#Anti Callie stone

[masked-alien-lesbian]

Fixed it...I can't even with these people

[zhoras-bitch]

Reading the newest non-VIP chapter of TBB, I'm astounded at how Daphne is so much more of a well-fleshed out character compared to Cole and thus so much of a better match for MC because there's actually substance to their relationship besides inexplicable horny energy in the air. Wouldn't it be so cute for Daphne and MC to have some sort of artsy career together with photography and painting? Now I'm just mourning wasted potential, LMAO.

Honestly, I agree 100%. I do like Daphne a lot, which is very predictable of me, but anyway.

To be fair though, saying she's more complex and developed than Cole/Callie is setting the bar too low. They are such a nothing character. It’s been 8 chapters, which is over a third of an average Choices book, and all we know about them is that they are hot, rich and... kind of nice, I guess? It’s honestly shocking how bland they are.

Maybe diamond scenes give more insight into her personality. I kind of doubt they add much, seeing how most of them seem to lean into the horny, but maybe. In the diamond-free playthrough though, I’d argue they are genuinely maybe the worst single LIs in the Choices library in terms of character development.

As for Daphne, the spa scene with her and MC was cute as heck. I want them to talk about picture composition together. I understand why they didn't do it, but not having a Daphne route or a poly route in this book is a shame, they would actually add something unique and original to the story. Well, there will always be Infamous.

[zhoras-bitch]

In a twists that shocks no one, I, a Sofia Russo stan, also like the wife in TBB. Honestly though, you're so right about Cole/Callie and TBB overall being... surprisingly boring? Like TNA at least had the ridiculous soap opera appeal. TBB is just giving nothing so far, like, there isn't even anything to hate on besides how obviously m!coded Cole/Callie is. (I mean, a tech billionaire with a man cave who names their sports cars and likes video games and can't talk to their wife? Wow. Riveting stuff.)

I wish TBB let you romance Daphne she’s far more interesting than Cole

[morgansdeb]

☕️ alex leaving jo for izzie

*sighs* Okay, so I have several thoughts about this, but I don’t know if I’m going to do a good job at articulating them properly. This is going to be long.

So, this is probably my most unpopular opinion of all time... I don’t like Alex Karev. I never have. I think he’s annoying, a bully, and quite frankly, he did a lot of terrible things that the fandom doesn’t really address. I mean, when I finished Grey’s and I went online to see if others disliked Alex, I was disappointed that I found very few people that agreed with me. This fandom LOVES this guy, and I’m just here in my little corner like “nope, he sucks.”

I think the thing that bugs me the most is the hypocrisy in the fandom when it comes to Izzie vs Alex.

When Izzie left the show, because Katherine Heigl left the show, she became the evil bitch who abandoned Alex, that horrible ungrateful woman who didn’t stay by her husband’s side despite all he did for her. We know the reason Izzie’s exit from the show was so poorly handled was because of Shonda’s issue with Katherine not submitting herself for an Emmy for season 4 (which tbh, I can’t blame her? She was right when she said the material she received that season wasn’t Emmy-worthy, especially in comparison to Izzie’s storylines in the previous two seasons, which were actually heart-wrenching and better developed), so I genuinely don’t get where people’s beef with Izzie comes from. She was written that way because of issues behind the scenes.

And if I’m honest here... people forget that when Izzie left the first time, she was under a lot of emotional distress. She was BATTLING CANCER, JUST LOST HER FRIEND IN THE WHOLE WORLD, AND GOT FIRED FROM THE HOSPITAL!!!! Sorry for yelling, but this fandom doesn’t have any consideration for Izzie’s feelings. Webber fired her in a stone-cold way and heavily implied Alex helped him with that decision. So of course Izzie left. She was traumatized!! And then SHE CAME BACK. She came back and wanted to make things right with Alex, but he told her TO LEAVE. He was the one who did that. So what was Izzie supposed to do? Stay in a hospital where she has to work with a man who told her “I love you so much I almost hate you” (wtf was that line)? Yeah, I can’t blame her for leaving.

People always wanna talk about how Izzie is selfish when she donated 8 million dollars to open a free clinic, was the only resident who bothered to teach the interns (while Alex complained about working on the clinic and said the interns were stupid, lmao, what a guy), donated money to pay for a girl’s back surgery, decorated the house for Christmas and made socks for Meredith and George (and Doc!!), tried to be nice to the doctors from Mercy-West (and ended up getting called a bitch for it :///) and was overall a happy, sweet person who cared about her patients and her friends. Izzie was amazing, why are you all so mean to her?? Because she left Alex’s annoying ass?? If that man was my husband, I’d leave him too, lmao

ANYWAY... so yeah, Alex ain’t shit to me. The first thing he did when he met Izzie was tell her she wouldn’t last as a surgeon, then sexually harassed by hanging pictures of Izzie’s modeling days all over the locker room, cheated on her with Olivia, made fun of her relationship with Denny, called her a stupid bitch and stole one of her surgeries, made her cancer all about himself, didn’t comfort her after George died (seriously, this was so fucked up and nobody ever talks about it. Alex was so jealous of Izzie’s love for George and he showed it all the time)... that man was not “the perfect husband”. He’s lucky Izzie gave him the time of day after the stunt he pulled in the locker room. She was the only one of the interns who gave him a chance, when Meredith, Cristina, and George wanted nothing to do with him (and who could blame them).

He also bullied the hell out of George and April, especially April. People defend this by saying “oh, but everyone bullied April!!” (that isn’t a solid defense, btw), and while the other characters were annoying for that (I love Cristina, but her treatment of April was so awful, same with Meredith, Lexie, and even Jackson was a dick to her at times), Alex always took things to an extreme level. When they’re in the on-call room and are about to have sex, Alex starts yelling at her and saying all that gross stuff about not wanting to hold her virgin hand, and then we see April choking on her own tears at Cristina’s house and Alex never apologized to her for that, he just continued to bully her. He ALMOST KILLED Andrew, and I know that he beat him up because he thought he was assaulting Jo, but he didn’t even try to make things right with him?? He could have killed him or ruin his entire career, but the show had Alex be portrayed as the victim and the other characters didn’t seem to be bothered by what he did?? How did Bailey appoint him as temporary chief when he had a record??

Okay, so this turned into an anti-Alex rant more than anything else, but all this needed to be said. I know he became a better doctor and everything, but he never clicked as a character for me. His friendship with Meredith seemed forced (Cristina was gone, so Meredith needed to hold on to someone, right??), and it was very shitty how it took Meredith TWO YEARS to respect Jo as Alex’s girlfriend and Alex just let Meredith treat her like crap?? Never change, Karev. I don’t care about his friendship with Arizona, either.

So... this guy left Jo. He cheated on her, lied to her, and then left her in a letter. And the fandom is like “okay, but Alex didn’t do it!!! The writers ruined him!!!”, oh, wow, so when Izzie leaves Alex she’s a bitch, but when Alex leaves Jo, it was the writers??? Alex should be the most hated character on the show because what he did was horrible, but the fandom gives him a pass. Y’all hate Izzie, but this guy is okay in your eyes???

Another unpopular opinion, but I don’t like Jo either. She’s boring to me; I don’t care about her storylines (I find them quite repetitive), and I never cared about her relationship with Alex (they had zero chemistry to me). So no, I don’t care that they’re over. I do wish Alex had taken her with him, lmao.

I hate that they made Alex and Izzie end up together because now EVERYONE is blaming Izzie for Alex’s exit. “She hid the children from him!!!” Alex SIGNED his rights away and told Izzie she could do whatever she wanted with his sperm. It’s not Izzie’s fault Alex decided he now wanted to be a dad to those kids. Why does Izzie get all the blame for all of this? Alex is a grown man who made a choice. We also never saw them reunite on screen, so we have no idea what they spoke about. Maybe Alex didn’t even tell her he was married. I mean, he had no problem lying to his wife about where he was, so who’s to say he didn’t lie to Izzie, too?

I know, I KNOW that Alex leaving Jo like that is bad writing. But the only reason I care is because I hate that this storyline made my favorite character the target of fandom hypocrisy and hate. But to be honest, Alex got a better ending than most. George, Lexie, Mark, and Derek died horrible and painful deaths. Callie and April also had shitty exists. The ONLY one who had an exit worthy of her character was Cristina (not counting Addison because she went to have her own spin off).

I don’t know if I have anything else to add, tbh. If you hate Izzie but love Alex, you’re a hypocrite.

Oh, and George and Izzie forever <333

[travllingbunny]

The 100: 7x08 Anaconda

The mini-rewatch of season 7 that @jeanie205 and me did during this mini-hiatus is finished, and with that, I’m going to finally post my reviews of 7x08 and 7x09, hopefully before the show returns.

I’m tempted to start talking about the opening scene without any introduction, just like the episode itself started with no “Previously on” and no cold open (the latter, I believe, for the first time since season 1, when the show still did not have any opening titles).. but I’m going to still say a few general things before going into details under the cut. 

When it was first announced that an episode of The 100′s final season would be the backdoor pilot for a prequel show, that info was met with a lot of hostility (to the effect of “why waste a full episode on new characters instead of those we know”), which didn’t surprise me much. What did surprise me was that people mostly seemed to expect the episode to be 100% set in the past and unrelated to anything from season 7 - which, as far as I know, is not how backdoor pilots normally work, they still have to fit within the season they’re a part of. The structure of the episode is more in line with what I expected - while most of the episode is set in the past, the framing device is a scene of Clarke confronting Bill Cadogan in the Stone Room on Bardo, and the long flashback is both setting up a possible prequel, and revealing things relevant to the plot of season 7. The biggest connecting points are the Anomaly Stone on Earth, the importance of the Flame for Cadogan and the Disciples, and Cadogan himself, who is clearly not going to be a character in the prequel except possibly in flashbacks, but who is one of the main antagonists of season 7. The episode works as a backdoor pilot but is also interesting as a part of the backstory of The 100. 

I really enjoyed the episode - and as it turns out, I enjoyed it even more on rewatch, when I could stop and soak in all the new info and details - and I hope the prequel does picked up, as it has a lot of potential to be interesting, though there is one big concern I have about it. More about that at the end of this post under “Prequel speculation”.

So no Previously on this time (unsurprisingly), no cold open - and we get a brand new version of the opening titles - since this episode technically fully takes place on Bardo, these opening titles start with the Bardo Stone Room and end with another shot of the Stone Room we haven’t seen before in the OT, one with the Stone. The Stone Room is where they begin and end, just like the episode itself. And just like Clarke and the rest of her group have been stuck in this Stone Room for 4 episodes.

But I actually don’t mind it in this episode. At least Clarke is in the focus of these few minutes we spend in the present, and I really like these few minutes. We start with an expanded version of Clarke's response to the news of Bellamy's "death", with slow motion, distorted angles and close-ups of Clarke’s face showing shock and grief and numbness (and I’m going to post another screenshot of that, because I want to savor the moments when the show focuses on characters’ grief before going back to the action - and not just the type of grief that results in going off the rails and murdering people.) We also see Raven on the verge of tears, and Miller choking a little - the other two people who have been Bellamy’s friends for a long time. Clarke being Clarke, she picks herself up the moment she sees someone else in pain (Raven) and focuses on honoring Bellamy’s memory, just as Bellamy did in 4x13 when he believed Clarke was dead, and tells Raven they need to save Octavia and Echo: “We do this for him. We do this for our family” - acknowledging that saving them is something of particular importance as they were people important to Bellamy, and also including them in the “family”, as the term these people use to describe their group and the bonds that have formed over time. (Family is bond closer and less close than friendship. You can be someone’s friend and their family, but you can also be a part of someone’s family without necessarily having developed a friendship with that person, due to the overall bonds and loyalty.)

Then we get the first meeting between Clarke and probably the season’s main antagonist, Bill Cadogan, who comes to another wrong conclusion when he thinks she recognized him because she has the Flame (and, he hopes, Callie’s memories), when it's actually from a video Jaha showed her.

Gabriel has another moment where he helps Clarke (as when he covered for her in 5x13) and silently communicates with her to let her know that the Disciples believe she still has the Flame, so she could keep up that pretense. These two work well as a team.

The bulk of the episode is the flashback framed as Bill telling a story to Clarke - though we don’t actually see the flashback from his POV, and he doesn’t even appear in many of the scenes. In fact, it is almost all from Callie’s POV, and some of it from Reese’s.

And we get back to Clarke and the Stone Room in the end, with the shocking “twist” of Clarke and the Nakara group seeing Octavia, Echo and Diyoza as Disciples. Shocking for them, not for us - we know they had no choice. 

Clarke saying “You killed my best friend!” has caused some pointless (but in this fandom, expected) drama, where some fans saw that as “confirmation” that Bellarke is and will remain completely ‘platonic” - even though that makes no sense. What did anyone expect her to call him? My boyfriend? He wasn’t that. The man I love? My soulmate? Someone expected her to say that to an enemy she’s never met before, in front of a bunch of her friends and other people?  Very unlikely, even if he hadn’t still been Echo’s boyfriend when he “died”. Some thought “Bellamy” or “him” would have been better, but what would that mean to Cadogan? He’s never met her and knows nothing about her, and she was trying to make it clear how much Bellamy meant to her. If anything, the fact that she’s singled him out as her best friend is a big progress from their usual habit of never defining their relationship to each other - except for Clarke including Bellamy in the collective designation of her “friends” or “family”.

I love the way the Chromatics cover of Neil Young’s “Into the Black” was used in the ending montage - so I made two gifsets about the use of the song for the Cadogan family scenes, and for the scene with Clarke:

https://travllingbunny.tumblr.com/post/623186143096307712/its-better-to-burn-out-than-to-fade-away-the

https://travllingbunny.tumblr.com/post/623186346138370048/its-better-to-burn-out-than-it-is-to-rust-the

Flashback

This is our second look at the world pre-apocalypse - after the brief scene of Josephine’s memory in 6x07, where we saw Josephine and her friend in the diner. But that scene took place several years before the apocalypse (depending on how much time was needed to get from Earth to Sanctum on Eligius 3, which did not have damaged engines as Eligius 4 did after the uprising), since Josephine and her family and the rest of Mission Team Alpha were already on Sanctum 7 years before the apocalypse. And Josephine and her friend were far less interested in the current events than Callie or August, so we only got a few outside references, including the magazine covers which showed that Diyoza’s capture was the main national news, and that Becca was already very high profile and on the cover of a technology/science magazine.

This, however, is the very day of the apocalypse. In the first scene - Callie Cadogan and her friend Lucy in Callie’s and her mother’s home, after participating in a protest as parts of environmentalist group with the familiar name Tree Crew -  we get lots of info about just how crappy this world was even before ALIE started a nuclear apocalypse, through various news items on TV (see this post) - and it is like 2020, only taken to the 10th degree:

natural disasters as a result of global warming (a deathly heath wave is mentioned), new diseases (Coronavirus “Russian Ankovirus” outbreak), economic inequality (one of the news is that measures aimed at poverty relief haven’t met with support in Congress), internment camps in USA, anti-government protests in the USA that end up with riot police beating up protestors, together with technological developments, such as the first orbiting hotel (I wonder if anyone was already using it - if they were, there would be more survivors in space, but it doesn’t seem this ever became a part of the Ark), or the first brain transplant. a medical development which begs some ethical questions (since I’m pretty sure that a person with a functioning brain is still alive... I cant think of several different scenarios, disturbing to various degrees). 

The world’s population has risen to 11 billion - I guess that’s why ALIE thought there were “too many people” (but her reasoning was as flawed as Thanos’ - instead of killing people, how about increasing or just better redistributing resources?). 

It’s also confirmed that a Wallace was the POTUS at the time, meaning that the President and the administration went to the underground bunker at Mount Weather to survive the apocalypse (after which, as we know, they did the North Korean thing where they nominally live in a republic but their leaders are really hereditary).

Callie calls the US regime at the time “fascistic”, echoing how Diyoza characterized it in season 5.

Callie,her friend Lucy and August were all members of the environmentalist group Tree Crew (who already had the same symbol we later see Trikru the clan using), apparently declared illegal or terrorist or something by the Wallace administration.

Callie and Grace Cadogan also used to be members of the Second Dawn cult, led by her father Bill, together with her brother Reese. August also used to be a member. Possibly as a child of some other members. 

Becca Franko - described as “tech tycoon” and “reclusive billionaire” - had not been seen in public for a year, since she went to her Polaris space station (to work on the Flame, as we know), a year after she created the first ALIE (and quickly realized ALIE had a fatal flaw). She also owned her own network.

One other piece of info about this world: they had holograms as a means of communication.

Something that was not in the news and not known to the public: it seems that quite a few people were “in the know” about the fact that a nuclear apocalypse may happen (whether they suspected it would be ALIE, or thought there would be a nuclear war) - and even had a code word for it, “Anaconda”. Bill Cadogan was one of the people who knew it. The POTUS and his administration obviously had enough time to evacuate. It’s mentioned that a lot of people immediately started trying to get to the bunkers. 

Cadogan and Becca did not personally know each other before the apocalypse, but he apparently had “friends” in many of the space stations. This explains how she knew where the real Second Dawn bunker was located. But whoever these “friends” were, they clearly did not pass on that knowledge to the future generations on the Ark, since even Jaha, who researched Second Dawn, was only able to find public info - articles, Cadogan’s biography - and didn’t even know where the decoy bunker was, let alone the real one.

The most important thing the backdoor pilot needs to do, of course, is introduce compelling, interesting characters. It did pretty well in that regard - Callie is a likable protagonist, and the fact that the antagonists - Bill and Reese Cadogan - are her father and brother, gives more emotional resonance by putting family relationships at the center. The new characters have some similarities to the main characters from The 100, but are at the same time different enough. 

The comparison between Callie and Clarke is the most obvious. Oddly enough, Jason tried to draw a difference between them by saying Callie is focused on saving “everyone” rather than “her people” - which makes me scratch my head, unless he means that Callie will always remain absolutely the same through the prequel show, since Clarke also started off by wanting to save everyone - and that was her driving motive for a long time, until the plot kept putting her in situations where she had to choose between her friends and family and strangers, where the latter would often be aggressors attacking her people. What strikes me as the biggest difference i- not just between Callie and Clarke but between all these prequel characters and the main characters of The 100 - is their background and the world they have grown up in. Clarke and Callie are both “princesses” - from the privileged background, but in Clarke’s case, it’s privileged relative to the majority of other people from the Ark, like the Blakes or Raven (which meant things like, nicer living quarters, opportunity to watch recordings of old soccer matches as entertainment, probably less worry about not getting the medicine you need), but in comparison with the way the most of the viewers live... definitely not. The world Clarke was born in is a post-apocalyptic world of scarce resources and constant fight for survival, and even her happy (by those standards)’ life in that world ends a year before the Pilot, when her father is executed and she has spent a year in solitary confinement, expecting to be executed herself - before she’ and 99 teenagers are sent to Earth as “expendable”. On the other hand, Callie, Reese, August, Tristan and others grew up in a world similar to our own. There are, of course, many people in our world who also have to fight for their own day-to-day survival every day, but the Cadogans are rich, and the rest of the Second Dawn members and their families are no doubt not far off. This is Callie’s house:

Some of these middle-class and upper middle-class kids are rebellious, idealistic and optimistic and worry about the fate of the world, like Callie, Lucy and August.  On the other hand, there’s Reese, whose driving motivation is to impress his father and gain his love. He’s a rich boy with daddy issues, but he’s also a victim of emotional abuse - maybe physical, too (if we take into account a cut scene  showing a training session where his father injures him, under the explanation of making him tougher or whatever). Callie and Reese are only the second sibling dynamic we see explored on the show (I’m not counting Emori and Otan, since the latter appeared very shortly), and this dynamic - a sibling rivalry between a rebellious girl who is her father’s favorite even while she opposes and rejects him, and her jealous brother who wants to impress his father - is completely different from the Blakes. (It reminds me a bit of Gamora amd Nebula - and I’ve just realized this is the second time in this review I’ve referenced MCU.)

Watching this family dynamic, I was reminded of another family that paralleled and contrasted the Griffins: the Lightbournes. Particularly when Grace called Bill a narcissist with psychopathic tendencies and he was entertained by that, In the flashback in 6x02. Simone called Russell a megalomaniac - but that was really said as a cute joke, as the Lightbournes were happily married, and Simone was just as bad as Russell, and even more ruthless than him. But in both cases, we have destructive rich white guy megalomaniacs who made themselves into gods, and want to bring back their dead daughters. Daughters are both extremely intelligent, brilliant and charismatic, but completely different in personality. (The mothers, while all very different, seem all to have been medical professionals - I’m not sure about Grace, but Callie does mention learning how to stitch a wound from her.) Callie sees that her father is an a-hole and rejects his values, and is an idealist and altruist who wants to do the right thing and save people (while Josephine was a selfish narcissist). Her mother Grace is somewhere in between, as she also left Second Dawn and doesn’t fully agree with Bill - but will often go along with him, and tries to keep peace between the other family members, and thinks their family needs to “set an example”. With the Griffins, we had an idealistic, altruistic father and a daughter with similar characteristics, who adored him and misses him after losing him, and a mother who was similarly concerned with helping others, and the conflicts between them were about how to go about these solutions. With the Lightbourne, we had the evil version of the Griffins, and the Cadogans have a more complicated dynamic. Callie is more comparable to Clarke, and Bill to Russell. 

But one aspect in which Bill Cadogan is much worse than Russell is - where Russell loved his family, maybe a bit too much, considering what he did to bring them back, Bill loves himself and his “savior” role more than anything. Maybe his love for Callie comes close - and I get the impression that one of the main reasons he loves her is because he respects her and she challenges him - but it is still not his main motive.  He is ready to punish his ex-wife for disobeying him by leaving her to die. Reese is an a-hole, but it’s hard not to feel sorry for him when he thinks for a moment that his father is worried for him (when Bill runs up to Reese, who's injured) but Bill immediately shows that all he cares about is getting the Flame, so he can get the final code for the Anomaly.

Another issue is, of course, that Callie, Reese and Grace are POC, but I don’t know if race - or sexuality, or gender - will ever be raised as an issue on the prequel show itself - or if the world pre-apocalypse and right after it is supposed to be as post-race, post-sexuality, post-gender as the current timeline of The 100 is. On The 100, for instance, Thelonius and Wells Jaha being black or Clarke being bisexual or a woman, were not issues that affected their status - only class issues existed; if the pre-apocalypse society was different, then the show could explore Callie, Reese and Grace being very privileged in terms of class and status in SD as Cadogan’s family, and lack of privilege in other respects.

I’m not sure I fully buy the way Callie easily goes along with her mother and leaves her best friend to die. It seems to go against the rest of her characterization. But maybe it shows that she still wasn’t a full-blown rebel at this point, in spite of participating in the protests against the government and in spite of rebelling against her father - maybe she still wasn’t able to really rebel against her mother, too. 

Interesting line - as Callie stitches Lucy's injuries, Lucy says: "I don't want to be scarred for life" - which may be foreshadowing for Callie being scarred and haunted by the fact she left Lucy to die? Unless Lucy turns out to somehow be alive - but worse for wear. Which would again haunt Callie, too.

I guess Callie’s failure to at least try harder is supposed to be what drives her to try and save other people, after she learns that there was still room and resources for almost 100 more people in the bunker - and when she sees August fighting tooth and nail to save his girlfriend, when she is barred from the bunker because she’s not “Level 12″. August is clearly a character the show is setting us up to like - these scenes are reminiscent of Bellamy fighting to open the door for his sister, and his name evokes the Blakes (Octavia was named after Octavian August’s sister)..

(Sidenote: Callie mentions a high suicide rate (20 suicides in the last 6 months, twice as many attempts) - and this is something that would realistically happen in such a dire situation. It’s a bit unrealistic that it apparently never happened with Wonkru.)

The SciFi plot points relevant to the overall plot make an appearance when we see the Anomaly Stone on Earth, which Bill found in Machu Picchu and brought to the bunker (and we get an explanation why he didn’t use it right after the apocalypse but spent two years in the bunker instead - he didn’t know how to activate it - not being able to find the last two symbols)... and when, two years later, Becca Franko arrives from Polaris in her pod, as we saw in 3x07, with Nightblood as the cure against radiation she’s about to offer everyone, and the Flame in her head.

A few words about how I feel about Becca. While she is here positioned in opposition to Bill Cadogan - who is definitely a megalomaniac a-hole and a villain - I can’t see her as a pure unambiguous and unproblematic good guy we should stan, as Callie stans her. For starters, Becca is also a megalomaniac - she calls her second AI “the Flame”, comparing herself to Prometheus! (But she makes me think of Dr Frankenstein, and the full title of Mary Shelley’s novel was Frankenstein or the Modern Prometheus.) She is, of course, as a genius scientist, a lot more capable and competent than Cadogan,but she also has a huge savior complex (only she is focused on the idea of her AI being the savior, rather than herself), and is also another big capitalist - a “tech tycoon” who owns her own space station and her own network (and was so powerful and politically relevant that the Chinese and the Russian space station were refusing to join the rest of the stations until the US station destroyed Polaris -  Becca was apparently seen as a rival strong enough to challenge the US government?). She worked for a big corporation (Eligius) which colonized other planets and used people - prisoners - as “expendable” work force that can be left to die if necessary. And knowing that she had Nightblood developed more than 7 years before the apocalypse, and that she was worried about what ALIE could do  - I wonder why she didn’t offer Nightblood as the solution for a potential apocalypse before it happened, rather than isolating herself on Polaris to work on the Flame. That was one questionable decision - another one was putting the people on Polaris in danger and letting them die, so she could get the Flame to Earth. I could be more understanding of this decision if I could embrace the idea of the Flame as more important than anything, the one thing needed to save the world, as Becca believed it was. But her idea of a sole savior who will help everyone after being enhanced through an AI is something I find pretty questionable and a bit disturbing in general. To be fair the Flame definitely did fulfill its role once and help a person with a good mind use it to save the world - Clarke in season 3. But that was one time, to save the world from ALIE. This, however, doesn’t really justify passing the Flame on and on and giving people political power with it - even without knowing how distorted her initial idea would become in the Grounder society, surely anyone can see the potential for tyranny there? And Becca was aware that 1) the Flame could also make a bad person become even worse and powerful (as it has with Sheidheda) and 2) someone like Bill could use it to destroy the world, according to Becca herself. Seems like a way too big a risk to take.

There are apparently 744 different Anomaly symbols, which means an “infinite” number of combinations, according to Becca (err, not really; it’s a really, really huge number, but it’s not “infinite”, which bugged me a little, since I wouldn’t expect a scientist, especially one who uses the Infinity symbol as her logo, to use the word “infinity” as an exaggeration).

Becca manages to activate the Stone, not because of any scientific knowledge she has, but because the Flame, apparently, gives her enhanced hearing - allowing her to hear the sounds of the Stone, where each sound stands for a symbol. (Dogs can apparently also hear those rather unpleasant sounds.) Everything in this episode makes it clear that it is the Flame itself that Bill needs to find the code, it's always been about that. (Him thinking Callie is in there is just a bonus - emotional connection.) The Flame had no one's memories/spirit in this episode before Becca died, and Becca made it clear to Callie that it’s all about the Flame itself. If the Disciples knew Clarke didn’t have the Flame anymore, they wouldn’t need Madi or Sheidheda - it’s not about the memories, not even Becca’s., it’s that piece of plastic that's buried on Sanctum, if it can still work. (Or maybe they need Picasso :p.)

The most mysterious moment and the biggest question of the episode is - where (when?) did Becca go and what did she see when she activated the Stone the second time and when she and Callie saw the white light coming from the Anomaly? This is different from the green light we see when the Anomaly takes you to other planets. The white light is probably connected to transcendence and/or the Judgment Day that Becca said she saw - which Cadogan, with his typical arrogance, believes he is ready for. but Becca believes no one is. 

"It wasn't to open the bridge to another world, it was to remake this one" - this line would make me think that our protagonists are meant to rebuild the Earth - but at this point, I find it hard to see how this could happen over in just 7 episodes, with how the current storylines are going. So maybe they’ll focus on rebuilding Sanctum, after all.

For opposing Bill’s plans, Becca is locked up for 5 days, tied to a pipe (geez!) and, guessing what’s about to happen, she explains the Flame to Callie and tells her to take it and never allow Cadogan to have it, as she believes he could destroy the world with it. (Another often asked question was how the Flame survived Becca’s burning - we learn that it can and that it’s programmed to save itself.)

Becca is burned by Second Dawn Disciples led by Reese Cadogan, presumably at his dad’s orders. Which maybe was supposed to evoke the popular idea of “burning a witch”, but the historical fact that burning at the stake was the traditional punishment for heresy fits even better. There’s been speculation that the memory we saw in 5x10 was his - but that’s incorrect: Madi experienced that memory, she felt being burned, screamed and yelled what Becca was yelling, and we saw it from her POV - the Second Dawn members that were around her and herself reflected in their helmets.

Another memory we saw from Madi, the one we saw her draw in 7x09 (and which I initially mistook seems to be a memory of Becca or other people going into the Anomaly) seems to actually be a memory of the moment when Becca first interacted with the Anomaly Stone and talked about it with the other people in the room - Bill, Grace, Callie and Reese. In other words, every one of the Flame memories from this period may be Becca’s - we have no evidence that would help us learn who else took the Flame after her death. It could be any of the characters who stayed on Earth - Bill is the only one who definitely has never gotten his hands on it.

Retcons and Easter Eggs

I’ve always thought that the world-building, especially when it comes to the Grounder society and culture, was the weakest part of the show. Jason obviously followed some of the common tropes of post-apocalyptic fiction when it comes to the portrayal of Grounders, but didn’t think things through - and at some point, probably realized and/or heard/read all the criticism of the show and thought: “This really doesn’t make any sense”,  came up with the Second Dawn backstory, and eventually came up with this expanded backstory, which gives many new explanations. Even though we still don’t have the answer to the biggest question: how a society made of bunch of modern people, survivors, could deteriorate into a tribal society with a medieval level of technological development and lack of knowledge about science and the past culture and history - over a few decades. I guess we need to see the prequel for that, but there are some ideas how it could have happened.  I liked most of the retcons in this episode, such as:

Trigedaslang was devised by Callie as a child. The idea of a new language developing naturally over less than 100 years never made sense. (The “it’s a pidgin” explanation never worked either - as Trig apparently developed without the influence of any other language or necessity to communicate with people who don’t speak English. It’s just distorted/changed English.) The only reasonable explanation was always that it was an artificial language - we just didn’t know when it was made.

Finally we get an explanation about the fact that Grounders originated from the Second Dawn survivors and were influenced by their mottoes (”From the ashes, we will rise”), but at the same time, worship Becca as “Pramheda” and make their leaders take the Flame - in spite of the fact that Cadogan and Becca were rivals and that the latter was burned by the Second Dawn members. 

The fact that two factions already exist - Callie’s (adores Becca, wants to save as many people as possible by using Nightblood, clearly trusts in science) and Reese’s (Second Dawn true believer, burned Becca, needs the Flame for other purposes) may start to explain how things started going wrong and the society fractured.

Speaking of which, the Conclave seems to have originated from Reese Cadogan’s obsession with the fights his father made him have with him and his sister, and his dumbass idea of using a duel to determine who gets the Flame. This is a better explanation than “it is after an apocalypse, so they just started having death tournaments for reasons”. Callie, on the other hand, is much more pragmatic and doesn’t seem to care much about tournaments as a way to prove oneself - because she doesn’t need to, so she does the Indiana Jones/Harrison Ford thing and just pulls the gun and shoots him in the shoulder. One of my favorite moments in this episode. 

“Tree Crew” gets the award as the least expected and funniest new piece of info/retcon, though that begs the question of how the other clans got their names. I’ve joked that Ice Nation were a group of ice hockey fans... but for all I know, maybe that’s true! :D Or maybe the “Trikru” name was later misinterpreted as something to do with living in the woods, so the other clans started having names like “Boat people” or “Shallow Valley people”.

August made up the term Nightblood.  

"You must choose wisely" comes from something Becca said to Callie, about choosing the person to give the Flame to. Too bad that later Commanders didn’t know it meant “find the most qualified person” and instead got the weird idea that it meant making a bunch of kids fight each other and that one of them winning somehow means the dead Commander’s spirit “chose” their successor.

One thing that definitely makes a lot more sense now is the Grounder’s bizarre fashion sense, I can easily see a bunch of 21st century upper middle class/rich teenagers thinking it would be super cool to wear warpaint, tattoos and dreadlocks (even if you’re as white as the original Sheidheda), and some later Commander going: “I want to wear a crown! No, you know what would be cool? That thing Indian women wear on their foreheads? You know that thing? I could wear that!” 

Easter Egg: Callie was reading Ovid’s “Metamorphosis” at home just before the news of the nuclear apocalypse came - the same book that Niylah gave as a gift to Octavia not long after they went into the bunker (5x02). And maybe it is literally the same book - they sure weren’t printing any new books and someone had to bring that book initially to the Second Dawn bunker during the first apocalypse. In 5x02, it was symbolic of Octavia’s transformation into Blodreina. Here, it may be symbolic of Callie becoming a leader, or the transformation of the entire society.

But some other retcons don’t work well:

The Flame’s abilities have been retconed so many times, but this is the first time we learn that it enhances the Commanders’ senses - which is a big plot point, as it allowed Becca to hear the sounds of the Stone. We have never heard about that before or seen any indication that Lexa or S5/6 Madi had any enhanced sight or Matt Murdock-like super-hearing. 

So why was Becca called the Commander aka Heda? I don’t mean the fact that she was never one - Callie could have decided to call her the first Commander as an homage. But why that term? The flashback in 3x07 made it look like it was because Becca was wearing a suit with the word “Commander” (because she took the actual Commander’s suit before she left Polaris) - but since everyone knew who she was, why would that make them start calling her Commander?

Prequel speculation

There’s a lot of reasons why I’d like to see the prequel picked up. Firstly, because Callie is a likable and charismatic protagonist. Reese could be an interesting antagonist as he is her brother - and while he has been a grade A a-hole so far, there’s room there for character development, especially with his relationship with his sister, backstory of abuse by their father and the probability that he’ll understand at some point that he won’t be able to get the Flame to his dad even if he gets it. There’s also the fact that their mother will need saving at the start of the new show (if it gets picked up), and certainly a lot of other possibilities for family drama. And we’d probably also see Callie change and be faced with difficult and morally ambiguous situations that test her, much as we’ve seen with Clarke over the seasons.

Several other things mentioned by Jason in his interviews sound quite exciting:

Lost-style flashbacks to the characters’ lives pre-apocalypse: I’d love this. It would present a contrast before and after the apocalypse, and flesh out characters, and let us learn more about things like, what the Battle of San Francisco was, which wars was Diyoza in, more about Diyoza’s role as a freedom fighter/terrorist... can we get more Diyoza backstory?

the possibility of seeing the origins of the Ark and ancestors of our main characters like Clarke, Bellamy and Octavia (and we know we would see the ancestors of these characters, Jason mentioned that - the guy clearly does know what the fandom likes and wants), immediately doubled my interest. I just hope there’s a good idea how to do that without 1) the two stories looking completely disconnected (it seems this won’t be the case as Jason mentioned that Callie’s people will have to go to space to make more Nightblood and this will allow crossovers) and 2) with a good explanation how the people on the Ark, 97 years later, did not know about the survivors on the ground, about the Earth being survivable, or about the Nightblood, which had been used by Eligius years before. The line  "Dad had friends on more than one space station. They already know we're here" also begs for an explanation.

on the ground, we’ll see Callie and co. looking for more survivors (after all, there were more bunkers and other shelters) and offering them Nightblood as a “cure” - which could lead to a lot of interesting situations (and potentially pretty current commentary, if there are people who refuse it)... On the other hand, this could also lead to some more moral dilemmas when they run out of the Nightblood shots (they have 2,000 at the moment, and again, Jason has indicated that they will run out of NB and will have to create more).

Some of the big questions include - who becomes the actual first Commander? How does the society develop from there? When and how is the Anomaly Stone deactivated on Earth, and where is it now? How does Becca’s knowledge eventually get lost? We’ve heard it’s because the data got corrupted/deteriorated over time, but it’s a little too convenient that even Madi still had Becca’s memories, but the scientific and technological all other knowledge was gone during the following 95 years.

I have some ideas how it could go. A lot of people (including, obviously, Bill himself in-universe) wonder if Callie became a Commander and would like to see her be the first Commander. But Callie is the first Flamekeeper, and I don’t see her going “I’m the best and most qualified person, I should have it”. This doesn’t preclude the possibility - she may finally take it for similar reasons Clarke did in season 3, because she has to in order to do something important and there are no other candidates around. But that would be too optimistic an option. Maybe Reese manages to get his hands on the Flame, but Callie or August or someone from her faction manages to disconnect the Stone so he wouldn’t be able to get it to Bill? Or maybe someone else - say, Tristan, who so far can be summed up as “that while guy a-hole who hangs out with Reese” - managed to get his hands on it and then make himself Commander? If people like Tristan or Reese become the Commander, that would work better in terms of explaining how things went so wrong with the Grounder society.

There have been speculations if these characters are ancestors of this or that character we know. Maybe Tristan is an ancestor of this Tristan from season 1 (the guy who was sent to ‘slaughter’ the 100 and was killed by Kane in 2x01)? People are often named after their grandparents, sometimes even after their parents, or celebrated ancestors - names can get passed on like that, and Tristan isn’t exactly the most common name. Or, if Tristan manages to become a Commander - that would make it a popular name.

In any case, the prequel needs to provide a convincing explanation how the society of these survivors and their descendants went from what we see in this episode to the Grounder society we know. But this is my big concern about the prequel - and it’s the problem that many prequels have: however they get there, we know how things turn out; we know it all somehow goes wrong, and that not only will the antagonist fail in their initial goal (getting the Flame to Bill), but the protagonist, Callie, will ultimately fail in her attempts to create a better society. Instead, the Grounder society will descend into tribalism, worship of violence, and constant wars between a bunch of clans, the Flame won’t be given to the person chosen as most qualified but will be fought over by a bunch of children selected on the basis of “special blood” (as Nightblood becomes rarer over time) and forced to kill each other, and most of Becca’s knowledge will be forgotten, as Grounders become technologically underdeveloped and unable to really defend themselves from the Mountain Men, who will learn about them in a few decades and start using them as blood supply.

On the other hand, knowing that the protagonists will fail and that everything will go wrong is often the case with prequels (e.g. regardless of their quality, Star Wars prequels were certainly watched by many people), or, for that matter, with some period dramas (e.g. Babylon Berlin, which I love - set in the Weimar Republic, which means that we know all the time while watching the show that things will go horribly wrong on the level of the society). Sometimes that sense of doom doesn’t turn me off as viewer and actually makes the story more compelling in a way. But that would certainly be a difference from The 100 - no matter how dark, we can still hope things will turn out well and a good solution will be found. Or maybe everything will go even worse. We don’t know how things turn out with the humanity in general. In this prequel, we would know.

Body count for this episode: in the present day, no one. in the flashbacks... over 10 billion people.

Rating: 9/10

[polhfone]

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EXCLUSIVE: Wentworth Miller and 'Prison Break' Boss on Why the Finale Isn't 'Happily Ever After'

Warning: Spoiler alert! Do not proceed if you haven't watched Tuesday's season finale of Prison Break.

Did Michael Scofield get his happily ever after?

At the end of Tuesday's Prison Break finale, Michael (Wentworth Miller) revealed to his archnemesis, Jacob (Mark Feuerstein), that he has always been the one calling the shots -- successfully reframing Jacob for the murder he committed and originally framed Michael for.

It all worked out in the end, of course, with Michael reuniting with his love, Sara (Sarah Wayne Callies), and their son, Mike (Christian Michael Cooper), finally free of the shackles of prison. But did they finally achieve their happy ending -- one that has been years in the making?

RELATED: 'Prison Break' Sneak Peek! Sara Is a Total Badass in Finale Showdown

"Depends on your definition of 'happy,'" Miller writes in an email to ET. "Is he reunited with his loved ones? Yes. Is he at peace? With everything he's done and the man he's become? I don't know. That might not be available to him. Not after what he's been through."

As creator Paul T. Scheuring revealed, the final scene where Michael has a hint of a smile on his face as he looks longingly at Sara, his son, his brother Lincoln (Dominic Purcell) and Sheba (Inbar Lavi), had a different -- slightly darker -- intention.

"As scripted, it was supposed to be a bit more ambiguous at the end where Michael is looking over his shoulder and you realize while life is apparently bucolic, he’s carried something with him ever since, which is a paranoia that he’ll never get over," Scheuring tells ET. "It also insinuates that somewhere out there in the world, there’s another challenge confronting him or waiting for him. So, no, this is not happily ever after."

Though the finale had everything fans could possibly want (i.e. a dramatic death -- R.I.P. Whip!, epic bait and switches), one key element that seemed to be missing was a final moment between Michael and Sara. (One could look to episode seven, where the two first reunited in Greece, as serving that purpose.)

"The whole episode was too fast really for them to sit down and commiserate," Scheuring explains, elaborating on why that scene with the couple never came to pass in the finale. "There’s plenty of time to do that after the season, so it was really a function of momentum.”

RELATED: 'Prison Break' Boss on Michael and Sara's Reunion: 'She's the Endgame'

FOX

Even so, Miller and Scheuring agree that Michael and Sara's relationship, as well as being parents together for the first time, will be intact -- and it's going to take an outside force to threaten that for good.

"Absent. Til this point," Miller writes, in reference to Michael as a father. "Michael's been a kick-ass brother but as a father, he's a blank slate. But I think he'll get the hang of it. Eventually. Then one day his son will come to him and he'll be like, 'Dad? Can I get a tattoo?' I'd love to see the look on Michael's face."

“Michael at once is a lone wolf and he’s a guy who has his own agenda, but to become a part of a family unit, that doesn’t fly so well. You have to be there. He’s an extraordinarily loyal guy, as evidenced by the lengths he goes to get his brother out of prison. You can only imagine that he would be equally loyal to his son. Perhaps you’re finding some subject matter for what the plot of season six is," Scheuring says. “There’s no way in hell, going forward, that Michael will step out on his kid or Sara on his own volition. Something will have to come between them."

Meanwhile, the future for Lincoln and Sheba, who had a clear connection ever since they teamed up in Yemen, is less etched in stone.

"In Lincoln’s case, the insinuation is there’s potential for something with Sheba but they really don’t know each other. They were running around in a giant adventure across the Middle East and the world, and they barely had time to have a cup of coffee. It’s far from wedding bells," Scheuring explains. "But I would say Inbar Lavi is sensational. She’s one of my favorite parts of the season; I could see her coming back if the show ever came back."

RELATED: Wentworth Miller on Resurrecting 'Prison Break' Nearly 8 Years Later

With the Prison Break season now over, Miller reflected on revisiting Michael, revealing the most satisfying part about playing the character again for nine more episodes.

"Exploring his dark side," Miller writes. "In the original series, no matter how many people died or lives were ruined because of wheels he set in motion, I felt like there was this underlying insistence that Michael was still a hero. Not an anti-hero but a hero. One of the good guys. In the reboot, the gloves are off. I think we took a much more realistic look at who Michael is and what he's done. And the toll it's taken. On everyone."

The 44-year-old actor also noted that getting to showcase different shades to Michael and being more vulnerable this time around was a refreshing quality.

"He's been damaged, no question. But he's still on his feet," Miller says of his beloved character's seven years away. "I think that's one of the reasons the show appeals. I think we're drawn to stories where someone suffers enormously, and struggles through great odds, and comes out the other side. Battered but not broken. It's inspiring."

As for whether there's a chance Prison Break could return for a sixth season, Scheuring wouldn't commit. (Fox Co-Chairman Dana Walden revealed on May 15 that they "would definitely consider doing more episodes," though "there's nothing in the works right now.")

“I can’t even give a percentage to it because the prerequisite is a top-notch story. It really has to be high-end and until that story materializes, there’s zero percent chance," he admits. "We’re not going to just redo it to do it again. We want the audience to feel like it’s of high standard."

"Right now we don’t have another story," Schering adds. "It’s really hard to come up with a new, original prison story because [of] the conceit -- on some level, we have to break out of prison. There’s a desire on a lot of different participants’ parts, but until that idea comes, there is no season six.”

For more, watch the video below.

[connorrenwick]

How To Design a Home with Your Health, Fitness + Happiness in Mind

There are lots of design books on the market that are great for serving up inspiration for creating beautiful, modern spaces in your own home but sometimes, they’re not very realistic, attainable, or even relatable. Finding the perfect antique dresser or just the right shade of white paint can be important but style and aesthetics alone won’t bring happiness into your home. Instead, it’ll be the behind-the-scenes elements that really matter, like the flow of a room, organization and storage, optimal lighting and incorporating smart technology. Thankfully a new book is coming to town that addresses all the above and more. Written by author Jamie Gold, a professional kitchen and bath designer and Mayo Clinic-certified wellness coach, Wellness By Design: A Room-By-Room Guide To Optimizing Your Home For Health, Fitness and Happiness will help you change how you feel in and about your home with functional, implementable tips that go beyond aesthetics.

Jamie Gold

Jamie’s book is currently available for preorder and will be available on September 1, 2020, but we wanted to learn more about it as we wait for our copy. Keep reading to see what sneak peek tips might surprise you about your own home!

What was the original inspiration or impetus for you to write Wellness by Design?

I’ve been inspired to share ideas like these since I became a kitchen and bath designer in 2004, then started writing about design a couple of years later. I’ve always been drawn toward practical ways to make life easier at home; I’d much rather be relaxing with a book or playing outside than doing chores! As I embarked on my journey from 233-pound couch potato a decade ago to training for a Kilimanjaro summit for my 60th birthday this year, I realized how much my health and fitness benefited from enhancements I’ve made to my home. The impetus for this book was about putting those ideas in one place!

Kitchen organizers make meal prep easier, faster, and more accessible. \\\ Photo courtesy of Kesseböhmer/Kitchen Design by Dee Maher

An anti-fatigue mat can make long meal-prep sessions less wearing on your joints. \\\ Photo courtesy of GelPro Comfort Floor Mats

What are some of the benefits you’ve noticed from adjusting and enhancing your own home with the tips + tricks from your book?

One of the first things I did when I moved into my townhouse was add organizers to all of the kitchen base cabinets. That made meal prep simpler and less time-consuming; I never have to hunt for a tool. I also brought my anti-fatigue mat when I moved. If my back, hips, feet or legs are tired from training, they’re not extra-stressed by standing on a hard floor for long kitchen sessions. It has been a game-changer!

As far as my bathroom goes, when I started training for obstacle course races and other endurance events, I would come home dirtier and more sore than you can imagine! Adding a handheld massaging showerhead was great for both hygiene and muscle relief.

More recently, I’ve had to adapt my living room to serve a couple of evenings a week as a temporary gym, since the one I usually use is closed. Not strength-training for months while getting ready for Kili wasn’t an option, so I used the tips I shared with readers in the book to ensure I had a safe space to workout at home. With the help of a trainer friend who adapted my workouts from gym equipment to a few dumbbells, resistance bands and a yoga mat, it’s gone better than I could have expected! In fact, I plan to keep using my living room to help meet this goal even if my gym reopens before the trek.

A handheld massaging showerhead can help ease muscle soreness after a tough workout. \\\ Photo courtesy of Kohler Co.

A well-organized garage can host a well-equipped workout space. \\\ Photo courtesy of INTER IKEA Systems B.V.

Are there any ideas in your book that you think might be surprising to readers? 

I think readers might be surprised at the impact their garage can have on their physical and emotional wellness. For many of us suburbanites, it’s the first room we see when we come home. Is it a welcoming space that puts you in a positive mindset? Is it well-organized to get you out the door faster to the beach, a race or work? Can it be used for fitness activities, as many of my neighbors are doing now? If so, what needs to be considered? What are some garage hazards to avoid for your well-being and that of your household?

I think entryway organizers are essential, whether that’s adjacent to the garage or your front door – whichever your family uses most. Having a designated spot for each household member to keep their gear and shoes is a key to efficiency, less stress, fewer trip hazards and better home hygiene.

An organized entry with shoe storage keeps your home cleaner and calmer. \\\ Photo courtesy of M Monroe Design (Interior Design); architecture by Baxt Inqui Architects; Photography by Dylan Chandler.

Air quality monitors alert you to otherwise undetectable dangers in your home, such as radon. \\\ Photo courtesy of Airthings/GreenRoom.

Across the world, the home has become extra hard-working due to the pandemic. The home is also now a daycare, an office, a gym and a school. Are there any tips + tricks from your book that you could share for optimizing our home for health and happiness in light of current events?

It’s interesting that even though the book was scheduled to go to the printer before the pandemic hit us, so many of the concepts I cover for general health apply. I think that’s going to be even more important as we move into cold and flu season. The less vulnerable we are to getting sick, the better for everyone in the household! High efficiency air filters, radon detectors and plants for indoor air quality are helpful as we start closing our windows against the elements. I’m also a fan of hands-free technology for reduced germ spread.

On the happiness end of the scale, I suggest creating a space for yourself to connect with your thoughts, with comfort and joy, and with nature when possible. That could be a patio or a corner of your bedroom, but do carve out a quiet zone for yourself if you can, especially with all of the stresses added to your life right now.

Green walls can bring nature’s wellness benefits and dramatic flair into your living spaces. \\\ Photo courtesy of Soltech Solutions. Design/photography by Callie England.

Lastly just for fun, what are 3 items from the Design Milk Shop that you’d love in your own home and aligns with the philosophies in your book?

I’d love one of these Boro Throws by Studio Variously for my quiet zone.

I’m always looking for great planters to add greenery to my home in stylish containers. This Small Summit Planter by Capra Designs in stone would be perfect for my eclectic living room.

I’d love a place to display my white mug collection in my kitchen and this Xlibris Shelf by Sibast Furniture could be the perfect wall perch for them.

via http://design-milk.com/

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[dwdelaney-blog]

jan2019

https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=1O1vRdX8aGLekWJQ8IKrF_nq4NdrLwgXv

Fema & iema - not subject to us law

Different rules kick in when those agencies decide "emergency" exists - pres can also declare emergency and create work around for us law - same w/ state governors probably - see also osfm fire prention - arson frame - fraternal org recruit for ops - in essence "deputized" like posse - vigilantism - attys for argue such an informal relationship serves to shield such orgs - as well as corporations - from liability - they wanted to arg that I was in fact a terr threat in order to obtain the natsec exception - but they knew I wasnt a real threat - so the arg shouldnt work - and whistleblowers were numurous extremely persuasive - just pointing out the obvious - cringeworthy good - atlantic article jan/feb 2018 p39 -

Gov rnc - use false flag to create "emergency" so they can fuck with me - pow - cant have a pow w/o the - w -

War powers act? - false flag -

2a - militia function - defs arg that militia is ing - "armed" deputized - analogous to guns - chem

Also prob arg that guns are ind rt - recruits - natsec 911 excetion if they believe - I was potential threat - doesnt sportstalk deny this claim? - it should -

Gun control topic - black riots -

The auth doesnt have to flow from the stated 911 - a 911 in one area triggers a choice of options for a g exec - ie katrina could allow natsec - telecom infrastructure - econ - etc

Invasion of iraq was about me - rock - kid rock - duane johnson - twin towers creates 911 to designate pow - mitchell jessen - inginspk - and see law enforcement - scso - spd 2006 retirees - links from town to town - corp mcds - wal - gop yrs - natl guard roa - recruiters deps - security guards wackenhut securitas - carlyle - badgers - law enf fop -

What the fitchburg

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1/2

Pedophile frame is true - used to mobilize chem - poison - spfld dcfs - investigators - terry white - gonet - coal trucks - boes - auburn - eric hall mrt - dirt - roddavis - goodluckx2 - coal train - atl ns - resurgens - centaurs - fema - 911 - 33rd - vaq209 - lol - alec baldwin - top gun -

Not funny - there not fooling anyone w/ that nonsense - are u still sure u want to sell me on the idea - youre just trying to help me out

1/5

2 minutes agoDetails

Something in the water - no fooling Lake spfld & henson runoff - vets skinner Dennis pmoore - trace elements - industrial chem - cwlpdir - spfld municipal utils - Sium - dod funding - vulnerable population Henson runoff is dod funder - animal disease - bird flu - chem bio weapons - vets - vest - operant cond - two stage attack - water & trace elements create latent weakness - exploited by airborne chem - po - badgers - dod - supposed to look "organic" - epa sees threat but cannot act b/c exec action - courts uphold - no one can talk Was right about the water Xa sticfusion false flag re water pump - water dist names - and see ca And see van meter - scb - bd of dirs/sium - inb & pave il - henson ac forced air - hvac - consent - addiction frame - lenox

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1/7

Think the "wall" is proxy

Daca is consent for AC - no

953.

1/10

2 minutes agoDetails

Usccb ldrshp 98 - 2017 Gregory belleville/alton - spfld - stl - slu - callis cl&e - casinos pave il - concrete pipe - kurtz - mood indigo - academies - atl - ecole - keepn it real - koch bros - dinardo hou galv - xa spfld dinardo - links - sfd - kurtz amb deployment - spitzer link from stl to spk - blessac - paprocki - ipi - bishop lucas - basketball coach named mark few - student mixer at the bull dog - rotc guy told me about this new casino game he was developing - it was just like blackjack only the winning hand was at 22 Joseph A. Fiorenza, Bishop of Galveston-Houston (1998–2001; last NCCB/USCC President and first USCCB President; became an archbishop in December 2004, when the then-Diocese of Galveston-Houston was elevated to a metropolitan archdiocese) Wilton D. Gregory, Bishop of Belleville (2001–2004; later became Archbishop of Atlanta) William S. Skylstad, Bishop of Spokane (2004–2007) † Francis E. George, O.M.I., Cardinal, Archbishop of Chicago (2007–2010) Timothy M. Dolan, Cardinal, Archbishop of New York City (2010–2013) Joseph E. Kurtz, Archbishop of Louisville (2013–2016) Daniel DiNardo, Cardinal, Archbishop of Galveston-Houston (2016–Present) † = deceased 1/16 2010 election At the November 2010 General Meeting in Baltimore, elections were held for president and vice president. For the first time in the history of the USCCB, and in a break from long-standing tradition, a vice president standing for the presidency was denied the top post. In those elections, Timothy M. Dolan, Archbishop of New York, was elected president – defeating Gerald Kicanas, Bishop of Tucson, 128–111 (54% to 46%) – and Joseph Kurtz, Archbishop of Louisville, was elected vice president in a runoff against Charles Chaput, Archbishop of Denver, 147-91 (62% to 38%)

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1/14

Pompeo wants denuclearization - false flag? If he or - the defs - were worried about that they could could have stopped this a long time ago - they wanted to get caught - what effect did they think dragging this thing out for another 15 yrs would have - they couldnt leak - they had to construct the situation that would force me to do it - biggest prank - ever -  people have tried to make this thing stop - somebody and I honestly dont know who - wasnt having it - I cant say I consent - It isnt true and I wont do that to the people that have put their career and their personal lives in real risk trying to help me get my life back

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1/15

Seems like the plan was to stall this thing until a gop admin could just pardon everyone. Tell me im wrong

1/16

Big shoulders - go red devil

Champaign site - gold

Xa poison at banner job - w/ the 2 franks - and see pringle - karcher malta - kcs - shriners - masons - milburn and madonia are mgrs for mgraw - xa mgraw and albanese - hotels - here - mi runs out of mcds - kinzinger dist and uiuc - linguists - carlucci and rummy were roomies at clown college - xa carlucci & ghwb carlyle - sears - houston - bos - things remembered - vala - trophies - xa dm - ft detrick - nsa - ovp - mvm vince - courthouse - clowns - clearwater - madcow guy is right - clowns - jeffe ron - mckenna - plummer - baiseball - louisville slugger - usscb - krusteil herschell - sideshow bob - son of a mitch - gavel in the yard signs - figure ground - mark denzler - really?

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1/7

Mental health frame - mental illness - op as central nervous system anti-depressant - glyphosate - glutamic acid - elmer fudd - cross herrs - crazy pete hoekstra - schaive & a herr cut - oh yeah - ed smith - furman milburn - industrial chem - schuh - little shoe - three coins in a fountain - hendren site - addiction frame from mcfadden job - mental illness frame from jail time in scso - mmc - mmc bd - sium - van meter - inb - scty/trsr - foundation - irve - monthly bill - alzina - xa addiction frame - cocaine in dumpsters - the real story is the way doj has been used - usattys is the tip of the iceberg - the people doing this to me have had doj auth - they have tried to undermine my case - their own case - hard to believe - burkhardt - ron stone - pbpa5 - spd gonzalez - uber - team lift - getup - whigs - smiley cyrus - urine vited - trump pence and bishop trombones - usccb - kurtz is a louisville slugger - how bout that - I just saw that - hes the new - they try to tell me theyre sorry - rock is on the cover of natl rev - theyre making emoji the movie - w/ patrick stewart - if they were sorry it would stop - they think theyre being funny - they are pleased w/ themselves at how clever they are - really? -

1/19

Pompeo - decoding "iranian" possible usage for reference to me -

I ran -cross country - ian - ian anderson - jethro tull - jethro bodine - cletus - appetite - nick name for me is - jethro - xa fudd - comida - maslow hierarchy of needs -

Iran - bolton - lightning - dod symbology - elvis - tcb - xa bct big tobacco - altria - winston - burson etc - iran cross country - iranian - iran - yes boss - jeffe ron - op - si jeffe - cifa - chase - perpetual vigilans - wide awakes - two headed eagle - iranian - ian anderson - jethro tull - comida - psyops food - operant cond - ac - principal skinner - 90's - team lift - sparky - jethro bodine tool - reese with her spoon - legally blonde - xa ghwb & iraq - txgop - banes - kid rock

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Syria - sire yes - horse people - centaurs - fuck you - sir - knights - horses - sere - mitchell jessen - af - ac - psyops/civaff - burson - bct - altria - bruno mars - hamberguesa - ace - ache - sear burger flippers - beef - res - team lift - cow says moo

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1/25

kaitschuk - rauner - leg dir - il sheriffs - foop -

that's the po link - what does this whole thing say about the po - people say I won my case - and the po wont enforce - that's why this is continuing - they know whats going on - they are a named party - they are defs - that car talk evidence exists - talk on the radio - dispatch - sideshow bob - 3d shift - pm mgr - chem - ierc - wide awakes - semper vigilans - xa mental health frame - bogus and note gnutek

[hedonismoaudiovisual]

Suspensión de la incredulidad

La La Land es una película hechizante. Todo en ella funciona bien. Cada plano, cada cuadro musical, cada giro narrativo, cada escenario, cada color están al servicio de una historia subyugante y única.

En su tercer largometraje después de la también impactante Whiplash (2014), Damien Chazelle vuelve a cubrir su film de melodías y de protagonistas jóvenes que buscan triunfar en el arte. En esta ocasión, los obstáculos no serán las actitudes sádicas de un director de orquesta psicopático sino los extenuantes castings que deberá realizar Mia para hacerse un lugar como actriz en Hollywood y las dificultades que encontrará Sebastian para poder vivir como músico de jazz.

Sin embargo, ambas producciones volverán a emparentarse en la intensidad de su relato. Así como en Whiplash cada golpe de platillo transmitía un ímpetu poderoso, los pasos de baile, las canciones, las miradas en La La Land tienen la facultad de magnetizar al espectador. Aciertos de un montaje preciso que se ve potenciado, además, por la presencia encantadora de dos talentosos intérpretes como Emma Stone y Ryan Gosling.  

Tratándose de un musical, la cuestión de género no puede soslayarse, menos aún si consideramos que nos referimos a un rubro prácticamente en extinción que es cardinal en la historia del cine. Y ese es otro de los aspectos maravillosos de La La Land, en tanto rescata la esencia y la mística de los musicales clásicos de la industria de los '50, aggiornándolos a la actualidad sin por eso postergar algunos rasgos nostálgicos presentes en sus citas cinéfilas, vestuario y decorados. Una obra tradicional y a la vez moderna tanto en lo formal como en el desarrollo de la historia de amor entre los protagonistas, presentada con tiempos narrativos que no siempre son lineales, en otro de los aspectos más acertados y originales del film.  

Un par de impugnaciones que una película de este estilo puede encontrar comienzan con la antipatía que provocan las producciones musicales en algún público que siente que cada cuadro cantado o bailado lo distancia de la historia y la vuelve fantasiosa o ilusoria. Para ellos, viene bien insistir con el concepto de suspensión de la incredulidad que nos invita a aplazar el sentido crítico y permitirnos disfrutar de algunas incongruencias con la realidad que pueden presentarse en este género, como por ejemplo ver a los protagonistas volar en un museo. Por otra parte, cierta postura snob anti-Oscars o en contra de lo masivo también puede apartar a muchos de la obra, falacia que al menos aquí debe ser descartada ya que La La Land, con toda su gran producción, premios y nominaciones, no deja de expresar alma e identidad a través de las marcas singulares de un autor detrás que se esfuerza por escapar de cualquier previsibilidad o idea gastada.

Una historia sensible -pero sin sensiblerías ni golpes bajos- que defiende con particularidad y belleza el tema de la realización personal, el esfuerzo por cumplir los deseos y los efectos cruciales de un encuentro amoroso trascendental. Cuando Mia y Sebastian se miran (las pupilas de Emma Stone hablan), coquetean, besan, cantan, bailan o conviven conceden escenas que glorifican y enaltecen el concepto de romanticismo.

Por Gabriel Yurdurukian

Título original: La La Land.  Año: 2016. Duración: 127 min. País: Estados Unidos. Director: Damien Chazelle. Guión: Damien Chazelle. Música: Justin Hurwitz. Fotografía: Linus Sandgren. Montaje: Tom Cross. Reparto: Emma Stone, Ryan Gosling, John Legend, Rosemarie DeWitt, J.K. Simmons, Finn Wittrock, Sonoya Mizuno, Jessica Rothe, Jason Fuchs, Callie Hernandez, Trevor Lissauer, Phillip E. Walker, Hemky Madera, Kaye L. Morris.

[masked-alien-lesbian]

Reagan Thorne, Sam Dalton, Callie/Cole Stone...why are all the billionaires able to fly a helicopter??? Is that just a requirement when they turn 18 or something? Gotta go get my helicopter license, and then maybe, idk, feeling cute, might cheat on my wife some

[zhoras-bitch]

She's so pretty and for what.

[masked-alien-lesbian]

What a waste of a beautiful sprite

[zhoras-bitch]

Also, do not get me started on how much the LI pissed me off for never doing anything about it. Yes, in real life it can often be hard to tell that a person is a victim of abuse and even harder to help them, but in the story it is not subtle at all. Even MC, a total stranger, seems to quickly figure out how much Estelle controls Daphne and how miserable Daphne is about it. And yet the LI, who is Daphne's spouse, who's known her for years, who lives in the same house as her doesn’t even bat an eye. Probably because they are too busy fucking their side piece. Worst Choices LI award.

The Billionaire's Baby fascinates me. They wrote the whole Daphne and Estelle situation, which any sane person should be able to recognize for what it is: an extremely emotionally abusive relationship, in which Estelle controls literally every aspect of her daughter's life, including her job, her marriage, her relationships, her social media, her diet. Daphne wants to be a photographer, but she works as a model, because her mother wants her to. She stays in an unloving marriage, because her mother wants her to. She gets a baby she's not ready for, because her mother wants her to. For all we know, this has been going on since Daphne was a baby. So they wrote all of that down, right? And then they just. Barely acknowledged it. Best we got was MC thinking/saying Estelle is annoying and kind of a bitch. Neither the characters nor the narrative treat the situation with nearly the level of gravity it actually warrants. It's like there's a huge three headed goat demon in the living room, and all the tenants ever do about it is vaguely acknowledge its existence once in a while before going on about their day as if nothing has happened. Fucking bonkers.

[masked-alien-lesbian]

Tag yourself, I'm the lady that's just trying to get past these 50 Shades of bs.

[helloworlddemo1122-yahoopar-blog]

EXCLUSIVE: Wentworth Miller and 'Prison Break' Boss on Why the Finale Isn't 'Happily Ever After'

Warning: Spoiler alert! Do not proceed if you haven't watched Tuesday's season finale of Prison Break.

Did Michael Scofield get his happily ever after?

At the end of Tuesday's Prison Break finale, Michael (Wentworth Miller) revealed to his archnemesis, Jacob (Mark Feuerstein), that he has always been the one calling the shots -- successfully reframing Jacob for the murder he committed and originally framed Michael for.

It all worked out in the end, of course, with Michael reuniting with his love, Sara (Sarah Wayne Callies), and their son, Mike (Christian Michael Cooper), finally free of the shackles of prison. But did they finally achieve their happy ending -- one that has been years in the making?

RELATED: 'Prison Break' Sneak Peek! Sara Is a Total Badass in Finale Showdown

"Depends on your definition of 'happy,'" Miller writes in an email to ET. "Is he reunited with his loved ones? Yes. Is he at peace? With everything he's done and the man he's become? I don't know. That might not be available to him. Not after what he's been through."

As creator Paul T. Scheuring revealed, the final scene where Michael has a hint of a smile on his face as he looks longingly at Sara, his son, his brother Lincoln (Dominic Purcell) and Sheba (Inbar Lavi), had a different -- slightly darker -- intention.

"As scripted, it was supposed to be a bit more ambiguous at the end where Michael is looking over his shoulder and you realize while life is apparently bucolic, he’s carried something with him ever since, which is a paranoia that he’ll never get over," Scheuring tells ET. "It also insinuates that somewhere out there in the world, there’s another challenge confronting him or waiting for him. So, no, this is not happily ever after."

Though the finale had everything fans could possibly want (i.e. a dramatic death -- R.I.P. Whip!, epic bait and switches), one key element that seemed to be missing was a final moment between Michael and Sara. (One could look to episode seven, where the two first reunited in Greece, as serving that purpose.)

"The whole episode was too fast really for them to sit down and commiserate," Scheuring explains, elaborating on why that scene with the couple never came to pass in the finale. "There’s plenty of time to do that after the season, so it was really a function of momentum.”

RELATED: 'Prison Break' Boss on Michael and Sara's Reunion: 'She's the Endgame'

FOX

Even so, Miller and Scheuring agree that Michael and Sara's relationship, as well as being parents together for the first time, will be intact -- and it's going to take an outside force to threaten that for good.

"Absent. Til this point," Miller writes, in reference to Michael as a father. "Michael's been a kick-ass brother but as a father, he's a blank slate. But I think he'll get the hang of it. Eventually. Then one day his son will come to him and he'll be like, 'Dad? Can I get a tattoo?' I'd love to see the look on Michael's face."

“Michael at once is a lone wolf and he’s a guy who has his own agenda, but to become a part of a family unit, that doesn’t fly so well. You have to be there. He’s an extraordinarily loyal guy, as evidenced by the lengths he goes to get his brother out of prison. You can only imagine that he would be equally loyal to his son. Perhaps you’re finding some subject matter for what the plot of season six is," Scheuring says. “There’s no way in hell, going forward, that Michael will step out on his kid or Sara on his own volition. Something will have to come between them."

Meanwhile, the future for Lincoln and Sheba, who had a clear connection ever since they teamed up in Yemen, is less etched in stone.

"In Lincoln’s case, the insinuation is there’s potential for something with Sheba but they really don’t know each other. They were running around in a giant adventure across the Middle East and the world, and they barely had time to have a cup of coffee. It’s far from wedding bells," Scheuring explains. "But I would say Inbar Lavi is sensational. She’s one of my favorite parts of the season; I could see her coming back if the show ever came back."

RELATED: Wentworth Miller on Resurrecting 'Prison Break' Nearly 8 Years Later

With the Prison Break season now over, Miller reflected on revisiting Michael, revealing the most satisfying part about playing the character again for nine more episodes.

"Exploring his dark side," Miller writes. "In the original series, no matter how many people died or lives were ruined because of wheels he set in motion, I felt like there was this underlying insistence that Michael was still a hero. Not an anti-hero but a hero. One of the good guys. In the reboot, the gloves are off. I think we took a much more realistic look at who Michael is and what he's done. And the toll it's taken. On everyone."

The 44-year-old actor also noted that getting to showcase different shades to Michael and being more vulnerable this time around was a refreshing quality.

"He's been damaged, no question. But he's still on his feet," Miller says of his beloved character's seven years away. "I think that's one of the reasons the show appeals. I think we're drawn to stories where someone suffers enormously, and struggles through great odds, and comes out the other side. Battered but not broken. It's inspiring."

As for whether there's a chance Prison Break could return for a sixth season, Scheuring wouldn't commit. (Fox Co-Chairman Dana Walden revealed on May 15 that they "would definitely consider doing more episodes," though "there's nothing in the works right now.")

“I can’t even give a percentage to it because the prerequisite is a top-notch story. It really has to be high-end and until that story materializes, there’s zero percent chance," he admits. "We’re not going to just redo it to do it again. We want the audience to feel like it’s of high standard."

"Right now we don’t have another story," Schering adds. "It’s really hard to come up with a new, original prison story because [of] the conceit -- on some level, we have to break out of prison. There’s a desire on a lot of different participants’ parts, but until that idea comes, there is no season six.”

For more, watch the video below.