#I loved season 3 but I loved my interpretation of it — and the show did not do enough groundwork for pretty much anyone's interpretation

[avelera]

hi! first off, i love your arcane meta, especially the jayce characterization and hextech details. you get it.

now second, (and feel free to ignore this wall of text for any reason):

if you're in the mood to talk about meta, i'm curious to hear your take on one season 2 thing that i've been scratching my head about

how much does post-anomaly jayce know about the future? my initial impression was that wizard viktor only told jayce what we see onscreen, and jayce was kind of improvising and trying his best without detailed knowledge of future events.

but some lines ("we're meant to lose this fight") and a comment from the artbook (post-anomaly jayce wearing armor bc he knows there is a battle coming) imply that he knows more than he lets on.

what's your (watsonian) take of jayce's knowledge of the future in season 2? is there any detail in the show that sheds some light on this?

i think jayce knowing or not knowing about certain events really recontextualises some scenes. is he following his own or wizard viktors plans? is he suprised about the events of act 3? i've been rotating this in my head but i'm not sure what interpretation i prefer.

Thank you so much!

As for your question, it's a really interesting one!

Unfortunately, I do think I need to start the answer with the Doylist one:

Jayce knows as much about the future as he needs to for the plot.

I think this is important to note because it informs an understanding of their choice not to show us him getting an exposition download of everything Wizard Viktor has worked out over the years as to how exactly Jayce can thread this needle of saving Viktor at exactly the right time.

Because, in theory, the amount of optimization could be infinite. It could get all the way down to, "Jayce needs to be scared into falling into this exact pit and spending no more than 3 months there because that gives him the suffering needed for his plea to Viktor to be heartfelt and informed by similar suffering, but not so long that Jayce goes insane from isolation."

Or even things like, "Ekko needs to go to the Happy Zaun universe or else he won't have the sympathy needed for him to prevent Jinx's suicide and without her present at the battle, one of Herald Viktor's mind-control arms snatches up Ekko too soon rather than grabbing Jinx instead, so he's not there to buy Jayce's those critical extra seconds for his appeal to True Love and also put a bomb in Herald Viktor's face."

That said....

I admit, part of me still sort of wishes that Jayce had been the one to go through multiple realities of optimizing, just because I think it answers... a few more questions? Like how did he suddenly get so comfortable with killing someone like Salo, if he wasn't fighting in other universes? Why does he look so aged if only 3-6 months passed? How does he know things like how exactly to get to Viktor's commune and the fact they're going to lose the fight, etc etc etc.?"

I think it would have been cool and very fitting for Jayce but I will admit, the story we got covers all of this too.

Jayce's aging could easily be the product of extreme hardship (I wouldn't be surprised if the animators referred to images of people who have been, say, stranded on desert islands or prisoners of war for long periods to inform just how much Jayce's face muscles wasted away while he was there and just how much extreme hardship can age you because it can be extreme even within a few months and between pain, starvation, dehydration, and magical gangrene, Jayce was going through it).

Jayce's comfort with the idea of killing Salo could just be a product of his hardship (killing and eating lizards with his bare hands lol yuck), or of understanding that assimilated people are already dead, effectively, and to stop that future he cannot hesitate at all. Also, maybe he just fucking hates that guy, which would be pretty understandable after Salo voted to banish him back in 1.02 and also is very funny to me, personally, that he was just a little more comfortable smooshing that particular Councilor than he would be literally anyone else.

And this is were I get to your question: how much does Jayce know? Presumably, if we go Watsonian, whatever Wizard Viktor believed he needed to know to actually thread this needle, because there's probably information he doesn't need to know too.

For example, Jayce might know:

He cannot let a Cultist get back to Viktor with Hexgems. Salo needs to go. Who knows what this prevented but I can easily see how Viktor having more power right now to prolong his healing/assimilation would be a bad thing regardless. Also just... having Salo at all as a potential power player that Viktor could work through.

He knows where the commune is. In theory, he probably could just ask someone in Zaun too I mean, I doubt it's a secret, and narratively we don't need to see that.

He knows he cannot under any circumstances let Viktor talk to him once they're face to face. He can't even look at Viktor after Viktor knows he's there. There's a heavy implication that if Cult Leader Viktor so much as smiles at him, Jayce will fold, if we believe the little flash of memory of Jayce remembering him smiling at him isn't just Dead Wive Vision but is actually Anomaly Future Jayce warning him about what happened to him to lead t that point, which I think is a baller theory.

He can't give into Viktor, ever. He can't let Viktor touch his forehead before the right time. Jayce fights like mad to get away from that robot once Viktor decides that Jayce will be his partner again or else.

He knows he needs to take all the Hexgems out of the base of the Hexgate, but is it to stop Viktor? Or is to buy a few extra seconds while Viktor plugs them back in again so that Ekko has time to wake up? This is the sort of thing where Wizard Viktor might know the real reason for something but doesn't need to get that granular with why because it's about buying time, not actually preventing the Herald from grabbing the Anomaly.

By the way, I have a theory that one reason Jayce needs to get the gem burned into his wrist is because there's universes where his bracelet gets cut off and he loses the gem so Wizard Viktor is like, "This is gonna suck, but you really need this thing embedded in your flesh so it's there at the right time." Though, it could also be so he can engage the magic in his Alt Universe hammer. Still, I am a little sad that it's not an effect of Jayce universe hopping where some battle got it burned into him, because that was my original theory and I'm still very partial to it.

Jayce knows that he has no chance of winning the fight, he just needs to survive it. Once he gets to the top of the tower, once he grasps the hammer, it's all over. From that point on, the only thing he can do is have faith and get his big Power of Love speech ready, that is his only chance.

As for what Jayce is surprised by, I do think he might have been told information but not shown it necessarily. I am still really sad we didn't get a visual of what Wizard Viktor told him but, at the same time, one of the fun parts of Arcane is that it doesn't spoon-feed us, which gives us the chance for discussions like this, so wanting that scene is me being a Jayce addict not because I think it would necessarily strengthen the story.

So I think Jayce doesn't know what Machine Herald Viktor looks like. It's possible that Wizard Viktor doesn't either, because that didn't happen to Wizard Viktor, he didn't get slowed down at the commune, Jayce probably joined him there and probably didn't fight him at all, there's a strong hint that Anomaly Universe Jayce surrendered to Viktor at the top of the tower (the explosion marks around him are behind him, which implies that the force of his conversion might have been in front and willing, like he was kneeling before his king, and we don't have the top of his head to know which direction the fingerprints are positioned in).

So basically, Machine Herald Viktor is a product of Viktor needing Singed to regain enough power to go get the Anomaly, which Wizard Viktor didn't need to do.

It's possible that Wizard Viktor doesn't know about Ekko, he just knows that something outside his awareness has to happen for MH Viktor to be caught off guard, and as MH Viktor says, "That device cannot be," he cannot in his infinite knowledge account for what happens in a world where Hextech never got beyond its infancy with Jayce and Viktor at the helm.

So, at a certain point, there may have been things that Jayce and Wizard Viktor just had to rely on faith to come about too.

But it's way more fun to speculate because I think we'd be punching holes in it instead of speculating on it if we had been given this whole download.

Hope that answers your question??

[leupagus]

So I'm sure there's different versions of this

But the one my cantor* told us when we were in Sunday School was this one:

Two rich men go to a cloth merchant's shop. This merchant is known for having beautiful silks, even though he has but a small humble store in the outskirts of town — so small that his infant son is sleeping on one of the chests!

These rich men want to buy these silks, so they demand to see them at once.

The merchant says, "I am sorry, they are not for sale today. Come back tomorrow and I would be happy to show them to you."

The rich men, knowing that this merchant is a Jew, think "ah-hah, he wants more money!" So they offer him a tremendous sum.

"I am sorry, they are not for sale today. Come back tomorrow, good sirs."

The rich men are puzzled, but they double their price. Quadruple it. Anything this merchant wants, they can give him.

"I am sorry, they are not for sale today. Come back tomorrow, if you please."

So, the rich men leave, annoyed, but they present themselves the very next day and sure enough, the merchant goes to a chest and pulls out the most beautiful silks that these rich men have ever seen. And when they offer to pay, he will only accept the price that he himself has deemed fair — many times less than even the first offer these rich men made.

"But why would you not give us these silks yesterday?" they ask, happy but baffled as they (or more probably their servants, but the cantor didn't get into that) pack up the silks to leave.

Just then, the merchant's wife comes in from the back, carrying their infant son. The merchant smiles and says, "Because my child was sleeping on that chest, and I did not wish to disturb his slumber. His peace is more precious to me than all the money you, good sirs, could ever provide."

[bringthekaos]

I'm excited for your thoughts on the new season if/when you share them

It has legit taken me 3 days to come to terms with Act 1. Enough to be able to speak about it. Gunna apologize in advance for the wall of text, and I’m hiding it under a break for spoiler reasons. Also prefacing with these are all just my opinions. All are free to disagree with me and RB with discussions/theories etc. just don’t be a dick about it, I’m not engaging in any discourse.

Ok. So. I have mixed feelings, and I’m aware that this is because I don’t have the whole story yet. So this is all contingent on how the rest of the season plays out.

First and foremost, I’m… wildly swinging back and forth between love and disappointment for Viktor’s arc. So first the negative, and I’ll try to keep it brief because a lot of people have already expressed this and I don’t need to be beating that particular dead horse.

Viktor has had his agency, his bodily autonomy, his original ideas and nearly everything that made him Viktor stripped away. Nothing so far has been his choice. And while this could have worked just fine for an original character, he wasn’t. So there is a massive disconnect between what this character was/should have been. In League, it was all his choice (albeit with a healthy dose of mental illness thrown in, but still). AND it was very heavily suggested that many of the augmentations he performed weren’t as extensive as he lead everyone to believe (namely the controlling/dousing of his emotions). But it appears that whatever the Hexcore did to him, it’s real. He is clearly having a difficult time accessing his emotions, and if he can feel anything, it is limited to the point of him being completely stoic. And the thing with stoic characters is that you obliterate any emotional payoff for the audience. It’s very hard to make an audience feel an emotional connection to a character’s story arc when they themselves don’t feel anything (I have a theory about this though, but I’ll address it a little later in this post). And then there is the issue of Blitzcrank. Blitz was Viktor’s whole world, after his exile. How are they going to swing that? Like, I’m not even asking for Blitz to be in Arcane (that would be great, but I really don’t think they have time). But I stg if they take Blitz away from Viktor, make them someone else’s invention (my suspicion is Heimer or he finds the idea in Sky’s journal)… I’m sorry but no. This was Viktor’s idea, Viktor’s genius. I will genuinely be extremely upset if they take that from him too.

Then there is the whole situation with Sky. First, this girl was fridged. She was nothing but a plot device and continues to be just that. It feels hollow and forced, especially now that he’s hallucinating her as some sort of penance for what he did. (I have seen the prevalent theory that it’s the Hexcore using her image and his guilt to manipulate him, given that it “ate” her, and we have seen it “manipulate” him before when it punished him for trying to destroy it). But back to Sky—he barely acknowledged that poor girl. The reason for that can be argued, whether it’s because he’s gay or because he was just so wrapped up in his one-track minded research. But regardless, there just wasn’t enough setup between those two for this whole thing to have as much weight and meaning as I think it’s supposed to. Honestly to me (TO ME) it reeks of comphet. It feels like that random woman they threw at Poe Dameron to No Homo him. I’m not even asking for Jayvik canon. But the creators were well aware of this ship, after all it’s the second most popular ship in this show and it’s been around since 2012 when Jayce was literally created for Viktor. I’m asking for the bare minimum here—that it’s left open-ended as it was in League, open for interpretation.

Last negative I have is the whole Viktor Jesus thing. The first problem is I am pretty violently agnostic, and messiah narratives have never spoken to me. I don’t enjoy them, they feel weak. The whole “ordained by a higher power” thing is just… stale. Especially when this character originally had no higher power, he gave it to himself through his own hard work and ingenuity. Honestly, Viktor’s original arc is about as far from a Jesus allegory as you can possibly get. And I am absolutely terrified that they’re going to end said Jesus arc the way you’d expect—with him dying for it. Which leaves the moral of his story “disabled man should have just accepted that he was going to die despite the fact that it was the oppression and xenophobia of Piltover that left him out to dry, without proper health care, accessibility, equality, or equity that lead to his terminal diagnosis to begin with.” Which is a very oppressor-centric narrative and we do not need another one of those.

Sorry, I know I said I’d keep the negatives brief, and that was… not. My bad. But moving on!

I’m not saying I didn’t enjoy it, I did. I am working to embrace this new Viktor narrative and work it into my brain in a way that doesn’t ruin the ship for me. So without further ado, the positives.

Jayce.

Jayce.

Jayce.

I’d have to go back and time it, but it feels like he got more screen time in this first act than the entirety of the first season combined, and his character shined for it. It humanized him in ways season one never did. He’s caring, he’s devoted, and he loved Viktor! No matter what kind of love you think it is, it proves he loved Viktor without a doubt. He carried Viktor several city blocks to the lab to save him, and then YES, he broke his promise about the Hexcore because he couldn’t stand the thought of losing him!

And he’s funny! (The scene where he picks up the regular sized hammer in the fight against Renni and made that “this is ironic” face?? And then basically the entire interaction with Ekko? The hand me a tome thing, and then when he basically pulled this when Ekko suggested “so this is all your fault cuz you pissed off the Arcane”:

GOD that shit was great. Jayce’s personality just shined, and maybe it’s too much to hope, but maybe this will douse a little of the hate. Because instead of being a subtle hint at all of those things being true about him, it’s now overt. And when people lack media literacy, the hints have to be overt.

And th-the. The h. The HUG SCENE. I don’t think I will ever emotionally recover from that scene. Starting with Viktor who, despite being clearly emotionally—I dunno, vacant I guess—sounded so lost and scared when he said “what am I?” For me, it was whispers of that scene from The Last Unicorn: “what have you done to me?” And my poor sweet Jayce, who clearly hasn’t left this damn lab except to go to Cassandra’s memorial. Sleeping on the desk and bleeding through his bandages because he doesn’t want to spend a moment away from Viktor while he “recovers.” And his euphoric response when he finds Viktor alive, when he realizes he hasn’t lost him. And I OWE HIM AN APOLOGY, goddamn. I said in a post that “Jayce will not understand.” I thought that was how Arcane was gunna start the divorce. But Jayce genuinely did not care, as long as his lover friend was alive. And just… Jayce being so affectionate through this entire scene. The hug obviously, but also blurting things he thought he’d never get to say to Viktor—“I’m resigning from the council, my place was always here in the lab with you.”

And… the hug itself. I know we’re all analyzing it frame by goddamn frame, but I see exactly what everyone else sees—there is a moment where Viktor very subtly smiles. But it’s gone in an instant, and it turns bittersweet. LOOK AT HIM.

There is something there, it’s just buried. Deep beneath the surface. It seems to say “I want this, I have wanted this for so long.” But then he realizes something, something I don’t think we’re meant to understand yet. Maybe that he doesn’t feel anything about it anymore, and he recognizes that this should upset him and it doesn’t. Or perhaps it’s something more along the lines of “it’s too late.” Whatever it is, I think this is the exact moment he knows he has to walk away. Because he knows he’ll cave to the affection, he said it himself. (Which is another thing entirely. His voice changes when he says that. Something in him is reacting to that word. Maybe he’s fighting against it, or maybe he’s fighting to get it back. But something made him almost growl that word.)

Which leads me to my final thought (for this post anyway, cuz it’s turning into a novel); Viktor is still in there. He can still feel things, I just think they’re extremely muted by whatever the Hexcore did/continues to do to him, or he has to fight to express them. Because he also smiled at the hallucination of Sky after he “cured” Huck. And if he feels nothing, he wouldn’t have been “joyous” at the thought of her being proud of him, approving of the good things he’s trying to do in her memory. He wouldn’t crave that validation, that vindication from her. So I’m hopeful that we start to see this shell crack a little, especially if those visions of Sky are the Hexcore manipulating him through guilt. It will start to erode him, no matter how stoic he has become. And literally the only thing I’m clinging to is that Jayce will see this and try to pull him out. “He’s still in there and I have to save him.” And that maybe it’ll start to work.

[ittsybittsybunny]

ATLA Live Action Series Review:

The Good

Aesthetically this show felt right. Sure sometimes the outfits didn't quite feel lived in, but I always felt like I was watching a fantasy world with decent effects and interesting design. Also, I really enjoyed the sets!

Bending: Yes some of the fights feel very quick, but the bending looks cool. It is certainly better than 10 benders lifting one big rock. I can honestly say the opening bending fight scene gave me so much hope for this show.

Kyoshi Warriors: I loved seeing them in live action, and I thought Suki's performance was great!

Omashu: I think the mashup of the mechanist made sense since that is an important character overall and I would hate to see him cut. However, both Jet & the secret tunnels felt sloppily thrown in.

Northern Water Tribe: I really loved the way it looked, and appreciated the two episodes we spent here. I think Yue gained more agency in this interpretation, and why shouldn't the moon spirit be a waterbender. Also, episode seven felt the most in tune with the original show's spirit.

Zuko: I think he was one of the most fleshed-out and best parts of the show! Dallas Liu really captured Zuko's spirit, and the scene between him and Aang in episode 6 was wonderful!

Soundtrack: Hearing the original soundtrack bits is always great, and when I first heard the ending music I was so excited.

Is the show perfect, no - but I wouldn't mind a season 2.

The Bad

Pacing: Turning 20 episodes into 8 was bound to lead to some cuts...but oftentimes times things felt too quick or disjointed. I think there were editing problems contributing to this for sure, but sometimes things skipped around too much without a clear purpose as to why. Also, why bring in plots from later seasons when you barely have enough time already?

Writing: This show definitely suffered from exposition dumping, though it did get better as time went on. I think the biggest example of this is actually opening in the past rather than the present. We do not get to learn along with Aang that the world has changed, instead, we get to learn that 100 years have passed....which doesn't hold the same tension or worldbuilding.

Clunky Dialogue: Along with exposition, clunky dialogue is another example of bad writing. I think sometimes I felt like the acting was kind of meh in the beginning, but then over time I began to realize it had far more to do with the lines characters were trying to deliver. The actors themselves are not bad, just cursed with awkward writing and lines that feel out of touch with the setting they're in.

Main Trio: I don't entirely know that I believe Katara, Sokka, and Aang are friends as opposed to 3 people stuck together to save the world. Aang feels a little too somber for a young kid running away from his responsibilities, Sokka is protective, but not exactly the heart of the team, and Katara is sort of just there until the last two episodes. Where is her struggle, her desire to learn so strong she steals from pirates? Also, while Gordon Cormier did a great job, Aang does zero waterbending on his own, is overly serious, and tells Katara not to fight. Where is his desperation to protect his friends? It feels like they all lost emotional depth.

Tension: Bringing Ozai, Azula, and Zhao out in the beginning immediately causes us to lose the realization there is an even bigger bad. Part of why Ozai is so terrifying is he is a primarily silent villain until the third season when we finally see the face of the "big bad evil guy" behind it all. Yes, they add to Zuko's backstory, but again, they are revealing the villains too early. Azula is the antagonist of season 2 and one of my favorite characters, so I hope they do more with her in the future. Finally, Zhao is supposed to be an example of the uncontrollable nature of fire unrestrained, instead, he comes off as vaguely threatening with the supposed true power being Azula.

Characterization: While all characters are bound to lose something in a shorter show, it still felt like certain characters were more mutilated than others. I am sure there are 100 different opinions on who, but I think the biggest victim was Katara.

Katara: Katara manages to go from a complete novice to a bending master in what feels like a matter of days. The journey feels short, and that makes the results feel largely unearned. Katara is one of the strongest personalities in the show, determined, kind, and fiery. In many ways, she is the unpredictability of water - equally dangerous as it is necessary to live. She is the child of a war who lost her mother, forced to grow up too soon, and even raised her older brother. Yes, Katara often gets stereotyped as the mom friend, but overall she feels underutilized in this show. We really don't see enough of her journey until the very end.

Iroh: Iroh was always comedic but most importantly wise. Even when Zuko is trying to give himself advice, he mimics Iroh. Instead, he seems to be used more as comedic relief without the underlying experience. He just doesn't feel right. Also, he kills Zhao instead of Zhao getting himself killed - which is less about Iroh and more about the writing than anything.

Ozai is weirdly a little too nice. Yes, he burned Zuko and pits his kids against each other, but he feels toned down in a show claiming to be more mature than the original cartoon.

Azula is perhaps more realistically worried about losing her status as the golden child, but she is also missing the cruelty she and her father share. I understand worrying about making your character cartoonishly evil, but the Fire Nation is currently a deeply nationalistic empire trying to control the world. Where is the deep-seated belief that they are better than other people, not just trying to bring balance to the world? There is a line between creating complexity and toning down the very real evil inherent in this plan.

Roku: I can only say what the fuck was that. He was barely there, and not the serious master to Aang's youthful exuberance.

The Ugly

Show, Don't Tell: The show's single biggest issue seems to be speeding through story parts by simply stating things. Instead of allowing the audience to discover, trusting that we are smart enough to understand, let's just blatantly say things like Zuko is the only reason the 41st division is alive to their faces. Even though in the context of the story Ozai literally already said that.... it's the division, the division for Zuko, Zuko's division.

Thematic Misunderstandings: I think this show makes several minor changes with major implications, such as airbenders actively fighting the firebenders, when airbenders are known for their pacifist nature and the lie of an Airbender fighting force is actively propaganda. Similarly, Aang very quickly accepts his role as the avatar and doesn't even run away in the beginning. Without this conflict between his desire to be a carefree child and the fact that the world needs him - the show loses a key aspect of Aang's character. Also, the obsession with downplaying the avatar state as something dangerous feels like a disservice to the tradition, connection, and strength of the avatar, which can be permanently destroyed as the trade-off for that kind of power. It's dangerous for the balance of the entire world, not just because it's powerful!

The Agni Kai: Zuko's fight against his father is one of the defining moments of Ozai's cruelty, not just because he is willing to fight his child, but because Zuko tried to do everything right. Zuko shows deference to his father, apologizes, and most importantly refuses to fight! The determination not to upset his father and still be grievously injured and banished is a hugely important theme for the fire nation and Zuko's life as a whole. He tries to do everything he is supposed to and only regains his father's acceptance after he "kills" Aang. Zuko's struggle between moral vs. social right and wrong in contrast to his family is hugely important to his character.

-----

TLDR: ATLA was a fantastical animated television show that was never afraid to show character development and flaws. When you turn 20 episodes into 8, you are bound to lose something. You hollowed out the middle, leaving the shell of important moments and events without ever wondering if all the times in between formed the true spirit of the show.

Rating: 6.5/10 It's perfectly fine and worth a watch. Not a disaster, but certainly falls flat of the original.

[genericpuff]

The excessively passive voice when talking about Minthe being intended to have BPD is hilarious. "It was thought to have her written with BPD"? So weird

Honestly, once you start noticing this passive voice in how Rachel writes and talks, it's kind of hard to unsee.

Like, for starters, the BPD example. It's very non-committal, almost as if to sound like she never actually wrote her with BPD, it was just an 'idea' that she could neither confirm or deny as canon. But then you read the episode with the slap and-

It's- it's literally called "Splitting". It's about as subtle as a brick to the face. This entire episode showcases Minthe having an actual literal episode of splitting and it's plain as day to anyone who can read the title card and put two and two together. So for the wording to be so passive around her characterization... it wasn't "thought" to have her written with BPD, she was written with BPD.

Another example that sticks out in my mind of Rachel's passive writing is far later in Season 3, when Demeter reunites with Persephone and naturally expects her to come back home with her.

This line still fucking bothers me to this day. Besides the fact that it's just really poorly written dialogue, Persephone describes her being in love with Hades as if it's just some coincidental thing that happened to her that she can't avoid and not a deliberate choice she's making. "It would seem" my ass, Persephone is a coward for not being upfront and just talking to her mother like an adult by saying, "Mother, I love you, and I understand why you want me to come home, but I'm in love with Hades and want to stay in the Underworld with him." Instead the way it's worded is almost designed to absolve Persephone of any and all agency in her own decisions and active participation in her relationship with Hades by instead making it out to be just some circumstance that she can't get herself out of.

Again, this isn't quite as egregious as the aforementioned BPD scene, but it's still irritating because Rachel writes like this a lot throughout LO. And it's not just the dialogue either, entire decisions throughout the comic are flip-flopped and kept vague by Rachel so she can give herself plausible deniability over the narrative. I could come up with some of my own examples, but I think she managed to speak for herself just fine in the end-of-series Q&A that left both critics and fans of the series massively confused and disappointed:

LO is full of half-committed plotlines because Rachel herself can't commit to her own decisions. So the decisions she does make are left vague enough that hardcore fans are willing enough to fill in the blanks themselves, but anyone who asks her genuinely what her plan was, she just gives the same wordy "IDK it's up to your interpretation!" response. It's like she thinks people are asking her as just another reader who can only speculate, but she's literally the author, so why is she acting like her guess is as good as theirs?

Well, because that's how she wrote LO. That's how she's always written comics, with vague half-finished thoughts and just enough for readers to do the mental gymnastics of making sense of it all just to give her the credit for "smart writing" that she never actually did because she stopped paying attention after the first sentence. And that method of being vague for the sake of audience interpretation is fine for illustrations or anything that isn't trying to be a concise narrative, but LO did try to be that and it really shows how hard it failed in doing so when its own creator can't even come up with something slightly plausible to explain all the questions people had in the end. "There is some backstory there" but proceeds to not actually expand on said backstory. "I like to imply things without outright telling people", so do I, but the difference is that Rachel is using that as a crutch to not answer the questions she setup for her readers and then didn't resolve after five years. There's not wanting to spoon feed people the plot, and then there's literally refusing to explain your decisions when writing said plot, almost because you don't know any more than they do.

The entirety of LO is rooted in Rachel's passiveness, from her inability to answer questions concisely to every little plot point that was established and dropped throughout the comic's run. Writing a story is a series of decisions, deciding what to keep, deciding what not to keep, deciding what has to be changed, etc. and Rachel just... doesn't seem like someone who's ever been capable of making those decisions, especially when she's writing an actual long form story to the end and doesn't have the luxury of dropping it whenever it feels convenient for her like she did several times with The Doctor Pepper Show. Once she was actually held to a standard, once she was actually signed into a contract that expected her to make those decisions, she failed to and it culminated in one of the messiest conclusions to a story I've seen since Game of Thrones.

LO is kind of like Schrodinger's Cat - a plot point can be or not be whatever it needs to be so that Rachel can be either praised for smart writing she never did or absolved of bad writing that she did do. It's equally parts interesting and vague enough that whatever her readers give her credit for writing, she can give them a thumbs-up and go "you're totally right, champ!" and proceed to take all the credit of being a "good writer" from the efforts of her own audience who had to jump through a million hoops to make sense of her own messy writing.

But when she's put on the spot by those very same readers to answer for her own decisions, she can't.

Because she never made them.

Because there was never anything "deeper" going on, that's just what her style of "distraction writing" made you believe. The plot never lets you stop to think about what you just read long enough before zipping away to the next thing and distracting you with a new twist or a new character or a new plot point, and before you know it, you've gone weeks without reading about the last thing that was established you probably haven't even realized that those questions never got answered. Sometimes Rachel remembers to get back to those things and resolves them within a handful of panels, other times she forgets them entirely and just leaves them to rot in the hopes that no one ever calls her out on it. And when they do... she can just pull the get-out-of-jail-free "Welp, it's up to your interpretation!" card and get that credit all over again for being deep and insightful, meanwhile those who are rightfully dissatisfied with that answer are blanket-accused of "getting mad at Rachel for not writing the story they wanted".

To close out this ask that, per tradition, turned into an essay, I'd like to recall the famous words of fictional detective Benoit Blanc: "Look into the clear center of this glass onion... Miles Bron is an idiot!"

[mozzaicynth]

one thought everyday and its just the amazing world of gumball especially these three freaks (doodles + some headcanons below :3)

mr small -

my interpretation of small becoming more mellowed out in the future seasons as opposed to season 1 is him managing his anger in a more healthier way (meditation, etc) (plus i think all those herbal infusions are incredibly effective on the nerves) . that being said i think he still has underlying anger issues and lashes out if prompted too much . another reason hes nicer and more of a pushover in the later seasons is because i like to think hes guilty of his plethora of outbursts earlier on, especially towards students (unwarranted shouting which as a school counsellor he should know is pretty harmful on younger kids) . the fact that he tries to offer his help when its absolutely not needed so many times later on in the show further makes me like to think he’s making up for it all

hes also so autistic to me hes on the spectrum you cant tell me otherwise and i think hes pretty awkward and considered strange by the whole town (which is saying a lot for elmore standards) . still super friendly and approachable but he also cant take hints and he definitely stims (and has special interests, alternative medicine are you kidding)

his music taste i love to think is all over the place … i get the general consensus is he listens to mystic chants and sitar music but he definitely listens to more, ranging from pop to indie to rock to metal (this may or may not have become an idea when i was listening to ‘darts by soad and associated it with him,) . also what with his stupid little self funded album that is such a jarring listen ‘cause of all the ridiculous genre changes

i think he crochets/macrames as a hobby along with other diy stuff (most of the decorative items in his home crafted by him) making him, surprisingly considering how incompetent he is sometimes, super crafty/handy .

larry -

larry is a great person: incredibly intelligent, he’s very knowledgable on a plethora of subjects and he has a big heart, holding little to no virtriol against the people of elmore (except the wattersons but that is SO warranted) . thus i like to imagine he did great in school, moved on to do so wonderfully in uni whilst juggling jobs and his studies but after graduation was left stuck (alike so many people nowadays) . neither small or larry came from well off families but i think for larry he didn’t have much of a support system anyway so currently he overworks and works and works just to catch up on the student debt whilst simultaneously paying his taxes (i still think about that episode all the time fuck the police . big pink son of a bitch), loans and not to mention the bare minimum to keep himself alive

he’s a very sweet and kind person but anyone under the immense stress that he’s under would be irritable and temperate (he deserves to be more angry imo) and i whilst he has so many jobs he always aims to excel at all of them, having an incredibly particular way that tasks must be done and having them organised . because of this, he can be a lot more temperate when interacting with coworkers, especially those who don’t do their job as well, having to take matters into his own hands . as he and karen (his girlfriend throughout the series) share some jobs it puts a strain on their relationship (which was built off of the mutual ‘having several jobs’) and they break up .

even so, though larry consistently tries to propose to her in the show, in “the laziest” he doesn’t seem to be happy nor comfortable at all with the prospects of marrying her . in fact, even when he’s achieved the ‘american dream’ (properties like a house and car and a family (his girlfriend soon to be wife)) he’s unhappy . personally i don’t think he knows what he wants to do with himself ; he works all day and night and has little to no time for himself to even think in peace that the only purpose he knows is work .

i like to think he used to be an artist; self taught, it was a hobby and an enjoyment but his studies and his work took over so his one form of self expression was squeezed out of his life .. (i like making their lives as bleak as possible soz ! 🙏) he still admires the arts and i think that’s another reason he likes steve so much; his handcrafts and mini projects .

steve and larry are two opposites that are similar in ways .. but i love their dynamic so much . my interpretation of them is that steve will help larry balance out his life slightly better to leave room for himself instead of working 24/7 . steve has his head in the clouds and larry grounds him, and larry is so stuck in his ways with work that steve pulls him out of it slightly, lifting him up a little higher (AUGHHHGHH I HATE THEM I HATE THEM

as for their relationship with rob, im very much a stevelmeyer adoption truther !! both larry and steve coming from dysfunctional families, they aim to help rob and take care of him to the best of their abilities . further, larry taking on taking care of rob gives him direction in his life again . 😁😁😁😁😁😁

this isnt gonna be the last post headcanon/idea wise i still think of them 24/7 but heres jus SOME things .. (im such a yapper sprry not sorry !) :3c

[tenshi-agerasia]

in-universe alien stage mechanisms and the use of colors in round 7 (a luka & till rant ft. mizi & hyuna)

it's generally agreed that alien stage can be interpreted as a metaphor for the kpop industry, and as someone who did tons of studying (because of my 3d fav) on how performances work in c-ent, i noticed some things on my nth rewatch of blink gone

meta-wise, the colors in the mv are green (to represent till) and purple (to represent luka). this combo works really well for the song, but is there an in-universe explanation to the lighting? yep:

take a look at the scoreboard. even in-universe, green represents till and purple represents luka. taking the idol theme more literally, we can also assume that these are their official colors. i went back to the TOP 3 video and well well well guess what appears during luka's part

the lightsticks, the projected neon signs, the same kind of mask (?), the stadium lights. we can reasonably assume that this purple is luka's official fan color and represents support for him.

and guess what color almost all of the crowd is repping during round 7 through lightsticks and masks?

that's right, overwhelmingly purple. don't forget that the winners of each round of alien stage are decided by live in-house voting, and audience members will always be biased towards who they're a fan of. remember that luka is insanely popular and already won a season, so his fanbase would be larger, more developed, and more devoted.

till was, for a lack of better words, cooked. he was doomed to lose from the start, because how can a few of his fans outvote the majority?

i've seen some people theorize that the result was rigged, and i completely disagree: you cannot fake support on this large of a scale. "oh, but the color of the lightsticks are controlled by the organizers" then explain the masks, a clear fandom symbol

also, from my experience in survival shows, vote counts in the final round are usually hidden until the results are announced, which explains the wobbliness of the scoreboard bars like they're inflatable tube men in front of a car or mattress dealership.

an alternative explanation to the lightsticks is that it represents the current vote, but i'm not inclined to believe this theory because, again, the masks. like real-life idol performances, i think that this is just a show of support from the audience.

back to the meta: mizi's appearance in the crowd is a reinvigoration of determination in till, and in terms of color, she is a break of bright green among the sea of purple. she not only stands out because she's someone he loves, she is visually a breath of fresh air for him.

do you think, in those last moments, he was not only happy to see her alive in front of him but to also see her wearing his color?

in this part where they're reaching out to each other, the pink-purple light that seems to be shining from mizi is representative of how she's a beacon of hope for till. in-universe, however, till is just moving towards the audience, the close proximity of the lightsticks illuminating his face with color.

mizi and till are surrounded by this vibrant purple, a symbol for luka. even with mizi's more pink-ish radiance, they are literally in his territory, at the mercy of the system that he has been through and learned to play along with.

the same can't be said about luka when he sees hyuna again:

the warmth of his fan color disappears, replaced by a colder indigo. the audience, his fans, the aliens that he knows how to use to keep himself alive mean nothing to him right now. it's this cold feeling of shock that makes him so unsure of how to react.

in this moment, he is no longer luka the performer, luka the idol, luka the twice winner of alien stage—he's just luka. he's vulnerable to emotion, an unfamiliar thing, and he's so painfully human.

luka: (sees hyuna) holy shit it's you... mizi: till is literally dying behind you luka: this ain't about him

another detail: these shots were never shown in the mv so i'm assuming they're taken by in-universe cameras (see the red flashes in the audience), especially because of the angle (downwards pointing perspective)

[qqueenofhades]

Good Omens Season 2: Some Thoughts (and also Screaming)

First, /screams

Second, obligatory disclaimer that this meta contains MAJOR SPOILERS for all six episodes. If you somehow have managed to remain virginally unspoiled, look away now, scroll past, or add "good omens s2" and "good omens spoilers" to your block list, as those are the tags I have been using for all posts and reblogs.

Third, /screams more

Okay okay okay. Deep breaths.

Anyway, so, uh, how about all that, huh? First, the good thing about the tone of the season overall was that it felt considerably darker and more adult, in a good way. We didn't have the precocious kiddies, the kitsch and literally-comphet Anathema and Newt, the so-clever narration, etc. All that was gone, which makes sense when you consider that a) the end of last season saw them reboot into an entirely new universe, and b) the fact that God has gone silent is, in fact, a major plot point for the season. We don't have Her slyly telling us the story, or indeed anything, and everyone is left to make their own judgments and take their own actions. Which, obviously, gets them into a lot of trouble, especially when Metatron (the Voice of God, aka someone acting in the belief that they're speaking for God and therefore doing terrible harm) swoops in with the ultimate buzzkill at the end of episode 6. But we'll get to that.

The downside was that the main, present-day plot (hiding Gabriel in the bookshop and trying to get Nina and Maggie to fall in love) was fairly thin, felt stretched out and at times weirdly paced, and otherwise existed mostly to get us to That Ending and the setup for season 3. But the ending was so damn good (if obviously, very painful) that I can't be TOO mad, not least because we spent six episodes with them just making absolutely no pretense about the whole thing being as incredibly homosexual as possible. I'll be honest: I did not think they were going to actually, explicitly go there. Neil Gaiman has been so consistent about "your interpretations are valid and you're welcome to read it however you want, but the only canon is what's on screen," which I think is frankly a good thing (not least since the Neil GAYman Cinematic Universe is consistently very, very good to us queers), that I just... didn't quite think they'd pull the trigger. Sir Terry is dead and can't have active input, this is based on a book published 30 years ago, maybe they didn't want to make it LIKE THAT... etc. I certainly hoped, but I didn't really think they would.

Uh. Well.

As I said in my various semi-coherent liveblog posts, I honestly don't think there was a single straight person in the entire season, among both major and background characters. Aziraphale/Crowley and Maggie/Nina are the obvious paralleling couples, but Beelzebub (using "they" pronouns and addressed as "Lord" despite presenting as femme/femme-adjacent) is clearly nonbinary and therefore also queer, and the countless gay/queer side characters were just /chefs kiss. From Job's son making a sassy pass at Aziraphale, to the random Scottish goon with Grindr on his phone (which he then gives to Aziraphale, because what is subtlety), to the interracial couple with the trans spouse at the Pride and Prejudice ball, there was just a lot of casual, unremarked, non-story-critical queer representation visible at every turn. It's like the NGCU saw the bigots wailing about Sandman season 1 being extremely gay and went CHALLENGE ACCEPTED, LET'S MAKE GOOD OMENS 2 EVEN MORE GAY.

God bless.

Obviously, Jon Hamm as Amnesia!Gabriel stole the show (he was SO fucking funny) and it was also incredibly fun to watch Miranda Richardson repurposed as a scheming demon. Nina Sosanya also reappeared as Nina the coffee shop owner, which leads us into the Maggie-and-Nina subplot. They're obviously, wildly, incredibly clearly an analogue for Aziraphale and Crowley themselves, but they're also each, crucially, a mix of both. On the surface, Maggie is Aziraphale: the plump, blonde, earnest, sweet-natured one owning a slightly dated book music shop and somewhat clueless about emotional nuances, while Nina is (also on the surface) Crowley, the hard-edged dark loner who doesn't want to open herself up to people or be spotted caring. But emotionally, Maggie is Crowley: the one openly pining, clearly besotted, only wanting to hang around their crush and do whatever they can to make themselves useful, while Nina is Aziraphale. Interested but reticent, attracted but conflicted, trapped in an abusive relationship with a demanding offscreen "lover" (Lindsay/Heaven) who tries to constantly control and shame them without ever offering much, if anything in return. By the end, they bring themselves around to what Maggie/Crowley are offering, but by then, well. We've got a lot more problems on our hands.

As I also said in my earlier posts, this entire thing has always been a metaphor for religion, queerness, and what religion -- especially abusive, fundamentalist, organized religion -- does to queer people, but they really cranked the FUCK out of that metaphor this season. Aziraphale is guilt-tripped, controlled, and shamed for his attraction to Crowley at every turn. He is torn between his imagined duty to Heaven, in all its ignorant, uncaring, bureaucratic, gratuitously cruel system that he still insists on seeing the best in because he can't bear the alternative, and the chaotic and sometimes grey but genuinely more good morality that Crowley offers him. (Can I just say, we were explicitly shown that the two of them together doing "just a little miracle" are more powerful than Heaven AND Hell combined.) And at the end, he's told that the only way he can be with Crowley -- what Metatron explicitly blackmails him with -- is if they both go back to heaven, submit themselves to the cruel system again and give up everything that has made them who they are: their home in London, their human friends, their reliance on each other, their independence, their own ways of doing things. You can be queer in this (religious) framework, but only the limited, watered-down, controlled, controllable, constantly-under-supervision kind of queer, which relies on both you and your lover "converting" back to the true faith. And if you don't cooperate, they will literally kidnap you, lie to you, manipulate you, take you from your soulmate, and force you right back into doing the one thing (destroying the world) that you never, ever wanted to do in the first place, because in their minds, that is still better than this. It's for your own good.

Ouch.

And the thing is: that's why the ending a) hits so hard and b) is so fucking painful, because of course Aziraphale agrees. He has no conception of being able to defy Heaven on his own; he has always, always needed Crowley for that. In the flashbacks, when Aziraphale is faced with an order from Heaven that he desperately does not want to carry out (such as letting all Job's children get killed), he still relies completely on Crowley to "outsmart the rules" and find a better way. Crowley is A Crafty Demon; that's what he does, and so Aziraphale rationalizes it to himself that therefore that must be fine. Even in season 1, when he really didn't want the Apocalypse to happen but initially thought it was his duty as a good Heaven footsoldier, he relied on Crowley to talk him out of it and allow him to do what he really wants instead. That's their whole dynamic in a nutshell, as exemplified in that scene in episode 2, where Crowley tempts Aziraphale with the "pleasures of the flesh" while sprawled on his back in Ravish Me mode like the giant walking gay disaster that he is. (Sorry, buddy. That beard. Can't do it.) Everything that Aziraphale's existence is, that makes him who he is, that he loves and cherishes the most (in this case, food and wine) comes from Crowley. Everything else is just background noise.

Throughout the season, what we see is Aziraphale increasingly coming around to the fantasy of being with Crowley. He's coy and flirty; he talks about "our car" and expects Crowley will let him (which he does); he wants to have a Jane Austen ball and for them to dance together (oh my heart); he even thinks, at the crucial moment, that the best way for them to be together is to go back to heaven just like they were in the beginning, once more perfect angels, as if those entire six thousand years of struggle and grief and pining and separation and falling didn't happen. And Crowley -- poor, poor, brave, devoted, heartbroken Crowley -- has just heard for the first time in said six thousand years that actually telling the person you love how you feel is an option. Maggie and Nina tell them point-blank that their whole stupid plan failed because people aren't chess pieces who can be moved and automatically achieve the desired result. And of course this gobsmacks the dearest and dumbest Ineffable Husbands, because they can't conceive of anything else. People are chess pieces in the Great War of Heaven and Hell; Aziraphale and Crowley themselves are chess pieces who have been desperately trying to get out of being moved by external forces, but that doesn't change the fact that that's what they are. They don't have volition or agency aside from that which they can sneak for themselves in brief and stolen moments. That's it.

Until, well. It's not it. They discover that this whole would-be war is actually an elaborate ruse to cover up another angel-demon romance, that of Gabriel and Beelzebub. (I'll be honest, I'm 99% sure they did this storyline because they saw the fans crackshipping them, but I appreciate a fictional narrative that values and incorporates its fans' input, rather than trying to constantly "trick" or "outsmart" them or "do what they don't expect.") And Gabriel and Beelzebub get to be together, but only by leaving their world forever. They have to desert their homes, their structures, even their own identities, and never return. And Crowley and Aziraphale are so rooted in their "precious, perfect, fragile" life in their little corner of Soho, with their bookshop and their Bentley and their dining at the Ritz (which they didn't get to do in the end because METATRON /shakes fist), that that just doesn't work. Neither of them can conceive of doing that. So Aziraphale thinks "go back to heaven and try to make the terrible system do some good and take what we can in terms of being together" and Crowley just... pours out his heart. He's ready to fucking propose. He barely stops himself from saying something to the effect of "I want to spend eternity with you." He begs, he pleads with Aziraphale to go away not in the literal sense, but the emotional/metaphysical: to finally break this toxic dependence on Heaven and tell them once and for all where to stick it. And because he is desperate to make Aziraphale understand, he finally throws all caution to the winds and recklessly, desperately, adoringly kisses him, the one thing he's wanted to do for ages and...

Gets. Shot. Down.

Ugghhhhh. I'm suffering all over again. Aziraphale wants him, hungers for it, for them, and yet he's been so abused and so conditioned by Heaven (he's still blithely repeating to Crowley's face that "Hell are the bad guys!") that he just cannot accept that kind of desperate, blind, limitless, lawless affection. He even forgives Crowley for this "transgression," just to really twist the knife, and Crowley just can't take it, can't face up to how terribly this has all gone up in flames, after he went to heaven trying to find the answer for Gabriel's situation. Gabriel, who he fucking hates. Gabriel, who tried to kill the angelic being he loves (and for which Crowley has transparently never forgiven him). And yet at one pouty puppy-eyed look from Aziraphale and a warning that whoever is harboring Gabriel might be in danger, Crowley leaps headlong into the Bentley again and rushes to the rescue while "Good Old Fashioned Lover Boy" is blaring. He stoutly protects Gabriel; he does a miracle to disguise him; he lets him have hot chocolate and stay in the bookshop; he guards him from the literal demonic horde outside. All because of Aziraphale. That's it. And then, it still doesn't work. Not only that, Gabriel's absence and decision to forego Armageddon gives Heaven the one tool they finally need to take Aziraphale away from him.

I repeat: Ugghhhhhhhh.

(In a good way. Ngl, I love this angst. This is the kind of angst my brain Thrives on, the Thematic Parallel Romantic Character Arc kind. Nom nom nom. But also: AGONY.)

I also need to talk about Aziraphale driving the Bentley, aside from the obvious metaphor of him being in Crowley's home while Crowley is in his. Last season, we had the "you go too fast for me, Crowley" scene with them sitting in said Bentley, which was Aziraphale saying he's not ready for a relationship. In this season, as noted above, we see Aziraphale increasingly embracing the potential fantasy of being with Crowley. But here's the catch: when he's in the Bentley this time, driving it, setting the pace, acclimating to the idea, he's driving his own idea of what the Bentley/his relationship with Crowley is. It's not the real thing. He plays classical music; he supplies himself sweets; he turns it yellow; he drives too slow. Crowley calls him in another old-married-couple snitfit to complain that Aziraphale's messed it up, but what Aziraphale has actually messed up (or will, by the end of the season) is far more consequential than just a car. He's changed the entire shape of their relationship to the one he thinks can make it work, and it just doesn't. It has to be them -- "we could have been... Us" -- or it's not even close to the truth. It's not worth their time.

I repeat: Ouch.

Speaking of the writers validating fan theories, I know we all picked up and screamed about on Crowley's idea of Peak Romance Guaranteed To Fall In Love being sheltering from rain and gazing into each other's eyes, which confirms that that poor bastard was indeed ass-over-teakettle gone as soon as he met Aziraphale (again) in Eden. I also need to talk about the 1941 redux, because wow. This time, the danger comes from Hell, which we see being its usual self: gleefully, pointlessly cruel, pettily backbiting, dirty, sniping, tedious, endless, determined to mindlessly destroy because They're The Bad Guys and they like it. So they blackmail, spy on, miracle-block, illicitly photograph, and try to prove that Aziraphale and Crowley are secretly a couple, right after Aziraphale himself has just had the Light From Heaven realization that he's in love (which we all also picked up on in s1). They're forcibly outing them (to speak of more Religious Queer Trauma) in order to break them up/get them into trouble with their authorities/families. Aziraphale and Crowley manage to escape it mostly by dumb luck, but Crowley having an altogether freakout, hands shaking, barely able to actually point the gun at Aziraphale even in the knowledge that it's supposed to be fake, is just... wow. He can't even fathom the idea of ever trying to destroy him in earnest, especially when he knows on some level that Aziraphale also finally just realized his own feelings. So I just need to --

/screams

Anyway, Aziraphale's entire arc this season is doing what he thinks is the right thing and then inadvertently causing harm and damage as a result. In the Edinburgh flashbacks (live slug reaction of me: SEAN BIGGERSTAFF???!!) he tries to stop Elspeth from stealing bodies and gets Morag killed and Crowley drinking the laudanum to save him (though that part with David Tennant just riffing left and right, using his natural Scottish accent, and being Tiny Crowley/Huge Crowley was hilarious). He invites his neighbors to a Pride and Prejudice ball and makes them all the target for demonic attack. And of course the Job episode: Aziraphale, horrified at Heaven's callous cruelty, desperate not to get Job's children killed, willing to go along with Crowley's tricks to save them somehow, tempted by Crowley to do the fucknasty with their angel bits eat some food and decide that he likes it. As mentioned, the whole thing about God being silent this season is a major thematic choice. The only time we see/hear God is Her communing with Job from afar. Aziraphale enviously imagines the answers he must be getting (he's not, he's baffled and perplexed), while Crowley longs beyond words to even have the opportunity to ask the question: why? Why do this? Why is this your plan?

And of course, this absence culminates in the Metatron, the Voice of God, the person arrogantly claiming that they're speaking for God and know exactly what Heaven wants, being able to seize Aziraphale by the short hairs and absolutely fuck him over. Gabriel is gone/decommissioned/eloping with Beelzebub, so Heaven needs a Supreme Leader (God apparently is no longer a factor in the equation). And what this Supreme Leader needs to do is finally unleash the Apocalypse that Gabriel decided to pass on (the Second Coming). Aziraphale needs to be punished, taken away from Crowley's influence/love, and put back under Heaven's explicit control, so Metatron spots a great opportunity to do all three at once. It's not an accident that the exact tool he uses to get Aziraphale to agree is "now you can actually be with Crowley!" Aziraphale and Crowley have been trying so hard to hide out from their respective Head Offices, but now all at once, there's this seemingly miraculous opportunity for them not to have to do that anymore! They can be together! They can be sanctioned by Heaven! They can give up all this hiding and sneaking around and lying! Isn't that better?

... As long as, of course, they give up absolutely everything that makes them who they are. No big deal. Minor catch. Probably nothing.

Metatron doesn't let Aziraphale have time to escape, or think it over, or reflect, or anything. He pressures Aziraphale to come with him immediately, or be once more subject to Heaven's implicit wrath/destruction/judgment. Believe me, Aziraphale already KNOWS he's made a huge mistake, as soon as he hears what Metatron really wants: bringing him back to unleash the Apocalypse that Aziraphale and Crowley have given up literally everything to prevent. He doesn't need time to reflect. By the time my man is in that elevator, he's well aware of what a catastrophic misjudgment he's made, and yet --

Aziraphale needs this. He has, as noted, literally always relied on Crowley outsmarting Heaven's cruel orders in order to prevent himself from having to do them. He's relied on Crowley rescuing him ("rescuing me makes him so happy," WELL BUB, IT'S BECAUSE YOU ALWAYS NEED IT). He admits to Crowley's face that "I need you!" He hates Heaven's sadistic meanness, but he has absolutely no framework, in and of himself, to defy it. When the rubber hits the road, he will crumple and try to go along with it, and now he's been put in a position where he's going to have to stand up, defy Heaven, and make the break once and for all BY HIMSELF. He doesn't have Crowley around to do it for him, he has no support, he is going to arrive in Heaven and be shuttled straight off to the Apocalypse 2.0 War Room. The only way he gets out of this is if he actively stands up, if he chooses himself and Crowley and their life, and he has to.

The thing is:

Aziraphale has lived his entire eternal existence Looking Up. Up is the direction of Goodness and Heaven. Up is where Angels go. Up is where Aziraphale comes from and where Demons and Hell are not. But now he's going Up, in a position to take over the whole shebang, and it's the last thing he wants.

So he's going to have to come back Down.

He's going to have to Fall. He's going to have to get back Below at all costs. He's going to have to finally, once and for all, understand what led Crowley to make the choice to leave Heaven and never come back. It's only then that they can possibly be together on any kind of conscious, equal, deliberate footing, claim their own agency, reject Heaven AND Hell, and try to really earn that South Downs cottage and that happy-ever-after, and it's gonna hurt so good.

Now if you will excuse me, /screams

[lullabyes22-blog]

my supreme, what is your opinion on the first three episodes of arcane season 2?

hhfdgffd

<3

The only supreme is Fortiche - and a huge round of applause to them for the animation in S2. Every frame is like lickable visual cake icing and my eyeballs scream for more.

Also in keeping with food metaphors -

First 3 eps are good soup. Tasty soup. Well-presented soup.

However.

There are clumps in this soup that were absent in S1. The flow is not as seamless. Transitions feel jarring and the dialogue overall feels distinctly more flavorless. First time I watched S1, there were entire lines of dialogue I ended up memorizing, and that dialogue continues to pack a well-deserved punch 3 years later.

This time around, the scripts feel distinctly more... Marvel-esque?

High on quip calorie, low on substantive content.

I highly suspect there was a great deal of executive meddling behind the scenes, given corporate were not expecting Arcane to crunch the numbers it did + the scripts being incomplete. That, and the storyline kept getting passed between different writing departments, with different chefs trying to spice the broth. All of this might account for the relative lack of cohesion and its weird sense of hypercompression

I don't know if it'll improve or get worse. We're only at 3 eps, and the rest of the story's still waiting to be told, so I reserve any real criticism until then.

But overall, yeah.

It's still gourmet soup, but I feel as if the soup's been zapped in a microwave, ykwim?

Beyond that, the series is still a treat. Truly sumptuous soundtrack, and inspiring cinematography. The fight scenes legit made me catch my breath. You can feel the love poured into every frame.

Fuhrer Caitlyn gassing Zaun was not on my Bingo card, tho.

Nor was Jesus Viktor.

I am A-OK with the Arcane eating Heimerdinger. But gimme back Jayce and Ekko, pls. They got character arcs (and ship breakups) to suffer through </3

I also do not think the writers of the show were expecting world affairs to pivot quite the way they have - /gestures vaguely at RL - because leaving aside character motivations in a self-contained fictional setting, the critical literary lens and interpretive optics between Zaun and Piltover overall are gonna lead to some, hehehe, interesting fandom discourse.

On my part, I can't wait to see every single one of these beloved characters spiral to the depths, hit rock bottom, and hopefully climb back out as wiser human beings.

I also expect some of 'em to die.

:')

Overall: 8/10. Very yummy indeed.

[inchidentally]

hiii inch!

as the resident landoscar scholar/essayist in the community, i'm curious about your take on their debriefs! ps. i love them both equally so i'm not trying to favor one over the other, just genuinely curious about your thoughts on it :)

it definitely could just be them having different styles of communicating and/or explaining things but i've noticed that whenever lando wins, he always shares his gratitude/appreciation for the team and oscar (even when oscar didn't directly 'help' him) and oscar will give lando credit for winning but then just talk about how bad he did in the race

yet whenever oscar wins, not only does lando hype him up, but he doesn't talk about himself in the debrief & oscar (at least not to my knowledge) has yet to thank/acknowledge lando for contributing to his win (& strangely enough has always thanked sponsors instead??)

so yeah, i hope this isn't too ramble-y & i hope you have a great day! <33

your timing is insane anon bc while scholar and essayist are wayyyy too nice ways to describe me being overly consumed w a hyperfixation, I was actually noticing things similar to your ask in comments sections and had written something that I wasn't sure about posting ! but I think it's worth it simply bc there is such a huge misfire with interpreting Oscar going on - totally not saying you are, anon and you were very clear in what you've said and I rly appreciate you wanting to know my take <3

- first thing to dispel is “Lando thanked Oscar for his first win/for helping make his first win happen” - he didn't! he thanked him for showing what the car was capable of with overtakes. I know I know! reality isn’t as bromancey but the sweetness of it was Lando giving Oscar’s drive a little shout out, but it was not him thanking Oscar for helping with his win. that's why they all chuckled when he stated the reason. and the sweetness remains <3<3 gotta clear that up bc there is no lingering double standard going on there. it’s the same as Oscar praising Lando’s drives. (also, apropos of this ask and ppl seeing Oscar as deficient - contrast that with how Oscar did very deliberately thank Lando for welcoming him to the team!)

- the other thing to dispel is the recency bias of thinking Lando praises and mentions Oscar this much on a regular basis/Oscar doesn’t mention Lando at all (anon, I know you’re not saying that btw). now! reality is that Lando's POV =/= his stans' POV. so from his perspective, as of recently he feels a need to assert himself to the media as a team player and to acknowledge Oscar more and make it known that he acknowledges Oscar helping him in similar ways. I’m not even going to dip a little toe into the reasons why, all that matters is that this is what Lando sees as something he needs to do and say right now especially. plenty of team orders instances and races have gone by where Lando doesn’t mention or acknowledge Oscar or Oscar’s help and plenty of times where Oscar has been the one to bring up and praise Lando where Lando hasn’t etc etc.

to the point where !! last season we had people concerned that Oscar was so Lando-centric and mentioned him so much and was such a great team player with team orders and being happy and supportive for Lando’s successes even when his own race was misery or the result was gutting or he just lost out on a podium - but that Lando wasn’t bringing Oscar up at all or acknowledging Oscar’s races. the turntables etc! literally had the flip situation! (even extending to this season in Melbourne where Lando got so wrapped up in his Quadrant filming and podium he kind of forgot it was Oscar’s literal hometown race salfsafjlah in the post race press conf a journalist brought it up and he was like ‘oh’ - like, Oscar was not upset about that he just wanted a podium!)

and guess what - in both cases it was never a problem for either Lando or Oscar!

seriously, I cannot emphasize enough how much what teammates like Lando and Oscar say to the media and fans is for the media and fans and NOT how they actually communicate to each other as people. Charles and Carlos openly admit they’ll bite chunks out of each other at times in media but then they see each other in person, immediately hug and are totally fine. PR is PR. it’s either not reality or at best it’s a publicly-framed version of it. which leads to…

- Lando and Oscar don’t do the PR or the bromance thing. instead they giggle and side-eye their way through having to do scripted stuff and media interviews, and thankfully their occasional shared-brain thing and contrasting personalities are fun enough for most fans to enjoy. and literally the fact that they beam into each other’s faces Like That and it’s incredibly endearing. which is exactly how they handle these post race videos - trust me, they are not sitting there in media talking the same way they do in their little closed off world of just their drivers rooms and no one else. or even when cameras are off and they’re just around the team or other drivers. equally, they aren’t viewing how they talk about each other to media and fans as relevant. it’s solely how they talk to each other.

- Oscar is an acts of service guy; Lando is a words of affirmation guy. as Lando fandom has so much discussion around mental health*, it is very worth reminding that mental health inclusivity means learning the different ways that different personalities express affection and friendship! there is not just one way! clearly, Lando is very happy with having a teammate who may not talk much but his fondness of Lando makes up multiple compilation videos and posts about being absolutely whipped when it comes to … almost anything Lando wants or prefers (“nope, I’m gonna keep you happy”). and paying such close attention to Lando talking that he helps fill in the blanks when Lando’s brain struggles in public. and watching closely when Lando looked like he might trip over his own race suit. 

- it’s worth mentioning here that Oscar inspires genuine affection in people who gain absolutely nothing from openly liking him. he maintains friendships from his early karting days, still has a group chat from the boys in his boarding house at school, and has been with Lily for 4 or 5 years now - but all of those people either have private social media or have remained so thoroughly normal that they’re undetectable. Tom Stallard, his race engineer, and Andrea Stella have taken to Oscar like a nephew/son despite Oscar not being a demonstratively emotional person (and how for himself he views extreme emotions on par with negative emotions which is innnnteresting!). bear in mind that Andrea and Tom remain very fond of Carlos and count him as a friend still, so their judgment is very much to be trusted <3 if you look up Oscar’s mum Nicole’s episode on The Red Flags Pod she confirms that he’s truly Just Like That and his family adore him. there’s also this tiny but very telling moment of Oscar sending a journalist gifts for their new baby and the fact that The Fast and the Curious Pod (wholesome nerds HQ) view Oscar as their child. and that Abbi Pulling thinks he’s “too nice to be a racing driver”. it’s healthy to learn how to receive love and affection from people based on how they are naturally and comfortably rather than expecting them to behave in ways that are more socially the norm/seen as "acceptable"! 

*and side note it’s extremely gross and anti-mental health the way certain F1 fans have genuinely decided to interpret Oscar’s personality type as evil or cold or unfeeling. that is so profoundly backward and bigoted boomery thinking. yes it’s fine to joke a bit that Oscar’s a baby-face killer or robotic IF you make it clear it’s not true. but when I get sent links to adult women on tiktok claiming that Oscar’s mother and sister are part of some grand PR scheme orchestrated by McLaren to manipulate and maximize Oscar’s image then we’ve officially left the whole ‘I support mental health’ thing and entered ‘I persecute and suspect people who don’t fit a socially acceptable norm’. because of all the drivers who quite literally do orchestrate and manipulate PR for growing their careers or their impact (which is fine btw!!) sorry, Nicole’s sporadic social media presence is not remotely skillful PR and Oscar’s little sister is a college girl using tiktok to talk about her own interests. and if Oscar was trying to PR his way into whatever gain people imagine an introvert who dislikes being on camera could possibly gain then he’s doing an abominable job! his sponsors are still the ones he’s had since before F1 (including his dad’s company), his social media is as standard and bland with highly irregular sprinklings of personality, and he isn’t branching out into anything outside his racing career. like, sorry to destroy anyone’s insane projections of some grand plan onto a guy who truly is just happy to have his job and hang out with his friends and his girlfriend lasfgljsagfjlagfslagfsaj

so anyway, when Lando and McLaren team and staff members love on Oscar, it’s because it’s real and they clearly feel reciprocation from Oscar despite it not being traditionally emotional or verbal. plenty of teams and teammates can be neutral to fully disinterested in a driver and it's fine for it to be like that. if nobody actually liked Oscar or found him cold or unfeeling, they would make little to no effort to seem like they love him or like him. F1 isn't team sports, the whole public face of it aspect just doesn't exist outside of backmarker teams who need social media engagement to keep sponsors happy.

- Oscar is famously Not ! a public speaking/on camera/PR/media person and you can see in their early 2023 stuff how much Lando helps him (this video esp is painfully cute bc Lando encourages and praises him and Oscar’s so pleased he does a song and dance). ask any longtime Oscar fan and they’ll tell you he’s leaned on the energy of extroverts and PR skilled people his whole racing career. and no, he really does not try to be a meme that's just what happens to awkward introverted ppl who have to be on camera a lot ;__;

- Lando used to be just as uncomfortable as Oscar with this stuff! and he’s said many times he has learned and adapted to be better at public speaking and media work, just as Oscar is learning! Carlos basically socialized and raised Lando from shy, twitchy mumbly little introvert to the person he became around 2021/2022. and we all observed how Lando basically copied Carlos and Daniel’s sense of humor to develop the bromance content we all know and love. and he does the same with Max F on streams as well. I wish I could find it but he said in one of the early winter break 2023 streams how he ‘usually lets other people do most of the talking and he interjects occasionally’.

-re the “thanking the sponsors” thing: to help Oscar get by on camera, especially with spontaneous speaking, Oscar uses little ‘scripts’ he’s worked out and approved of ahead of time so that he doesn’t have to deal with the white noise that hits him when having to speak spontaneously (the famous little ahhhh’s and uhhhhm’s and long delays he has before answering). which is why things like thanking the sponsors has been in rotation lately since it’s something Andrea said (remember him being teased for saying 'we're in Austria' x 50? and repeating the bit about his wisdom teeth? and the refrain of ‘my girlfriend says…’) because he’s just trying to get out something he knows is acceptable and palatable. compare the stiffness of his post race videos with when he’s one on one with an interviewer (the Laura Winter one is great) or filming non-scripted stuff w Lando and you can see the difference between him feeling under pressure vs how he expresses himself when he’s relaxed. 

- it’s genuinely weird and adorable how Oscar doesn’t use gushy language or do PDA with Lily or Lando, but in exactly the same way with both he loves bringing up their little quirks or what they disagree with him about or things they like that he doesn’t etc ??? idk if they’re secretly very similar or what but for some reason Oscar shows his affection for them only occasionally in plain terms, but mostly by bringing them up seemingly for no reason and in extremely mundane ways ?? idk it’s just a very very cute observation I wanted to point out and he doesn’t do that with any other people aslfgsljagfafgl

so yes, those are the Things To Know about Oscar and his relationship with other people and with Lando to explain why he isn’t like Lando, Carlos, or Daniel. and that whether or not Lando or Oscar bring each other up or acknowledge each other in media duties is not something to get stuck on because that’s not something they personally pay attention to in their relationship. we got used to a specific almost identical type of teammate relationship with Lando’s previous two - and even other teammates who are less close all follow a similar pattern of humor and media friendly behavior. but Oscar is weird, Lando is weird and just adapts better, and they’re both very weird together. they can mindread when not under pressure and they obsess over details about each other’s food and choices etc and go off on bizarre tangents about naps and music and they don’t like posting content about their downtime together/purely social hanging out. oh and they openly complain that they want to spend more non-racing time together as if they couldn’t just… do it more ?? yea they’re just like that.

somehow I have more to say but it’s mostly observations so under a cut it goes (but the stuff above is basically the main points I wanted to make!)

a lot of misconceptions have happened both because Lando's grown and changed so much since the start of 2023 and because Oscar's real personality is so slow to be revealed... and tbh it's def yet to be understood fully by a lot of people…

Lando very openly kicked against the idea of being the older/more experienced big brother role widely expected of him when Oscar was announced for Mclaren (to this day he jokingly but semi seriously says he envies Oscar’s “youth”). Lando had spent the previous four years as little brother and gotten very comfortable in that role. around Austin 2023, he realized Oscar was happy to look after himself and didn't need serious help with anything except media/PR/public speaking. this is where Lando found his big brother role and ran with it happily. it’s where the Finish the Lyrics video happened and we saw a major shift in the landoscar dynamic.

take Lando’s initial insecurity trying to figure out the dynamic with a quiet, low energy rookie and contrast that with how someone five years behind in experience to their teammate is NOT as secure of his position** and has much more to prove. yes Oscar has a contract but he knows better than anyone !! that those are not set in stone or immutable. he frequently has said - and his mom has said - Lando's place in F1 is already established as a front-runner. therefore Oscar's job is to push himself and prove himself to that level.

all of which is why you can’t look at Lando and Oscar in media - or even on track - and mistake their closeness in age for being able to judge them similarly. 

**the refrain of 'why can't he be a support driver until Lando gets a WDC' is easy to answer: for one thing absolutely NO driver wants that and for another, he very understandably does not assume he has the space or stability to just not try his hardest unless specifically asked by the team. 

without opening a can of worms on my personal opinions, I’ve consulted my family/friends of family who have been F1 obsessed since I was born - and the reality of guys who are seen or who actually are ‘support driver’ (not rly an official term but we all know what it is) is NOT the same as a number 2 driver, and neither of those are even options for Oscar. 

a number 2 is a driver seen as having become relatively disposable compared to the number 1 and who just wants to keep a seat in F1 despite the insult. they will at least tacitly accept that their role is to follow team orders and suck it up while number 1 chases the glory (whether that’s points or podiums). a number 2 has a limited life span either because his skill drops off and he becomes a liability or because he can’t stand it after a while.

a support driver is someone who either brings money/sponsorships/a unique regional fanbase and can occasionally or at least theoretically compete with their teammate. and who for whatever reason is judged as the guy who has to suck it up when the other guy has a better shot at the glory. but if the other guy falls behind or suffers a DNF, the support driver is automatically the number one. and if the support driver has a shitty season or the gap in ability widens between him and his teammate, he retains his seat anyway because of the money/sponsorships/unique regional fanbase he brings. so basically, he’s pretty damn safe.

Oscar does not bring money, sponsorships or a unique regional fanbase. Australia doesn’t need convincing to be invested in F1, Oscar’s sponsorships are peanuts compared to what sponsor-grabber Zak Brown already has and Oscar’s funding ran out before F1 and his career only continued because of Mark Webber taking an interest in him (for more on that, see K’s excellent primer - you can scroll down to the screencap of a sheet with a lot of numbers on it for that particular part). and despite insane conspiracy theories about him, Oscar’s PR and image not only don’t have anywhere near the numbers of many other drivers, he also had to recover from the immensely bad PR following Alpinegate. he had most fans of McLaren, Alpine, Danny Ric and Lando (as the prospective teammate) all hating his guts before he’d even stepped into his first papaya race suit. all he’s had getting him past all of that was his promise from F2 and F3 and then his improvement as a driver.

so that’s being support driver out of the question.

and also referencing Mark Webber, without leaning too cornily into the obvious like… no, Oscar’s not going to be the one F1 driver to be okay with the idea of being a number 2. his own mother said how he viewed potentially having Lando as a teammate as advantageous for a rookie because he wouldn’t be expected to match up immediately. the flipside of that is what he’s had to achieve and become immediately after his rookie year in order to be seen as around Lando’s level. his job is to prove to McLaren and to his race team that he's going to try and bring them the best result on every outing. if mathematically that means team orders in favor of Lando then fine, which he's more than proven he'll do. but without said orders, Oscar's job remains to try and get at the very front - just like it is Lando's. there isn't an option or a reason for Oscar to just... intentionally fail or ease off that responsibility (again, unless ordered to).

so that's a no go for being a number 2 driver.

and some more about Oscar and mental health for those who think it only applies to drivers who talk about it frequently: Oscar has talked about how, when his dad came with him to the UK, initially Oscar felt he had "too much time to think". and about his difficulties in moving all alone to boarding school (“sacrificing” being with his family) on the other side of the world at fourteen. I cannot for the life of me find the post again but he even hired a sports psychologist to help him. he’s always been called mature and competent for his age and he and Lily seemed to just go right into domestic almost-married codependency after about two years together. there’s a whole school of thought about children who leave home early and parentification and boarding school syndrome etc but that’s getting way too speculative for even me to go into. but basically, Oscar leapt into a lot of unknowns without a lot of the usual safety nets drivers have/have had. he's had to be self-reliant in a way that's not common among the extreme privilege of the average F1 driver and for those who have it similar to him, they have a similar outlook and approach***. so to mistake his confidence and determination for cockiness or coldness is as wildly off as people misinterpreting Lando’s genuine honesty for him being a cocky asshole. overall, Oscar’s self-assurance and maturity are why he’s continued and succeeded in such a volatile sport and pipedream career because compared to a lot of other drivers on the grid, he has not had a smooth or assured journey.

***obv in reality, apart from Ocon and Hamilton, we're always talking about very relative disadvantages. but Oscar is absolutely in the class of drivers who have to live far away from a family support system and who financially were not guaranteed career progression.

by contrast, Lando was a totally unique phenom and had big, welcoming hands grab him as a teenager and bring him into the McLaren and F1 fold. pundits and cameras and fans all saw him bringing drinks to Alonso and toddling around being helpful in the garage before his time with the team had even come. by the time he drove his first F1 race he was already everyone's beloved baby and Carlos basically got a crash course in parenting as he took full responsibility for socializing Lando and even having to cope with his teenage mood swings. Lando also had a comparatively gentle learning curve by dint of being so immensely talented and exceeding expectation for his age - but also always having older, more experienced teammates as his nearest competition. I will say he made sure to state he didn't want people to give him bias simply because his teammates had such an advantage of experience - and that he personally judged himself equally against them (to his detriment of confidence sometimes!). but it's only logical that people would factor in the age gaps anyway. by the time he'd entered his third year in F1 he was firmly established, had one of the largest fanbases and McLaren couldn't have made it clearer how badly they wanted to keep him from the clutches of other teams.

again - very much NOT saying that Lando doesn't feel the need or pressure to keep proving himself because he absolutely does, but it's still a VERY unique and unusual first few years in F1 !! 

Oscar had a very different experience of not knowing if he could progress after winning F2, having to hang around in reserve and then show up at McLaren without much fanfare (except the unanimous walls of hate from Danny Ric fans, Alpine fans and McLaren fans) and work from the backmarkers up with the team to prove himself - all while those months before the upgrades were spent with fans united in wanting him to fail and celebrating his difficulties.

so yea, all even more worth bearing in mind when it comes to how Lando takes the approach of speaking about Oscar and the team from a proprietary sense of pride - versus Oscar still focusing on his own races because it’s normal for young drivers early in their careers to be more focused on proving themselves and asserting themselves in order to become established in the way Lando is now. they seem so similar in so many ways but when it comes to their positions in the team and in the sport, it’s well worth remembering that big gap exists and why it makes them different sometimes - but that crucially, they end those post race videos united either in misery or in happiness and pride <3

I AM SO SORRY TO EVERYONE WHO READ THIS FAR GOD I WON’T SHUT UPPPP

[dropoutconfessions]

Season 2 of mismag has undeniably made me an Evsam shipper. Their relationship just feels so organic and, in my opinion, is developing so naturally. I've never liked Evan/K in the romantic sense, love their dynamic as friends though, their relationship just felt so rushed to me. Now I understand that season 1 was only four episodes so they didn't have an abundance of time to focus on it beyond what they did. To me it was very one sided up until they got together in ep 3, up until that point Evan hadn't said or done anything that suggested he reciprocated in anyway, I know he said after the fact that he'd had a crush on K as well but it always felt out of nowhere and very tell don't show, to me. Now all that being said, if others have different interpretations than me, that's totally valid. The wonderful thing about shipping is that it's subjective, all our interpretations are correct when it comes to our experience of the show, one doesn't take away from the other. What frustrates me is when (some) people have to constantly be like "how can people ship Evan/Sam?! It's so wrong! They're platonic!" Like damn let people have their fun, sheesh, no one's saying you have to ship it too. Anyway, I'm really loving this season and can't wait for more episodes.

-

[essycogany]

The Roll Reversal Between Sonic And Amy

In Sonic Prime did Sonic and Amy’s rolls get swapped? Because MAN THE IMPLICATIONS IN THIS SHOW IS BOTH SUBTLE AND NOT SUBTLE AT THE SAME TIME.

The reason I say the two hedgehogs rolls are swapped is because one line in the entire show is the only indication of Amy’s crush on Sonic.

Sonic: “You like me….To some extent.” It’s never hinted at in the original Green Hill. Though a funny and random detail I liked is Amy apparently tricked Sonic into getting into the water (Probably to teach him how to swim) and I thought that would’ve been adorable to see.

Now onto Sonic’s part. Sonic possibly having a crush on Amy shouldn’t be a surprise. First of all the implications in actual canon Game/Modern Sonic is increasing more and more in my opinion. Secondly, this show’s version of Sonic is probably the most emotionally driven and affectionate. He’s not as secretive about how he feels either.

Sonic in episode 8 s2: “We’re all in this together. And I’d really think you’d grow to love them as much as I do.”

Onto the small details. We have short, but not hard to miss moments of Sonic just….staring at the different Roses. Sure, it can be viewed as platonic, but it’s the constant softening his gaze in a bunch of different scenes that didn’t have to be added, but was. It’s all up to interpretation.

Anyways, Sonic and original Amy’s first interaction is with the blue blur coming up to her excitedly and standing in a flirtatious manner. His tone of voice when he says “Got a little sidetracked,” could be interpreted as anything, but how he’s animated makes me pretty sure it’s intentionally flirtatious. That’s just me though.

Then we have the flirting teasing at Rusty Rose in the pirate dimension.

Rusty: “Not that anyone will remember you.”

Sonic: “Now you’re just being hurtful.”

Sonic not minding Black Rose hugging him and might even appreciates it.

And almost all the scenes between him and Thorn Rose was ship fuel for me. With Sonic calling her “Thorny,” as a nickname. He kept the location of the green shard a secret so Thorn could trust him. Sonic stopped himself from fighting Thorn as much as possible. (The Amy Flashback was adorable) Not to mention the last few scenes with Thorn holding onto Sonic was sweet as well.

Sonic even helped improved the sisters lives.

With Rusty finding her humanity and ability to live without her Flikie.

Thorn regained her broken friendship and trust with the Bose Cage Gang.

And Black Rose became the new leader of her Crew. (I say that knowing it was mostly Dreads redemption that helped, but still)

Sonic’s also the reason for all the Roses to gain a sisterhood. Which was one of the most precious part of the entire show. Season 3 has scenes of them running up to Sonic to make sure he’s alright, and helping Sonic twice by saving the last three pirates from No Place and getting him back home.

And here’s my favorite detail. I love how Sonic adores Amy’s way of thinking in Prime. When helping Thorn come to her senses, Sonic mentions how the original Amy would handle the situation. Expressing herself and discussing how she feels. The reason I bring it up is because Sonic finds value for Amy being able to do it without issue. Understanding he’s not the best at expressing himself.

Thorn: “I don’t know. She sounds pretty great.”

Sonic: “Yeah. You are.”

In fact. Sonic thinks so fondly of Amy that the show couldn’t end without having him come to her bashfully and calling her, “Sweet Amy.”

Also the posing with Sonic’s hand behind his back and feet up doesn’t help.

Last thing I’d like to point out is Sonic’s implied crush on Amy is very subtle and despite all of this can be interpreted as platonic which I’m fine with. But the thought of a roll reversal between two characters that’s never experienced it prior to now is awesome to speculate.

Stay Creative! 💜

[kanguin]

Apropos of nothing, here's my top 15 anime and whether the story would be improved if you made the main character a trans girl:

1. That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime - You can't transition Rimuru in a way that matters, but honestly if Rimuru did start to ID as a woman over time, that would be cool. Unlikely though considering his human form is the body of Shizu, so a fully fem form would feel pervy to Rimuru.

2. Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood - Well it'd certainly make the title funny if you made Edward into Edwina. And it'd make Ed/Winry into yuri. But honestly it'd change very little imho. Though it would be interesting to explore transition in a world where alchemy exists, but just in a different story. Might make for a fascinating post-canon fanfic?

3. Mushoku Tensei: Jobless Reincarnation - Oh god would it. The story is already focused on exploring identity and already has dysphoria when a god he talks to forces him into his pre-reincarnation body on the astral plane. Making Rudy into a polyamorous trans lesbian would literally be peak and elevate the story so much.

4. Kaguya-sama: Love is War - You know what? Yeah. I can vibe with making Miyuki Shirogane trans. It would add another layer of intrigue to the story AND make it gay. It could even be funny if Kaguya or Chica found out before Shirogane did. Wait. No. It would be hilarious if YU ISHIGAMI found out first, and just, assumed Miyuki was closeted, and not just, clueless. Yes this could add so much entertainment value.

5. Dungeon Meshi - Lord almighty get this autistic furry a choker and some estrogen, stat. I make it no secret how I feel about the Trans Touden Sisters interpretation.

6. Dandadan - Make Okarun and Jiji trans girls and make the main cast a messy polycule and sign me the FUCK up please! It would be so funny and so much fun. I NEED this version of Dandadan. It'd be even funnier considering how much is focused around Ken's junk and him being partially possessed by an old lady.

7. Overlord - NGL I'm not even sure anything would change if you made Momonga into a trans woman. She'd act the exact same, and so would everyone else. Interesting for sure, but fruitless, ultimately.

8. My Dressup Darling - Crack? Crack cocaine? Do you realize how amazing it would be to make this into a story about a gyaru girl pulling a closeted trans girl excitably out of the closet?! This would make this so much cuter than it already is, I think I'd EXPLODE.

9. How a Realist Hero Rebuilt the Kingdom - It wouldn't change much narratively, but the world could always use more stories with polyamorous trans lesbians as the protagonist.

10. The Faraway Paladin - Wouldn't change much honestly, but it would be cool. Tbh Season 2 Will looks like a stealth/closeted trans girly already.

11. Mob Psycho 100 - Again wouldn't change much but would be fun. Put Mob on estrogen and watch her transform from anxiety autism failboy to anxiety autism failgirl. And then still be the kindest person in any room.

... Okay though, on second thought, getting to see her go ???% on a transphobe would be cool as shit.

12. One Punch Man - another no change case. One Punch Woman. She has boobs now. She probably transitioned in like a day somehow.

13. My Hero Academia - I think putting Midoriya on estrogen would fix the show actually. Maybe also put the writer on estrogen just to be sure. (joke)

14. Kill la Kill - Making Ryuko Matoi a trans girl would actually be really cool, especially with her challenging establishment, with the themes of clothes being a restrictive aspect of society, and with her gay romance with Mako. I've seen so many trans girls on Tumblr with Ryuko's exact shameless, confident personality, I just know it'd be epic.

15. Cautious Hero: The Hero is Overpowered but Overly Cautious - It would change little about how Seiya acts, but realizing she's trans would definitely give Ristarte's bisexual ass a nosebleed. Though Seiya would probably be ultra mega hyper closeted behind numerous mystic barriers, so that'd be fun to explore.

[hotdaemondtargaryen]

EWAN MITCHELL INTERVIEWED BY TV GUIDE.

AEMOND HAS BEEN PRINCE REGENT FOR A FEW EPISODES NOW. IS RULING THE REALM WHAT HE EXPECTED?

"He's probably got a little more than he bargained for."

"I think he's starting to feel the weight of that crown on his head."

"In Episode 7, you had Rhaenyra raise new dragonriders."

"And so that puts into question that belief that Targaryens have always been closer to gods than [to] men."

"That divide between dragonlords and common folk has now been shrunk in Aemond."

"He recognizes that he's outnumbered, dragon-wise — out-dragoned, should I say."

"And so you start to see that in Episode 8, he starts to get a little bit desperate."

"But he's still got a few things up his sleeve."

SO WHAT RHAENYRA DID MADE HIM FEEL LESS LIKE A GOD?

"Definitely."

"And what he does as well, in retaliation — in a fit of rage, he burns the town of Sharp Point, which is the seed of Bar Emmon who sits on Rhaenyra's council, who very much pledged to the Black side of the war."

"And it's interesting because although it was an act of anger, geographically the town of Sharp Point is situated very close to the Gullet."

"And so maybe Aemond is warming up the blockade for things to come in Season 3."

"That's kind of how he kids himself, that's how he justifies his actions."

THAT'S INTERESTING. I'M ALSO WONDERING, WHO ON THE SMALL COUNCIL DOES HE TRUST THE MOST RIGHT NOW, AND WHO DOES HE TRUST THE LEAST?

"Well, is there any council member left? I think he sent them all away."

"[Laughs.] It was really interesting exploring those scenes as well, when Aemond was on one side of the table, and how he was serving the war effort."

"Then when he gets voted as Prince Regent, he sits on the other end of the table, and now he looks at all of these council members through a very different lens."

And it's like, "How can each of you serve me? Who's with me, who's against me?"

"He's very earnest in a way."

"And he ultimately disbands the council table, he's not one who cares that much for tradition."

"In terms of who my favorite is, it would probably be Criston Cole (Fabien Frankel)."

"I think Aemond trusts Cole to do his job."

"And the person that he doesn't trust, it would be Larys (Matthew Needham)."

"I think he can see through him a little bit."

LARYS TOLD AEGON HE HAS TO ESCAPE BECAUSE OTHERWISE AEMOND WOULD KILL HIM. WHY HASN'T AEMOND KILLEM HIM?

"I don't want to give away too much, but one of the things that I loved in Episode 6 is when Aemond gives Aegon the king's marker back, and he kind of presses it into his wounded stomach."

"Is he doing that to inflict pain on Aegon?"

Or is he doing it as a way to say, "Don't worry, the king's seat will be there for you when you get better?"

"So, Aemond's true allegiance is questionable."

"You don't necessarily know what his ambitions are, but that's what makes him scary."

WHAT YOU SAID AS THE SECOND INTERPRETATION — ABOUT THE KING'S SEAT STILL BEING THERE FOR AEGON — IS FASCINATING. BECAUSE AFTER HIS ACTIONS, I WAS DEFINITELY LEANING TOWARD THE FIRST INTERPRETATION WHEN I WATCHED THAT SCENE.

"Aemond, he raises those questions."

"One of the things that I love about watching film and TV, is the conversation it sparks afterwards."

"I love that almost as much as watching the film, and having that debate with friends — their angles on what characters' hidden motivations might be."

"And I love deciphering it all."

("HE NEVER ACTUALLY FELT THAT UNCONDITIONAL LOVE FROM ALICENT AND SO HE HAD TO FIND IT ELSEWHERE. HE HAD TO FIND ANOTHER SUITABLE SURROGATE, I THINK HE FOUND ONE IN VHAGAR, AN OLDER SHE-DRAGON," MITCHELL HAD TOLD TV GUIDE.) WOULD YOU SAY THIS DECISION SHOWS THAT HE'S GIVEN UP ON TRYING TO WIN HIS MOM'S APPROVAL OR LOVE?

"No, I don't think he's given up."

"I don't think he'll ever give up."

"I think he very much didn't want his mom at work."

"So he was like, mom, you just step outside for a minute."

"I'm going to finish this war, and then when it's done, I'll join you on a Dornish beach."

"We can share a Piña Colada, and I'll be the war hero."

"You can be the mother I always wanted you to be, and it'll all be good in Aemond's eye, and peaceful."

"Whether or not that's what Alicent wants, or whether that's her idea of happiness, is another thing."

SO HE SAW IT AS AN ACT OF PROTECTION.

"Yeah."

"Or maybe you could look at it from the fact that he just doesn't want his mom's voice on the council table."

"And he does have a grudge against her for the way that she raised him."

AND WHEN YOU SAID SHE CAN BE THE MOM HE ALWAYS WANTED HER TO BE, WHAT DOES THAT LOOK LIKE?

"I think one that just has love for him."

"That's how we beat Aemond, it's with love."

"We gotta give him a hug."

THERE'S ALSO THE BIG SCENE WITH HELAENA WHERE SHE TELLS HIM HE'LL DIE. FIRST, WOULD YOU SAY HE FULLY BELIEVES HER, KNOWING HER PROPHETIC GIFTS? AND HOW DO YOU IMAGINE THIS INFORMATION WILL AFFECT HIS CHOICES GOING FORWARD?

"I think he definitely believes some part of Helaena's foresight to be true."

He witnesses that when he's named Prince Regent, and Helaena stood behind him, she asks, "Was it all worth it?"

"And witnessing what Helaena says to him at the end of the [season], it challenges his beliefs."

"He always had an idea of how things were going to play out."

"He felt very bulletproof, to an extent."

"And so to hear that belief be put to question by Helaena, it kind of shakes his world."

"And I think Aemond, he's got to sit down and let that information marinate a little bit."

"But as we know, he doesn't sit still for long."

"He's going to be up on his feet and he's going to retaliate ASAP."

WE'VE SEEN HIM QUITE BOLD AND IMPULSIVE. DO YOU THINK HAVING THAT KNOWLEDGE OF HIM DYING WILL MAKE HIM MORE CAUTIOUS?

"I think it's interesting, because the knowledge that Helaena shares with Aemond, it's information that could make Aemond an enemy of her, or, on the other hand, it could actually make Helaena a very valuable ally for the Green side."

"Because with that perception, if you were able to harness that power and that foresight, I think if we listened to Helaena a lot more we might be in an even better position than we are now."

"And she could tell us about blows before they land, we can be one step ahead of the curve."

LOOKING BACK AT THIS SEASON, HOW DO YOU THINK AEMOND'S BOND WITH VHAGAR HAS GROWN?

"He's definitely got Vhagar on a leash."

"We acted more as a power couple in Season 2."

"Aemond learned from his mistakes in the skies of Storm's End from Season 1."

I think he listened to his grandfather Otto Hightower (Rhys Ifans) when he said, "You must get a grip on your emotions."

"And so I think he definitely had Vhagar on a tighter rein this season, and was a lot more in control, and that makes him all the more scary."

DEFINITELY AGREE ON THAT. AND DID YOU SAY YOU'RE A POWER COUPLE?

"Yeah, we're a power couple."

"She's beautiful, right?"

[mayabruhbruh]

What do you think of the possibility of Will and Chance happening? I feel like it would be really poor writing tbh but I feel like they will give Will a different love interest because they’ll try to make all of the audience „happy“ But that would just truly not align with the writing so far I feel like.

Love your analyses btw<3

THANK YOUU! That's so kind :) And great ask! This is definitely a topic that the ST fandom needs to discuss.

The default question when people have little to no hope in Byler is, well, who the hell is Will going to end up with? Because it’s become increasingly evident that they’re trying to set him up for a romance. The “im not gonna fall in love”, the “it’s not my fault you don’t like girls”, even the gif shown above. It all can be interpreted to mean that Will is going to find his person soon.

So... to be completely honest, I had no idea who Chance was until this ask popped up and I had to look him up💀. It’s been a while since I’ve been on here, so I’m a little rusty on the deep lore lmao. So, in the off chance that others might also be confused, here’s a (rare) gif of him I found.

I think that’s him with the Hawkins cap on the right. Correct me if I’m wrong.

I’m not sure where the rumors that this guy was going to become a bigger part of the show came from, but that seems highly unlikely to me. I feel like they would have either hinted at it in the fourth season (like how they’re giving Patrick here quite a sizeable role so that he’ll be memorable to us later when he gets vecnafied) or they would have announced him as a more prominent character already like how they did for s5 with Holly, that one new kid character, and also how they did Amybeth for s4. Idk, maybe it’s unreasonable to think they would have to do that, but it feels quite too out-of-the-blue. Especially for a character that would take on the role of becoming our central character’s love interest, which is a BIG DEAL. Especially if it’s queer lol.

Secondly, I firmly believe that it would be a disservice to Will’s own desires to meet someone new.

Will said this explicitly in the van scene, and as of now, we’re still under the impression that Mike is his person. Forget about Mike’s issues and feelings for a second, and think about what Will is saying here. He feels like a mistake for being different, but Mike makes him feel like he’s not a mistake at all, that he’s better for being different. Mike gives him courage to fight on. Fuck. Tbh, it makes me wonder how long he’d felt this way. As a byler, you might be inclined to think his feelings have been on for forever, but narratively, he could have easily just realized his own feelings very recently, most likely sometime between season 3 and 4. It doesn’t mean the feelings weren’t there before, but realistically neither Will nor the general audience were aware of it before now.

Moving on.

Has anyone heard of the rule of Chekhov’s gun? It’s an incredibly clever and widely-used tool in screenwriting and storytelling in general that helps to clue the watchers in for what’s to come next.

Think of Lucas’ wrist rocket in season 1. When they introduced it as a flimsy-looking, no-good weapon that he’d put too much pride in at first, it gives us a good laugh and we move on. But really, it very meticulously set us up to subconsciously anticipate to see it again later. That’s what Chekhov’s gun is all about. Set-ups, foreshadowing, hidden treasures.

Another great example would be the painting reveal of s4. Obviously, after finding out that Will was painting something, bylers immediately figured it was for Mike and BEGGED and HOPED and PLEADED that we’d be able to finally see it, but to the general audience it was just another something that they’d have to pick apart and realize was actually of importance as the season progressed. (It’s also a good way of showing that the writers are fully capable of engrossing the entire fan base and general audience in his and Mike’s story. Just knowing Will had painted something and that it was for Mike created this sense of PLEASE TELL ME WHAT IT IS AND WJATS GOING ON and whatnot that watchers are simply so susceptible to it’s insane.)

Okay, back to the van scene. Will’s confession.

Now, I’m not saying that the writers intentionally used this foreshadowing tool for us to find and understand immediately. There are plenty, plenty of instances where writers use Chekhov’s gun principle and it flies over peoples heads purposefully. What I’m trying to say is that, thematically and narratively, they would never have introduced Wills feelings for Mike if not for it to have importance to the story, or for nothing to happen with it at all. It’s a set up. And a maddeningly good one, at that. Because queer stories already do tend to fly over people’s heads, and also because there’s the added drama between Mike and Eleven that makes it seem quite impossible for any of these feelings to be addressed in the midst of such emotional chaos. But whatever. I think I’m rambling.

Basically, whether they end up together or not, whether Mike reciprocates these feelings, Will is forever established to be in love with Mike. The confession was simply too grand and emotional and earnest for him to just switch up abruptly next season when he meets someone new that he might have a better chance with. Even if there were to be a whole new arc for him where he learns to let go of Mike or something crappy like that, it would be terrible writing on their end and poor use of a well-set-up Chekhov’s gun reference. It would be like introducing the gun in the display case in scene one, then two scenes later just tucking it away into a storage closet for the remainder of the story. Like… what?

And plus, it’s HIGHLY unlikely that Will would end up with that sort of storyline next season when he’s literally WITH Mike for presumably a majority of the time (based on the set pics so far).

So that’s my debunking of the Chance rumors :) and I didn’t even get to mention how incompatible they’d be just naturally as characters. Chance, a Jason-following jock that hates Dungeons and Dragons, fantasy and nerdy things, and willingly assisted in beating up the Hellfire Club when they were trying to find Eddie. What about that at all screams Will’s type? And if you’re thinking “unconventional couple enemies to lovers”, just don’t. This isn’t a rom-com, especially for a queer plot line lol. I think it’s safe to say there’s no “chance”😉 that they will ever happen. And either way, it’d be a bummer if they did. Cus it would just be Will defeatedly settling for someone that isn’t Mike.

UGH! It makes me sad that the one thing that is firmly being teased by the writers (Will’s love playing a major role in the plot to come) is constantly being questioned and framed as different questions. “Will Mike reciprocate?” “Does this mean Mike and Eleven break up?” “Who will end up with who?” SHHH Frankly, to me this is already a win. It’s become obvious that Will having feelings for him will come up again soon, and the rest of the evidence that accounts for Mike’s end already speaks for itself, so I prefer to just sit back and watch it all unfold.

Again, thanks so much for the ask!! This was so fun to dissect and feel free to keep sending questions into my inbox. It might take me a second to post my response but I’m determined to get through all of them. Love you guys!! <3

[yumeka-sxf]

Becky's homewrecking is one of my most favorite stand-alone chapters...and the anime version did not disappoint!

Everyone's reactions to Becky's hilarious delusions are just so perfect - Loid being baffled and totally clueless, Yor being flustered and completely misinterpreting things, while Anya just observes it all with quiet amusement.

Plus the scenes of Anya imagining Becky as her mom, and even the short sequence of showing Becky her house - gah, everything about this chapter/episode is peak SxF comedy~

Becky completely ignoring Bond...poor pup 😂

If Loid thinks he doesn't understand children based on Anya, Becky certainly did not help! (also Bond in the corner still feeling rejected)

Yor's "encounter" with the car worked much better in the anime 🤣

I honestly feel really bad for the driver!

Also this poor guy, lol. Though I'm sure the money Becky gave him was more than enough to cover repairs on the machine 🤣

I know some people found this chapter uncomfortable, but I don't get why. If Loid reciprocated Becky's feelings, then yes, that would be bad, but he doesn't. He reacts how anyone would if some delusional little kid decided they had a crush on you - by being confused (and hoping that your wife doesn't interpret it wrong!)

It's not unusual for little kids, especially little girls, to develop silly, fleeting infatuations with adults (I'm guilty of that myself when I was Becky's age, lol).

Anya's willingness (at first) to go along with Becky's delusions was fitting - she idolizes Becky's lavish lifestyle, especially the food (and since Yor's food is, well...) Plus someone at her impressionable young age can be swayed easily. But I'm sure if somehow this delusion became a reality, she'd realize that Yor is the best Mama and Becky should just be "best friend" 😅

This chapter also confirms that Yor didn't completely forget everything that happened after the bar incident. Or at least she remembered it more clearly after Loid supposedly had the conversation with her again, lol. Just shows how important his compliments are to her.

I love how the episode's key visual is a throwback to the one from episode 6! I hope we get to see more Yor/Becky interactions again.

We also got a short anime-original story featuring Fiona. Everyone was expecting chapter 60 to be adapted, but I'm kinda glad it wasn't since it and the Becky chapter seem a bit too long to share the same episode. Not a whole lot to say about this segment other than I liked how Fiona's actions mirrored the Forgers' activities on their vacation. We also got to see more of her "training" in the woods that was hinted at after her tennis match with Yor.

I liked this bear hitching a ride.

And omg, foreshadowing for chapter 67!

And it seems like the final episode of the season will adapt the 2-part story of Loid and Bond's fire rescue. I know there's a scene of Fiona in the next mission preview, but it's likely from a quick anime-only scene while the rest of the episode will adapt the two parts of chapter 62. The big indicator that this will be the only story adapted is that the next episode only has one title, "Part of the Family."

Can't believe we're just one week away from the final season 2 episode AND the CODE: White movie! Later today there's going to be a Jump Festa panel about SxF so I'm hoping there will be a season 3 announcement - stay tuned!