edge of his jaw in her palm as her fingers trace the scar running up his cheek. 

“You’re really here,” Artemis manages to say, before she wraps her arms over his shoulders and pulls him close. He returns the tight embrace and her feet lift off the ground.

“I’m really here,” Wally repeats, like even he can’t believe it.

“Yeah, you are, man,” Dick says, clapping Wally on the back and laughing in between lingering sobs. 

Artemis releases Wally from her death grip before taking his face between her hands and pulling him in for a kiss, and another, and another, and one more for good measure. 

When they pull back, they’re both laughing and crying, and holding each other close. Dick pulls them both into a hug, which leads to all three of them falling to their knees. Wally sits on the ground and pulls Artemis into his lap while Dick wraps his arms around them both from the side. Artemis stays pressed firmly against Wally’s chest, her arms wrapped around him, but she makes room for Dick to place his head on Wally’s shoulder and quietly cry. 

Everyone is talking, cheering, crying, but Artemis only registers the sound of M’gann’s quick scream behind the lingering ringing in her ears. She can’t see the others from her position or through her tears, but Artemis sure feels the impact when M’gann crashes into their dogpile and extends her arms around them all. Conner is next to join the mix as he reaches into the pile, finds Wally’s forearm through all the limbs, and holds on tight. Kaldur is last, settling on placing his hand atop Wally’s head and falling to his knees beside M’gann. 

Artemis shuts her eyes tightly as the laughs and sobs keep coming, from all edges of their little circle. She drinks in this moment and bottles it up, storing it in her mind for when they all regain some semblance of composure. But who could blame them?

“Holy shit,” Wally says, his head bowed near Artemis’s ear, “I missed you guys.”

“We missed you, too.” 

[sol1056]

let’s just leave this here

so let’s see how quickly I can get through a bunch of these, just so they don’t languish for the next month... here we go. behind the cut:  why the opening never changed, why DW is deploying Josh again, a few about Iverson & Hedrick, is a reboot possible, staying in fandom vs leaving... and some others in the same vein. 

why did they keep the same opening for all of vld seasons, considering the line-up was never supposed to come back to the original from s3?

Every indication is that originally, the team would return to the original lineup. Keeping the opening was probably meant to remind audiences of that inevitability. Or you could believe LM, who said the opening cost 20K to make, and thus was too expensive to do more than once. She’d rather spend that money on a vacation. 

So I've heard that Josh Keaton is doing damage control for S8. Do you think Dreamworks sent him in because they know that he's the one guy that no one can get mad at? After what some of the fans have done to him this past year [...] I’m amazed that he's willing to stick around and try to make his fans happy for as long as he can. I can see why people say "We don't deserve him."

Josh has somehow managed that sweet spot between charming the fandom and gaining its trust. Doesn’t hurt that he’s got the chops, voice-wise, to take written dross (no, really, some of those lines are horribly clunky) and spin it into gold. More than anything else, he comes across as genuine, and that adds a certain credibility to his words. 

But... Josh doesn’t really have a choice. Playing Shiro is what catapulted Josh upwards, and the last thing he can afford to do is piss off DW by refusing to play ball. He’d only be damaging himself (and his reputation among potential employers) if he didn’t snap to attention when called. Plus, I think he really does sincerely love the character, but it’s got to be a tough spot for him right now. 

When you get down to it, the only one on VLD’s (former) staff who seems to believe Shiro belongs in the story and should be respected as part of the story... is Josh. Who else can Shiro’s fans look to, if Josh stops speaking?

So, yeah, Josh is it. And I bet he knows that, and knows it’s just part of signing up for such a major role. This is part of his job. 

So I came across a pic of Mitch Iverson from SDCC 2018 where he and Tim Hedrick weren't in the panel ... and [Iverson] was wearing a SHIRO BLACK PALADIN top ... while the EPs & Hamilton were in the panel promoting S7, Iverson supported Hedrick & his story, and Shiro.

Hedrick was actively involved in every script as the story editor, and reportedly conceived of Shiro as an astronaut returning after his capture by aliens. Iverson got his start thanks to Hedrick, thus it makes sense that Iverson would be simpatico with Hedrick’s vision of the story. 

On top of that, by SDCC Iverson already had his next gig lined up. He continued to write for VLD, so he had to be subtle... but a t-shirt was a good way to make his sentiments clear. Can’t blame the guy, seeing he probably knew what was coming and chose a quiet protest of his own.

As an American, how would you take it if someone, that is, Iverson, called himself a redneck? From what I know thats derogatory term & for people not exactly inclusive & supportive of minorities. He also retweeted an art of Allura with a quote: ‘Laters’, which I found in really poor taste...

Redneck is another slur adopted by the in-group. My guess is that if you called Iverson a redneck to his face, he’d be offended. But if you introduced yourself as a redneck, and then called him one, it’d be different. And yes, as a term, redneck has a complex history, and it changes subtly in terms of how each generation defines/uses it. 

As for retweeting things in poor taste... eh, most people don’t have any training in social media. Jokes are the hardest; it’s so easy for them to go so wrong. Until VLD, I’d bet Iverson was lucky to have a few hundred followers. How many follow him now? It takes time to find your footing in striking the right balance of humor and dignity. 

Sometimes the best course is to ignore the stumble. They’ll either learn, or they won’t. Either way, it’s their problem, not ours. 

Will Tim Hedrick be allowed to continue the voltron universe the way he planned it?  

I doubt it. He’s got a new project. If you’re now an EP finally getting your name at the top, would you really want to go back and fix someone else’s story? Sometimes it’s just better to leave it behind, and make sure the next thing you do is something you can have pride in.

...why do you keep saying the last episode Tim Hedrick wrote was The Feud? A lot of people keep repeating it, like it was his last 'fuck you' to the showrunners. But official sources all say 'The Journey Within' was his last episode.

All we can say for certain was that tJW is the last Hedrick episode broadcast. That doesn’t mean it was the last one written. 

Here’s why a lot of us peg tF as Hedrick’s last written episode: the story editor credit. Hedrick's the sole story editor on all his other episodes; tF is the only one in which both Hedrick and Hamilton share credit. The simplest explanation is this episode was edited in that window during which Hedrick had one foot out the door, and Hamilton had one foot in. iow, Hedrick put it into the queue, edited half, and moved on. Ergo, last written.

I can’t believe how they just managed to anger literally everyone no matter your favorite character or ship.

I recall a quote from early on, where LM said they had a feeling they couldn’t please everyone. The problem (which I noted at the time, and has remained true) is that the answer isn’t to just piss off everyone. 

It’s to figure out who you want your audience to be, and to write the best damn story you can for that particular audience. If you end up with a story only old-timer DotU fans love, and kids are lukewarm about, fine. If the reverse is true, fine. You can’t please everyone, especially in a reboot/remake. So you pick your battles, and write your story accordingly. 

Looking around social media, most people I'm seeing are either rightfully upset, or they're hyperfocusing on the one single scene they liked because they just don't have the energy to deal with the show's bullshit right now. How can they fuck up the last season so badly that it seems like the general reaction is disappointment and denial?

I think there’s a common cause for the fandom reactions: exhaustion. 

In American broadcast television, a 26-episode season runs from September to May, then a summertime lull, during which people digest and discuss. Binge-watching is changing this, but it seems one thing hasn’t changed: no matter how fast we watch a show, we still require processing time. 

What did we get? A half-season, two months’ break, another half-season, two months’ break, a full season, three months’ break, and a final full season. If every season had provoked a spike equal to S1/S2, we might’ve been begging DW by June to just freaking chill. Fandom had barely begun to process one season and a new one was already landing on our heads. 

On top of that, S3-S6 weren’t exactly walks in the part, post-release. In terms of controversy, S7 dwarfed them all. That made an awful lot of people (across the entire spectrum, from almost every sub-group in the fandom) disengage. Those who remained dialed back on their expectations (”as long as X happens, that’s all that matters”), or they hung in there, insistent it would turn out alright. 

So either you’re exhausted from not being able to fully disengage with the final season still in the wings, you’re exhausted from convincing yourself this one specific thing would be enough, or you’re exhausted from defending what turned out to be indefensible. 

Frankly, disappointment and denial is a fairly soft landing, compared to what might’ve been. But any way you cut it, the fandom’s worn the hell out.   

Do you think LM and JDS are gonna address this or are they just going to ignore the complaints, wash their hands and move on?

They don’t need to do anything. They don’t work for DW anymore. If someone has to address the complaints, it’d be DW or DW’s chosen spokesperson. I guess you could call that washing their hands, but the simple fact is they’re not on the payroll. They’re not responsible for VLD anymore.

do you think it's possible for dreamworks to rewrite season 8? i've never heard of a show doing that before and i'm afraid that we'll be stuck with what we got, but damn, i really hope that we will get to see the characters get the endings they deserve, if nothing else.

I’m not sure why anyone would bother. S7 was rife with problems; S3-S6 meandered back and forth. If I were to do a soft in-series reboot, I’d go back to the end of S2. That’s the clearest break, story-wise. 

But if you’re going backwards 50+ episodes to the 26th, just keep going and start over. More to the point: not a lot of creators would sign on to inherit problems not of their own making. Same reason new directors on a property will want to rework the script in some way (if not start over from scratch). 

Do you think this is truly the end of Voltron: Legendary Defender? I know that a lot of the cast and crew wanted to continue on with a sequel, and there's so many possibilities and things they can do in that universe, not to mention that Voltron is (or rather, was) a money bank...

Your guess is as good as mine, really. Hopefully we’ll get at least hints when the SACanime panel rolls around in early January.

There's a change petition for the "original s8" to be released ... [people] believe that LM and JDS are NOT the ones who ruined the last two seasons and that it was "exec meddling." Like, no, sorry, exec meddling appears to be what made it good in the beginning.

If we consider Yoo an exec by virtue of being CEO of Studio Mir, then I kinda wish he’d meddled a bit more. 

...I'm wondering if the original version exists, completed. In one post, you said DW picked Tim over L/J so surely that got animated? What do you think? Be real. I don't want to get my hopes high thinking there's some buried treasure out there to find.

Ah, no, sorry, I wasn’t speaking in the sense of VLD but in the overall corporate sense. Here’s how the scenario often plays out: manager A and employee B do not get along. The longer they clash, the greater the chance A will find an excuse to fire B. The project is literally not big enough for the both of them. 

B could resign, quit, or do a preemptive strike: go over A’s head and ask for help. If B leaves the company shortly after, it means the higher-up said: “I’ve heard A’s side, and I think A is right.” The exec might offer a good reference, or blame it on a no-fault bad fit. Doesn’t matter; the exec’s chosen A’s side. 

Now, consider what actually happened: B gets transferred off the project, and gets a major promotion -- basically up to the same level as B’s former manager. Either B has some of the most amazing dirt ever, is phenomenally good at twisting reality to seem like the wronged party... or the higher-up reviewed the situation and decided that of the two, B was the one worth keeping. 

Having decided that, the exec made an offer B couldn’t refuse, which would be to run a show that’s practically tailor-made to fit B’s dream job. That’s what I meant by losing the battle (how VLD would go) and winning the war (being the party seen as in the right, by the execs). 

The only way for A to turn things around is to have a blisteringly successful final product. It could literally kill two careers with one stone: the (former) employee, B, who spun such a good story, and the exec(s) who believed B. 

Given the numbers I’m seeing for S8... that exec did choose wisely.  

ETA (sorry forgot this part): There might be pieces, but it really depends on what version control is in use (if any). For that matter, even if there were saved copies, who’s to say those didn’t get, whoops, deleted at some point? I’d put my bet on there being nothing, now, except what we got. Sorry. 

I could understand if you never want to have anything to do with this show ever again.

Oh, jeez, I was here before VLD and I’ll be here after. Once we all get over our mutual exhaustion (and the holidays, bloody great timing, there), it’ll be time to roll up our sleeves and get to work. Fandom’s got a lot to do, putting things back together in all the shapes that’ll make us happy. This is the best time to be in a fandom, if you ask me. Everything’s just getting started!

[shiroallura]

How do you go about writing a chapter? Like, how do you plan it out, outline it and pace it? Every chapter is so beautifully well done and I'm just curious about your process when writing them

First of all: AWWW THANK YOU!! and i looove talking about my writing process bc i’m so modest, so keep the questions coming if you have any more! I don’t have a very regulated process, per se, but here are some things that stay consistent:

I always know my starting point, and where I’m ending. I make myself work in wide arcs, whether it’s an arc, something novel length, or even for an entire series (like my original work rn). I like to know a few events that happen in between, usually the bits that are really exciting / I think of earlier on, and then it’s just a matter of connecting the dots. That way I’m coherent and always on track, but I can still surprise myself and take detours and change things up if I need to.

Specifically for my TSBS chapters, though, I’m always considering this list of questions:

Where does this fit within the season, and what does this chapter have to achieve before it’s over?

Which characters most recently got focus? Who hasn’t had it in a while? 

Which characters need focus to keep a plot or character point relevant and overarching?

Is this scene fulfilling at least two purposes, if not more?

Am I keeping with emotional continuity?

Am I treating all my characters like people?

What is coming back around later that can be reasonably introduced now? What needs to be introduced now so that it feels set up when it comes back in a few chapters?

Am I giving breathing room to the characters? If I’m not, is that the point?

Is this chapter more plot or character driven? Which does it need to be? How should I make sure each side remains decently balanced even if I need to lean more one way than the other?

What Shallura scenes can/should I include in this chapter?

Is my relationship development even and not rushed?

What gen / team scenes can I include? What team relationships make the most sense / need to develop now so that they’re more firmly established? Which team relationships haven’t been touched on yet, and where can I make time for them?

What things that have already happened/affected the characters can be brought back here? (Bleeds into emotional continuity). What parallels are the most poignant to draw?

Is this a useful time for foreshadowing?

As outlining my chapters, I use the show’s s2 as a very loose guideline and take whatever I like from it, wring it for the good parts, and then string it along in a list of bullet points under a chapter title of what I know this chapter needs to include. I’m always flexible and waiting for wiggle room, of including a bit more or a bit less (if it got a lot longer than expected) in the chapter. I’m already doing that with chapter fourteen, even, and shuffling a couple things I thought would happen in the chapter to help bulk up chapter fifteen.

Above all else, tho, I have fun and prioritize character over plot, and given that 90% of vld’s issues stem from prioritizing plot over character, it’s really not that hard to fix, even if I’m putting a lot of hard work into it. 

I also follow my self indulgences, as I know if someone clicked on this fic they were likely disappointed in VLD in the same ways I was. For example, I was originally going to have Lance move onto being friends with Allura / stop flirting in s3, but when I was like, “screw it, let’s have it happen now,” in mid-s2, not only did it make me hella happy and make me like Lance a lot more, it’s already opened up some opportunities in a chapter or two for some great development for him and other characters, so it’s a win-win.

So yeah, I’m trusting my gut and at my core, writing the show I would’ve loved to see. I’m glad you find it as beautiful and rewarding as I hoped it would be

[xfandomwritingsx]

Unseen Glances - S3.E1.

gif source unknown 

Description: Little snapshots throughout the seasons of yours and Becker’s relationship spanning from the first meeting to the last episode.

Warnings/Labels: Fluff, Lazy Writing, Slow Burn, Annoyingly Not Blurting Out Feelings, Becker Being Becker, Adorableness

Approx. Word Count: 3,000

A/N: So I’ve had this idea for a reader character that fits into the main story line and episodes with Becker as a love interest. I don’t have the time, motivation, or dedication anymore to write it out in full like it probably deserves. HOWEVER! I really wanted to get some of this stuff to you and the easiest way to do it is in little snapshots. Some taking place during episodes, some taking place in between. There will be a little more telling than showing than I like but it is what it is. I hope you enjoy it because there will be more to come!

P.S. Gifs of Becker are scarce, so don’t expect great ones. And I might skip them sometimes if I really can’t find one.

Your name: submit What is this?

The first time you see him he’s walking with Lester through the arc, getting the grand tour. You’re in the main room, reading a couple of papers and catching up on some research when they walk in. You notice them and watch as he looks around the room, calculate but curious.

You had heard people talk about updated security and new protocols, but you hadn’t seen anything to back it up until now. By the looks of him, Lester had apparently hired more military men for backup. Lovely.

“You’ll be dealing with a highly strung and temperamental team of rank amateurs who just happen to be brilliant at what they do,” Lester tells him. You perk your head up and tilt your lips into a small smile when you hear him.

“Well that’s not very nice now, is it?” you pipe up, putting the papers down. “You know you love us.” The sight eye roll Lester does gives you a small bit of satisfaction.

“That’s Y/N, part of the reckless band of fools I just mentioned,” he barely acknowledges you before continuing on with his conversation. “Your job is to stop them from getting themselves killed.” The soldier looks at you and you flash him a smile that was meant to be charming, but combined with Lester’s words probably looked a little more troublemaker-like. “No matter what they say no matter what excuses they use, you and your men stick to them like glue.” You’re about to make another sarcastic comment when he continues. “We can’t afford another Stephen Hart, is that clear?” Lester’s voice lowers just a hair and whatever smartass thing you were going to say dies in your throat and you look back down at your papers. Stephen had been the first real loss on the team, and it still stung everyone a little.

“Crystal clear, sir,” the soldier responds evenly. Lester takes just a moment to recompose himself, less than a second really.

“Good Luck,” he says fleetingly. He walks past the soldier going to leave, but turns around after a moment of thought. “Oh, by the way, Professor Cutter won’t like you and he will go out of his way to make your job as difficult as possible.” You have to smile a little at that as the soldier raises his eyebrows slightly surprised. At least he was nice enough to warn the poor guy. “Try not to take it personally.”

You watch the new addition to the team as he scans the room, taking it all in. You wonder if he knows what he’s gotten himself into and how long he’ll last. A lot of people tend to come and go in this field. They think it’s all fun and dinosaurs until they face one and then suddenly they can’t take it.

“He’s not lying,” you say to him, getting his attention. “Cutter doesn’t take too kindly to the hired help unless he hires them.” His stance never wavers from his military attention stand and a part of you really just wants to push him off balance. He looks way too formal.

“Well my job isn’t to be well liked,” he answers easily. There’s a hint of dry humor hidden behind his serious tone. You like it.

“Then you should fit right in.” You hop off your seat, taking your papers with you. You walk by him, his eyes following you. You smack your papers playfully against his chest as you go. He glances down briefly surprised by your gesture. “Welcome to the team,” you call back at him before exiting the room.

--

You hadn’t expected much interaction with him. Most of the security just faded into the background, but all throughout the museum and the chase through the city, he surprises you. He takes initiative past just standing around with a gun. He actively asks questions about the creature. He takes charge, but doesn’t get in the way. It’s refreshing. And beyond all that, he actually has a personality.

You had seen him watch Connor break the Sun Cage and listen to Sarah’s story about the curse with an amused look hidden under the laid back and cocky stance. He’d even popped in and added a, “Bad luck” for good measure which made you chuckle. His eyes find you, and smirks along with you when Connor knocks the vase down.

Shortly after that, you find yourself in his passenger seat on the way to meet up with Cutter and Abby. They had wanted you to stay in the museum to start with, but now that you knew what it was and that it was out in the general population, you want to be out there.

He drives quickly, but not irrationally. You suppose with a job description of “keep people alive” it wouldn’t make much sense to get into a wreck. You pick your kit up from the floor where you had stuffed it when you climbed in. Putting it on your lap, you flip open the white lid and do a quick inventory of your supplies, moving to reorganize it to make the items you’re most likely to need easily accessible.

“What is that?” he questions, taking his gaze from the road briefly to watch you.

“It’s my travel kit,” you tell him, still moving your things around. “I’m the resident field medic. Or the closest thing we have to one at least.” You pick up a packet of gauze for him to see. “You wouldn’t want me performing surgery, but I can patch you up pretty good.” He tilts his head, seemingly satisfied with the answer and turns his attention back to the road. “You got thrown right into the fire, didn’t you?” you joke, trying to make some light conversation with him. “Creature incursion on your first day, lucky you.”

“They promised an eventful job. I’d be disappointed if I didn’t get a taste of it from day one.” His voice is even and slightly dry, but the humor is unmistakable.

“Why do I have a feeling I’m going to be patching you up a lot?” You smile lightly at him while closing up your kit. His eyes don’t waver from the road as he smoothly weaves between two cars in your way.

“Why do I have a feeling you’re going to be one I have to pull out of danger’s path a lot?” he counters, a playfulness replacing the irritation the words might have implied.

“Sometimes first impressions are wrong,” you muse, biting your lip to stop the smile. You want to at least pretend he was wrong.

“And sometimes they’re spot on,” he admits, looking over at you once more. You can’t bite back the smile this time and let out a small laugh.

“Yeah, sometimes,” you agree. “How far away are we?”

“Almost there.”

--

“I’m not bowing,” he says sternly, as if the idea is completely absurd. You suppose it might sound that way to the new folks, but if you were being honest, this wasn’t the weirdest thing you’d done in this line of work. You all start to lower yourself down and you notice that Becker is still standing tall besides you, gun pointed at the limping Pristichampsus.

“Like hell you’re not,” you whisper a little harsher than you intend. Reaching up, you hook your fingers into the waistband of his pants and give him a firm yank. Not expecting it, he gives a small umph noise and while his knees don’t buckle, his torso loses a bit of its steadiness. “Get your ass down here.”

“Yes, ma’am.” The sarcasm in his voice coats over either a displeasure or a surprise. You don’t really care which at the moment because it’s getting him to bend his legs and crouch down next to you, gun still held ready to fire if need be. You notice his feet inch forward just enough so that he puts himself out in front of the line. Your hand is no longer in his waistband, but is still resting just above his hip, partly because you’re too afraid to move and startle the animal and partly to help you keep your balance as you crouch on your toes.

The crocodile-like creature creeps forward and watches you all carefully. You can feel everyone in line tense up and lean back just slightly, as if that one extra inch would have saved them should it attack. Everyone except Becker that is. You can feel him tense under your hand, but he is unwavering, finger ready to pull the trigger.

Thankfully he doesn’t have to as the animal slinks back through the anomaly. Everyone lets out a collective sigh of relief before Connor yells out and falls from the boxes onto his back. You have to let out a breathy laugh, one of those laughs that comes when your body isn’t entirely sure of the right reaction, and pat Becker on the back.

As everyone stands, he turns to you and raises his eyebrows with a plain, straight face. You’re not entirely sure if he’s expecting an apology or an explanation for your actions.

“What?” you shrug. “It worked, didn’t it?” The smallest smile tints his lips before he directs his attention elsewhere.

“Let’s get this site secure!”

--

As you pass the coed locker room on your way home for the day, you notice Becker sitting on the bench with his back towards you, still donning his full uniform and just starting to untie his boots.

“You seem to know what you’re doing,” you say casually as you pop your head in. He looks back at you over his shoulder, eyebrows raised. If you’ve learned anything today, it’s that the soldier seems to communicate most in the subtlest of facial expressions.

“Well that is my job,” he answers, his voice smooth. He swivels himself around to straddle the bench so he can see you. You cross your arms and lean on the doorframe of the room. His shoulders relax a bit. “I’m not here to cause you trouble.” It was no secret that no one on the team had an issue with him personally, but were overall weary of someone who’s job was to follow their every move. It posed the potential for a lot of problems and red tape none of you wanted. “I’m just here to make sure you’re safe.”

You study him for a moment and he allows you to. He sits there, spine straight and face neutral, but intrigued. He’s military to a tee. He’s all straight lines and clean shaven, well-groomed hair you just want to run your hands through if for no other reason than to mess it up and see what he’d do about it. His build, his muscle, the way he keeps his gun nearby; everything says serious and straightforward. Yet there’s something soft about him somehow. His voice is kind and warming, practically charming. There’s honesty blatantly carved into his eyes. You nod your head slowly.

“I believe you,” you tell him truthfully. His head bows just slightly in appreciation. “Doesn’t mean I’m going to listen to you.” His lips cock up in a small smirk and he blinks away from you. “I trust Cutter with my life. I trust him to do the right thing and make sure the world doesn’t go to hell. So it doesn’t matter that I think your intentions are good or that you’re honorable or attractive.” You ignore the way he raises a single eyebrow at you when you say that. It wasn’t the point of the conversation. “If Cutter tells me to do something, I’m going to do it. Whether you like it or not.”

“I got that impression,” he says, obviously referring back to the bowing incident. “And I honestly wouldn’t expect anything different,” he admits, giving you a look of slight admiration. You’re a little relieved he’s not angry at you for it. “You all have a true loyalty to him. It’s something a lot of people don’t have nowadays.” He pauses for just a moment before adding, “I’m still going to do my job too.” You smile lightly.

“I wouldn’t expect anything else, Captain.” You push yourself off the door frame and stretch yourself out a little. “See you tomorrow, Becker.”

“Yes, ma’am.” You turn to leave, not noticing the way he watches you and doorway after you’re gone.

[wolfwhiteflowers]

-why i didn’t quit before / team family /s9-caryl

-big twd filming spoilers, 9x05?

-carick

-au

My thoughts so far.  vvv

I noticed some fans quit TWD early on like in s6 and they mentioned the flaws. They have good points and all. I wondered why I kept watching TWD. I think because it’s just one of the cool shows to watch on Sundays, and just loving the TF. I also think if I’m more critical of the show, I would probably quit the show around s3 or s6 too. Idk if it’s comic story way that made people lose interest or it’s the writing. Like a lot people miss the team family being really close and trying to survive..or on the road and not staying in one place. These comments are like what the comic-fans say too about the comics. So idk. Like it’s just how TWD story goes. Building up to a new world ..arc. (like Falling Skies show?) So, my point is that I didn’t quit back then because I just like the show and I was also was like hoping the show could turn around. I liked s6B. I find it interesting that Carol went to Kingdom and dealing with her issues. Richonne happend and Negan was introduced. (big character in comics) I was curious how it will go and I was curious what Carl will do. I know s7 and s8, the fandom didn’t like those seasons-AOW arc. I kinda don’t like it either. It was so dragged out and less TF. But I still like the show. I still feel hopeful that it will go better.

 When Carl died (and he wasn’t like comic-Carl-y, imo like I hoped for) that was hard, but I was like okay so then it’s Rick’s show and I guess Michonne will live longer. AOW ended in s8. S8B was entertaining to me, imo. But I hated the finale and what they did with Carol. The finale should have been like or even better than the s2 finale and tease us the f*** with what will happen and excite us. (remember Michonne first appearance and prison. s3 also had a time jump) Then we got a new showrunner and news about LC and with the finale being so blah & hard to predict, I was like uhh it’s 50/50 chance of the show being better than before. Maybe more Team Family moments? I was still hopeful. We got those spoiler pics of TWD cast like they’re in a parade and them going to the “museum.” I got so excited again and hopeful but a bit conscious about it because Idk what s9 was. Then suddenly we got the AL news of him leaving ( and then LC). I just felt crushed. We lost Carl and now we’re losing Rick, the two big protagonists of the show. That’s just quick and weird. Also totally seems pointless for the show to keep going,imo. (but hey at least Rick got like 2 years of bliss/timejump). I know he wanted to leave some day (duh actors arnt robots)  but I wasn’t expecting how it goes like that and it’s just not what I want. I wanted this popular show to end where they wanted it to end. Like Lost, Scandal, Fringe, GoT, etc. But no...show business..life happens or whatever, AMC wants more money. So yeah I lost hope on the show - I quit with this show. So this is why I kept going till s9, I guess. It’s whatever whenever is enough for you. Now I look back on it, it’s really around s5-6 when we feel like TWD is Team Family like and good or fun to watch. There’s some things I liked about TWD that other shows don’t have. Like this slow pace..that feels realistic sometimes, the music, and cast. But seeing other shows, I’m like wow ..we know who are the main characters are and they interact a lot throughout the series. It’s sad. I miss TF.

So yeah I just take s9 as an AU story where Rick dies. -_- I hope Caryl goes canon but well the show is like done to me. So Idk. I would watch or care..if Caryl goes canon and everything else is interesting and TF being close again. Like it’s gonna be Carol and Daryl ..Michonne? and rest are Negan, Aaron, Rosita, Eugene and Tara. meh. It’s hard what do with this. In time I know. So far, s9 just sucks. C/E is gonna be or is canon. I just like siiiigh. I wish Carol isn’t with anyone in s9. I want to know who is Carol in the future and have her with TF again. But it’s not that. Carol with Zeke for some reason. Idk  why tease Caryl in s8 and not make C/E canon in s8???? Maybe Carol is just to prop Zeke story and comic death in s9??? That’s another thing. There’s this original TWD show story and characters’ arcs and comic book remixes. I think what we want is balance of those two. But lately s7 and on it’s all super plot-y or super comic book-plot-y. So maybe Zeke dies and then Carol helps Daryl to start the Whisperer war and then ..then what? Will we actually get more TF moments? If Caryl does become canon, will their romance be well written and interesting? (Shipping a non-canon ship to a canon ship changes the shipdom/fandom. People lose interest.)

---filming spoilers and spec in s9

So ep 5 or so, s9 filming spoilers, it’s obvious Rick dies. So right there the show isn’t gonna do a cool happy ending for Rick and the Grimes. No Grimes family off to a boat or Commonwealth. Now, I know. :( Poor Michonne. (writers totally screwed up her character-journey)

 Based on spoilers, there’s a white horse (symbolism), that script paper.., Shane appearances. So yeah there’s some over the top death scene happening. Idc in some ways, because this is all AU to me. (twdspoilers4theprivileged tumblr) Based from the script paper spoiler/rumor, I noticed that Carol is there..actually the main five characters are there. It’s nice ..but once again it’s when something major happens. It seems like Rick takes the other parts of comic-Andrea’s death. He dies by trying to kill all the walkers in the herd ...to save his people(?) like Andrea did. It also seem traumatic too, our main characters are watching it as it goes. Like damn ..who wanna see that  super sad and depressing death of a character in this ep. Like sure ..Rick deserve this kind of death scene and how important and special he is. But ...it’s not a series finale and writers will forget about this in a couple episodes later with Daryl dealing with Negan and Whisperers, I guess. *Also I guess Zeke wasn’t there..and others. So it’s like Zeke isn’t or still not important in the show. So ..maybe he will die from Alpha in msf or finale in s9. I just think if Zeke will be a main character, then he gotta hang out with Daryl  and others,a lot. (so far he’s in ep1. so far Carol in ep 1 and 5..) Idk what Maggie will do / LC’s 6 episodes. There’s some play with time. Maybe Maggie dies in msf?

Yeah Carol so far is in ep 1 and 5. I don’t think she interacts with Rick in s9. I find it important for her to interact with him. It tells me writers remember their bond, care about the character Carol, and what they do with TF. So far, it’s seems like they don’t. This is the part that really upsets me..it’s something also that I was really hoping for in s9 and something to see if it will happen-then the rest s9 will go fine. I love Carick so ..yeah I don’t think there’s good Carick moments in s9 and I think Carol will only react about Rick’s death. Writers ..again don’t care or too lazy to deal with TF moments and Carol and her bonds with other characters. So, it’s like if writers can’t do Carick scenes so then s9/new showrunner doesn’t matter to me anymore. It’s over. Those Carick hopes or Carol hopes were all before AL news, btw. That s8 finale made me doubt.

I might accept TWD s9 and Rick’s death, if like the first 6 episodes or so was treated like a series finale and it was something writers/Gimple have in mind for a long time and that they wanted Rick to die in ‘series finale’. And then the rest be like a spin-off and plus being more character-y..good writing. But  eh. We still see characters dealing with his death and other plots going on. It just won’t work, I guess. But right now, I’m like it’s all AU, idc. TF are close and Grimes family lives on.

So, now that im like ‘whatever’ with the show or try to.., i wanna point out the flaws more lately. But it’s stuff we already know. It’s really crazy to watch TWD s8 and then watch the recent season (s5) of The 100 and how much The 100 flows better, character’s arcs goes naturally well or balanced. It’s not too (comic)plotty. And ofc, there’s girls power, and character interactions. Mains still interact. That stuff that I like and interested in.  I know they’re different shows. I think TWD is probably more like Falling Skies with how the story goes but it’s not really charactery..in story right now.

...Let’s do AU fanarts.

[just-whelmed]

A Long, Rambly, Incoherent Rant Regarding TWD

!WARNING!: a lot of complaints, a lot of tangents, specific shipping of specific pairings, wishful thinking and weird ideas, probably unpopular opinions -- all up ahead.

[i just needed to get my thoughts out there; i’m not looking to fight anyone over things i think/believe/like or don’t like about the show. i’m aware my opinions are not fact, nor are they the end all, be all for the walking dead. i’m just a fan who has no one to talk to about all this junk. nothing more. ignore if you want.]

I love The Walking Dead. It’s been a huge part of my life, my family’s life, for going on 5 years now. I’ve sat down every Sunday (when the show is airing) since the season 4 premiere to watch live, I’ve argued with family members after episodes, I’ve analyzed and defended characters, spent time making stupid edits and writing fluffy fanfics and just generally thinking about this show for an admittedly unhealthy amount of time.

I’ve never liked zombie entertainment. I didn’t even want to watch this show initially, but I’d been convinced by my sister one day and so we sat down in my room and watched season 1, which we rented from a video store before it went out of business. Right away, during 1x01, I realized that this wasn’t a zombie show—it was a show about survivors. It was a show about one man waking up to a dead world and wanting nothing more than to find his family. It was about seeing all these characters with all their complexities, whether you liked them or not, trying to keep themselves afloat while anyone could die at any moment. But that was never the point. The point was to follow these characters we meet right alongside Rick and root for them to conquer the threat of the world, no matter the cost. Because amongst all the loss and sadness, there was survival and hope. That’s how I convinced my grandparents to watch, too. 

And so it makes me sad, mad, frustrated, that I can barely recognize the show anymore. That I can rarely even enjoy it. Where’s the fun in watching characters you’ve cared about for years get killed off without any payoff (especially when it’s falsely promised that it’s for some type of “reason”)? Where’s the fun the show either being so predictable that it becomes stupid, or so outlandish that you have to laugh at the ridiculousness of it?

I know the common arguments, just as I know my opinions are purely my own. This is a show that’s created by a team who can do whatever they want with it. They don’t have to take the fan’s wants and desires into account (they rarely do, anyhow). They don’t have to cater to anyone. However, why should they then expect the fans to keep watching when they (Gimple) consistently flush everything we love about what made TWD what it is right now down the drain? Actions have consequences, and while yes, this is a show and what happens shouldn’t revolve around whether or not people are going to get mad, I do think TWD deserves a little more care and common sense.

And I’m in no way saying that this show should not evolve every season, that it should only be about 5 people and no one else, that threats can’t be bigger and greater or that main characters can’t eventually die. I know all these things, I accept all these things, I even like some of these things. But there’s a time, a place, and a way to do all of this, and the way it’s been done recently… it’s just frustrating.

Of course, no matter what happens on the show, someone will always complain. There’s too much plot, not enough character moments; too many character moments, not enough action; too much action, not enough plot. Etc, etc. Nothing can please everyone 100% of the time and that’s fine, but where’s the balance? Where’s the forethought? It seems like Gimple plans a season without thinking about the future of the show, and now said future is far too bleak—in terms of TWD itself and the state of how long AMC can keep this train running before it completely wrecks.

And everyone has an idea on when this started happening. For reference, my favorite seasons OVERALL are 1, 2, and 6. S3 had a lot of great episodes, but too much focus on Woodbury too suddenly. S4 had some stand out episodes, but was slow a lot of the time and had weird plot moments intertwined. S5 might be my least favorite, really, though it contains a couple of my favorite episodes in the series. The first half with all that hospital shit? No thanks, but the second half was pretty good. A lot of people disliked s6 and cite this as the season that things started to fall apart, but aside from the completely random obsession Rick had over Jessie and the fakeout dumpster with Glenn (also, Denise’s too-soon death), I think the season was strong. It had a lot of little character moments where most everyone got to shine and essentially helped change the course of the show in new and interesting ways.

Unfortunately, s7 took those changes and ran in the wrong direction. The pacing was off, half the focus was about Negan when we had three communities (two of which were extremely new) to learn about, and practically all the deaths were for shock value. (Also, the whole “blame Daryl” bullshit really blew up here in full force, stopping Negan from taking accountability for anything because he’s so ~charming~.) Now, I have a lot of individual episodes in this season that I actually really like, for various reasons (7x02, 7x03, 7x05, 7x08, 7x13, 7x14, 7x15, 7x16; obviously, 7B was better than 7A in my eyes). And there were a lot of things in the other episodes I enjoyed, too, but overall? S7 was kind of a big mess.

Why did Glenn need to die, honestly? What was the point of the dumpster bullshit if he was going to get his comic death anyways, only this time as an afterthought and therefore the exact opposite of the huge show-changing event they’d claimed it would be? Abraham dying, alongside maybe a surprise someone else, would’ve done the same damn thing that s7 showed us, except Maggie wouldn’t have lost yet another person she cares the most about, Daryl wouldn’t be persecuted for something Negan did on solely his own will, and we’d still have some fucking hope for a little bit. TWD immediately started feeling less like TWD when Glenn was killed off. 

Why is Negan’s characterization so flip-floppy? He was, to me, a threat in 6x16 and 7x01, as well as 7x03, and then for the rest of the season (as well as 8a) he’s just a joke-cracking, lame ass leaning cartoon who likes to pretend he’s not coercing his “wives” into being with him and who seems so obsessed with Rick’s dick that I’m not sure how he thinks about anything else. His relationship with Carl also falls flat. Yeah, I can see maybe if he had some kind of fatherly feelings towards him, but he just seems like a sociopath. He makes fun of Carl and then apologizes when he starts to cry, only doing so to gain control. He carts Carl around to show him the workers he treats as slaves, the “wives” that are only with him because they want to avoid a worse fate, and tries to emasculate his father by propping himself up as some kind of God to his “Saviors,” as if Carl will think that’s cool. He used Carl to break Rick in 7x01 and then was ready to bash his head in during 7x16, but it’s okay because he feels bad, right? Negan is a villain who has no empathy, who makes excuses for his actions the same way his fans do; there’s nothing to make the audience connect with him in a way that even the Governor, as whiny and dumb as he was, had. His s8 tragic backstory? Cheated on his dying wife. Okay. But it’s alright because he’s funny sometimes, yeah? In my opinion, Negan is a weak villain who’s plot armor is so obvious that so much of the show has become stupid. He controls so many people and yet you’re telling me that only Dwight hates him? That no one can just freaking shoot the guy who strolls around without a care? You’re telling me that Rosita is suddenly a shit shot and hits the small surface of baseball bat instead of Negan’s forehead? You’re telling me Sasha couldn’t take the knife from the rapist in the cell and stab Negan? She was going to die anyways, so why not just do it? You’re telling me they had Daryl on the B-Team in 8x01 because… why? He had a bike to lead walkers to Sanctuary? No, it’s because he would’ve popped Negan between the eyes if he’d been in that crowd, instead of shooting out windows too many stories up to even matter. Like… not to shit on Rick’s plan, because it’s pretty clever when you take the whole thing into account, but really? They could’ve killed Negan in 8x01 and the show would have been more interesting with Simon as the new main villain.

Also, what’s the deal with introducing characters (Heath, Sherry) that suddenly just disappear? I get actors have other things going on, but then there’s literally no mention of them again. Tara finds a sheet of paper, which we have no clue what would even have to do with anything, and hopes Heath is okay. Dwight gets Sanctuary’s doctor killed so he can lie about Sherry being dead. That’s it. And then what’s the deal WITH BRINGING BACK A CHARACTER FROM SEASON 1, SOMEONE THAT COULD HAVE HAD POTENTIAL TO SHOW MORE TENSION WITHIN NEGAN’S RANK, SOMEONE WHO COULD’VE HELPED DWIGHT TURN ON THE SAVIORS AFTER RECONNECTING WITH RICK, SOMEONE WHO COULD’VE AT LEAST FILLED THE EMPTY SPACE MORGAN WILL BE LEAVING ONCE HE HOPS SHOWS, ONLY TO KILL HIM AT THE START OF THE VERY NEXT EPISODE??? The most random shit you have ever seen, right up there with scavenger freaks that talk like robots even though the apocalypse has only been around for like 2-3 years.

It really pains me to complain about a show I love so much, but maybe it’s because I have such strong feelings for it that I have to air my grievances.

But wait, there’s more!

So, sure, season 7 had a nice finale, with Sasha at least going out on her own terms and Glenn finally really being acknowledged by newly appointed leader Maggie, plus the cool visual of seeing Rick, Ezekiel, and Maggie give rousing speeches to their followers, but we then get s8.

It had a strong start. Rick’s plan is confusing and, for some reason, not fully explained when it’s the ONE thing that should be talked about. But, essentially: Rick teams up with other communities to trap Negan inside until they can no longer survive, with the threat of walkers looming, rather than outright killing anyone because he wants them to surrender. Then, with Dwight’s information, they go to every outpost to clear them of outside Saviors and to arm themselves with more weapons. His back up plan, in case something goes wrong, is to call upon the group that already betrayed them. Then, they just need to wait it out.

Except a lot of things go wrong, as they usually do, and this makes up a lot of the plot. Great! I enjoy the fact that many of our favorite characters are disagreeing. Daryl, Tara, and Morgan want revenge at all costs; Rick and Maggie are struggling with morality; Ezekiel loses nearly all of the Kingdom and needs Carol to get him steady; Jesus, the new moral compass, has taken prisoners because he’s thinking not just about the present, but also the future and what the cost of winning will do to everyone; Rosita’s learned her lesson, Michonne is on neutral ground, Carl once again won’t stay in the house, Eugene’s become an asshole as well as a coward, and Aaron is dealing with the loss of Eric (which was unnecessary, but whatever).

But within these neat little things are several problems. For one thing, Tara in s7 seemed to care about the innocent workers, even after she learned about Denise, Glenn, and Abraham. Now, she wants them all dead and is kind of manipulating the fragile state of mind that Morgan and Daryl are in. Like don’t get me wrong, crashing a truck into Sanctuary was Daryl’s big idea (and it was NOT a bad one, entirely, just morally incorrect, which he even knew and seemed to struggle with at times), but after Michonne tried to talk some sense into him and we saw that he’s once again suicidal, Tara is right there to make sure he goes through with it, just like she said Morgan was right after he had a breakdown and nearly killed Jesus. As for Eric, I get that we need casualties in war, and considering that they never developed the background characters (Tobin, Francine, etc) like they should have, Eric is the only one people would have cared enough about. It’s all about impact. (Note: If it wasn’t clear, I do not ship Aaron and Jesus on the show. I don’t read the comics, I don’t like the comics, and I don’t care if they’re a thing in them. On the show, they’ve not spoken ONE WORD to each other on screen. They’ve never interacted, which is a shitty setup if the plan is to then try and convince us later that a relationship can form there, especially if they killed Eric just for that. Why does Aaron need to be with Jesus when he was already in a perfectly loving relationship? Tom Payne said it best: it would be lazy plotting. Aaron is grieving. Give him the random baby, since Ross mentioned that he’d clung to that bit of life in the wake of losing Eric, and leave him alone.)

Now. Daryl. Obviously, he’s my favorite character, so no matter what I say it’s going to seem like I’m defending him just because. But what you don’t know about me is that I actually like to see both sides to a situation. I don’t think one character is always right or wrong, I’ll admit to anyone if something happens that I don’t agree with, and then I try to see the other side if I can. So… Daryl’s been a popular character since his first appearance. Like him or not, he’s a mainstay and a huge part of the show. Daryl has always been hot-headed, violent, and emotional. He’s also always been caring, loyal, and an outsider. In 6x16, he goes out to find and kill Dwight, despite the fact that it would probably get him killed in return. Why is he doing this? Dwight, who he’d helped in the woods, betrayed him and stole his stuff. Then, he killed Denise for no reason and showed zero remorse. Rick, Michonne, and Rosita followed him out because they cared about him and thought what he was doing was stupid. People act like Daryl is the only character who does stupid shit. Yeah, he’s not, but anyway. Instead of realizing Glenn, Michonne, and Rosita have their own minds and make their own decisions, people want to blame Daryl for them getting captured instead of blaming Dwight and the Saviors for acting on Negan’s orders. In 7x01, when everyone is in the lineup, after Abraham is murdered, Negan taunts Rosita. He’s looking for an excuse to kill someone else. He’s purposefully going around, trying to see who he can rile up. When he starts shouting at Rosita, Daryl snaps and punches him. Stupid, stupid, stupid. BUT look what happens after. The punch, which Daryl no doubt thought would get himself killed, backfires and makes Negan like him because he’s not a “bitch” like Rick. Immediately, Negan turns to Glenn, who’d already spoken out of line, and beats him to death. Aside from the fact that the writers wanted Glenn to die, if we’re looking at it in the scope of canon, do you really think it was random? Do you really think Abraham was random? Abraham, who’d straightened up as a challenge to Negan when he first went down the line? He was a threat and Eeenie Meenie Minie Mo was a farce. He picked Abraham for a reason, just as he picked Glenn—because he saw how Glenn reacted to Negan suggesting he would kill Maggie, and then with Daryl’s outburst on Rosita’s behalf he realized how much pain it would cause everyone if he killed someone else (someone who already showed strong ties to another in the ine) instead of the one who punched him. This is behavior he carries out constantly: choosing someone at random to hurt when someone else acts out because it’s cruel, because the person who defies him is doing so thinking they’re going to die, which means they’re ready to die, and killing someone else leaves that person living with pain and guilt. He tries to make Rick cut Carl’s arm off to get him to break. He was going to kill Dwight for when he, Sherry, and Tina escaped, leaving Sherry alive to ive with it. He burned Mark’s face for seeing Amber. He killed Spencer when he sucked up to him about hating Rick. He told Arat to kill someone random after Rosita shot at him. On and on. This is a pattern. Would people be less pissed if it had been Glenn who punched Negan and if someone else died in his place? Is it only Daryl (who has always been portrayed as impulsive and angry in hard situations) that elicits this reaction? It continues into season 8. Daryl goes against Rick’s plan, just like pretty much everyone else has been going against his plan, and he’s actually got sound reasoning. He wants to blow a hole into Sanctuary to let Walkers inside, furthering the threat and shortening the timeline of their surrender AFTER they’ve lost many of their Kingdom fighters. Rick cites the innocent workers and Daryl tries to make himself feel better about the plan by saying the workers could possibly escape (showing he cares, but not enough in his mindset to back down). Rick pretty much tells Daryl he cannot do it, which is a bad idea, and Daryl decides to disobey. But honestly, Rick’s plan is to recruit the trash people that betrayed them and have shown not to care about anything other than themselves, so how is Daryl’s plan, as ruthless as it is, any worse? Then, when he carries it out, with the help of Tara and Morgan, it succeeds in what he wanted it to. BUT THEN PEOPLE WANT TO BLAME THE WALKERS ROAMING OFF ON DARYL, WHEN HIS PLAN DID THE EXACT OPPOSITE. AND EVEN AFTER IT WAS STATED TWICE IN ONE EPISODE THAT EUGENE WAS AT FAULT, I STILL SAW PEOPLE BLAMING DARYL. It makes no sense. But neither does the show half the time, so whatever.

Sorry. I needed to get all that Daryl stuff off my chest.

Let me talk about Jesus for a minute.

Jesus had one of the best introductions on the show in 6x10 (which is my all-time favorite episode ever). Tom Payne is strong in the role, which, from what I understand, is quite different than the one from the comics… and that’s okay. And no matter what people say, I actually think Jesus has been characterized consistently since he’s been introduced, we’ve just seen it expanded on in unexpected ways. The issue comes with the fact that we haven’t seen enough. Gimple has underutilized him constantly, for no reason. After a good start at the end of s6, he was a background piece for a lot of s7, which is a shame since he shined whenever he was on screen. We established that Jesus is pretty much the only real fighter at Hilltop, the only scout, the only person who’s out more than he is in. But when we see him in s7, he’s just hanging around Hilltop like no big deal. If the point was for him to be there for Maggie and Sasha, then maybe more than a couple of little scenes was necessary to show that. And in 7x16? They took away his big Negan moment without giving a single fuck. That moment would’ve solidified him immediately as a member of Team Family instead of being just on the edge of it, but nope, give it to the cgi tiger (i love her, but let’s be real). And in 8a? We’ve seen his morality, his philosophy, and some of his many capabilities as a fighter, but there’s so much more to explore and I have little hope that they will in 8b, especially in the right ways. I so hope I’m wrong because I love his character and there are countless possibilities for him (one of which is a relationship with Daryl, but maybe I shouldn’t get into that. Yet).

I’ve liked a lot of little moments in 8a. I like the action, the conflict, the spotlight on multiple characters in an episode, the dynamics. But Negan’s plot armor is still around, the trash people are still around for no reason, shocking deaths are still around, and it’s exhausting. For as good as the pacing has generally been, the little details of the overall plot are convoluted.

The show that’s been about survival and hope no longer has either.

As bad as Glenn’s death was, even with the way he’d been slowly phased out before that point, Carl’s impending death is somehow worse. Carl, who was Rick’s reason for living since the start; Carl, who we’ve watched go through so much, who’s grown up so fast, who was just a kid who kept losing himself and is now a man who is capable of so much compassion; Carl, who is the future of the show, literally and figuratively. It’s all gone. For nothing.

For all the talk about “anyone can die at any moment,” no one ever really thought that Carl would be an option, and it’s precisely this reason they did it. I don’t care what excuses Gimple and Kirkman give. I really don’t. There will be no payoff for this, just acceptance from those who haven’t yet already quit. There are people who might think this is overdramatic or who don’t care or who are happy because oh how shocking or because maybe they didn’t like Carl, but this is legitimately a huge blow to the show. Not even simply because TWD is losing Carl himself, but because it’s losing everything he represents to the show and to the other characters. This is a big impact and it’s entirely negative. The trailer for 8b has Carl mentioning Lori telling him he would beat this world, which is sad and poignant, but why does it have to be? Why couldn’t she be proven right? Why does Gimple have to ruin the very foundation of the show with dumb stunts like this?

Deaths are no longer shocking or a good idea. Killing off main characters when you have so few remaining is no longer a good idea. Focusing on the horrors of their world with so few moments of happiness and love to counteract it is no longer a good idea. (How many couples on the show are there at this point?) Watching the characters we actually care about get kicked down over and over again, without getting to see them stand all the way back up, is no longer a good idea.

We have 8 episodes of the season left. A lot of things can happen, good or bad, we can only speculate right now, but based on the course season 8 has taken so far? I’m not too hopeful. We’re going to lose Carl, we’ll lose Morgan in some way since he’s crossing over to the other show, and I would be majorly surprised if Negan dies. It’s hard to be excited for whatever else might happen when most of the possibilities are disappointing. Even with Angela Kang ready to run s9, right now I feel kind of apathetic. Will she have as much control as Gimple had? Can she mend whatever else s8 breaks and create a new, interesting story with our remaining characters for s9? Or will it just be more of the same—maybe even worse—because AMC can’t get it together?

I complained about Gimple sticking far too closely to the comics during 7, which forced the show in awkward directions that it hadn’t been on track for (Spencer becoming a random douchebag for the guts death, for example), but instead of finding a middle ground between adapting and tweaking storylines from the comic for the screen and creating original ideas in s8, Gimple’s now strayed so far from not only the “source material,” but also from what the show has been and what it should.

How can it get back to its roots while becoming fresh in a way that’s actually logical and interesting? Maybe one day we’ll see. Cross your fingers.

You guys probably don’t care about my undeniably optimistic desires for the future of the show, but maybe I can list them anyway, since I’ve rambled enough as it is. 

One: Get rid of Negan. As much as I love JDM and think he’s a fantastic actor, Negan’s run his course. I vote for Rick not sparing Negan, but instead sparing the workers and those like Siddiq who he would have otherwise ignored, if not for his son’s interference. If Carl wants Rick to be merciful, it should be a side effect of Negan’s death, maybe make him feel guilt about how he went about the whole thing, but don’t keep him alive. Heck, Gimple recycles plotlines so much, why not have Rick take the workers into Alexandria like he had with the Woodbury citizens? It’d make more sense than the mustache-twirly villain living while Rick’s own child dies. At least the Governor had some humanity.

Two: Slow down on the character deaths. Seriously. How many nameless Alexandrians are left? How many nonfighters at the Kingdom? Oceanside has already been touched by Negan and Rick, and while the Hilltop is currently intact, I doubt they won’t suffer some damage by the end of this season. No more main or side characters should die this season; no more mains in s9, either. There’s barely anyone left. The characters we’ve already established are what make this show worth anything.

Three: Time jump for season 9? I think the show needs it, at least a couple of years. We’ve got a new showrunner, now we need a fresh slate. If a few years pass between 8 and 9, more options for what to do with the plot will open up. (Will they do the Whisperers? Will it be some big remix, like turning Lydia into a boy for Enid, having Lydia develop a mother/daughter relationship with Carol, having no kid at all? Will Jadis live to become Alpha by finally shaving off that horrible haircut? Maybe we’ll get an original villain? Who knows.) But people will be healed up, rebuilding can be under way, and we can explore storylines for characters that could have started during the jump, making things feel natural.

How about some little things I’d love to see, but that we probably won’t? Buckle up for some major wishful thinking and maybe exit the vehicle if you aren’t on the same page as me for certain things... like desus, carzekiel, etc.

Maybe we can recycle Rick not knowing if he should lead or not, still struggling with the loss of his son and trying to live on for him and Judith. Maybe Michonne is more driven after the initial mourning of another son and takes a more active role in getting Alexandria back on its feet, since she didn’t want to leave it for the Saviors in 8x08. She and Rick are stronger together and can focus on raising Judith to know her roots, like Lori’s sacrifice and how much Carl loved her, keeping his spirit alive. Maybe they recreate the council from the prison and any new characters (Siddiq, perhaps the introduction of Magna and her crew) can be part of it, alongside the oldies like Rosita, Aaron, and Gabriel (if he survives).

Maybe Daryl has decided to stick around at Hilltop. Not only did he never fit in at Alexandria, but perhaps he feels an obligation to look after Maggie and the baby. Maybe Enid’s come into her own (with the help of Maggie and Jesus?) and can have a critical role within the group, maybe as kind of a runner like Glenn had been at the start?

Maybe Jesus is more secure in his position in the community(ies), more secure in himself, and gets a personal story… like, say, developing a relationship with Daryl. And maybe this, too, can be a new start/story for Daryl; a departure from all the self-sacrificing and depression he’s been getting these last few years. Daryl’s sexuality has been ambiguous since the beginning, basically, as we usually know or see who a character is interested in fairly quickly (Rick with Lori and then Jessie and then Michonne, Glenn and Maggie, Tara and Alisha(?) then Denise, Sasha and Bob, Abraham with Rosita and the Sasha, Eugene’s interest in Tara and Rosita, Aaron and Eric, Carl with Beth and then Enid, Jesus coming out to Maggie...). And the fact that it has continued to be ambiguous, and to be covered as some kind of mystery as of late, leads directly into a chance for one final, organic reveal. Daryl has always been a character that’s formed unique and important bonds with others. He was integral to Jesus being introduced into the show and they’ve shared some very important scenes since; plus, it’s easy to pick up on signs that Jesus might have a bit of a crush on, or is at least attracted to, Daryl. (There are so many desus scenes, shots, parallels, etc. that have already been talked about, so I won’t here, but you know. you know you know.) Showing a bond between Daryl and Jesus that turns into romance would be an interesting story, a new one for both characters, it would make sense in a myriad of ways, and it would also be groundbreaking. (Also, Daryl deserves some freaking happiness and dialogue for once, just as Jesus deserves to be pushed to the forefront, and something like this could do just that.)

Maybe Tara can make the move to Oceanside. She needs a break, some time to get herself together, and she’s closely tied to that community already… which is full of women. Give Tara a girlfriend that isn’t murdered. (Cyndie? How even old is she, I don’t know.)

Maybe Rosita can find happiness again, now that she’s more chill and humble. Her bond with Tara can be further explored. If they want to throw her into a romance like in the comic, it sure as hell isn’t going to be with Eugene (either kill in in redemption or do something other than this back and forth confliction), so how about Tara or Siddiq? Dwight seems likely, given their interactions thus far, and while I’m still salty about him I see that he’s trying to redeem himself and Rosita would be someone who would understand that. There’s also Gabriel, but I would rather see him continue to sort of mentor her.

Maybe Ezekiel can rebuild Kingdom and maintain his more active role as a King, letting his people know the drill instead of feeding them an image. Maybe Carol can be his queen, his second in command, and they can be themselves together as they know exactly who the other is. A romance between them already seems perfectly set up; we’ve seen that they clearly care for each other and have a deep connection. 

I could go on, but I’m just spitballing here (and probably also revealing some things i’ve planned for my fic’s sequel so oops). There are tons of things this show could do in place of constant tragedy. Yes, deaths can still happen. People can still be shitty, walkers can still bite and eat people, that’s how it’s always been. Conflict and angst have to there. But after a war this big, with so many losses from s7 and s8, we need something else. We need to bring back that feeling of survival in the face of certain death, those little rays of hope than shine after dark times. The show needs this if it wants to be good again and not just become another thing on TV that’s wasting away. 

The characters deserve better, the actors deserve better, and we deserve better.

I’m so close to quitting before we even get to what Angela might be able to do, and you don’t know how sad that makes me. It doesn’t matter that all of this is fiction; it’s such a big part of who I am at this point, and to have it screwed around with by someone who clearly doesn’t give a shit is something I still don’t understand, and I’m not even as critical about TWD as some people are! I can overlook a lot, find enjoyment in certain things that might otherwise be bad or annoying, and like… I don’t even know if I have an episode that I hate. I’m just done with wondering about what we could’ve gotten if things had gone differently. I still really wish they will, but it’s up in the air at this point.

So… Please, 8b, don’t burn that final straw. I want to tune in for s9 with real interest and investment and excitement again, not just because I’m loyal to the characters that are still standing.

Sorry.

[tam-nya]

NINJAGOOOOO? :^000

Under cut because it’s quite long (I wrote way too many quotes haha)

Top 5 favourite characters: Zane, Nya, Jay, Cole, MorroOther characters you like: Acronix, Cyrus Borg, Kai, Lloyd, Dareth, Skylor, Misako, Lil Nelson, Ed & Edna, Neuro.Least favourite characters: Eh I guess I don’t care about most of the skeleton and snake villains from the pilots to season 2. Skales is good though.Otps: JAY X NYA GIVES ME LIFE! I also love Kai x Skylor, Ed x Edna, and Misako x Garmadon. And Ray and Maya seem cute together.Notps: Let’s see... Morro x Lloyd, Lloyd x Kai, Lloyd x Garmadon, and Cole x Zane are the worst to me.Favourite friendships: I love the friendships among all the ninja, especially Lloyd + Kai, Cole + Jay, and Nya + Zane!Favourite family: Jay’s! Jay is a fantastic character, his adoptive parents are lots of fun, his discovery of his biological father is cool and his biological mom is beautiful.Favourite episodes: Home, Tick Tock, the Royal Blacksmiths, The Surge, The Titanium Ninja, Only One Can Remain, and The Temple on Haunted Hill.Favourite season/book/movie: Well I really love S3 the most! But S4, S5, and S6 are close in awesomeness too.Favourite quotes: Let’s see... Sorry if some are slightly off,  I might not remember completely correctly.

“There comes a time when every boy must become a man. What kind of man is up to him.” - Garmadon“We must all grow up someday. When that time comes, we must remember the lessons of our childhood, because our childhood is the greatest training of all.” - Wu (I think?)“We honour our ancestors, because if we do not look to the past, we cannot envision the future. On the Day of the Departed, we remember those who are no longer with us, and spend time with those we are still fortunate to have.” - Wu“You are like the sunrise. We cannot begin the day without you.” - Zane“Even in the darkness, we have the choice to reflect the light.” - Zane“I used to think technology would be the answer to all our problems. But then I saw it create new problems. Devastating problems. And then, a Nindroid named Zane saved us all. He was the perfect balance between us and technology. He taught us that life should be a balance, and if we focus on one at the expense of the other, that’s when the balance is off. Technology can improve our lives, but so can people.” - Cyrus Borg“You know, I think the real reason sailors name ships after women is because we name them after the most important people in our lives; mothers, wives, sisters. The people we can count on to be by our side when things get rough.” - Cole“I don’t feel anything anymore.” - Cole“It’s like I don’t exist anymore.” - Cole“Everyone wondered what powered Zane. I’d like to think it was brotherhood, because he powered me. And he’ll still power me as his memory lives on.” - Kai“I have no friends.” - Jay“Haven’t I suffered enough?” - Jay“Well, I’m HOOPED! And I haven’t brushed my teeth in a week!” - Jay“We’ll see who laughs when I have to go commando!” - Jay“Care for a mucus salt sandwich?” - Jay“Are you seeing what I’m seeing? Of course not, because all I see is my life flashing before me!” - Jay“You should never swear. It’s a sign of weak verbal skills.” - Jay“The only thing decided about you, Zane, is that you’re weird.” - Jay“I’m a tall glass of water!” - Nya“Now, I need to go before the perfume toxins enter my bloodstream and I go into shock.” - Nya“If you’ll excuse me, I need to go write a song about my feelings.” - Lou“I hate waiting... it’s beneath me!” - Morro“You can only save those who want to be saved. Goodbye, Sensei.” - Morro“Eh, kids. That’s why I never had any. Not because Gayle keeps rejecting my marriage proposals even though I’d make an excellent provider.” - Dareth

Best musical moment: ZANE’S FUNNY SWITCH DANCEMoment that made you fangirl/boy the hardest: The entire show. But I guess I love the Royal Blacksmiths scene with the ninjas dancing and then snuggling at the end.When it really disappointed you: I guess Zane’s drastic change in personality after his sacrifice disappoints me but ah well.Saddest moment: Zane’s death and funeral, Garmadon’s death, Garmadon’s SECOND death (when Lloyd meets his dad in the Cursed Realm but it has to be destroyed minutes later) Morro’s death, Nya’s death, and the Day of the Departed Scene where they’re remembering their lost loved ones and when Cole is fading from existence. Jay’s endless suffering in Skybound is pretty sad too.Most well done character death: ZANE’S! IT FRIKKIN RIPS YOUR HEART OUT.Favourite guest star: n/a?Favourite cast member: Brent Miller, he’s so sweet to his fans and makes wonderful videosCharacter you wish was still alive: I think it’d be interesting if Morro was still alive.One thing you hope really happens: Just more hella emotional scenes and more Jay x Nya moments is all I need!Most shocking twist: Cole turning into a ghost was really shocking to me.When did you start watching/reading?: I started lowkey watching 2-3 years ago maybe but I only became hella involved a few months ago.Best animal/creature: The lego people!Favourite location: Borg Industries is really cool.Trope you wish they would stop using: *shrugs* I guess villains being related to snakes in some form is getting overused (S3, S5, and S6 were different though) but I actually like how they’re used in Hands of Time, so it’s okay.One thing this show/book/film does better than others: Uhh it deals with heavy themes better than other kids cartoons and it has amazing CGI animation in my opinion. And I think the characters and humor are great too.Funniest moments: ...Where do I begin... I already listed some funny quotes before. Admittedly I find the S4 scene where a fortune cookie explodes in Cole’s stomach really funny. And Jay screaming/overreacting is often funny. I also like a lot of humor involving Zane’s weirdness, like when he was sitting in the fridge.Couple you would like to see: I wanna see Kai x Skylor again and see it develop more.Actor/Actress you want to join the cast: Ehh don’t really care.Favourite outfit: The ninjas’ teacher outfits in The Surge are so cuteFavourite item: Does Zane’s falcon count as an item?Do you own anything related to this show/book/film?: Yes... lots of lego sets, some books, all the DVDs, stationery... but my favorite thing is my lil Cole ledlight keychain!What house/team/group/friendship group/family/race etc would you be in?: I don’t think I’d be one of the ninja, but I’d still love to be friends with them.Most boring plotline: The pilots!Most laughably bad moment: Ehhh I guess some of the humor involving the skeleton and snake villains but it’s funny to my little brother, so at least it appeals to the target audience.Best flashback/flashfoward if any: Zane’s flashbacks about his creator raising him and then dying after erasing Zane’s memory. And Wu’s flashbacks about Morro’s descent into darkness.Most layered character: I think Nya.Most one dimensional character: The Overlord because he’s literally just an embodiment of evil :PScariest moment: The Overlord’s dragon form at the end of S2 was rather creepy. And Morro can be terrifying, especially when he possesses Lloyd.Grossest moment: I guess that would be Jay talking about mucus sandwiches and making Cole vomit but I find that hilarious because I’m weird.Best looking male: Honestly I think Jay is the cutest but they’re all extremely cute.Best looking female: NYA IS SO CUTE AND BEAUTIFUL AND PRETTYWho you’re crushing on (if any): Well, none really now but it was Zane before.Favourite cast moment: Brent Miller interviewing any of the other staff.Favourite transportation: I think the Bounty is cool.Most beautiful scene (scenery/shot wise): The Cloud Kingdom scenes are pretty, scenes with water are pretty, and the scene at the end of Day of the Departed where the lanterns are going into the night sky is pretty.Unanswered question/continuity issue/plot error that bugs you:Best promo: I like the S3 trailer but I guess I’m biased haha... the music is cool though. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tIuGSfSKZPEHonestly though the trailers for seasons 3 to 6 are all cool!At what point did you fall in love with this show/book:When I saw the scene with Zane in the apron and everyone laughing at him while he was just confused. :P

[sol1056]

if you promise peaches, deliver peaches.

After S7, the asks have been piling up. A few examples:

I was so confused in ep4 when Acxa disappeared, I thought she’d stuck with the team after ep3 and maybe I just missed the scene where she left, but others have brought that up, too.

Funny how the majority of the problems in s7 are because they tried to force BP Keith to the detriment of the story, and ironically, Keith's story, too.

I thought Lance’s family reunion would be much more emotional and be a part of his arc, since he was the most homesick, but then they gave that to Hunk?

Shiro got tossed aside in the most ableist, racist, and homophobic way, and Allura could have had a cool storyline mixing her paladinship and her castle storyline with a new altean mecha, instead of Shiro becoming a bad Allura 2.0 and Keith becoming a bad Shiro 2.0.

Srsly tho, am I the only one who finds it extremely bothering that in writing Allura and Lance they don't bother to show Allura coming to view Lance in a romantic light after her breakup?

Why even bother in S6 to make such a big deal of Shiro/Kuron saying his dream is to be a paladin over and over? Until he was revealed a clone some of us thought he was Shiro, so it's even harder to accept Shiro not being BP anymore.

The EPs seem to be so stuck in their initial idea and salty they couldn’t do it exactly as they want that they just ignore the story itself?

The EPs have spoken of being determined to get the VLD gig out of fear it’d be given to someone who'd wreck the story. That's understandable, but we're talking about a 78-episode, six-season, space opera mecha series. This genre practically demands a sprawling world and a massive cast, and it's far beyond the scope of anything either JDS or LM have ever helmed on their own. 

My guess is that JDS and LM didn’t realize the enormity of what they were taking on, or they (and their bosses) seriously underestimated the degree to which they were wholly unprepared.

Behind the cut: what I meant when I said these EPs are not storytellers.

I’m not surprised the EPs over-estimated their skill, really. People will look at a creative process like art –- where you often start young, practice daily, maybe study it formally, apprentice or intern (especially in animation), and gradually work your way up -- and they see the effort. They know it wasn’t an overnight thing. 

Too often, the very same people won’t accord that respect to the art of storytelling. It’s treated like divine inspiration, something that just happens. We’ve been hearing and reading and watching stories all our lives; how hard can it be to do it ourselves?

It’s goddamn hard, is what it is. I would love to tell you otherwise, but that’s the truth. You can rock your dialogue but you gotta track character goals, too. Complicated backstories only get you so far if you don’t understand how to modulate tension. You can have a great premise but you still gotta resolve the damn thing. A story has a hundred moving parts; scale up to a space opera’s necessary levels of epic and we’re talking exponentially more.

In my experience, the hardest part of storytelling — not the technical aspects of writing, but the art of storytelling — is holding the shape of the story in your head. The entire thing, all at once. You have to, if you’re to see how a choice at this point will echo down the line, or a motif laid here should reflect there, how the theme shifts but stays true from start to end, how these secondary arcs weave together to undergird the main arc.

I’d say a lot of what we learn in our first few novels is how to see — and hold —the story’s shape in our head. I’m not talking dialogue or voice acting or choreography. I’m talking about the overall shape, the vision and theme it establishes, evolves, and eventually resolves.

If we cannot, we will find our stories promise peaches and deliver pine cones.

Looking back, there are too many clues --- almost all given by the EPs themselves --- that they didn't have the experience to do this story justice. What they did have was a certainty that their vision was the best, an inability to deviate from that one story they'd devised, and a continual low-grade frustration at being held back.

Let's go back to the beginning. S1 starts a little rocky (to be expected as a team finds its groove), but S2 builds on S1 quite deftly. It’s not perfect, but in a storytelling sense, it’s the strongest season, and it's much too self-assured to be a beginner’s. It moves swiftly but steadily to a pivotal midpoint, and from there snowballs gracefully into its finale; it balances nuanced characterization with plot movement, and its opening promises bear fruit by the end.

In those earliest interviews and panels, the EPs are often casually vague about basic details, like character ages or relationships. At least twice their answers change, giving the impression they hadn't known and had needed to confirm with someone else. Generally, though, they're low-key and hopeful, possibly leaning on the borrowed confidence of that other storyteller’s influence.

By S3/S4, their tone shifts to a peculiar kind of non-ownership. They joke about having no idea what's going on, tossing out guesses as though they'd be the last to know. They offer head canons, rather than insight. They wear their frustration openly, alluding to the story they'd wanted, chafing at what had been decided for them.

As the story moved into the split-seasons, it's clear that whomever lent that guiding hand in S1/S2 was no longer present. Someone else’s fingerprints are on S3, and my guess is it’s mostly Hedrick, at least on the script-level. The word choices change, the cadences change, the beats change. From S3 on, VLD has all the hallmarks of a muddy vision. 

You can see that in the story’s shape. It holds together, but barely. It darts forward, then sideways, then treads water for a bit. It’s erratically paced, dropping plot points and introducing new ones, only to drop those as well. It can’t settle on a driving antagonist, and when it finally does, it can't keep the antagonist’s goal consistent. It sacrifices nuance for one-note characterization, and shoves most substantiative character growth off-screen.

This continues to S6, which generally continues the focus on plot coupons over character goals, exposition at the cost of emotional beats, and neglecting established characters to introduce left-field swerves in the guise of plot twists. On the plus side, it does manage to rally enough to end its multi-season prevarication, and put to bed questions hanging around since late S3.

It's worth noting that both EPs have only a single writing credit each, for the pilot three-parter. That makes it doubly striking that JDS chose to write the Black Paladins episode. After the season aired, JDS complained in passing about rewrites on his episode. If that seems odd, remember that an EP has final approval on every script. If it bothered him to have his ideas rejected in favor of keeping Shiro, it must've burned to have his writing choices countermanded.

From the timing and the episode credits, this must've been around when Tim Hedrick left the team --- and the EPs took full ownership. 

It shows in their post-S6 interviews. Gone are the ambiguous expressions or vague promises of doing their best. Their wording is declarative: what Kuron had been, what Shiro would be, the resolution of Shiro’s illness, the nature of Shiro’s past relationship. None is equivocated, nor couched as head canons. They’ve taken control of the narrative, and their interpretation is now the deciding one.

This change was important enough to them that they had to make sure we’re aware. There’s simply no other reason to tell us S7 had been written in its entirety, let alone tell us the original outcome. Nor is there any other reason to tell us they petitioned for — and got — permission to rewrite.

When I look at S7 with my writer’s hat on, everything tells me this is where the brakes came off. With Hedrick’s departure, there was no one left but the EPs themselves to steer the story. By whatever means, for whatever reason, VLD went from a crafted vision, to a conflicted one, to none at all.

Set aside the larger controversies for a moment, and just think about the shape of S7. It’s almost three seasons in one: the first part skips from event to event, then abruptly timeskips to reset the entire playing field. That second part in turn is divided from the last half by a two-parter that halts momentum for an overlong flashback with an entirely new cast, followed by a finale that mostly backseats its protagonists in favor of letting that new cast dominate.

There’s a common pattern in the way beginner writers react to critique, and I see that all over the EPs’s responses, from the beginning. It’s only grown worse since S6. They can’t quite juggle the story they think they’re telling versus the story they’re actually telling.

I’ve had these conversations too many times to count. I ask, how did this character get from here to there? The newbie storyteller is quick to explain, usually in great detail. I ask, but then why did this happen? The more I dig, the greater the chance the newbie will get angry that I don’t seem to be reading the story they’re so obviously telling. If I keep pushing, they’ll get defensive.

They’ll confidently assure me this is exactly the story they’d intended to tell, and if I don’t like it, that’s my problem. (They may not be able to hold the shape in their head, but they’ve probably already taken to heart the adage that one must stay true to one’s ‘artistic’ vision. The part about listening to critique even when it’s uncomfortable… that takes a bit longer to learn.)

My reaction almost always boils down to: you’re telling me this amazing story, but that’s not the story you’ve actually written.

Sometimes the best description of the shape of a newbie’s story is that of a house after a tornado’s swept through: the front door is on the chimney, the roof is half-off, and the windows are shattered in the front yard. Most of the pieces are there, but it’s all so jumbled the newbie storyteller can’t see what’s missing. They can’t hold the shape of the story in their head, so even when they know here’s where something goes, they’re too overwhelmed to remember the door they need is still on the chimney.

An epic story is no cakewalk, and boy do I give credit for that effort, but it’s one thing to learn by noodling in a fandom on AO3. It’s quite another to do it at the scale of a television series, let alone one with the expected scope of a space opera spanning galaxies. This is not the place to learn as you go.

Here’s why the shape of the story — and holding that in your head — is so important. 

Think of a story’s resolution like a fresh peach. You want the reader to bite into the peach as the culmination of everything the story has been, from start to end. But you don’t get a peach by planting pine trees. You must start with the proper seeds, and make sure what grows is a peach tree, such that your final act bears the right fruit.

I touched on this before with the promise of the premise. Themes, backstories, world-building, and motifs are facets of the seeds planted in the first act. Everything you need to resolve the story must be present when the story begins; that’s where your premise lies, and your promises are made. 

Through the entire second act, the tree must grow. The storyteller’s task is to trim as needed, bind this to that, shore up the roots, add water and nurture: this is where the theme expands, the foreshadowing laid, the questions reveal answers that lead to further questions, narrowing the outcome, each outlining the tree’s shape in sharper detail.

By the time the story turns the corner into the third act, the readers should be reasonably certain they’re going to get a peach tree. This is not a bad thing! You want them looking forward to plucking the peach and enjoying it. You want everything planted at story-beginning to come to fruition, at story-end.

That is why you must hold the shape — the vision — in your head, always checking against where you began and where you plan to end. You cannot throw out the entire tree at the end of the second act and start over; if you ignore the fruit your story is producing and insist on serving up pine cones, you’re going to have confused and possibly angry readers.

You promised them peaches, damn it.

The story is now midway through the third act. Everything planted in the previous seasons must now be coming to fruition… but it won’t. The EPs are openly (even proudly) reversing course on everything that’s come before. That means directly violating every motif, every thematic element, every bit of foreshadowing in word, image, or sound.

And at the same time, the story’s scope is simply too vast, and they haven’t the experience to juggle all the thousands of moving parts. The result is the most slapdash season, yet. Characters simply drop out of sight, only to reappear again with no warning. Themes and motifs built up over so many episodes are tossed aside as if they mean nothing.

The hand-to-hand fights are visually striking — the EPs’ strengths are in storyboarding, after all — but emotionally hollow, bereft of dialogue that could finally give us closure. Characters that would’ve once spoken openly with each other barely exchange a word; character-distinct dialogue is uttered by someone else, as though the VAs mixed up the scripts in the recording booth.

To achieve the emotional heft required for a meaningful resolution, there must be echoes of the story’s beginning. But when the beginning is negated—underscored by a timeskip that resets the entire playing field—there’s nothing to refer back to. The events now are happening in a void, divorced from the themes and motifs that created the emotional context in the first place.

This is by design; the EPs’ vision has never matched with the story as it was told to this point. They can’t go back, so they’ve rebooted. Once with the timeskip, and again with a two-parter episode that introduces new characters that can be entirely their own. Compared to the protagonists, these secondary characters have been lavished with attention to the point of overload: full names, backstories, designs. All of of that, and the time required to introduce them is to the detriment of the actual protagonists.

Whatever story VLD ostensibly set out to tell, that story is gone, now.

This is no longer a matter of losing track of the story, such that the promised peaches have transmuted into pine trees. We passed that point somewhere in S6. The EPs have burnt down the orchard to plant new seeds, while doing their best to ignore the charred stump of the story we'd been promised.

I would've preferred peaches, myself. That was the story I was promised, and that was the fruit I expected from everything I saw onscreen. But now? 

I hope you like carrots.