#I spent the day watching s1 & drawing

[chidorrrita]

・❥・and I just might know you too

the worries of a scientist never go away but you make them slightly better

: ̗̀➛ viktor x gn!reader

: ̗̀➛ cw: just sweet fluff, s1 act2 vik, angst if you squint your eyes and have watched s2 (but no spoilers so don't worry)

: ̗̀➛ wc: 1k+

: ̗̀➛ a/n: My finals are coming up and I’m feeling incredibly stressed so in the spirit of things I thought of making Viktor equally stressed so we can tear our hair out together

Progress Day is only a week away and Viktor couldn’t be more stressed. He’s spent almost every day he can at his lab, opting to sleep in his makeshift bed and eating subpar cafeteria food in order to try and finish the grand machinery he and Jayce have planned to show off. 

On the rare occasion, you drop by his little lair to leave an important paper from his apartment or a home cooked meal. He gives you a curt thank you and immediately returns to work leaving no time for distraction as you are often his biggest one. You had once come with plans of eating lunch with him, which he greatly appreciated, but had to turn down as he surely would not want to leave your company and work would never be done. So you keep your visits short if only to save Jayce the headache of yet another unfinished stack of papers on his desk.

The week slowly passes, uneventful and boring with Viktor cooped up, unable to share his new findings or sassy wit, which you sorely miss, but soon Progress Day arrives. 

The entirety of Piltover is buzzing in excitement and everyone at your job can’t seem to stop talking about what “Golden Boy” Talis has in store for them this year. Although it is a very exciting day, your giddiness is not towards the new fancy technology or the colorful parade, but rather a certain, currently distressed, scientist. Your boss yells over the commotion for everyone to settle down before sulking off to his office and you count the minutes until your shift is over.

The moment the clock hand hits three you are out of there, missing your boss once again shouting over the desks demanding a thank you for half-day of work, and rush out the door and towards the trolleys taking people to the center of town. You hop on the back just as one is leaving, nearly tumbling over your impatient feet before grabbing the copper pole, watching as the buildings get smaller in the distance as you approach the ever growing academy building. Leaping off the trolley, you race inside, taking two steps at a time on the several staircases until you find yourself in front of Viktor’s lab once again.

You rap your knuckles against the door once then twice. On the other side you hear light shuffling and the sound of a metal crutch hitting the floor until the door opens to an exhausted looking Viktor. 

The bags under his eyes have gotten significantly deeper, and his suit quite wrinkled no doubt from hours of hunching over his desk. His face visibly lightens at the sight of you 

“What a welcome surprise. I thought you were coming here after the ceremony.”

You step through, eyes scanning the messy state of his lab, crumbled paper strewn about the floor and varying sizes of metal gears taking up most of his desk.

“I was but my boss let us out early today. A sign of his endless generosity.” You draw out your words, elegantly throwing your hands up, as your boss is anything but generous. Chuckling to yourself, you spin on your back foot towards Viktor, taking in his disheveled appearance, the fluffy spikes pointing in all different directions. “I hope that’s okay.”

He lets out a light laugh, nodding his head. “Of course.” 

Closing the door behind him and settling into his stool pushed to the corner of his desk, the only part that isn’t covered in gears. You saunter over, leaning against the side of the desk, peering at piles of paper with chicken scratch writing that could only belong to Viktor. How he’s able to read his notes is beyond you. One of science's greatest mysteries. 

The desk creaks as Viktor places his elbows upon it, a hand above his brow then dragging it down his face in frustration, shutting his eyes. A low grumble escapes his chest before he blurts out “I just don’t understand.” 

You turn your head slightly, but stay silent and let him continue, and he lets out another dejected sigh. “The professor won’t allow us to present our new technology. We could be changing lives right now.” 

Now you’ve never been very scientifically inclined, but you have learned that much in the field is controlled by shady deals and red tape through Viktor. This must be another one of those cases and Viktor has never been one to care for what he would call “petty office politics” even concerning the Council. 

There isn’t much you can do other than comfort him, so you take his tired hands in yours, rubbing slow circles over his overworked tendons. “I’m sorry Vik.” 

His voice softens, relaxing against your touch. “There's no need to be sorry. It’s not your fault.” 

He momentarily leaves your hold to guide you in front of him, moving his papers and patting the empty spot on the desk. You oblige and gently take a seat as to not disturb the rest of his contraptions. Opening your legs, you scoot his stool closer with your feet, and he smoothly slots in between, head resting against your chest. The soft beating of your heart calms him, and he melts further into you. 

Your hand reaches up to brush through his thick hair, tucking it behind his ear, bending down to whisper, “it will all work out. I’m sure of it.”

He snorts and gives you an incredulous look. “How can you be so confident?” 

Your reply comes easily. “Because I know you. You’ll find a way. You always have.”

Any response he had dies on his tongue and instead he gives you a sheepish smile, cheeks turning slightly red at your compliment. You smile back, leaning forward to give him a chaste kiss which only turns him even more red. He retreats back to your chest, arms circling around your waist squeezing tighter than before. 

Perhaps you are right. All this will work out in the end and he can do what he set out to be. Not merely a scientist chained to create whatever his contributors wanted but someone who actually helps people. Perhaps even help the people of Zaun. Give them the same hope you have given him.

He presses a kiss just above your heart, a promise to you and himself that he will stay true to his dream. 

[hexfloog]

i am sooo thematically consistent actually lmfao

My final contribution to Repostober 2024 :) Loose "redraw" of this sketch that I posted last year. Scan and words below the break.

I know the phrase "rewired my brain" gets thrown around a lot in fandom but I honest-to-God think Ghost Channel really did it. If it's not THE formative thing in my taste for horror, it imprinted pretty damn hard on my little babby brain. To this day, the memory of watching it for the first time stands out as my earliest experience where I've needed to pick my jaw off the floor and then marinate for a bit.

For those not in the know, Ghost Channel is an episode late into season one of Code: Lyoko. It is freely available to watch online, but if you're even a little interested in watching it, I highly recommend watching it in sequence, despite the episodic nature of S1.

Original scan, from 2009ish:

I'm sure I've mentioned it, but before I realized the importance of archiving my art I threw away virtually everything I had relating to CL >___< Later, I thought it might be fun to redraw some pillars from my childhood fandoms and this sketch happened. I've posted a few things for Repostober so far that were products of this same effort.

Reinterpreting this in 2024 was a challenge. My taste in horror hasn't changed much over the years, but the way I enjoy it definitely has. The 2009 scan reads as an in-your-face tribute to the episode (to me, at least), but these days I'm a much, MUCH bigger fan of subtlety and the power of implication. Redrawing it 1:1 bugged me a little since I didn't feel it'd meet my current standards or do the episode justice. I'm a firm believer in "less is more" so I spent a loootttt of time grappling with a good 'redraw' that 2024 me would accept while still passing as... well... a redraw xD I suppose it is still conceptually the same.

Jeremie is easily my favorite in the CL gang which definitely has nothing to do with the fact that I seem to have a proven history of latching onto the prodigal child with glasses and I've always found it crazy poetic that one of the only (or maybe the only?) big bad's true manifestations in the show is in his image. Something something thematic parallels, you love to see it >:) CL already has this habit of depicting shit that I would normally attribute to the modus operandi of a supernatural, demonic force so of COURSE I was gonna get in on this LMAO

Unfortunately, unless I find a hidden stash of old CL fanart somewhere... or enough time passes for me to draw this again... this is probably my last CL art for a while </3

On a more technical note for as much time as I gave myself for this I really popped off, especially on the background o___o Code Lyoko BG art goes super hard in general though, I don't think I would have settled for anything less. Had tons of fun with the VHS effects, learned lots of new little tricks to distort images for future projects.

Also this piece is called "ENDKAMPF" in my files lol

[scarefox]

Ok, I gotta do it. Here is a list of BLs that imo are painfully underrated because they are not your classic BL. I enjoyed them way too much for them to be so underrated. It's a crime actually:

Dear Doctor, I'm Coming for Soul

Dr. Prakan is a well-known surgeon dedicated to saving people’s lives. However, while he is trying to save lives he is constantly visited by the last person he could ever want to see. Death will show up every day trying to take the souls of the people that the doctor is trying to save. They work for completely opposing sides. One must collect the souls of the dead, the other must save lives before they reach that state. Is it possible to fall in love with the one thing you try to avoid, and how can the love story between death and a Doctor last?

(TW: lots of hospital-typical dying and accidents)

The Pornographer (watch order: 1. The Novelist, 2. Mood Indigo, 3. Pornographer - Spring Life, 4. The Novelist: Playback, 5. Pornographer: Continued Spring Life)

Kuzumi Haruhiko is a university student. One day, he causes a bicycle accident. The accident causes novelist Kijima Rio to break his arm. Kuzumi doesn't have insurance or money to pay Kijima for his injury. Kijima then asks Kuzumi to transcribe a story he is writing. Kuzumi is surprised to learn the story is obscene.

Innocent (watch order: 1. Innocent Special, 2. Innocent, 3. (Not That) Innocent)

As a child, Zheng Yu Shi was involved in an accident so traumatic that it led to his development of a second identity. Going by the name of Noah, this second identity has grown up with Yu Shi. Quiet and very reserved with his emotions, Noah has spent years as Yu Shi’s vigilant protector. Living with Dissociative Identity Disorder, Yu Shi is used to having Noah around to take care of him. But when he meets Wu Zheng, things between Noah and Yu Shi begin to change. Aware of Yu Shi’s growing feelings for Wu Zheng, Noah takes over, using his distrust of Wu Zheng as an excuse to keep the two apart. Despite his best efforts, Noah can’t keep Yu Shi and Wu Zheng apart forever. As the relationship between Wu Zheng and Yu Shi grows, Yu Shi begins to realize that his faith in the world is slowly starting to be restored. With Wu Zheng by his side, will Yu Shi find a way to heal from the wounds he’s been carrying for so long?

(TW: child abuse, implied rape in the past)

Eien no Kinou (Eternal Yesterday)

Koichi is cheerful and popular in the class. Mitsuru is talented and not good at socializing. The two high school students are strongly attracted to each other due to their opposite personalities. However, one morning, Koichi is hit by a truck in front of Mitsuru. Koichi got up on the spot and smiled as usual, and although he was indeed "alive", his classmates gradually began to forget about Koichi's existence.

(TW: kind of major character death / undead situation)

Color Rush (S1 !! I still couldn't bring myself to watch S2 cause I love S1 too much to move on, it's one of my comfort shows and Yoo Han is a big part of that but he isn't in S2....)

Monochromatic people (known as 'Mono's) live in a world where they are not able to see colours and therefore view their surroundings through varying shades of grey, black and white. However, every Mono has a fated person (known as 'Probe's) who is able to trigger their grey-scale world into colour, inducing what is termed as a 'Colour Rush'. Yeon Woo is a Mono. He’s aware that other colours do exist but has never experienced them for himself, nor was he interested in doing so. However, Yeon Woo’s life is forever changed when he meets Yoo Han, his Probe, and experiences his first 'Colour Rush'. Terrified that he would be obsessed with Yoo Han because of Yoo Han's ability to make him see colours, Yeon Woo tries to avoid Yoo Han, but why does Yoo Han insist on drawing close to him?

(TW: depressed main, suicide attempt)

Love Tractor

Seon Yul, a temporarily relocated city man, meets Ye Chan, a rural man who adores the countryside. Seon Yul comes to the countryside to experience life knowing nothing about farming and Ye Chan appears before him. As Seon Yul learns to adapt to rural living and engage in farming activities, he becomes increasingly attracted to Ye Chan's sincerity and enthusiasm. Together, the two embark on a chaotic and romantic countryside journey of healing and love.

Nobleman Ryu's Wedding

On a warm spring day during the Joseon Dynasty, the wedding of Ryu Ho Seon and his beautiful bride, Hwa Jin, takes place. But come their wedding night, Ho Seon becomes suspicious of his beloved. And with good reason, for his bride is a man! And now Ho Seon finds himself face-to-face with the bride’s brother, Choi Ki Wan, who explains that Hwa Jin’s loathing of political marriages drove her to disappear before the ceremony even began. Needless to say, Ho Seon quickly tries to annul the marriage, but his ailing mother is opposed to such a move. The pair must now maintain their union, one that can never be revealed to a single soul! When Kim Tae Hyeong, comes to congratulate his friend Ho Seon, he falls for Ki Wan and immediately commences to court him. Now both Ki Wan and Ho Seon find themselves in a difficult position. Caught between honouring his ailing mother’s wishes and the unending flood of love letters for Ki Wan, Ho Seon is only too aware that there is little time to waste. To further complicate matters, Hwa Jin chooses to make her impromptu return at this time. The only way to soothe the pain in everyone’s hearts is to return everyone to their rightful places. But is this easier said than done?

The Miracle of Teddy Bear (bear with me this might sound nuts (haha 2 puns in a row) but this is actually a crime mystery)

Taohu is a giant white teddy bear and has been Nut's object of comfort for ten years. However, he isn’t an ordinary teddy bear, he has the ability to communicate with other objects and items in the house. One day, unbeknownst to Nut, the teddy bear was miraculously turned into a young man, however, that young man can't remember anything about himself. Taohu tried to find his own background, but everything became complicated when he found out that his background was connected to the dark secrets of his owner's family. He had to hurry because his time as a human is running out and he wanted to discover the secrets of his background so much, but he also wanted to be closer to the person he loved the most. Will Taohu be able to find the answers to his questions and reveal all the secrets he wishes to know? And would there be another miracle that may allow him to fulfill his wish?

(TW: mentally ill mother, abusive parent, death, murder attempt)

Something in My Room

Phat just moved into a new rental house with his mother. There, he meets Phob, an amnesiac ghost, and has to help Phob solve the mystery of his death within forty-nine days of Phob's death. Will they succeed?

(TW: horror elements, suicide, cancer, death of a parent)

I Will Knock You

Thi, a college student, had a part-time job as a tutor. One day, one of his students got into trouble with high-school gangsters. Thi went to protect his student and confronted the leader of the gang, Noey. After that day, Thi ran into Noey so many times, he started to learn that although Noey had a badass look, the boy was ridiculously silly. Noey just came up by himself that Thi was running after him. Thi was so done trying to explain that he had zero interest in him, but fate played funny tricks. Thi was contacted to be a tutor for a new student. That student was Noey. They learned more about each other. Noey started to change himself and made a move on Thi.

(TW: cringefail4cringefail ... lol)

My Ride

This is the story of Mork and Tawan, a motorcycle taxi driver and a medical resident in Bangkok hospital. While they might seem to come from different worlds, one day they meet by chance when Tawan hires Mork to take him across town. This first ride leads to another and another, and soon Mork finds that he can't stop thinking about the handsome doctor. Meanwhile, Tawan also feels drawn to Mork, and an unlikely friendship is born. Might it lead to more?

3 Will Be Free (polyamory m/m/f)

Neo is a stripper who is running away from the loan shark Thana and his gang, after having an affair with Thana's wife Vanika. One day, the criminals find him in the bar where he works. In attempting to escape, he ends up bumping into two people who will change his life: Shin, a gay boy, the son of Thana, who is frustrated at being rejected by a friend; and Miw, the manager of a gogo bar who is running away from her past. Accidentally, they end up killing one of the gang members who was chasing Neo, which makes them enemies of the gang. Now all three need to find a solution to escape from this situation together, while at the same time managing the physical and sentimental attraction that arises between them.

(TW: attempted rape)

Bed Friend

When it comes to work and the relationships he maintains with his coworkers, Uea Anol gets along well enough with almost everyone. But there is one very big exception and his name is King Kunakor. Good friends with his best friend Jade, King is the one man at the office that Uea simply cannot stand. A cocky Casanova with a serious reputation, King is everything Uea hates in a man. But when a company outing ends in a drunken hook-up with the one man he can’t stand, Uea begins to see King in an entirely different light.  Initially planning to move on after their one-night fling, Uea and King agree to keep seeing each other on a strictly physical basis. With no strings attached, will these two be able to keep things between them simple and carefree or will their emotions eventually get the better of them?

(TW: attempted rape, homophobia, bad coping, MDL comments are dumb af about this one so don't go there)

Utsukushii Kare (My Beautiful Man)

Seventeen-year-old Hira, who is at the bottom of the class, tries to remain invisible at school, never wanting to open his mouth and expose his stuttering speech to his classmates. He views the world through his camera lens, detached until one day, Kiyoi Sou walks through the classroom door. The impact is instantaneous. Hira finds himself pulled into Kiyoi's gravity, following him everywhere and attending to his every need. Popularity comes easily to beautiful Kiyoi, who is always surrounded by his classmates. He uses his status to get what he wants, ordering around the boy who stares at him with his big eyes and seems to worship him like a god. Hira contents himself to merely exist within Kiyoi's orbit, asking for nothing in return…

(TW: bullying, amok shooting fantasies, MDL comments are dumb af about this one so don't go there)

[glitch-pep]

Under the cut is a massive ramble that I NEED to get out of my system, because a lot has changed in the last two months or so-

Also the oc stuff on my blog has been looking like this and it's been bugging me to no end so I wanna explain some stuff below- 💀

#1

After 4-5 years of drawing on my phone with my finger, I spent my savings on a drawing tablet. It's been a giant wish of mine to have one for ages, but I never really worked up the courage to do it since it's a big financial decision and I always feel guilty about spending money... but, after months of intense contemplating I did it!

Buuut I did have a few mental breakdowns once it arrived... long story short, turns out that you can't connect a HP PC with the tablet using the USB-c cable that you get with the tablet, because the USB-c port of the PC doesn't support an additional screen display.

I did look up if you can connect them beforehand, and the internet told me that the answer is yes. You can't trust anything these days bro- 💀💀💀

After A LOT of back and forth and me trying to return the tablet because I can't use it without it being connected to the PC, they told me that I can't return it. Than after EVEN MORE back and forth, we found out that it would work with a completely different cable that I had to order seperately. I had just about enough money left for it, so I ordered it, and then it was peace and love on planet earth because it finally works now.

#2

Also, I needed a free drawing programm I could use, but problem was that my old app, Sketch Draw And Paint, has the most simple layout and functions it can have, so I was used to simplicity.

When I tested out GIMP, Krita, Inkspace and FireAlpaca, I could not wrap my head around how they worked and my lazy ass didn't feel like watching a bunch of tutorials... I was like bro let's find one that I can figure out on my own, it can't be that complicated. 💀

Everyone thank MediBang Paint for being simple enough for me to understand... if MediBang Paint has 0 fans I'm dead fr. From now on, all of my art will be drawn in MediBang Paint and on the tablet.

Is my art any better? Idk but I'm having fun so far, experimenting with stuff, slowly getting towards actually getting some oc stuff done...

...and, speaking of oc stuff...

#3

...I'm going to explain what I plan to work on in the future for each of my oc's, so, let's get started.

Mina - I'm not going to be making any more main character eene oc's, I only gotta design Mina's aunt and a different side character and add them to the characters in her lore and that's it. Mina's story is by far the most simple out of everyone. She'll just get 1 or 2 fics. This doesn't mean that I don't love her, trust me I've had some crazy ideas for her lore, but I've decided to keep it simple, because it makes sense given who Mina is.

Milo and CJ - For the sake of telling you my versions of Seasons 3 and 4 of mf, I have to slightly redesign each canon character from the main cast, figure out how to draw them and write some new lore for them, while using any info I found to characterize them somewhat properly.

I watched and overanalyzed the entirety of the webisodes and the alternative versions of them, as well as the Nickelodeon show, and I looked through the website and the wiki, all for the sake of writing down ANY piece of information I can get about the lore of this show and the characters, because I really needed to have something to work with.

I rearranged S1 a bit and put together a S2 with the webisodes. I'll talk about this eventually.

I won't be making any new main character oc's for this one, only background characters. I'm planning to write S3 and S4 in the form of fics.

Sunny and Molly - For this one I have to add a bunch of secondary and background characters, but we don't need those to begin the story, they'll be relevant later. I'm currently trying to piece together episodes and which goes where so that I can start writing it. I also gotta analyze the website a bit more, to get a feel of how to somewhat properly write the canon characters. I also have a seperate wh oc story idea in mind that I wanna get to eventually as well.

Charlie - I have to remake Charlie's intro, slightly redesign her, add 4 additional main characters, also secondary and background characters but those will be relevant later... Charlie shares her story with a bunch of other oc's. This one will definitely take me the longest, and it's the last thing on my waiting list, because I wanna tackle the easier ideas first. I do also have a seperate sm oc story in mind that I wanna get to as well.

Piper - I don't exactly know what I'm gonna do yet. I wanna see how tadc plays out, and then I'll work on setting some stuff in stone. I do have some ideas and concepts in mind, but I'm not sure in what direction I should go with it, depends upon how the story in the show will play out. (I probably won't wait for the whole show to be done, but at least 1-2 more eps would kinda help me understand where it's going.) I will work on some of the ideas tho.

As of now, I don't plan to make any new oc's for any other fandoms, mostly because I haven't gotten a good enough idea for anything yet, but also because I really wanna work towards polishing the oc's I already have.

I am setting stuff up so that I can start writing the fics. I have no idea how long this will take me, given that I got irl responsibilities to take care of too, but I'll try my best to get it done eventually.

And that's it. I hope you'll have a nice day! 💕

[contritecactite]

Ooops, the eternally wonderful @quoththemaiden blessed us with some more thoughts on the Japanese dub of Good Omens and then I got left waiting in a car for half an hour with nothing to do so uh. Quick little Tumblr fic? The discussion was just about "your stupid car is on fire" becoming "your car is burning in the manner of a fool" and I promise this thing gets around to that. After about a thousand words. But the literal translation there made me think about burning in other contexts, and so:

Ways to Burn

Rating: M; tags and fic under the cut

Tags: angst, fire imagery, choking imagery, references to fire, Crowley has a bad time throughout the years but then has a good time, also a brief instance of a very particular kind of good time (blink and you'll miss it unspecified penetrative sex act), post-s1, ignores s2, dramatic tonal shift into silly bickerflirting

Ways to Burn

First: literally. Probably. 

He’s scorched when he lands, and that's all he knows for sure.

Shame comes next. He hadn't known he could feel it, much less that it could burn as surely as a flat dark rock with too much direct sun—and hadn't that been a new sensation, too, his tender serpent's belly warming too much too quickly at the contact.

All right, so that one next, the too-warm surface, and then the shame.

He doesn't mean to get them kicked out. Right thing or wrong thing, he hadn't wanted that. Trouble’s one thing. Trouble, actually, is kind of fun. But he's never really liked endings, and this is as sure an ending as anything ever was.

But—a beginning, too.

He never felt the fire of that flaming sword, but he burned sure enough watching that angel admit to giving it away.

It's a long time before he works out what to call that particular sensation, and longer still—much longer—before he lets himself call it that.

The sun burns, and the sand, all those days in the desert, and the fires—those he starts and those he doesn't—and the shame, over and over, of being reminded that before anything in the world had even happened, he had proven to be a failure at his job.

Except.

Some days, it's his new job that brings him the most joy. There are so very many ways to cause trouble, more and more every century, and eventually—

Eventually the frostbite he used to imagine himself sustaining under that angelic gaze eases into something a bit more… well, lukewarm, at first.

And even that burns hot when applied to something chilled to the bone. He ought to know. He's spent time in the mountains. In the snow and the dreary slush of miserable winters.

Doesn't take much of being out alone in all that for come in and sit by the fire, you wretched old thing to do just as much work as a cup full of something spiced and warm. 

Heat gives way to warmth the way wildness gives over to domesticity—in the world at large and in whatever passes for the heart of one particular demon. As Crawley made room for Crowley, so too does untrustworthy fiend slip away in favor of my dear.

It's the polite warmth-almost-heat of tea set out for a guest who arrives a little too late, but it's more than enough to fend off icy fingers. And it's safe.

It rises to a slow simmer one day as anything might after nearly escaping a bombing, but he doesn't dare let it grow further. He's been in London so very long now, and he will not allow himself to burn up against his only source of warmth.

There's something perfect in the tension of keeping it there, of striking the kind of balance that leaves something just too hot to touch but cool enough to draw near.

And then the bookshop burns, and Crowley has never been colder, stood there in the centre of the flames and shouting until his throat feels as seared with prayer as the book beside him has been by the tongues of fire.

And then, again, literally: the Bentley is no more than a car-shaped wreath of flame, and Crowley himself has caught, too, but it doesn't matter. Doesn't matter because it can't matter. Doesn't matter because even if the wheel is red-hot under his hands, he doesn't feel a damned thing.

It's a good job the old man in Tadfield knows a thing or two about keeping one's thoughts to oneself; the impression of your stupid car is on fire and you're just sitting there like a fool emanating from him is almost enough to break Crowley's concentration, and if he'd said it aloud, well—

Doesn't bear thinking about.

At the air base he learns all over again that relief is wool blankets and dry socks like what in the world were you doing out in that awful cold, my dear back in 1684 and that grief is swallowing an ice cube whole and feeling it melt while still choking and fear is almost like both at once when you're so used to it that it's more companion than stranger.

The Hellfire he stands in while wearing Aziraphale's shape could never hope to burn the same way as just like that, my love, you feel wonderful when, days later, he sinks down onto Aziraphale for the first time and feels heat inside him and warmth all around.

A warm bath, after, both literally and figuratively—warmer than body temperature but not enough to scald, laughter and joy and something he suspects might be freedom.

“He insulted my car, you know,” he mumbles into Aziraphale's hair.

"Who, dear?”

“Dunno. Man with a dog back in Tadfield. Didn't say it out loud but he was thinking so hard about it being on fire. I swear he said ‘your stupid car is on fire’ and ‘your car is burning in the manner of a fool’ and a dozen other different variations on- oh, no.”

“What?” Aziraphale asks, alarmed enough to try to sit up, but Crowley tugs him back down.

“Well, did you notice the Bentley being a bit. You know. Odd.”

Aziraphale hums, considering, and then makes a small sound of recognition. “There was some new music. And it—well, I thought you must have done it, but when we got out, I thought it winked.”

“Why would I make a car wink? My car? Honestly.”

“Oh, as if you've never been cheeky.”

Crowley groans. “That’s not the point. What I'm saying is, it didn't used to do those things, yeah? And I didn't make it do them. And you, you wouldn't have made it wink at you.”

“Certainly not.”

“I think that when Adam put things back together, since I was thinking about missing it and the old man was out there giving it personality, he might have thought—well, it might actually have one now. For better or worse.”

“Ah. Well. I'm sure no harm will come of it. It's a very loyal car, and you've always taken good care of it.”

“What has that got to do with anything?”

Aziraphale burrows in more deeply against his chest. His face seems to grow a bit warmer. “Well, if you must know, Adam left quite a few new books about… well, about haunted cars.”

Crowley snorts. “And you read them? Oh, angel, how far you've—grk. Mn. Nevermind that.”

“Hm.” He's quiet for a moment or two longer, and then: “They made some of them into films, you know.”

“I am not watching anything about haunted cars.”

“I thought you liked spooky.”

“For someone who reads as much as you do, you ought to have a better grasp on spooky versus terrifying.”

“I think you like your car too much.”

“Like you better.” He pauses. Considers. “Don’t tell it I said that.”

Aziraphale only laughs at him and holds on tighter, and it's bubbles in champagne chilled to just the right temperature to be held in a warm, dear hand while the other hand holds Crowley's.

[abeinginsand]

Teen Lark serenading Terry requested by @babacontainsmultitudes !! "Quisiera estar contigo viendo las estrellas sobre el mar" I would like to be with you watching the stars over the sea

Song: Bajo el Agua by Manuel Medrano Thanks so much for the request, baba! :D I had a great time drawing your lovely idea out

Came up with the set-up that leads to this scene in dms so copy-pasting it here as well: Its teen years post s1 and the boys have game nights at the Wilsons' every other weekend. The person who wins the most games gets to ask the person who lost the most for two (harmless) favors. The favors have to be asked for before the next game night so like friday evening (last day)-- Lark texts Terry saying:

L: You should come over T: Right now?? L: Yes, unless you're busy

He doesn't elaborate and Terry is curious (maybe worried too). Terry comes on over and Larks home alone (rare occurrence) but seems okay. They go to the bedroom. Lark says he wants his two favors now and Terry is thinking it'll be something mischievous…only for him to ask him this:

"Take a seat over here" "And look up at the ceiling until I'm done. Except if your neck hurts then uh…look at anything in here but me or close your eyes or I don't know figure it out!"

He makes some vague hand wave gesture with a grumble and points at the bean bag chair and TJ sits down.

So Lark dims the lights and grabs his guitar, sitting down on the floor nearby and starts playing. He is blushing super hard and doesn't want to mess this up. That's why he told him not to look! Also spent an hour putting all those glow-in-the-dark stars up there too. ---- For the rainbow scribbles on the wall, they are drawings of Vince, Erin, Walter, and a pack of wolves. The wolves represent the Oak-Garcia family. The blue gradient picture above the window is a photo of all the boys together with the twins in the middle, little Nicky in the air, Terry on the left, and grant on his phone on the right. The sign above the closet says "Love is worth fighting for <3".

[a-dotrivenitupontop]

why you should vote for david brittlesbee in the @epicdivorcemantournament. a powerpoint presentation (tumblr post) by me:

•in just the pilot episode of mythic quest david gets excluded from company meetings, has his assistant abandon him for another guy and calls one of his workers ‘mom’

•he’s the boss at a video game company but the divorce fucked him up so badly no one accepts that he’s even a boss (this kinda shifts in s3 but eh. spoilers)

•oh yeah his parents also got divorced. so. y’know double whammy innit. just one divorce after another for this poor little meow meow

•“are we at your divorce trial right now? because i just watched a hot asian chick rip out your heart”

-brad bakshi, s1 e10

•my man CONSTANTLY uses divorce to project onto his workplace. whenever the main characters fight david always draws comparisons to his divorce (especially in s2)

•to score david a date the aforementioned brad had to train him to talk to women using a simulator called ‘divorcee dance party’

•he did score a date though. only he forgot her name and the relationship lasted like six episodes. the reason they broke up? he got down on TWO knees and BEGGED for marriage. slay queen

•also before using the dating sim david used pictures of his wedding day on his dating app profile. and a video of him reviewing bikes. that’s a crucial piece of information too

•his ex wife kicked him out of his own home forcing him to live in motherfucking cerritos (op in br*tish and has no idea what a cerritos is but assumes it’s something to describe as ‘motherfucking’)

•“you know who didn’t have trouble finding a man? your ex-wife”

-poppy li, s1 e2

•in an episode where each character got given a workplace animal personality thing david got wolf and spent the episode bragging about it. only he did the test the wrong way and turned to be a butterfly. this isn’t directly related to divorce but i do think it’s pathetic of david

•when two of his employees (amongst a couple others but they’re irreverent rn) quit to work at a new company in the basement david was so fucked up by this that he was implied to have almost attempted suicide. we stan a depression-ridden mess who would rather kill himself than lose his found family and relive the trauma of his divorce. heart emoticon

•anyways here’s a compilation of david being Pathetic for your entertainment

[besidesitstoowarm]

Davies era recap?

sorry i've been procrastinating on this one so bad. i spent three weeks in costa rica thinking about jurassic park. tbh i don't know what to say about the specials or the era overall that i haven't said already

nine feels so beautiful post-time war, traumatized and snappish but also light and warm and kind. he was once a father and grandfather and now he is neither but he is still a doctor!! s1 feels so much richer after having seen "day of the doctor" tbh i know how we got here! it was hard, agonizing, impossible choices. yet he's still here, and he chooses love every time. a coward. he would rather doom the entire universe as long as it kills him too; he cannot survive another genocide. he can't see it happen again. if he can't prevent it, he just wants to not see it. i love nine so much

and then ten. ten is more built from nine than ANY other regeneration i can think of. ten is rose, he's bad wolf, he's nine. he's the echo of donna, of tentoo. ten is someone struggling to find his place between "where he's already been, as remembered by rose" and "where he is destined to go, via donna" like he is so dragged along by fate. mf is a full on greek tragedy, he does NOT know what is going on

that's what makes the specials such a wreck (good/bad). when he was with rose, they were a painful but understandable match. with martha, kinda middle ground. with donna, it was fate. after them? after tentoo, after the most important woman in all creation? he's adrift. he clings to randos, he tries to be the hero so hard. and he fails. he trips and cries and sobs like a huge loser, over and over again. i do love him (and tennant is fully failed by 2/4 specials) but he's unraveling! little baby duck imprinted on their mommy who is gone. what's left, after that? martyr/savior complex and dubiously gay shit, i guess

tennant is a marvel, i have to say this. eccleston too, in different ways. davies has such a wonderfully human touch with these characters, iirc moffat draws a lot from fairy tales while davies pulled a lot from modern social commentary. jack is... something, but it was a different time. ten/master is sooooooo much. this era ended more than a decade ago

all in all, davies era is beautiful, it's decadent. it's complete nonsense bullshit a good chunk of time, but i don't think that's a negative; doctor who is like star wars to me, where i truly genuinely believe it's at its best when it's kind of bad. i mean, late 60s is MY era of who. base under siege nonsense galore. farting aliens. doctor who should be bad, in order to be good. i mean this, genuinely. attack of the clones is great. you get it

i feel more comfortable leaning into this ending knowing what comes later; knowing that davies comes back, knowing that ten becomes fourteen eventually and cleans up his shit, knowing that donna gets a better, more complete ending. it's honestly hard to say what i would think about this era without knowing about the 60th; i do think "journey's end" is a nonsense bullshit episode that is nonetheless very fun to watch, however cruel an ending it is for donna. very grateful we got a redux. moffat is writing for this new davies era too i'm so excited i want to throw up

anyway! excited to re-enter the moffat era but davies had so much sway over the new tone of the show, so much feels so dated but there's no denying the impact his episodes had at the time. there were cat people. it was thematically consistent. god i love it all so much. quel domage!

[boburnhamhistorian]

Hi, everyone! Happy Groundhog Day!

For today's #FanartFebruary entry, I've chosen satmolly, an artist who provides a sense of whimsy and fun to her cartoon-like drawings.

Here is her Instagram and Etsy shop.

My personal favorite piece is this exuberant Bo with a rainbow 🌈 for Comedy—adorable!

Speaking of cartoons, an amazing artist recently posted Bo drawn in 4 unique styles that's definitely worth a watch:

South Park—this is my favorite, as I've watched SP since S1. New episodes soon! 🙌🏼

Rick and Morty—reminds me of the discussion in Eighth Grade haha

Family Guy—🎵spent my free time watching Family Guy🎵

Cuphead—

Remember to keep it here for more fanart fun this month! ✌🏼

[kybernecklace]

obiwan would love space succession but in the pretentious way where he thinks he could fix everything if he were involved. also he would relate to connor

[beepboop358]

Anti-Byler Argument Refuttals

Although I discussed all of this in my Byler Proof master slides post, I wanted to do a separate post specifically just refutting the most common anti-byler arguments.

1. "Mike and El's relationship is too developed" and "They have been through too much together to break up now!"

This is probably the thing I hear the most when people argue that Byler will never happen. The weirdest part of this argument is that people assume that they will never drift apart, and that they will never ever break up, as if we didn't just see them drift apart, break up, and not officially get back together in S3? Yes, they have both been through a significant amount of trauma, but their relationship is not as developed as people think it is, they barely even know each other really. They spent a week together in S1, then El was gone for a year. Mike and El don't reunite until the very end of S2, probably a few days after halloween. If we work out the timeline between Halloween of 1984 and July 4th of 1985 in S3, that's 246 days, so it's actually less than a full year they have spent together, getting to know each other.

The “development” people argue that Mike and El have just doesn't stand up. Mike and El do not have intimate conversations, their conversations are incredibly awkward, and they just kiss frequently in the beginning of S3 before they break up. That's not development. Hopper even refers to their constant kissing as "not normal and not healthy." Mike couldn't tell El he loves her to her face, which is a parallel to the failed relationship of Stancy where Nancy couldn't tell Steve she loved him, and we later find out it's because she doesn't, which all happens during the blank makes you crazy scene that is extremely similar to Robin's coming out scene. And yes, Mike and El have endured a lot of trauma together, but so has the rest of the group and people don't seem to use this argument the same way with the other couples, or between the friendships. History doesn't determine the future if there's no feelings involved, things can always change. This is idea of staying in a relationship where there is no real love but there is history/benefits is hinted at in S3 when Mike dresses almost identically to both of his parents.

2. "Look at how much Mike cares for El! They're in love!"

No, they're not, and how they treat each other proves that they're not. I firmly believe neither Mike nor El is seriously, romantically in love with each other.

If Mike was really deeply, romantically in love with El, why did he treat her like he did in S3? If he really cares about her that much, why did he wait for Lucas to guide him at all times in matters regarding his relationship with El, instead of just taking initiative, but he does take initiative with Will? Why can't her apologize to her? Why wasn't Mike more upset about El dumping him? Why couldn't he tell El he loves her to her face? Why did he consistently lie to her throughout the whole show? Why did he stop calling her in S2? Why did he give up and say she was dead, but never gave up on Will? Why did he scream in her face in S1? And no - it isn't because he's just shy or awkward. Mike doesn't act like he is truly in love with El because he isn't. He is projecting his feelings for Will onto El, and he is deeply in denial about his sexuality due to his internalized homophobia and hasn't fully processed how he feels about Will throughout the series (up until the ending of S3). And why does Mike have such an odd reaction to El saying she loves him if he does love her? If he loves her that should be exactly what he wants to hear, so why does he look so confused and scared? And why doesn't he just say it back right then?

El isn't seriously, romantically in love with Mike. They meet in S1, and he immediately takes her in, saving her life. He looks out for her, and actually cares if she is okay, and no one has ever done that for her before. El was abused her whole childhood until Mike lets her live in his basement. He was the first person to treat her like a human being, and show her compassion, which she has never experienced before. It makes total sense that she would cling to their relationship like a security blanket. Mike is an emotional attachment for El. He makes her feel safe, because of how he saved her life previously. El has very limited knowledge of love, life, friendship, relationships, and social behaviors since she was locked in a lab for over a decade of her life, she was never truly exposed to these concepts like the other kids in the party were. Everything El thinks she knows about love she learns from watching soap opera's alone in Hopper's cabin. Of course her perception of what romantic love is, is warped. If El was seriously romantically in love with Mike, why was their break-up no big deal to her? Why was she smiling, laughing and looking at pictures of boys with Max right after she supposedly dumped the love of her life? Why did she not seem even the slightest bit upset about it the entire season?

If they're both seriously in love, then why are their interactions so awkward to watch and why does it feel so unnatural and forced? Why don’t Mileven’s interactions feel romantic? The official released scripts on 8flix describe several Mileven scenes as "awkward". It's no coincidence that detail was included in the script.

3. "But they already have Robin"

I mean this comment basically means that sense the show already has one confirmed lgbtq+ character, there can't possibly be any others. What?! There isn't a "one gay character limit per TV show". This comment really bothers me because it reeks of homophobia. If you don't ship Byler that's fine, but refusing to even explore the possibility there could be more than one lgtbq+ character in a TV show just because one already exists? Yeah no. Queer people existed in the 80's, definitely more than just one, so capping out the amount of queer characters in the show is just icky.

Also, Robin was not originally written to be a gay character. It was decided during the filming process that Robin should be a lesbian, because Maya Hawke and Joe Keery were not getting romantic vibes between their characters. Just because the show introduced a new gay character in S3, it does not mean the queercoding of Will and Mike is erased to make room for Robin, and keep Mileven together. Making Robin a lesbian, does not cancel out Mike and Will being gay/liking each other, and the show's future plans for byler.

4. "Mike's not gay."

Does this seem straight to you?

Giving your girlfriend a drawing of your male best friend, that was drawn by him, but telling her it's your drawing so she'll hang it up on the wall you coincidentally face while you make out with her, to remind you of him.

Taking your girlfriends hands off of you while you're making out with her, and keeping your hands folded in your lap away from her.

Only being able to apologize to said male best friend and being more emotionally invested in that relationship than your relationship with your girlfriend.

Mike is the only other person besides Will pictured in close up shots with rainbow and fruit imagery.

Even the die-hard Mileven fans have to admit that's more than a little coincidental, and if we know anything about the Duffer brothers, it's that they love incorporating intricate details in their show to reveal things about the characters/plot.

If you want more examples, some images, or just a more in-depth analysis of byler throughout the series, I suggest you check out my Byler Proof master slides :)

[bestworstcase]

I like your thoughts on how Rapunzel was handling things wrong in “Rapunzel: Day One.” The episode tries to imply that Cassandra is wrong for not sharing her feelings with Rapunzel, but is a Rapunzel really the person Cassandra should be opening up to? Rapunzel never respects Cassandra’s boundaries. Cassandra’s a private person. Rapunzel doesn’t respect that. And just because Cassandra doesn’t want to open up to everyone doesn’t mean that she’s bottling things up.

ok so this is gonna be a long one bc tbh i like. fundamentally disagree that RDO, the narrative of RDO, in any way positions cassandra as the one at fault for the emotional conflict between her and raps.

to digress a bit - while tts is not immune to Aesop Episodes (e.g. rapunzel's enemy or you're kidding me) wherein the characters close out the story by talking about What They've Learned, ultimately i don't think tts can or should be read as a morality play. it's a story where sometimes characters just... fuck up and the narrative doesn't waste its time on hand-holding or spoon-feeding us the moral.

anyway, i submit that RDO is what i'll call a False Aesop Episode. it follows the basic structure of an Aesop Episode (protagonist acts badly -> protagonist learns a lesson) but the lesson rapunzel learns is a bad one. it's like if you took... say, "an apple a day keeps the doctor away" as an aesop, the False Aesop here is rapunzel confidently eating a rotten apple and then being blindsided a few months later when the doctor who kept begging her not to eat food with maggots in it steals the moonstone from under her nose and runs off into the night with her new demon pal--

and that metaphor got away from me a little bit but you get the idea.

#1: constructing the conflict

the episode opens with cassandra. she's training; we see the sword fly out of her injured hand; lance suggests she take a break, and she answers, "thanks to rapunzel's little trick at the great tree, i have to relearn everything using this hand, so breaks aren't really an option."

she isn't harsh about it. her demeanor isn't all that different from her normal self—she even segues into a very typical concern (that the woods are dangerous and they should all be on their guard) and banters with lance a bit.

what this communicates, immediately and succinctly, is that:

1. cassandra's injury is severe. it's disabling. she's either in immense pain or she's lost all the strength in that hand or both.

2. cass is really upset about this, and not happy with rapunzel.

3. nevertheless cass is keeping her feelings more or less in check; the worst anyone could say about her is she's being a bit more curt than normal.

which is to say, she's acting quite reasonable. she's not taking out her hurt feelings on anyone else or being mean or lashing out, and she's not hiding her injury either. the most concerning thing about her behavior here is actually that she's focused on training so she can do her job instead of on healing or resting or taking care of herself.

then there's a pan over to rapunzel, who is angrily watching this play out while venting to pascal. "i get why cass is mad at me," she says. "she told me—" huge disdainful rolling of eyes here "—not to use the decay spell back and the tree, and i did, and she hurt her hand. but if she had just listened to me and stayed out of it, this all could have been avoided! and i feel like we could work things out, but she refuses to talk about it!!"

line this up against cassandra's behavior and spot the differences.

cass is focused on her injured hand. cass is upset because rapunzel accidentally mutilated her in the great tree. that's what this conflict is about for cass; her injury, and how she feels about being injured.

by contrast, rapunzel thinks the conflict is about them not listening to each other. she does acknowledge that cass was injured, but 1. she puts the blame on cass, and 2. has shoved the fact of the injury to the periphery of the conflict. it's not important, it's just a natural consequence of the real conflict, which is cass being mad and petty and refusing to talk to her about how she's unfairly blaming rapunzel for something that wasn't rapunzel's fault.

[i will add here that this behavior from rapunzel is 100% not knowing how to handle guilt and externalizing it as anger, and this thread of rapunzel burying her guilt gets picked up again in rapunzeltopia; it isn't that rapunzel doesn't care that cass is hurt, so much as she's just not emotionally equipped to process these feelings in a healthy way so it mutates into...this.]

and where cass handles her feelings in a pretty reasonable way, rapunzel rants and raves and draws cass as a literal monster with fangs and claws—she's stewing in her out of control emotions and concludes that she just has to find a way to force cass talk to her, which she does shortly thereafter by ordering—not asking—cass to come with her to search for parts to fix the caravan.

#2: the breakdown of communication

i've said it before but it bears repeating: cassandra might not be perfect, but she's a good communicator. in s1 and the front half of s2, she shares her feelings with rapunzel readily and frequently. when she tries to set boundaries with rapunzel, she's able to be clear and specific about what she needs. when she expresses frustration with eugene or her dad or rapunzel, she's very articulate about exactly what she's frustrated about. she can recognize when politer, softer refusals are being ignored and become blunter and more specific to ensure the message is getting across.

the moments when cass struggles to communicate are noteworthy because they're not normal. they signal that she's in acute crisis. think of how her unhinged rant about adira in RATGT heralded a complete emotional breakdown. she clams up in RDO because it's the only thing she can do to protect herself. because rapunzel is an inexperienced nineteen year old who learned all her social "skills" from a manipulative, egotistical abuser and nowhere in the series does that show more than in RDO.

rapunzel knows cass doesn't want to talk about the great tree, so she isolates cass from the rest of the group with the intention of forcing her to talk about it anyway. she's passive aggressive at first: chattering about inanities and trying to bait cass into 'opening up,' and acting vexed and guilt-trippy when she finds out cass brought owl along. she broaches the subject by going "too bad there's not an open-up-to-your-best-friend-about-the-thing-you-guys-are-fighting-about wand, huh?"

then she leads with "i know you're mad at me, but i did the right thing. i didn't have a choice," which... what can cass even say to that? she acknowledged cassandra's anger in one breath and followed up with "but you're wrong tho" in the next. that statement makes cassandra's feelings about her debilitating injury into an argument about Who Was Right.

this is a game that cass tries very hard not to play. "look, if you feel that way, then it's fine. we're good," she says, which is a statement that is not true at all on its face but - what it means is that if rapunzel wants to turn this into a debate about Who Was Right, cass will concede because that's not an argument she's invested in. cass does not want to put her feelings on trial so rapunzel can pick them apart and decide whether she deserves to have them or not.

so she disengages. the sun sets. they camp. rapunzel pokes her again, this time with a more direct approach: "cass, i need to talk about what we both know is going on between us."

and that's when cass throws up a WALL. prior to RDO, when cass is pressed on her feelings, she either: 1. opens up and explains to the extent that she's able (e.g. under raps or RATGT), or 2. flatly shuts the conversation down (e.g. cassandra vs eugene). but in RDO?

"there's nothing to talk about."

"i never said i was upset."

"what makes you so sure that you know how i'm feeling?"

this is cass falling off the end of her rope. this is a cass who spent the last year and a half with rapunzel running roughshod over every boundary cass exhausted herself trying to set. this is cass maybe a few weeks out from rapunzel screaming at her in front of all their mutual friends and then telling her "i am going to make decisions you don't agree with and i need you to be okay with that" when cass tried to open up about her deepest insecurities. this is cass spiraling into despair because she's seen that her best friend cares more about assuaging her own guilt and exerting her authority as a princess than she does about cassandra's feelings.

this is the moment when the friendship dies.

#3: the memory wipe, cassandra's apology, and the false aesop

the details of the tangled-but-cass shenanigans are not super important for the purposes of this discussion. suffice it to say that cassandra lashes out in the heat of the moment, seriously harms rapunzel by mistake, and spends the rest of the episode trying to repair the damage, then apologizes to rapunzel for hurting her. this is, obviously, the correct thing to do when you hurt someone, even if it was an accident.

you see the parallel here, yeah?

rapunzel hurt cass with magic by accident, and then made cass's hurt feelings all about her, blamed cass for the injury, twisted the facts to justify her own indignation, picked a fight about Who Was Right and invalidated cassandra's feelings, and pushed and pushed and pushed until cass blew up and lashed out at her.

cassandra also hurt rapunzel with magic by accident, and then she set aside her own hurt feelings from the argument they were having before to focus one hundred percent of her energy on brewing a cure and keeping amnesiac rapunzel safe, readily admitted her fault, and offered an earnest apology for losing her temper as soon as she could reasonably do so.

if RDO were a true Aesop Episode, this would be the lesson, and rapunzel would of course learn from cassandra's good example and reciprocate by apologizing for the accident in the great tree and her abysmal behavior afterwards—and in a reflection of how cass shared how bottling up her anger allowed it to erupt in a catastrophic way, rapunzel would probably confess that her demanding, selfish behavior came from a place of feeling awful about what happened and terrified that it would ruin their friendship.

but RDO is a False Aesop Episode. rapunzel isn't emotionally equipped to handle the intensity of her guilt, and she lacks the social insight and empathy to draw comparisons between what she did to cass and what cass did to her, so she can't connect the two situations in her head to understand what she's doing wrong. the true aesop flies right over her head, and instead what she learns is this:

1. she was right about cass being upset

2. backing cass into a corner fixed the problem

3. friends really do "just know"

4. being pushy and forceful was the right thing to do.

because the thing is, when cass apologizes for the accidental memory wipe, she truthfully explains why she acted the way she did—she's furious and she didn't want to talk about it, so she held it in as long as she could and then exploded when the pressure became too much—and for rapunzel, i think the explanation and the actual apology get conflated. meaning, cass says "i'm sorry for what i did out of anger" and what rapunzel hears is "i'm sorry for being angry."

and because of that misunderstanding, from rapunzel's perspective her own indignation has been validated and her behavior justified, because she was right all along and cass shouldn't have been angry with her in the first place and now everything is fine--

but it's not fine.

we're not supposed to share rapunzel's perspective here, because she's flat out wrong. nothing is really better and nothing has really changed, except that rapunzel got the talk she wanted and stops putting this intense pressure on cass. so as we enter the house of yesterday's tomorrow, rapunzel is taking it for granted that things are fine with cass, and meanwhile cass is still injured, still angry, still as aloof as she can be without getting rapunzel breathing down her neck again... and then she meets zhan tiri, who gives her everything she needed and couldn't get from rapunzel.

like, to my mind, this is the entire point of RDO, that rapunzel makes this catastrophic mess of trying to patch things up after RATGT and comes out of that mess wrongly thinking she succeeded. the episode is presented through the lens of rapunzel's perspective, but the lines are very wide and i absolutely think the intention is for the audience to read between them and understand the reality that rapunzel has sort of blinded herself to.

[conduitandconjurer]

Man I must have missed this star meme but ⭐⭐⭐⭐ for Klaus and the Doctor plz? 🥺

Omg ok let me see if I can limit it to four, LOL. For those who don't know, my mainverse on this blog is actually a delightful three-way crossover with Misfits and Doctor Who, and Klaus is married to the Ninth Doctor as portrayed by @mostincrediblechange. Their ship name is Spooky Space if you have no taste and wish to blacklist it LOL.

Klaus and the Doctor initially bonded over their shared experience of wartime trauma and deep personal loss, as well as their unorthodox relationship to death: the Doctor as someone forced to exterminate his entire home planet, Klaus as a medium for whom death is never a clear and finite boundary of existence. The Doctor picked Klaus up almost directly after the events of S2 (a detail which may change depending on S3), and their first actual date was on a planet almost entirely covered in mirror like crystal water with firefly like creatures floating in the air. Klaus would live in water if he could, so this is his favorite place in all the universe to visit. It's also prompted him to think of himself as a mermaid and of the Doctor as his sexy sailor boy, lol.

When the Doctor found out about the first time Klaus was sexually assaulted (at fifteen), he went back in time to prevent the occurrence and to give Klaus the big furry black jacket that we see Klaus wearing in S1, and he also went back in time a second time to meet Klaus "for the first time" in Klaus's twenties, affording him several days stay, food, and bath at a hotel with no strings attached. This was maybe Klaus's first experience of a love outside his family that wasn't in some way transactional. They spent their first night together just snuggling in bed in big fuzzy white hotel robes watching the Home Shopping Network. Klaus, who was at least aware that the Doctor was a time traveler, started fantasizing about their future together and said he wanted tanzanite jewelry. After erasing Klaus's memory, the Doctor went forward in time to their current timeline and bought him some tanzanite. Somehow, it enabled Klaus to remember their actual first time together. Yes, it's really fucking romantic and I'm about to cry remembering it.

They have been married for 2 years now, although they intend to have another ceremony with the family they've accrued since. The fundament of their entire relationship is complete trust and mutual full disclosure, and that has never been violated by either party.

Where they do struggle is in their ironically similar need to please and provide, to "earn" the right, somehow, to be loved. Both tend to "run" from conflict; Klaus by feigning nonchalance and cheer (or using, though he's been mostly sober during their relationship), the Doctor by avoiding discussing what upsets him and by keeping busy with menial tasks. Eventually one breaks down and tells the other they need to talk; this is easy to do because ever since the Doctor gave Klaus some of his Regeneration energy, to prolong Klaus's life expectancy, they can "talk" telepathically. This is easier for the Doctor, who is still training Klaus how to shut out ambient "noise."

The Doctor built Klaus a whole little resting oasis in the TARDIS "Zero Room," where somehow his powers as a medium are muted completely, and he can rest ghost-free.

The siblings who have met the Doctor: Five, Ben (in an AU where Klaus resurrected him), Viktor (so far, off-screen). Five initially was suspicious of the Doctor and protective of Klaus, but has very gradually begun to approve of and even like him.

While with his husband, Klaus's powers have flourished. He can levitate with ease, conjure in a controlled way (he even has a meditation group for the ghosts who hang around the mansion, lol) and draw life force from the surrounding environment (this one is terrifying and he seems to only do it when really distraught).

They accidentally genetically engineered a daughter LOL, which led them down the rabbit’s hole of realizing they both wanted to be parents, and now they have 2 adopted adult children too, and a fourth biologically engineered kid, a boy, on the way. 

I cannot express enough how healthy and romantic their bond is, it fucking kills me. Their chemistry is effortless for me as a writer. Anyway omg I have an eye strain headache now but \o!!!!

[thirteenthdyke]

oh yeah. here are my #thoughts on netflix a81 btw. (it’s long)

disclaimer these are just my thoughts from watching it once & all in a single day like two days ago. there were things i liked and things i didn’t like! obviously the biggest thing i didn’t like was melody not being gay but i feel like that’s been gone over so many times and i’ve been angry about it so long i’m kind of just tired so. moving on! 

things i liked: 

- the sound design - i know the creator said they were inspired by the podcast’s incredible sound design, and it really showed. i listened to most of the episodes with earbuds in, and that was definitely the best way to go - sometimes the most enjoyable part of a scene was just how it sounded. 

- ratty was there 💗💗💗 and he even lived maybe 

- i genuinely enjoyed mark’s character i thought he was funny and he had a fun role in the tv show. i do wish he’d had more petty gay best friend energy but i guess that’s harder to show off when dan doesn’t have a girlfriend for him to hate

- i LOVED the cold opens at the start of every episode & i thought that was the closest they got to the spirit of the podcast - it especially reminded me of s2 and all the weird seemingly unrelated tapes that tied into the overarching story dan had to figure out. 

- rat (jacob?) wasn’t there ❤️

things i didn’t like: 

- my genuine biggest complaint (asides from melody making out w samuel) was the change in motivation for melody and dan? one of my favorite parts of s1 in the podcast is how in a way they’re both motivated simply by the need to finish the story. this is more obvious in dan and less so in melody (since she’s also motivated by finding jesse) but it’s still true for both of them, and i remember that being a big draw for me as a person who loves discussion of narrative in media and when characters are aware they are in a story....that is simply My Thing. so to have that taken away to give dan and melody motivations that are? both partially based off of parents (dan wanting to know why his dad is in the tapes/tragic backstory tying in/invested in melody’s fate specifically & melody looking for her mother in visser being her only motivator before getting deeper into it w anabelle & samuel, etc) felt like Such a downgrade for me and evidence of honestly lazier storywriting. 

- how everything was connected and everyone was related. when davenport said samuel was his brother........ bro this isn’t once upon a time it’s a horror tv show. plus melody being dan’s dad’s patient & dan’s family dying because of visser stuff & melody being related to some ancient witches...idk i paid less attention towards the end. OH and melody’s mom being the groundskeeper kjdsghkf like. i’m so sorry i did not care about that at all. 

- related to both of the above but giving dan a tragic backstory made him so less just some guy.....like podcast dan is truly Just Some Guy and i felt like we were missing that. also podcast dan is more of a loser (i mean this in a nice way)  

- whatever was going on with the plot in the 1920s. sorry i didn’t really pay attention i spent most of the time trying to figure out who was playing iris vos cause she wasn’t listed on imdb yet (believe it or not :/ i recognized her from a ouat role from like 2015. also from watching fringe with my dad over the summer. anyway)

- a lot of other people said this but the downgrade from eldritch unknowable leviathans to religious horror/a demon with a name....not fun! not a fan!! i kept waiting for all the religious stuff to kind of like. be something else when the curtain got pulled back but it never happened. especially upsetting since they all kept referencing ‘the otherworld’ and then it was just a weird little dream sequeunce like.....no dude i want the world where the city is!! where the blacktop is!!!! 

- the only canon lesbian being an evil cultist :/ when it should have been melody 

in conclusion: i think it’s a perfectly okay adaptation of the podcast - it makes sense that there had to be a lot of new stuff, as other people have said again they had to expand a roughly 2 hour podcast into an 8 hour tv show so there would need to be a lot of new information. but boy they were not kidding when they said ‘loosely based’ huh  i also thought it was really cool to have a horror tv show with a black lead and multiple important characters of color, and i think all the actors did a really good job! however storywise i felt like the horror was a step down from where it was in the podcast and honestly </3 just wasn’t that scary. i wish they hadn’t been afraid to be weirder - they went there a few times w the cold opens & ratty!! a lot of the other horror stuff just felt very unoriginal to me though. anyway once again these are literally just my thoughts you do not have to agree with them at all lmao. if u read this far thank u i appreciate it and i hope this was legible. i’m gonna go relisten to a81 the podcast again now see ya 

[ackermanshoe]

March comes in like a lion, it's Portrayal of toxic & healthy relationship and how to compares rivamika + Ereh

Que the longest title everr 😌✨

So before I start on the actual analysis, I recently started watching March comes in like a lion instead of doing my assignments and I half way through season 2. For those of you who haven't watched it, it might be a spoilers so beware of that.

In this analysis I'll be comparing the similarities I found between Rei, Hina and Kyoko.

So watching any anime after being do emotionally attached to rivamika it's only natural that I compare them to the characters with even the tiniest bit similarities in their dynamic but Rei and hina's relationship jump in episode 4 of season 2 really caught me off guard and I was like omg?? Rivamika?? How do I make this about them 😩

Anyway so a little background on Rei's relationship with both girls Kyoko and Hina ( Hinata ). Firstly, i subconsciously placed Rei has Mikasa, kyoko has Eren and Hina as Levi, why? You will know on a minute. Rei is a depressed kid who has known only one way of life and that's through shogi games and after his parents death ( cough cough ) he was taken in by a old friend ( I think ) of his dad's who was also obsessed with shogi. Kyoko is the biological daughter of this man who has "adopted" Rei and later on Rei was came to know Hina and her sisters, they were super supportive of him from the start and having lost family members themselves they related to him on a personal level.

So you see why Eren and mikasa's dynamic matches with Rei and Kyoko and not only as "step siblings" it's also the fact that Rei became somewhat obsessed with her through the time he had spent over at their house, it's toxic and it's been showcased that way ever since kyoko was introduced into the series. Rei thought of her when he heard the word "love" and he even admitted to the fact that having her around is toxic and yet he can't push her away. He said he does not want to stop hearing her voice even tho she , herself is in love with a much older man who is married. Everytime she showed up to his bedroom uninvited and slept next to him my mind went "he is in love with her and their relationship is so toxic why does the author keep bringing her into his life?" Or "girl get the fuck away from him".

Without even thinking too much deep into their physical connection I already knew I would be able to related this dynamic to Eren and Mikasa. Although this series gives us much more depth into the main characters views since it's narrated from his own perspective, and the fact that he metaphorically compared his feelings of being lost and sadness helps me as an audience to understand what's happening much much easier than attack on titan. I personally feel like this kind of series are usually short ( idk how long this is) because it feels like the author knows exactly what he is going for, everything is set in stone.

Going back to Rei's ( mikasa's) relationship with kyoko ( Eren ) it's much much clear how toxic it had become for him in more than just one way. And the show isn't denying Rei of his feelings towards Kyoko and it's not even attempting to distant him from her and yet you just knew there had to be someone better right? That's when they introduced Hina and Kyoko in the same episode, meeting each other and a sense of invisible rivalry gushed over them, especially Hina. She is a happy go lucky girl and extremely sensitive to things to the point it kinda annoys me everytime she bursts out crying ( but hey you can't hate a genuinely good character ).

That's where things get interesting for me maybe because I am on that Levi X Mikasa agenda all the time but just like rivamika their relationship has been portrayed as platonic for the longest time in the seaosns. If I didn't go out of way to search up who Rei falls in love with and it didn't say hina's name I probably wouldn't be making this comparison right now because who wants to have their heart broken for the 2nd time in the same fucking month 🙄.

Anyway so in this one episode Hina comes home crying because of bullying issue at school and as she runs off into the dark streets Rei chases her and eventually catching up to her takes her hand and being able to relate to her problems, comparing his younger self to her present Rei reaches out his hand and God fucking damn it he says "you saved my life..I promise I'll stay with you" ofc I'm making this post now you know the real reason 🤡.

The unseen build up that happen between them reminds me of rivamika, the Portrayal of healthy relationship is rivamika. Hina (in our case Levi ) to Rei is the voice of emotion, she speaks out the feelings that Rei has been surpassing all these years inside of him. Just like how we talked about Levi is the voice of reason, while Mikasa has the impulsive urge to act up. Just like how Levi became the perosn who reasonably always took mikasa's side, he gave her personal reasons to take Erens side everytime have an actual meaning towards the scouts / everyone , he then became someone Mikasa was able to object & voice out her opinion towards because she knew that he would response and guide her the right way and finally he became someone she was able to fully trust.

Much like Hina and Rei, when Hina cried out her heart and Rei couldn't help but go back to his past self and imagine Hina coming to him and giving him a hand, being his saviour. It's much like how Levi saw his past self in Mikasa present ( S1 ), Levi gave Mikasa the hand she needed when she didn't know she needed.

Hina despite being much younger than him, was able to make him realise that he too was shutting out his emotions and was able to let himself be free through Hina when she cried, expressing her frustrations and very human like emotions. In the forest of the giant trees when Mikasa and Levi saved Eren for the first time he told her " we got your precious friend, didn't we?" A slight wake up call he had given her for the very first time, an attack on Mikasa's ego and evoking a different emotions within her. Like telling her it's not only about Eren and getting revenge, risking your life so easily, Levi had lost his entire squad in order to protect Eren so now that he is safe they better leave now.

So the question is did Levi and Mikasa save each other?

What can I say that I haven't said already in here about these two?

"you saved my life" Rei says to Hina as he reached out her hand and the beauty of that scene was the fact that it was delicate and soft despite it not being anything romantic. Remind me of that panel of Mikasa touching Levi's shoulder. How ironic is the fact that I'm comparing Hina, a openly emotional character to Levi who is said to be the most emotional inside?

Levi physically saved Mikasa a lot of the time however emotionally Levi saved Mikasa from being selfish and from herself. What if I said and ignoring 139, that Levi was one of of the biggest reasons Mikasa took the initiative and decapitated Eren that day?

Wait why does it feel like I already said it before lol

Through Levi, Mikasa learnt to trust more, learnt that even though they gave difference not only in height, age and in how they treat Eren ( Levi with force and Mikasa with care ), Mikasa still came in terms with Levi and relied on him, shared her burden with him. I think that's the biggest character twist Mikasa had, the fact that she was ready to draw sword at anyone who treated Eren wrong and everyone was scared of her and then came the grumpy shorty who beat her beloved brother right in front of her but eventually he became the biggest form of support she had in the end. I just can not help but laugh at all the unseen development this ship has had and all the implication of Futher interaction after season 3 between them, it's really obvious they had something going on because imagine you don't talk to someone for like 3 years and suddenly when you engage in battle against , paired up with them suddenly you become the strongest duo known to humanity. +?)!#)# make it make sense.

Sooo now you see the that having toxic relationship with a partner is only natural and inevitable but growing from that, opening your eyes to those who actually care there for you is rather healthy. So moral of the story is guys make sure stick with those who tells you to stay with them, the end.

Omg guys this turned out so much longer than I intended, anyway hopefully y'all liked it. I know it's not the strongest comparison or analysis but I feel like I'm running out of words for what I want to say about rivamika it feels like I'm recycling my sentences from previous analysis over and over again because ✨ lack of content ✨ and my inability to think of something new.

Please ignore all my spelling mistakes I have decided to embrace my mistakes instead of fixing them simply because I'm too lazy 😉

💜💜💜

[armageddon-generation]

Articulating Why His Dark Materials is Badly Written

A long essay-thing with lots of specific examples and explanations of why I feel this way. Hopefully I’ve kept fanboy bitching to a minimum.

This isn’t an attack on fans of the show, nor a personal attack on Jack Thorne. I’m not looking to ruin anyone’s enjoyment of the show, I just needed to properly articulate, with examples, why I struggle with it. I read and love the books and that colours my view, but I believe that HDM isn’t just a clumsy, at-best-functional, sometimes incompetent adaptation, it’s a bad TV show separate from its source material. The show is the blandest, least interesting and least engaging version of itself it could be.

His Dark Materials has gorgeous production design and phenomenal visual effects. It's well-acted. The score is great. But my god is it badly written. Jack Thorne writing the entire first season damned the show. There was no-one to balance out his flaws and biases. Thorne is checking off a list of plot-points, so concerned with manoeuvring the audience through the story he forgets to invest us in it. The scripts are mechanical, empty, flat.

Watching HDM feels like an impassioned fan earnestly lecturing you on why the books are so good- (Look! It's got other worlds and religious allegory and this character Lyra is really, really important I swear. Isn't Mrs Coulter crazy? The Gyptians are my favourites.) rather than someone telling the story naturally.

My problems fall into 5 main categories:

Exposition- An unwillingness to meaningfully expand the source material for a visual medium means Thorne tells and doesn't show crucial plot-points. He then repeats the same thing multiple times because he doesn't trust his audience

Pacing- By stretching out the books and not trusting his audience Thorne dedicates entire scenes to one piece of information and repeats himself constantly (see: the Witches' repetition of the prophecy in S2).

Narrative priorities- Thorne prioritises human drama over fantasy. This makes sense budgetarily, but leads to barely-present Daemons, the Gyptians taking up too much screentime, rushed/badly written Witches (superpowers, exposition) and Bears (armourless bear fight), and a Lyra more focused on familial angst than the joy of discovery

Tension and Mystery- because HDM is in such a hurry to set up its endgame it gives you the answers to S1's biggest mysteries immediately- other worlds, Lyra's parents, what happens to the kids etc. This makes the show less engaging and feel like it's playing catch-up to the audience, not the other way around.

Tonal Inconsistency- HDM tries to be a slow-paced, grounded, adult drama, but its blunt, simplistic dialogue and storytelling methods treat the audience like children that need to be lectured.

MYSTERY, SUSPENSE AND INTRIGUE

The show undercuts all the books’ biggest mysteries. Mrs Coulter is set up as a villain before we meet her, other worlds are revealed in 1x2, Lyra's parents by 1x3, what the Magesterium do to kids is spelled out long before Lyra finds Billy (1x2). I understand not wanting to lose new viewers, but neutering every mystery kills momentum and makes the show much less engaging.

This extends to worldbuilding. The text before 1x1 explains both Daemons and Lyra's destiny before we meet her. Instead of encouraging us to engage with the world and ask questions, we're given all the answers up front and told to sit back and let ourselves be spoon-fed. The viewer is never an active participant, never encouraged to theorise or wonder

 Intrigue motivated you to engage with Pullman's philosophical themes and concepts. Without it, HDM feels like a lecture, a theme park ride and not a journey.

The only one of S1's mysteries left undiminished is 'what is Dust?', which won't be properly answered until S3, and that answer is super conceptual and therefore hard to make dramatically satisfying

TONAL INCONSISTENCY

HDM billed itself as a HBO-level drama, and was advertised as a GoT inheritor. It takes itself very seriously- the few attempts at humour are stilted and out of place

The production design is deliberately subdued, most notably choosing a mid-twentieth century aesthetic for Lyra’s world over the late-Victorian of the books or steampunk of the movie. The colour grading would be appropriate for a serious adult drama. 

Reviewers have said this stops the show feeling as fantastical as it should. It also makes Lyra’s world less distinct from our own. 

Most importantly, minimising the wondrous fantasy of S1 neuters its contrast with the escalating thematic darkness of the finale (from 1x5 onwards), and the impact of Roger’s death. Pullman's books are an adult story told through the eyes of a child. Lyra’s innocence and naivety in the first book is the most important journey of the trilogy. Instead, the show starts serious and thematically heavy (we’re told Lyra has world-saving importance before we even meet her) and stays that way.

Contrasting the serious tone, grounded design and poe-faced characters, the dialogue is written to cater to children. It’s horrendously blunt and pulls you out of scenes. Subtext is obliterated at every opportunity. Even in the most recent episode, 2x7, Pan asks Lyra ‘do you think you’re changing because of Will?’

I cannot understate how on the nose this line is, and how much it undercuts the themes of the final book. Instead of even a meaningful shot of Lyra looking at Will, the show treats the audience like complete idiots. 

So, HDM looks and advertises itself like an adult drama and is desperate to be taken seriously by wearing its big themes on its sleeve from the start instead of letting them evolve naturally out of subtext like the books, and dedicating lots of scenes to Mrs Coulter's self-abuse 

At the same time its dialogue and character writing is comparable to the Star Wars prequels, more childish than media aimed at a similar audience - Harry Potter, Doctor Who, Avatar the Last Airbender etc

DAEMONS

The show gives itself a safety net by explaining Daemons in an opening text-crawl, and so spends less time showing the mechanics of the Daemon-human bond. On the HDM subreddit, I’ve seen multiple people get to 1x5 or 6, and then come to reddit asking basic questions like ‘why do only some people have Daemons?’ or ‘Why are Daemons so important?’.

It’s not that the show didn’t answer these questions; it was in the opening text-crawl. It’s just the show thinks telling you is enough and never shows evidence to back that up. Watching a TV show you remember what you’re shown much easier than what you’re told 

The emotional core of Northern Lights is the relationship between Lyra and Pan. The emotional core of HDM S1 is the relationship between Lyra and Mrs Coulter. This wouldn't be bad- it's a fascinating dynamic Ruth plays wonderfully- if it didn't override the Daemons

Daemons are only onscreen when they serve a narrative purpose. Thorne justifies this because the books only describe Daemons when they tell us about their human. On the page your brain fills the Daemons in. This doesn't work on-screen; you cannot suspend your disbelief when their absence is staring you in the face

Thorne clarified the number of Daemons as not just budgetary, but a conscious creative choice to avoid onscreen clutter. This improved in S2 after vocal criticism.

Mrs Coulter/the Golden Monkey and Lee/Hester have well-drawn relationships in S1, but Pan and Lyra hug more in the 2-hour Golden Compass movie than they do in the 8-hour S1 of HDM. There's barely any physical contact with Daemons at all.

They even cut Pan and Lyra's hug after escaping the Cut in Bolvangar. In the book they can't let go of each other. The show skips it completely because Thorne wants to focus on Mrs Coulter and Lyra.

They cut Pan and Lyra testing how far apart they can be. They cut Lyra freeing the Cut Daemons in Bolvangar with the help of Kaisa. We spent extra time with both Roger and Billy Costa, but didn't develop their bonds with their Daemons- the perfect way to make the Cut more impactful

I don't need every single book scene in the show, but notice that all these cut scenes reinforced how important Daemons are. For how plodding the show is. you'd think they could spare time for these moments instead of inventing new conversations that tell us the information they show

Daemons are treated as separate beings and thus come across more like talking pets than part of a character

The show sets the rules of Daemons up poorly. In 1x2, Lyra is terrified by the Monkey being so far from Coulter, but the viewer has nothing to compare it to. We’re retroactively told in that this is unnatural when the show has yet to establish what ‘natural’ is.

The guillotine blueprint in 1x2 (‘Is that a human and his Daemon, Pan? It looks like it.’ / ‘A blade. To cut what?’) is idiotic. It deflates S1’s main mystery and makes the characters look stupid for not figuring out what they aren’t allowed to until they did in the source material, it also interferes with how the audience sees Daemons. In the book, Cutting isn’t revealed until two-thirds of the way in (1x5). By then we’ve spent a lot of time with Daemons, they’ve become a background part of the world, their ‘rules’ have been established, and we’re endeared to them.

By showing the Guillotine and putting Daemons under threat in the second episode, the show never lets us grow attached. This, combined with their selective presence in scenes, draws attention to Daemons as a plot gimmick and not a natural extension of characters. Like Lyra, the show tells us why Daemons are important before we understand them.

Billy Costa's fate falls flat. It's missing the dried fish/ fake Daemon Tony Markos clings to in the book. Thorne said this 'didn't work' on the day, but it worked in the film. Everyone yelling about Billy not having a Daemon is laughable when most of the background extras in the same scene don't have Daemons themselves

WITCHES

The Witches are the most common complaint about the show. Thorne changed Serafina Pekkala in clever, logical ways (her short hair, wrist-knives and cloud pine in the skin)

The problem is how Serafina is written. The Witches are purely exposition machines. We get no impression of their culture, their deep connection to nature, their understanding of the world. We are told it. It is never shown, never incorporated into the dramatic action of the show.

Thorne emphasises Serafina's warrior side, most obviously changing Kaisa from a goose into a gyrfalcon (apparently a goose didn't work on-screen)

Serafina single-handedly slaughtering the Tartars is bad in a few ways. It paints her as bloodthirsty and ruthless. Overpowering the Witches weakens the logic of the world (If they can do that, why do they let the Magesterium bomb them unchallenged in 2x2?). It strips the Witches of their subtlety and ambiguity for the sake of cinematic action.

A side-effect of Serafina not being with her clan at Bolvangar is limiting our exposure to the Witches. Serafina is the only one invested in the main plot, we only hear about them from what she tells us. This poor set-up weakens the Witch subplot in S2

Lyra doesn’t speak to Serafina until 2x6. She laid eyes on her once in S1.

The dialogue in the S2’s Witch subplot is comparable to the Courasant section of The Phantom Menace. 

Two named characters, neither with any depth (Serafina and Coram's dead son developed him far more than her). The costumes look ostentatious and hokey- the opposite of what the Witches should be. They do nothing but repeat the same exposition at each other, even in 2x7.

We feel nothing when the Witches are bombed because the show never invests us in what is being destroyed- with the amount of time wasted on long establishing shots, there’s not one when Lee Scoresby is talking to the Council.

BEARS

Like the Witches; Thorne misunderstands and rushes the fantasy elements of the story. The 2007 movie executed both Iofur's character and the Bear Fight much better than the show- bloodless jaw-swipe and all

Iofur's court was not the parody of human court in the books. He didn't have his fake-Daemon (hi, Billy)

An armourless bear fight is like not including Pan in the cutting scene. After equating Iorek's armour to a Daemon (Lee does this- we don’t even learn how important it is from Iorek himself, and the comparison meant less because of how badly the show set up Daemons) the show then cuts the plotpoint that makes the armour plot-relevant. This diminishes all of Bear society. Like Daemons, we're told Iorek's armour is important but it's never shown to be more than a cool accessory

GYPTIANS

Gyptians suffer from Hermoine syndrome. Harry Potter screenwriter Steve Kloves' favourite character was Hermione, and so Film!Hermoine lost most of Book!Hermoine's flaws and gained several of Book!Ron's best moments. The Gyptians are Jack Thorne's favourite group in HDM and so they got the extra screentime and development that the more complicated groups/concepts like Witches, Bears, and Daemons (which, unlike the Gyptians, carry over to other seasons amd are more important to the overall story) needed

At the same time, he changes them from a private people into an Isle of Misfit Toys. TV!Ma Costa promises they'll ‘make a Gyptian woman out of Lyra yet’, but in the book Ma specifically calls Lyra out for pretending to be Gyptian, and reminds her she never can be.

This small moment indicates how, while trying to make the show more grounded and 'adult', Thorne simultaneously made it more saccharine and sentimental. He neuters the tragedy of the Cut kids when Ma Costa says they’ll become Gyptians. Pullman's books feel like an adult story told through the eyes of a child. The TV show feels like a child's story masquerading as a serious drama.

LIN-MANUEL MIRANDA

Let me preface this by saying I genuinely really enjoy the performances in the show. It was shot in the foot by The Golden Compass' perfect casting.

The most contentious/'miscast' actor among readers is LMM. Thorne ditched the books' wise Texan for a budget Han Solo. LMM isn't a great dramatic actor (even in Hamilton he was the weak link performance-wise) but he makes up for it in marketability- lots of people tried the show because of him

Readers dislike that LMM's Lee is a thief and a scoundrel, when book-Lee is so moral he and Hester argue about stealing. Personally, I like the change in concept. Book!Lee's parental love for Lyra just appears. It's sweet, but not tied to a character arc. Done right, Lyra out-hustling Lee at his own game and giving him a noble cause to fight for (thus inspiring the moral compass of the books) is a more compelling arc.

DAFNE KEENE AND LYRA

I thought Dafne would be perfect casting. Her feral energy in Logan seemed a match made in heaven. Then Jack Thorne gave her little to do with it.

Compare how The Golden Compass introduced Lyra, playing Kids and Gobblers with a group of Gyptian kids, including Billy Costa. Lyra and Roger are chased to Jordan by the Gyptians and she makes up a lie about a curse to scare the Gyptians away.

In one scene the movie set up: 1) the Gobblers (the first we hear of them in the show is in retrospect, Roger worrying AFTER Billy is taken) 2) Lyra’s pre-existing relationship with the Gyptians (not in the show), 3) Friendship with Billy Costa (not in the book or show) 4) Lyra’s ability to befriend and lead groups of people, especially kids, and 5) Lyra’s ability to lie impressively

By comparison, it takes until midway through 1x2 for TV!Lyra to tell her first lie, and even then it’s a paper-thin attempt. 

The show made Roger Lyra’s only friend. This artificially heightens the impact of Roger's death, but strips Lyra of her leadership qualities and ability to befriend anyone. 

Harry Potter fans talk about how Book!Harry is funnier and smarter than Film!Harry. They cut his best lines ('There's no need to call me sir, Professor') and made him blander and more passive. The same happened to Lyra.

Most importantly, Lyra is not allowed to lie for fun. She can't do anything 'naughty' without being scolded. This colours the few times Lyra does lie (e.g. to Mrs Coulter in 1x2) negatively and thus makes Lyra out to be more of a brat than a hero.

This is a problem with telling Northern Lights from an outside, 'adult' perspective- to most adults Lyra is a brat. Because we’re introduced to her from inside her head, we think she's great. It's only when we meet her through Will's eyes in The Subtle Knife and she's filthy, rude and half-starved that we realise Lyra bluffs her way through life and is actually pretty non-functional

Thorne prioritises grounded human drama over fantasy, and so his Lyra has her love of bears and witches swapped for familial angst. (and, in S2. angst over Roger). By exposing Mrs Coulter as her mother early, Thorne distracts TV!Lyra from Book!Lyra’s love of the North. The contrast between wonder and reality made NL's ending a definitive threshold between innocence and knowledge. Thorne showed his hand too early.

Similarly, TV!Lyra doesn’t have anywhere near as strong an admiration for Lord Asriel. She calls him out in 1x8 (‘call yourself a Father’), which Book!Lyra never would because she’s proud to be his child. From her perspective, at this point Asriel is the good parent.

TV!Lyra’s critique of Asriel feels like Thorne using her as a mouthpiece to voice his own, adult perspective on the situation. Because Lyra is already disappointed in Asriel, his betrayal in the finale isn’t as effective. Pullman saves the ‘you’re a terrible Father’ call-out for the 3rd book for a reason; Lyra’s naive hero-worship of Asriel in Northern Lights makes the fall from Innocence into Knowledge that Roger’s death represents more effective.  

So, on TV Lyra is tamer, angstier, more introverted, less intelligent, less fun and more serious. We're just constantly told she's important, even before we meet her.

MRS COULTER (AND LORD ASRIEL)

Mrs Coulter is the main character of the show. Not Lyra. Mrs Coulter was cast first, and Lyra was cast based on a chemistry test with Ruth Wilson. Coulter’s character is given lots of extra development, where the show actively strips Lyra of her layers.

To be clear, I have no problem with developing Mrs Coulter. She is a great character Ruth Wilson plays phenomenally. I do have a problem with the show fixating on her at the expense of other characters.

Lyra's feral-ness is given to her parents. Wilson and McAvoy are more passionate than in the books. This is fun to watch, but strips them of subtlety- you never get Book!Coulter's hypnotic allure from Wilson, she's openly nasty, even to random strangers (in 2x3 her dismissal of the woman at the hotel desk felt like a Disney villain). 

Compare how The Golden Compass (2007) introduced Mrs Coulter through Lyra’s eyes, with light, twinkling music and a sparkling dress. By contrast, before the show introduces Coulter it tells us she’s associated with the evil Magisterium plotting Asriel’s death- “Not a word to any of our mutual friends. Including her.” Then she’s introduced striding down a corridor to imposing ‘Bad Guy’ strings.

Making Mrs Coulter’s villainy so obvious so early makes Lyra look dumber for falling for it. It also wastes an interesting phase of her character arc. Coulter is rushed into being a ’conflicted evil mother’ in 2 episodes, and stays in that phase for the rest of the show so far. Character progression is minimised because she circles the same place.

It makes her one-note. It's a good note (so much of the positive online chatter is saphiccs worshiping Ruth Wilson) but the show also worships her to the point of hindrance- e.g. take a shot every time Coulter walks slow-motion down a corridor in 2x2

The problem isn’t the performances, but how prematurely they give the game away. Just like the mysteries around Bolvangar and Lyra’s parentage. Neither Coulter or Asriel have much chance to use their 'public' faces. 

This is part of a bigger pacing problem- instead of rolling plot points out gradually, Thorne will stick the solution in front of you early and then stall for time until it becomes relevant. Instead of building tension this builds frustration and makes the show feel like it's catching up to the audience. This also makes the characters less engaging. You've already shown Mrs Coulter is evil/Boreal is in our world/Asriel wants Roger. Why are you taking so long getting to the point?

PACING AND EDITING

This show takes forever to make its point badly.

Scenes in HDM tend to operate on one level- either 'Character Building,' 'Exposition,' or 'Plot Progression'.

E.g. Mary's introduction in 2x2. Book!Mary only listens to Lyra because she’s sleep and caffeine-deprived and desperate because her funding is being cut. But the show stripped that subtext out and created an extra scene of a colleague talking to Mary about funding. They removed emotional subtext to focus on exposition, and so the scene felt empty and flat.

In later episodes characters Mary’s sister and colleagues do treat her like a sleep-deprived wreck. But, just like Lyra’s lying, the show doesn’t establish these characteristics in her debut episode. It waits until later to retroactively tell us they were there. Mary’s colleague saying ‘What we’re dealing with here is the fact that you haven’t slept in weeks’ is as flimsy as Pan joking not lying to Mary will be hard for Lyra.

Rarely does a scene work on multiple levels, and if it does it's clunky- see the exposition dump about Daemon Separation in the middle of 2x2's Witch Trial.

He also splits plot progression into tiny doses, which destroys pacing. It's more satisfying to focus on one subplot advancing multiple stages than all of them shuffling forward half a step each episode.

Subplots would be more effective if all the scenes played in sequence. As it is, plotlines can’t build momentum and literal minutes are wasted using the same establishing shots every time we switch location.

The best-structured episodes of S1 are 1x4, 1x6, and 1x8. This is because they have the fewest subplots (incidentally these episodes have least Boreal in them) and so the main plot isn’t diluted by constantly cutting away to Mrs Coulter sniffing Lyra’s coat or Will watching a man in a car through his window, before cutting back again. 

The best-written episode so far is 2x5. The Scholar. Tellingly, it’s the only episode Thorne doesn’t have even a co-writing credit on. 2x5 is well-paced, its dialogue is more naturalistic, it’s more focused, it even has time for moments of whimsy (Monkey with a seatbelt, Mrs Coulter with jeans, Lyra and Will whispering) that don’t detract from the story.

Structurally, 2x5  works because A) it benches Lee’s plotline. B) The Witches and Magisterium are relegated to a scene each. And C) the Coulter/Boreal and Lyra/Will subplots move towards the same goal. Not only that, but when we check in on Mary’s subplot it’s through Mrs Coulter’s eyes and directly dovetails into the  main action of the episode.

2x5 has a lovely sense of narrative cohesion because it has the confidence to sit with one set of characters for longer than two scenes at a time.

HDM also does this thing where it will have a scene with plot A where characters do or talk about something, cut away to plot B for a scene, then cut back to plot A where the characters talk about what happened in their last scene and painstakingly explain how they feel about it and why

Example: Pan talking to Will in 2x7 while Lyra pretends to be asleep. This scene is from the 3rd book, and is left to breathe for many chapters before Lyra brings it up. In the show after the Will/Pan scene they cut away to another scene, then cut back and Lyra instantly talks about it.

There’s the same problem in 2x5: After escaping Mrs Coulter, Lyra spells out how she feels about acting like her

The show never leaves room for implication, never lets us draw our own conclusions before explaining what it meant and how the characters feel about it immediately afterwards. The audience are made passive in their engagement with the characters as well as the world    

LORD BOREAL, JOHN PARRY AND DIMINISHING RETURNS

At first, Boreal’s subplot in S1 felt bold and inspired. The twist of his identity in The Subtle Knife would've been hard to pull off onscreen anyway. As a kid I struggled to get past Will's opening chapter of TSK and I have friends who were the same. Introducing Will in S1 and developing him alongside Lyra was a great idea.

I loved developing Elaine Parry and Boreal into present, active characters. But the subplot was introduced too early and moved too slowly, bogging down the season.

In 1x2 Boreal crosses. In 1x3 we learn who he's looking for. In 1x5 we meet Will. In 1x7 the burglary. 1 episode worth of plot is chopped up and fed to us piecemeal across many. Boreal literally stalls for two episodes before the burglary- there are random 30 second shots of him sitting in a car watching John Parry on YouTube (videos we’d already seen) completely isolated from any other scenes in the episode

By the time we get to S2 we've had 2 seasons of extended material building up Boreal, so when he just dies like in the books it's anticlimactic. The show frontloads his subplot with meaning without expanding on its payoff, so the whole thing fizzles out. 

Giving Boreal, the secondary villain in literally every episode, the same death as a background character in about 5 scenes in the novels feels cheap. It doesn’t help that, after 2x5 built the tension between Coulter and Boreal so well, as soon as Thorne is passed the baton in 2x6 he does little to maintain that momentum. Again, because the subplot is crosscut with everything else the characters hang in limbo until Coulter decides to kill him.

I’ve been watching non-book readers react to the show, and several were underwhelmed by Boreal’s quick, unceremonious end. 

Similarly, the show builds up John Parry from 1x3 instead of just the second book. Book!John’s death is an anticlimax but feels narratively justified. In the show, we’ve spent so much extra time talking about him and then being with him (without developing his character beyond what’s in the novels- Pullman even outlined John’s backstory in The Subtle Knife’s appendix. How hard would it be to add a flashback or two?) that when John does nothing in the show and then dies (he doesn’t even heal Will’s fingers like in the book- only tell him to find Asriel, which the angels Baruch and Balthamos do anyway) it doesn’t feel like a clever, tragic subversion of our expectations, it feels like a waste that actively cheapens the audience’s investment.

TL;DR giving supporting characters way more screentime than they need only, to give their deaths the same weight the books did after far less build up makes huge chunks of the show feel less important than they were presented to be. 

FRUSTRATINGLY LIMITED EXPANSION AND NOVELLISTIC STORYTELLING

Thorne is unwilling to meaningfully develop or expand characters and subplots to fit a visual medium. He introduces a plot-point, invents unnecessary padding around it, circles it for an hour, then moves on.

Pullman’s books are driven by internal monologue and big, complex theological concepts like Daemons and Dust. Instead of finding engaging, dynamic ways to dramatise these concepts through the actions of characters or additions to the plot, Thorne turns Pullman’s internal monologue into dialogue and has the characters explain them to the audience

The novels’ perspective on its characters is narrow, first because Northern Lights is told only from Lyra’s POV, and second because Pullman’s writing is plot-driven, not character-driven. Characters are vessels for the plot and themes he wants to explore.

This is a fine way of writing novels. When adapting the books into a longform drama, Thorne decentralised Lyra’s perspective from the start, and HDM S1 uses the same multi-perspective structure that The Subtle Knife and The Amber Spyglass do, following not only Lyra but the Gyptians, Mrs Coulter, Boreal, Will and Elaine etc

However, these other perspectives are limited. We never get any impression of backstory or motivation beyond the present moment. Many times I’ve seen non-book readers confused or frustrated by vague or non-existent character motivations.

For example, S1 spends a lot of time focused on Ma Costa’s grief over Billy’s disappearance, but we never see why she’s sad, because we never saw her interact with Billy.

Compare this to another show about a frantic mother and older brother looking for a missing boy. Stranger Things uses only two flashbacks to show us Will Byers’ relationships with his family: 1) When Joyce Byers looks in his Fort she remembers visiting Will there. 2) The Clash playing on the radio reminds Jonathan Byers of introducing Will to the song.

In His Dark Materials we never see the Costas as a happy family- 1x1’s Gyptian ceremony focuses on Tony and Daemon-exposition. Billy never speaks to his mum or brother in the show 

Instead we have Ma Costa’s empty grief. The audience has to do the work (the bad kind) imagining what she’s lost. Instead of seeing Billy, it’s just repeated again and again that they will get the children back.

If we’re being derivative, HDM had the chance to segway into a Billy flashback when John Faa brings one of his belongings back from a Gobbler safehouse in 1x2. This is a perfect The Clash/Fort Byers-type trigger. It doesn’t have to be long- the Clash flashback lasted 1:27, the Fort Byers one 55 seconds. Just do something.

1x3 beats into us that Mrs Coulter is nuts without explaining why. Lots of build-up for a single plot-point. Then we're told Mrs Coulter's origin, not shown. This is a TV show. Swap Boreal's scenes for flashbacks of Coulter and Asriel's affair. Then, when Ma Costa tells Lyra the truth, show the fight between Edward Coulter and Asriel.

To be clear, Thorne's additions aren’t fundamentally bad. For example, Will boxing sets up his struggle with violence. But it's wasted. The burglary/murder in 1x7 fell flat because of bad editing, but the show never uses its visual medium to show Will's 'violent side'- no change in camera angle, focus, or sound design, nothing. It’s just a thing that’s there, unsupported by the visual language of the show

The Magisterium scenes in 2x2 were interesting. We just didn't need 5 of them; their point could be made far more succinctly.

In 2x6 there is a minute-long scene of Mary reading the I Ching. Later, there is another scene of Angelica watching Mary sitting somewhere different, doing the SAME THING, and she sees an Angel. Why split these up? It’s not like either the I Ching or the Angels are being introduced here. Give the scene multiple layers.

Thorne either takes good character moments from the books (Lyra/Will in 2x1) or uses heavy-handed exposition that reiterates the same point multiple times. This hobbles the Witches (their dialogue in 2x1, 2 and 3 literally rephrases the same sentiment about protecting Lyra without doing anything). Even character development- see Lee monologuing his and Mrs Coulter's childhood trauma in specific detail in 2x3

This is another example of Thorne adding something, but instead of integrating it into the dramatic action and showing us, it’s just talked about. What’s the point of adding big plot points if you don’t dramatise them in your dramatic, visual medium? In 2x8, Lee offhandedly mentions playing Alamo Gulch as a kid.

I’m literally screaming, Jack, why the flying fuck wasn’t there a flashback of young Lee and Hester playing Alamo Gulch and being stopped by his abusive dad? It’s not like you care about pacing with the amount of dead air in these episodes, even when S2’s run 10 minutes shorter than S1’s. Lee was even asleep at the beginning of 2x3, Jack! He could’ve woken from a nightmare about his childhood! It’s a little lazy, but better than nothing.

There’s a similar missed opportunity making Dr Lanselius a Witchling. If this idea had been introduced with the character in 1x4, it would’ve opened up so many storytelling possibilities. Linking to Fader Coram’s own dead witchling son. It could’ve given us that much-needed perspective on Witch culture. Imagine Lanselius’ bittersweet meeting with his ageless mother, who gave him up when he reached manhood. Then, when the Magisterium bombs the Witches in 2x2, Lanselius’ mother dies so it means something.

Instead it’s only used to facilitate an awkward exposition dump in the middle of a trial.

The point of this fanfic-y ramble is to illustrate my frustration with the additions; If Thorne had committed and meaningfully expanded and interwoven them with the source material, they could’ve strengthened its weakest aspect (the characters). But instead he stays committed to novelistic storytelling techniques of monologue and two people standing in a room talking at each other

(Seriously, count the number of scenes that are just two people standing in a room or corridor talking to each other. No interesting staging, the characters aren’t doing anything else while talking. They. Just. Stand.) 

SEASON 2 IMPROVEMENTS

S2 improved some things- Lyra's characterisation was more book-accurate, her dynamic with Will was wonderful. Citigazze looked incredible. LMM won lots of book fans over as Lee. Mary was brilliantly cast. Now there are less Daemons, they're better characterised- Pan gets way more to do now and Hester had some lovely moments. 

I genuinely believe 2x1, 2x3, 2x4 and 2x5 are the best HDM has been. 

But new problems arose. The Subtle Knife lost the central, easy to understand drive of Northern Lights (finding the missing kids) for lots of smaller quests. As a result, everyone spends the first two episodes of S2 waiting for the plot to arrive. The big inciting incident of Lyra’s plotline is the theft of the alethiometer, which doesn’t happen until 2x3. Similarly, Lee doesn’t search for John until 2x3. Mrs Coulter doesn’t go looking for Lyra until 2x3. 

On top of missing a unifying dramatic drive, the characters now being split across 3 worlds, instead of the 1+a bit of ours in S1, means the pacing/crosscutting problems (long establishing shots, repetition of information, undercutting momentum) are even worse. The narrative feels scattered and incohesive.   

These flaws are inherent to the source  material and are not the show’s fault, but neither does it do much to counterbalance or address them, and the flaws of the show combine with the difficulties of TSK as source material and make each other worse.

A lot of this has been entitled fanboy bitching, but you can't deny the show is in a bad place ratings-wise. It’s gone from the most watched new British show in 5 years to the S2 premiere having a smaller audience than the lowest-rated episode of Doctor Who Series 12. For comparison, DW's current cast and showrunner are the most unpopular since the 80s, some are actively boycotting it, it took a year-long break between series 11 and 12, had its second-worst average ratings since 2005, and costs a fifth of what HDM does to make. And it's still being watched by more people.

Critical consensus fluctuates wildly. Most laymen call the show slow and boring. The show is simultaneously too niche and self-absorbed to attract a wide audience and gets just enough wrong to aggravate lots of fans.

I’m honestly unsure if S3 will get the same budget. I want it to, if only because of my investment in the books. Considering S2 started filming immediately after S1 aired, I think they've had a lot more time to process and apply critique for S3. On the plus side, there's so much plot in The Amber Spyglass it would be hard to have the same pacing problems. But also so many new concepts that I dread the exposition dumps.