#I'VE BEEN SHIPPING THEM SINCE EPISODE 1 | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

0daylighthours0 · 6 months

Text

A Deep Dive into Milkvan and Byler's Development: If Milkvan Was Endgame All Along, Why Was it Written Like This???

SO. I've been rewatching st with my mother, who's never seen it before. And she was a fan of milkvan throughout seasons 1 and 2. Viewing those seasons again I could see why, they're cute. However, come season 3 and INSTANT distaste. And, listen, my mother is not the consciously shipping gal. She simply routes for main character pairings as writers intend, doesn't read between the lines, doesn't nothing. And she does NOT know my own opinions on the pairing. In other words, completely unbiased, uninternet drama influenced eyes. We've now reached season 3 and, after getting through a chunk of it, I asked her,

"so what do you think of Mike and El?"

and she expressed to me that they seem to be, quote:

"not very good together."

She said El's character doesn't suit the way she's acting now (in the first few episodes, concerning Mike), that Mike is more likeable and interesting when he's away from her. She doesn't like the way they ditched the party, and when it comes to their 'making out' the scenes are seen by her from Hopper's perspective (in other words, distasteful). She claimed that they'd be much better characters as friends.

And ya know what, she's right. And I mean like - duh, that's what we've been saying all this time, I'm not stating anything new here. But guys, wouldn't it be strange if the central couple of the show, pivotal that it is liked by audiences and is rooted for by them as they are THE pair, would be so dislikable like this? So uninteresting, so cliche.

I mean, okay, let's do a little mental experiment I like to do to test if I'm not just acting delulu. Let's play a game. In this game, milkvan ARE meant to be endgame. They are in love, they were all along, and they're here to draw in viewers and appease all El stans. Now, seasons 1 and 2 their relationship is honestly fine. Surface level, yeah, people will watch and appreciate them. They perfectly blend in with all the other neat pairings of the seasons, and have their own unique character traits to stand out as a main couple.

Just pretending our mate Will doesn't exist, we now get into season 3. Now, writers have nothing to lose here. If you've finished season 2, you probably like milkvan already. The issue is that they're already together now, so what's the conflict going to be? The arc? And every central couple needs that conflict to stay juicy.

Just take a look:

Jancy: quarrels, struggle to understand one another

Jopper: not yet together, one sided? will they won't they

Lumax: ...

Lumax? Lumax. Huh, guess they were simply together. Some loveable bickering, maintained a friendly dynamic while clearly in closer proximity. Well then, writers can do the same for milkvan right? Well, yes easily. But one might argue that since they are supposed to be THE pairing they need more going on between them than that. So what'll it be? Well, it seems that writers thought,

"hey, why not break them up?"

ok so.. that's a bit risky. I mean you want people to like this ship, if you break them up then that threats: 1. there being a disliking to one or both characters, 2. coming off generic if done incorrectly, 3. the break up might make no sense considering how in love they came off as just a season ago. But hey.. it could work, if done right. Some kind of misunderstanding, similar to Jancy. Maybe an argument leading to a sudden parting. I mean, yeah, Yeah! I can see that. Perhaps Mike is being too overprotective whilst El's trying to sacrifice herself for something, so she NEEDS to separate herself from him attempting to hurt him less. Or, I dunno, something akin. What's crucial is that us, AS THE AUDIENCE, still know them to be deeply in love. I mean, we have to still want them to be together. And we've seen couple trouble before. Just take a look at Lumax season 4 - did you or did you not want the best for both of them as a pair? You most likely did. See, it's doable. So did people like milkvan season 3 the same way, even after a separation plot? No.

Okay well, there are obviously those who'll always love milkvan no matter but, see, season 3 tainted it. "We need to write them like this cause it's more realistic to teenager behavior" my ars. You can make it messy without making it icky. Not only did it sour their unique dynamic, it flabbergastingly stomped on Mike as a character.

Honestly, I feel Mike has always been a mild struggle to write. Season 1 his motivations were 'find Will' (who still doesn't exist in our mind game yet shh) and 'protect El'. This worked well for him. Afterwards though, El and Will became more separate plots to him. But as a main character it remained integral that he be closely linked to them somehow. This sets him apart from Lucas and Dustin, who can easily be given any arc any season as their plots have the flexibility of a side quest nature. Since what Mike does is meant to matter more - with there probably being a better way of phrasing that but you know what I mean - it's harder knowing what he'll do when El and Will (who we'll GET to sh.) are their own separate people. And Mike is just a boy, he doesn't have super powers and he isn't a cop, which leaves there even less for him to do which is of significance. Season 2 writers decided upon having him support Will's arc, making himself of enough relevance by being able to take credit for some Will development in the story, and the plots that surrounded that, and then Mike was thrown a little bone by being the one to come up with the idea of burning those vines in the finale.

Truthfully, you don't really remember Mike's deeds much when reminiscing the series. It isn't like Dustin who's bond with Dart sticks to everyone, or Nancy and Jonathan responsible for kicking out Hawkins Lab. This is due to them, again, being able to traverse all sorts of adventures without limits. But my guy Mike can't do dat. Sadly, this kind of leads to him coming of as a little.. well... insignificant. And I know I know, the Mike truthers are gonna come at my throat. And hey! I love him too. I only want the best for my boy.

This makes season 3 a unique case cause it seems that, for the plot they decided they wanted, writers actually had to almost entirely change his character. I mean mate s2 Mike and s3 Mike are two different peoples, don't even. And I don't believe that the Duffers had their story and character turnouts completely drawn out from the very start at all. If I was to guess, I'd assume they have vague ideas of little plots they plan to include in future, but there is definitely a lot that has come unpredicted or changed throughout st's runtime. And one of those phenomenons are Michael Wheeler. So they decided to make this guy a di-

So they decided to make him more douchy, more movie typical teenage guy. It's not as if he wholly sucked, he didn't, but he didn't really do much. Whined about his girlfriend, separated the party. I mean what even was his arc? (UnLESS–)

You see, if milkvan is written to be loved, then season 3 was strike one. All of its charm was stripped away. It seems they had some cute scenes after their reconciliation, but it's not enough. It's just sort of

"oh, ok, so they're happy with eachother now. yayy."

and Stranger Things should want to be anything but boring. Sure they often enjoy indulging in tropes, but they always do something different with them. Something standoutish. And from this point on milkvan just got dull. Either writers ran out of ideas or lost interest, honestly (still with our mind game of telling ourselves they're meant to be).

But it's okay. Look, so season 3 was a bit rocky, maybe lost a couple of fans for the guys, but it is salvageable. Easily, easily. Looks like we want a plot of Mike struggling to tell El he loves her. Great! Much to work with.

So let's get into it. Season 4! Choices were... made. And, okay, now we can't go any further without bringing in our boy Will.

Mike is intrinsically tied to Will and El and has been from the start. Maybe Will was more of an accident. Maybe s1 Will was just a plot device for Mike, then s2 Will was a plot device again and Mike needed to be there as the main boy character. Come season 3 and it seems their relationship still matters. Will was sidelined - hard - so most of Mike's moments revolved around El. But as his bond with Mike is the only that's been properly built up, that's the only friend we'll get him interacting with in a way that matters. So the Mike and Will tie continues!

But that does not have to be the case for season 4. Now the writers have a chance.

They made Will gay.

Ok so.. ok so yeah that's fine. Yeah! I mean they didn't have to do that, might put them in hot water with the bylers since milkvan is their golden beauty but.. you know what no no that's okay. He's been hinted at being queer since episode 1, why not make it canon! Cool that works. Explore that, especially since we now have Vecna who can easily target Will for this. Give him a boyfriend! Or a guy crush. He's at a new school now? That's cool. Maybe we can explore some new male character Will's taken interest in. Hey maybe he meets someone who interests him which rises to surface his whole sexuality plot and-

he's in love with Mike.

Ok. No. No. What are you doing? What do you mean?? You didn't have to do that. Strike- strike EFING TWO mates! Strike. 👏 efing. 👏 2!

This was part 1. I am tired and gots to get my ars in bed. But ohohoh, do not worry. I am just getting started.

#anti milkvan #anti mileven #byler #byeler #stranger things #mike wheeler #will byers #byler is real #byler is endgame #byler analysis #byler nation #byler proof #byler is canon #byler endgame #byler tumblr #stranger things 4

224 notes · View notes

awsok · 1 year

Text

okay. let's talk about shin, sabine, and whatever the hell is going on here:

i've been trying to figure out this moment, and why shin responds like this. because it feels like a change, right? the shin of episode 1 would be thrilled to have permission to hunt down and kill sabine. but here, she's clearly protesting the order (indirectly, because she can hardly outright say 'no' to thrawn).

on one level, this is definitely at least in part because the order is coming from thrawn. orders from baylan are fine for shin: baylan is her master, and by this point in the series it's obvious how much she respects him. but thrawn? baylan told her finding thrawn would bring them power, but instead both she and baylan are being treated like his underlings - this is not what shin thought they were signing up for.

but if this were solely about thrawn giving orders, i'd expect shin's reaction to seem irritated or offended - she's hardly a stranger to anger, after all. but i think it's fair to say that shin's response here can be best characterised as alarmed? she's clearly surprised that they aren't letting sabine go, and more than that: she's not happy about it.

so then, i thought maybe that this was about honour - that shin was so disturbed by this, because it is dishonourable for baylan (who has made a point of insisting on keeping his word to sabine) to break their agreement. (and i know it may seem counterintuitive to assume that shin cares about such a jedi-like concept as honour, but judging by the way baylan speaks of the jedi and shin's padawan braid, he probably instilled her with their values if not their morals.) but then i remembered where episode four left off (which is indicated by the show to be a most a day or two ago):

this takes place literally immediately after sabine has made a deal with baylan. if shin cares enough about honour for it to override her hatred of sabine in episode six, it doesn't make sense for her to disregard honour (even in the heat of the moment) to try and kill sabine in episode four.

so if this isn't about thrawn (not entirely), and it isn't about honour (probably not at all), what is this about? what has changed to make shin go from homicidal obsession to protesting seemingly on sabine's behalf?

sabine, of course.

(by which i actually mean: shin.)

let's talk about The Look!

shin staring at sabine is nothing remotely new. shin staring at sabine without a homicidal glare or a mocking smirk? that's extremely new. this scene makes me crazy (i'm trying so so hard to keep the shipping goggles off and to be objective guys). it may not seem like much at first glance, but this is a dramatic change of behaviour for shin. she's looking at - no, observing sabine in a completely neutral and open way. there's no hostility in this gaze, no judgement, not even fear or conflict. just: observing. and she's doing so openly as well - not just that she isn't disguising herself - she turns to face sabine, as if to give sabine a better look at her. as if to let sabine observe her right back.

why??? why is shin doing this??

um. well. i actually don't know.

i can't make any remotely certain assumptions about what has changed since they left seatos. maybe shin has done a lot of introspection. maybe she feels like she's seen a different side of sabine. maybe they fucked on that spaceship.

the only conclusion i do feel it might be safe to make is this:

i don't think shin sees sabine as an enemy anymore.

i don't know when exactly that changed, i don't know what exactly caused it. but it's true. and if shin and sabine aren't enemies anymore - what are they to each other? what will they become?

tl;dr - shin doesn't want to murder sabine in cold blood anymore. also i think they should hold hands.

#dyn: where have I seen you before?#um so this got long. like nearly 700 words long.#what can i say they make me crazy #shin hati #ahsoka series #sabine wren #star wars #baylan skoll #also i tried really hard to stay objective and focus only on what canon gives us #shipping and fanon are fun but sometimes the restrictions of canon are More fun #plus i wanted this to be more about character analysis than shipping fodder y'know?#*#100 #ahsoka #*meta

416 notes · View notes

outrunningthedark · 18 days

Note

The first sign for me that the fandom was very anti-men was when they told the male BuckTommy fans to f*ck off when they expressed the ship to be good mlm representation. There was worse said but I don’t want to talk about that.

I've been here since the start of season four so I can't speak to what it was like in the early days when fandom was undoubtedly smaller and less dramatic, but I think the moment that made me start to realize something was...off was the reaction to Josh "scolding" Eddie after Eddie took control of the 9-1-1 call with the bomb threat. Like, I can't sit here and say I'm a huge Josh fan or anything, but for a fandom that prides itself on understanding "the narrative" and "media literacy" (which they obviously don't, lol), they sure were quick to attack Josh for his attitude because, lbr, they can't handle a sassy gay man in the flesh, despite the fact that Josh's anger most definitely served a purpose for that episode and the rest of Eddie's 5B arc - Eddie needed to be told he didn't belong at dispatch, that he would never be "one of them", in order for him to admit his mistake in leaving the 118. Which he did. In that very same episode. But Bobby wouldn't let him back in until he started taking therapy seriously. Josh literally set Eddie's return to the 118 in motion and all fandom could focus on was him being a big ol' meanie to their baby who never does anything wrong 🙃😶

#anonymous #tina speaks #tv: 911 #tv: 9-1-1

56 notes · View notes

buddiebeginz · 2 months

Text

I was talking to a friend earlier and it got me thinking about something.

B*mmy stans project all of the stuff they do onto us to an extent I've never seen with any other fandom discourse before.

They call us homophobic for not liking B/T or T*mmy. Yet they hate on people for shipping Buddie or seeing Eddie as queer. To the point of harassing people for including Eddie and Buddie in pride posts. Continually harassing the 911news account and even trying to dox a journalist for posting about Buddie.

They call us delusional for having watched two men love and support one another for 6 going on 7 years and for thinking there could be something more than friendship there. Even though Oliver, Ryan, and Tim have all said they see what we see. Yet they've seen Buck kiss a guy twice, have very minimal screen time or development and they headcanon that they're in love and will get married in the coming season.

They say we fetishize Buddie. Yet most of the time when our fandom is discussing our ship we're talking about the emotional connection between them. Or how we want to see them finally be together in a canon romantic relationship or as a full fledged family (with Chris). Or have their first kiss. Meanwhile most of their posts are the kind of sex they headcanon Buck and T*mmy have. Hell after that that dinner scene tons of them changed their urls to something with daddy in it (referencing the out of place daddy kink joke). To be clear there's nothing wrong with headcanons about fictional characters sex lives. But the main reason most of us ship Buddie is not just because they're two hot guys who we want to think about f*cking, it's because we're invested in the story of their life together. The same can't be said for B/T.

They say we feminize Buck for Buddie:

Meanwhile most of their fics/art/headcanons involve T*mmy being the big strong protector rescuing the "damsel in distress" Buck. They constantly talk about how hot it is that T*mmy is this big older "daddy" firefighter who can take care of Buck and guide him in what it means to be in a m|m relationship.

They say we've made Buck's coming out all about Buddie but 1. Eddie and Buck's feelings for him were heavily included in Buck's bi awakening ep. 2. They have made T*mmy synonymous with buck's coming out to the point of saying Buck wouldn't have even realized he liked men without T*mmy. They've even said that if T*mmy and Buck were to break up in s8 that it would ruin Buck's coming out story.

They accuse our fandom of being mean and of harassing the actors including of sending death threats to Lou. Of chasing Lou off of social media and being the one who caused him to stop his cameos. They say we're the reason Oliver chooses not interact with Lou or anything B/T related online. When there has been no proof of any of this. Meanwhile there is proof from their own fandom that Oliver and Ryan have blocked some of them. They have repeatedly tried to pressure Oliver to interact with B/T posts and Lou. They were also leaving comments on the the video of the podcast Ryan did (with Tommy DiDario) where he talked about his s*icide attempt, telling him he should have finished the job.

They call us a cult or BoBs (Buddie or Bust) yet they dress up like Lou and would still be paying for his videos if he was still willing to put them out. They prioritize Lou/T*mmy above any other character on the show. They talk about how T*mmy should get a begins episode. How T*mmy should be a main character. They defend everything T*mmy has ever done including when he was racist and homophobic to Chim and Hen. They harass anyone who has a negative word to say about their ship or Lou or T*mmy much like a cult would protect their leader. They to this day act like everything Lou ever told them in his cameos is the gospel truth.

911 fandom has grown increasingly toxic ever since B/T became a thing and I honestly just can't wait for the day we either find out T*mmy isn't coming back or when his last ep will be. I mean in some ways our fandom won't ever be the same after this. I've seen a lot of ugly sides to people who I had followed for years as Buddie shippers.

It will never not confuse the hell out of me that some people who were big time Buddie shippers for years not only dropped Buddie but turned completely against the ship and our fandom. And all for a ship that is seriously underdeveloped and one that it's clear the show is telling us in flashing neon lights isn't meant to last.

#buddie #911 buddie #911!

81 notes · View notes

ladyluscinia · 11 months

Text

Ok, I think I might be exiting the "are you fucking kidding me?" period and ready to make a real argument, so lets talk about Three Act Structure!

Is OFMD S2 just the "Darkest Hour"?

A very common explanation I've been seeing for some of the... controversial... aspects of S2 is that it's meant to be that way. That the middle act is where the protagonists hit their lowest point. Where we get the big failure point. Where everything looks kind of shit.

S2 is supposedly just that point. It's The Empire Strikes Back. People have been making that comparison since before the first episodes even dropped, telling everyone to expect something that could be disappointing or unsatisfying - it's just a matter of needing to wait for S3 to pull it all together.

It's not a baseless framework to consider the show through - I'm pretty sure David Jenkins has mentioned it in interviews (or at least mentioned he planned for three acts / seasons) so it's certainly worth asking how he's doing at the 2/3rd mark.

So - quick summary of Three Act Structure:

Act 1 introduces our characters and world. It includes the inciting incident of the story and the first plot point, where a) the protagonist loses the ability to return to their normal life, and b) the story raises whatever dramatic question will drive the entire plot. Act 2 is rising action and usually most of the story. The protagonist tries to fix things and fucks them up worse, in the process learning new skills and character developing to overcome their flaws. Act 3 is the protagonist taking one more shot, but this time they are ready. We get the climax of the story, the dramatic question gets an answer, and then the story closes.

If you want examples, the Star Wars Original Trilogy is a very popular template. And, hell, he said it was a pirate story... the main Pirates of the Caribbean trilogy also does a solid job with their three acts.

Let's compare. (Spoiler: I'm not impressed 🤨)

---

First thing I need to establish... Wait. Two things. First is that Three Act Structure is flexible, so we can't really analyze success or failure by pulling up a list of necessary plot beats that should have been hit in X order. Second is that if you tell me you are writing a romance with a Three Act Structure - where "the relationship is the story" - the first thing I'm going to do is ask you how you are adapting it. Because while there's not necessarily anything preventing you from applying this to a character driven plot, most people are familiar with it as plot structure for externally driven conflict.

Unless there's a reason the status of the main relationship is intrinsically tied up in the current status of the war against the evil empire, a standard Three Act Structure is going to entail either an antagonistic force that absolutely wants your main couple apart being the main relationship obstacle OR the romance aspect being a subplot to the protagonist's narrative adventure. None of those sound like how the show has been described.

So how is OFMD adapting it?

---

Act 1

(Can't figure out how well Act 2 is doing if we don't start at setup.)

Right out the gate, OFMD breaks one of the main "rules" for a story where the Acts are delivered in three parts. Namely the one where the first Act is treated as an acceptable standalone story, with it's own satisfying yet open ended conclusion.

In Star Wars, A New Hope ends with the princess rescued, Luke finding the Force, Han finding his loyalty, and the Death Star destroyed. The Empire isn't defeated, the antagonists still live... the story is not over, but this one movie doesn't feel unfinished.

Similarly, Curse of the Black Pearl gives Jack his ship back, Elizabeth and Will get together, and Norrington has the English Navy let them all off the hook and give Jack and the pirates one day's head start.

OFMD's final beat of S1 being Kraken Arc starting is not that, even if Stede returning to sea is still a pretty hopeful note. Now... I don't necessarily think this was a bad call. At least, not if the story is the relationship. It's easy to close on a happy ending and then fuck it up next movie if the conflict is external and coming for them. Not so much if you're driving the story with your protagonists' flaws, in part because it should be really obvious at the end of setup that your main characters need development and can't run off together right now. I actually like that they were risk-takers and let S1 look at the situation clearly vs doing a fragile happy end, because it takes into account the difference between a character-driven and plot-driven narrative.

I think OFMD's Act 1 actually ends at maybe the Act of Grace? Well, there through the kiss on the beach, counting as our "first plot point" before everything goes wrong, basically.

At that point, they have setup the story and characters. We've been introduced to Edward and Stede's current issues. Signing the Act of Grace does make the intertwined arcs between them real - it's no longer a situation that either one of them could just walk away from like it was in 1x07 - and we narrow in on the (alleged) driving question of the show:

It's not about "Will Stede become a great pirate?" or "Will we develop a better kind of piracy for the crew?" - the show is the relationship and the big question is "What is Stede and Edward's happy ending?"

Act 1 ends on their first solution, being together and making each other happy and admitting it's more than just friendship. Act 2 starts, appropriately, by saying both of them are currently too flawed for that to go anywhere but crashing and burning.

Now... looking back, what does Act 1 do well vs poorly?

I think it's really strong on giving us the foundation for BlackBonnet's characters and flaws. We aren't surprised Stede goes home or Edward goes Kraken (or at least... we weren't supposed to be surprised. There are still a lot of holdouts blaming Izzy for interrupting Edward's "healing" despite how at this point in the story it doesn't make sense for Edward to have the skills to heal... but I digress). The relationship question is compelling at the end of S1, the cliffhanger hooks, and the fandom explosion of fics did not come from nowhere - the audience was invested.

I also think Act 1 does a great job of settling us in the universe. We understand the rules it abides by, from how gay pirates are just a fact of life to how there's no important organs on the left side of the body. Stede has a muppety force field. Rowboats have homing devices, and port is always as close as you want it to be. Scurvy is a joke. The overblown violence of pirate life is mostly a joke, but we are going to take the violence of childhood trauma seriously.

Lucius's fake-out death, while technically part of Act 2, works well because Act 1 did a good job of priming everyone to go "obviously this show wouldn't kill a crew member for shock value, and we're 100% supposed to suspend disbelief about how he could have survived getting flung into the sea in the middle of the night." And we do. And we get rewarded for it.

Regarding antagonists - a big focus of any setup - the show is deliberately weak. The one with the most screentime is Izzy, and he's purposefully ineffective at separating our main couple. Every antagonist is keyed to a particular character, and they function mostly to inform us of that character's flaws and development requirements. The Badmintons tell us about Stede's repression and feelings of inadequacy, and Izzy tells us about Edward's directionless discontent and tendency to avoid his problems. Effectively - the show is taking the stance this will be a character driven narrative where Stede and Edward's flaws are the source of problems and development the solution. No person or empire (or social homophobia) is separating them...

...which leads me to something not present - there nothing really about the struggle of piracy against the Empire. Looking at Curse of the Black Pearl... we see piracy is in danger. The Black Pearl itself is described as the last great pirate threat the British Navy needs to conquer. Hangings are omnipresent - Jack is sentenced to die by one almost as soon as he's introduced to the story, when his only act so far had been to wander around and save Elizabeth from drowning. OFMD tries to invoke this kind of struggle in 2x08, but there's no foundation. Our Navy antagonists are Stede's childhood bullies, and so focused on Stede the crew isn't even in danger when they get caught. The Republic of Pirates is getting jokes about being gentrified, not besieged.

Even the capture of Blackbeard by the Navy is treated as a feather in Wellington's cap but not a huge symbolic blow against piracy... because we just do not have that grand struggle woven into Act 1. You only know the "Golden Age of Piracy" is ending if you google it, or have watched a bunch of pirate shows.

Overall, a solid Act 1, well adapted to the kind of story they've said they were looking to tell - a romance in the (silly-fied) age of piracy, instead of a pirate adventure with a romantic subplot.

---

Now, Sidebar - Where is the story going?

The thing about the dramatic question - in OFMD's case: "What is Stede and Edward's happy ending?" - is that a) there's normally more than one question bundled up in that one + sideplots, and b) while you aren't supposed to have the answer yet, you can usually guess what needs to happen to give you the answer.

Back to our examples... Luke's driving question is "Will the Empire be defeated?" Simple. Straightforward. Also: "Will Luke become a Jedi?" The eventual climax of our story from there is pretty obvious... the story is over when Luke wins the war for the Rebellion in a Jedi way. That's the goal that they are working toward.

Pirates of the Caribbean is a bit more complicated. We're juggling more characters and have a less defined heroic journey, but there are driving questions like "Is Jack Sparrow a good man?" and "Is Will Turner a pirate / what does that mean?" and even "Will the British Navy defeat piracy?" They get basic answers in Curse of the Black Pearl, and far more defined ones in At World's End. Still, this is another plot-driven narrative. They've laid the foundations for the Pirates vs Empire struggle, and when that final battle turns into the trilogy climax then you know what's happening.

OFMD is not doing a plot-driven narrative. To judge how they are doing at their goals, we have to ask what they think a happy ending entails in a character sense.

Clearly it's not the classic romantic sideplot, where the climax is the first kiss / acknowledgement of feelings. They've teased a wedding in Word of God comments a lot, so that's probably our better endpoint. Specifically, though, a wedding where both of our protagonists aren't ready to flee from the altar (big ask) and where they've both grown enough that their flaws / mutual tendencies to run away from life problems won't tank the relationship.

In Stede's case it's still massive feelings of inadequacy and being too repressed to talk about his problems. Also he ran away from his family to chase a lifelong dream of being a pirate - "Is Stede going to find fulfillment in being a pirate captain, or will the real answer be love?" Edward meanwhile expresses a desire to quit piracy and retire Blackbeard, but we also find out he's struggling with massive self-loathing and guilt from killing his father - "Is retiring what Edward wants to do, or is he just running away?"

If they are going to get to a satisfying wedding beat at the climax of their story, what character beats do we need to hit in advance?

Off the top of my head - both characters need to self-realize their flaws (a pretty necessary demand of anyone who runs away from problems). They are set up to balance each other well, but also to miscommunicate easily. They have to tell each other about or verbally acknowledge that self-realization so it can be resolved. Stede has to decide how much being a pirate means to him. Edward has to decide if he's retiring and what he wants to do. They both need to show something to do with getting past their childhood traumas given all the flashbacks. Through all this, they also need to hit the normal romance beats that convince the audience they are romantically attracted to each other and like... want to get married.

Oh, and this is more of a genre-specific sideplot, but once they demonstrate a behavior that hurts the people who work for them, they need to then demonstrate later how it won't happen again. Proof of growth, which is kind of important in a comedy where a lot of the humor is based in them being massively self-centered assholes. Stede doesn't earn his acceptance in the community until he kicks Calico Jack off the ship, making up for causing the situation with Nigel in the first episode. A workplace comedy can get a lot of material from the boss as the worker's antagonist, but if you want the bosses to stay sympathetic you have got to throw them some opportunities to earn it.

All that sounds like a lot, but like - the relationship is the story, right? If we spend so much time on establishing flaws big enough to drive a story, we also have to spend time on fixing them. Which is where the turning point hits.

---

Act 2: How it Starts

This is where the full story reality-checks your protagonist. Glad you saved your boyfriend and embraced new love in Act 1, but his repressed guilt means he's about to completely ghost you, and your own abandonment issues and self-loathing are about to make his dick move into everyone else's problem.

Again, it's a non-conventional choice OFMD has this start at the very end of S1 rather than with a sudden dark turn in the S2 premiere, but it's still pretty clearly that point in the Three Act Structure.

In Star Wars, The Empire Strikes Back opens with a timeskip to our Rebellion getting absolutely crushed and hiding on a miserable frozen planet. The Empire finds them as the plot is kicking off and they have to desperately flee. They get separated. Han and Leia try to go to an ally for help and end up in Vader's clutches. It's a sharp turn from the victorious note that A New Hope ended on.

Pirates of the Caribbean's Act 2 starts dark. Dead Man's Chest opens with our happy couple Will and Elizabeth getting arrested on their wedding day for the "happy end" escape of the last movie. Jack has not been having success since reclaiming his ship, and we'll soon find out he's being hunted by dark forces. As for the general state of piracy, we get a horrifying prison where pirates are being eaten alive by crows, and a new Lord Beckett making the dying state of piracy even more textual. "Jack Sparrow is a dying breed... The world is shrinking."

The key here is making a point that our heroes aren't ready. This is the struggles part - things they try? Fail. The odds do not look to be in their favor.

Now, OFMD apparently decided to go all-in on flaw exploration, especially with Edward. The first 3 episodes of S2 are brutally efficient in outlining Edward's backslide. In S1 you could see he had issues with guilt and feeling like a bad person. S2 devolves that into a destructive, suicidal spiral where Edward forces his crew into three months of consecutive raids, repeats his shocking act of cruelty with Izzy's toe offscreen (more than once!), escalates it with his leg, and finally they state directly that Edward hates himself for killing his dad so much that he fears he's fundamentally unlovable and better off dead.

Stede's struggles are subtler, but most definitely still there. He's deliberately turning a blind eye to tales of Edward's rampage, half from simply being too self-centered to care about the harms Edward causes others, and half from being unable to face or fathom that he had the ability to hurt Edward that much. Upon reunion he wants to put the whole thing behind them, not addressing why he left in the first place. Very "love magically fixes everything" of him, except Stede is no golden merman.

Interestingly, here, BlackBonnet's relationship dysfunction has very clearly been having a negative impact on the surrounding characters we care about. Make sense, since it's the driving force of the story, but that also adds a lot more relationships we need to make right. Like... Edward is the villain to his crew. The show focuses on their trauma and poisoned relationships with him. And then draws our attention even more to Stede taking his side to overrule their objections to him.

For a story where the conflict and required resolutions are primarily character based, and the setup had already given the main couple a good amount to work with, dedicating a lot of S2 to adding more ground to cover was... a choice. Potentially very compelling on the character end, certainly challenging on the writing end... but not a complete break with the structure.

Bold, but not damning.

---

Act 2: How it Ends

Now it is true that Act 2 tends to end on a loss. Luke is defeated by Vader and loses his hand, and Han has been sent away in carbonite. Jack Sparrow for all his efforts cannot escape his fate, and he and the Pearl are dragged to the locker.

But the loss is not the point. The loss is incidental to the point.

Act 2 is about struggles and failure, but it's also about lessons learned. There's a change that occurs, and our cast - defeated but not broken - enters the final act with the essential skills, motivation, knowledge, etc. that they lacked in the beginning.

Luke Skywalker could not have defeated the Empire in Return of the Jedi until he'd learned the truth about his father and resisted the Dark Side in The Empire Strikes Back. (Ok, confession, I'm using Star Wars as an example because literally everyone is doing so, but frankly it's a better example of formulaic Three Act Structure repeating within each movie because on a trilogy level - relevant to this comparison - it is a super basic hero's journey in a very recognized outfit and as such the Act 2 relevance is also... super basic "the hero tries to fight the antagonist too early" beat where he learns humility. Not really a lot going on. So, for the better example...)

Dead Man's Chest has a downer ending with the closing moment of the survivors regaining hope and a plan against an enemy now on the verge of total victory - a classic Act 2. But in that first loss against Davy Jones we get Will's personal motivation and oath to stab the heart, Jack finally overcoming not knowing what he wanted and returning to save them from the Kraken (being a good man), Elizabeth betraying Jack (being a pirate), Barbossa's return, and Norrington's choice to bargain for his prior life back. The mission to retrieve Jack from the World's End is the final movie's plot, but things are already on track to turn the tables back around as we enter the finale.

Now, relevant sidenote - one major difference between Three Act Structure within a single work vs across three parts is that Act 2 continues into Part 3, and only tips over into Act 3 about midway through. This is because obviously your final movie or season cannot just be the climax. That's why both movie examples start with a rescue mission. They have to still be missing something so they can get the plot of their third part accelerating while they go get whatever that something is.

But if you wait until the 3rd movie / season to get the development going at all - you're fucked.

Jack's decision in the climax of At World's End to make Elizabeth into the Pirate King goes back to the development we saw in the Pearl vs Kraken fight in Dead Man's Chest. So does Elizabeth's leadership arc. Will's whole arc about becoming Captain of the Dutchman gets built upon in the third movie, but it starts in the second. Not just as an idle thought - he's actively pursuing it. Already consciously weighing saving his father vs getting back to Elizabeth as soon as he makes the oath. Everyone is moving forward in Act 2. Their remaining development might stumble for drama, or they might be a bit reluctant, but I know that they know better than to let it stick, because they already faced their true crisis points.

I'm not sure we can say the same about OFMD.

S2 does a good job of adding problems, yeah, but there's not really any movement on fixing them. Our main couple stagnates in some ways, and regresses in others.

Stede opened Act 2 by running away in the middle of the night back to his wife without telling Edward anything. We know he did it because of feeling guilty and his core childhood trauma of his dad calling him a weak and inadequate failure. Now in S1 he actually speedruns a realization of his shitty behavior with Mary, but what about S2? Well...

He continues to not talk to Edward about... pretty much anything. My guy practiced love confessions galore but Edward only finds out about going back to his wife via Anne, and it gets brushed aside with a love confession. He seems to think Edward wants him to be a dashing pirate, or maybe he just thinks he should be a dashing pirate. Idk, it doesn't get examined. Regarding his captaincy, they give him an episode plot about Izzy teaching him to respect the crew's beliefs, but this is sideplot to a larger arc of him completely overruling their traumas and concerns (and shushing their objections) to keep his boyfriend on the ship so. That.

Stede kills a man for reasons related to his issues, shoves that down inside and has sex with Edward instead of acknowledging any bad feelings. At least this time Edward was there and knows it happened? Neither Chauncey's death nor his dad have been mentioned to anyone. He gets a day of piracy fame that goes to his head, gets dumped, and ends on a complete beat down by Zheng where he learns... idk. Being a boor is bad? He's still wildly callous to her in the finale, and spends the whole time seeking validation of his pirate skills. He reunites with Edward, kisses, and quotes Han Solo.

Where S1 ended on a great fuckery, his S2 naval uniform plan after they regroup is ill defined except to call it a suicide mission - and we don't get to see what it would have been because it devolves into a very straightforward fight and flee. And gets Izzy killed. Quick cut funeral (no acknowledgement of his S2 bonding with Izzy), quick cut to wedding (foreshadowing), quick cut to... innkeeper retirement? Unclear when or even if BlackBonnet discussed Stede's whole driving dream to be a pirate and live a life at sea, but I guess that got a big priority downgrade. Despite the fact he was literally looking to Zheng for pirate-based compliments in the post-funeral scene.

I guess he's borderline-delusionally dogged in his pursuit of love now - so unlikely to bolt again - but he's also got at least a decade of experience mentally checking out in a state of repression when he's unhappy. And he's stopped being as supportive and caring toward the crew in that dogged pursuit, while arguably demonstrating a loss in leadership skills, so, um, good thing someone else is in charge?

And if Stede is a mess, Edward's arc is so much worse.

As established, they devote the Kraken to making Edward worse. He literally wants to kill himself and destroy everyone around him in the process because Stede left, and this is fixed by... Stede coming back. That's it. The crew tries to murder him and then exiles him from the ship (and Izzy takes the lead on both, indicating exactly how isolated Edward has become), but it's resolved in half a day by Stede just forcing them to put up with his boyfriend again. Like they think he murdered Buttons and still have to move him back in???

The show consistently depicts Kraken Era as a transgression against the crew, but they also avoid showing Edward acting with genuine contrition. He admits he historically doesn't apologize for anything, and then mostly still doesn't. It's a joke that he's approaching probation as a performance (CEO apology), and then the only person he genuinely talks to is Fang - the one guy cool with him - and the only person who gets a basic "sorry" is Izzy - the guy he really needs to be talking to. Edward's primary trauma is guilt, but apparently he only feels it abstractly after all that? He's only concerned with fixing things with Stede, despite Stede being about the only person around who hurt him instead of the reverse.

Speaking of primary traumas, Edward hating himself doesn't really go anywhere after the beat of self-realization. Apparently Stede still loving him is enough of a bandaid to end the suicide chasing, but he doesn't like. Acknowledge that. Edward is maybe sorta trying to go slow so he doesn't hang all his self-worth on Stede again (you can speculate), but they a) absolutely fail to go slow, and b) he doesn't make any attempt to develop himself or another support structure. Just basically... "let's be friends a bit before hooking back up." And then we get the whiplash that is Blackbeard and/or retirement.

Kraken Era is Blackbeard but way worse, like no one who has known Blackbeard has ever seen him. In the Gravy Basket Edward claims he might like being an innkeeper, before destroying his own fantasy by having the spectre of Hornigold confront him over killing his dad. The BlackBonnet to Anne & Mary parallel says running away to China / retiring makes you want to kill each other - burn it all down and go back to piracy. Stede rightfully points out prior retirement plans were whims. Edward gets sick of the penance sack after a day and puts his leathers back on to go try "poison into positivity". But also claims to be an innkeeper (look - two whole mentions!) when trying not to send children to be pirates after teaching them important knife skills.

Killing Ned Low is a serious, bad thing that prompts ill-advised sex and then going hardcore into retirement mode - leathers overboard, talk about mermaid fantasy, get retirement blessings from Izzy, end up dumping Stede for a fishing job instead of talking about how he's enjoying piracy. The fishing job, however, is also a bad thing and a stupid decision because Edward is a lazy freeloader fantasizing about being a better person. We have an uncomfortable, extended scene of "Pop-Pop" weirdly echoing his abusive dad and then sending Edward to go do what he's good at - disassociate, brutally murder two guys, fish up the leathers, rise as the Kraken from the sea. He continues with comically efficient murder but also he's reading Stede's love letters and seeking to reunite with him so... wait, is this a good thing? Post makeout / mass slaughter he's trading compliments on his kills with Zheng so. Yeah. Looks like it. Murder is fine.

Wait, no, skip ahead and Izzy is dying and Edward suddenly cares a whole lot as Izzy makes his death scene about freeing Edward from Blackbeard. Now being a pirate was "encouraging the darkness" because Izzy - a guy who had little to no influence over Edward's behavior - just couldn't let Blackbeard go. Murder is bad again, and he is freed. Minus the little detail that the murder he explicitly hates himself over was not related to Blackbeard or piracy whatsoever, so presumably haunts "just Ed" still. Anyway he's retiring to run an inn with Stede now, as the "loving family" Izzy comforted him with in his dying moments sails away from the couple that can best be described as the antagonists of their S2 arc. Also Edward implicitly wants to get married. It's been 3 days since making out was "too fast". He's still wearing the leathers.

So most of the way through Act 2 and Edward's barely on speaking terms with anyone but Stede, who he has once again hung his entire life on really fast? Crushing guilt leads to self-hatred leads to mass murder and suicide, but only if he's upset so just avoid that. He's still regularly idealizing Stede as a non-fucked up golden mermaid person (that maybe he personally ruined a bit) because he barely knows the guy. His only progress on his future is "pirate" crossed out / rewritten / crossed out again a few times, "fisherman" crossed out, and "innkeeper ?"

Just.

Where is the forward movement?

It's not just that the inn will undoubtedly fall apart - it's that the inn will fall apart for the near-exact same reasons that China was going to at the beginning of Act 2, and I can't point to anything they've learned in the time since that will help them. I guess Stede realized he loved Edward enough to chase after him, but that was in S1! They should be further than this by now. You can't cram another crisis backslide, all the Act 2 development, and the full Act 3 climax into one season. Certainly not without it feeling like the characters magically fix themselves.

If they just fail and keep blindly stumbling into the same issues because they don't change their behavior, then Act 2 doesn't work. You're just repeating the turning point between Act 1 & Act 2 on a loop.

---

Where Did They Fuck Up?

Actually... lets start on what they did right.

The one consistent aspect of S2 that I praised and still think was done well in a vacuum (despite being mostly left out of the finale) was the crew's union-building arc.

With only 8 episodes and more to do in them than S1, side characters were going to get pinched even if the main plot was absolutely flawless. That was unavoidable. With budget cuts / scheduling issues, we regularly have crew members simply vanish offscreen outside of one scene, meaning cohesive arcs for your faves was not likely. Not to say they couldn't have done better - my benefit of the doubt for the TealOranges breakup and Oluwande x Zheng dried up about when I realized he was literally just her Stede stand-in for the parallel - but something like Jim's revenge plot from S1 was realistically not on the table without, like, turning half the crew into seagulls to afford it.

The union building works around this constraint really well. They turn "the crew" into the side arc, and then weave Izzy's beats in so that they aren't just about Izzy. The breakup boat crew working together to comfort each other and protect him turns them into a unit, and Stede's crew taking it upon themselves to address the trauma vibes while the captains aren't in the way solidifies it across all our side characters. The crew goes to war with Stede's cursed coat and wins, they Calypso their boss to throw a party, and they capitalize on a chance to make bank with an efficiency Stede could only dream of.

We don't get specific arcs, but Frenchie, Jim, and Oluwande are defaulted to as leaders in just about every situation, and Roach is constantly shown sharing his inventions with different characters. Individuals can dip in and out without feeling like the sideplots stutter. Any sense of community in S2 is coming from this arc - even if there are cracks at the points where it joins to other storylines (Stede and Edward, Zheng, etc.)

So why does it work? Well, because it's a workplace comedy, and you can tell they are familiar with working on those. They know where the beats are. They know where to find the humor. They know how to build off of S1 because they made sure the bones were already there - an eclectic group of individuals that start as just coworkers, but bond over time in the face of their struggle against an inept boss who they grow to care for and support while maintaining an increasingly friendly antagonism because, you know, inept boss.

OFMD does its best work in S2 when it's being true to its original concept... and its worst work when it seemingly loses confidence in its own premise.

"The show is the relationship," right? It's a romance set in a workplace comedy. The setup of Act 1 was all about creating a character-driven narrative. So given that... where the hell are we getting the dying of piracy and a war against the English Navy?

That's not a character-driven romcom backdrop, it's an action-adventure plot from Pirates of the Caribbean or Black Sails. It's plot-driven, creating an antagonistic force that results in your characters' problems. Once the story is about the fight against the Empire, the dramatic question becomes the same as those adventure stories - "Will the British Navy defeat piracy, and will our protagonists come out the other side of the battle?"

Forget the wedding. The wedding is no longer the climax of the story, its back to the happy ending flash our romantic subplot gets after winning this fight.

Except, of course, trying to pivot your story to a contradictory dramatic question near the end of Act 2 can be nothing short of a disaster, because either you were writing the wrong story until now, or you've completely lost the plot of the real one. I shouldn't even be trying to figure out if they are doing this, because it should be so obvious that they wouldn't.

And yet.

What do the Zheng and Ricky plots add to the story if not this? Neither of these characters have anything emotionally to contribute to Stede and Edward - they truly are plot elements. It's a hard break from the S1 antagonist model, but it also takes up a lot of valuable screentime. This was considered important, but still Zheng's personality and motivation only gets explored so far as it's an Edward-Stede-Izzy parallel with Oluwande and Auntie, and they only need the parallel for Izzy's genre-jumping death scene. Which follows a thematically out-of-left-field speech about how piracy is about belonging to something good (workable) and how Ricky could never destroy their spirits (um...?). And then David Jenkins is pointing to it and saying things about "the symbolic death of piracy" and speculating S3 might be about the crew getting "payback"??? An idea floated by Zheng right before our temporary retirement, btw.

Fuck, the final episode of S2 didn't have time for our main couple to talk to each other because it was so busy dealing with the mass explosion of Zheng's fleet and Ricky's victory gloat. We get lethal violence associated with traumatic flashbacks until they need to cut down enemy mooks like it's nothing, at which point we get jokes with Zheng. The Republic of Pirates is destroyed outright, and it feels like they only did it because they got insecure about their "pirate story" not having the right kind of stakes. Don't even get me started on killing a major character because "Piracy’s a dangerous occupation, and some characters should die," as if suspending disbelief on this aspect makes the story somehow lesser, instead of just being a fairly standard genre convention in comedy. Nobody complains about Kermit the Frog having an improbably good survival record.

Did someone tell them that the heroes have to lose a battle near the end of Act 2, so they scrambled to give them one?

Just... compare the wholly plot-driven struggle in 2x08 to Stede and Edward's character-focused storylines in 1x10 and tell me how 2x08 is providing anything nearly as valuable to the story. Because I can't fucking find it.

At best they wasted a bunch of time on a poorly integrated adventure plot as, like, Zheng's backstory or something, and just fucked it up horribly by trying to "step up" the kind of plot they did for Jim. In which case the whole thing will be awkwardly dropped but damage is done. Otherwise, they actually thought they could just casually add a subplot like this because they've done something wildly stupid like think "pirate" is a genre on the same level as "workplace comedy" and can just trample in-universe coherency while you draw on other media to shore up their unsupported beats.

Bringing us to the most infuriating bit...

---

"...end the second season in a kinder spot."

If this was the goal, the entire season was written to work actively against it in way that is baffling and incompetent.

The really ironic thing is that the reason that the Act 2 part typically gets a downer ending is because of the evil empire that OFMD did not have to deal with until they pointlessly added it. A plot-driven story has an antagonistic force - a villain - that the heroes need to defeat. Something external working against them. The story ends when they beat the thing, and it's not much of a climax if they do most of the defeating before you get there. Ergo, they have to be outmatched up to the climax. Ergo, the second part cannot end on them feeling pretty comfortable and confident going into the third.

The same rules do not apply in the same way to a character-driven arc.

We already established Edward and Stede declaring their love is not the end of the story. Nor, necessarily, is both of them confidently entering a relationship. Even once they've developed a bunch they will have to show that development by running into the kinds of problems that would have broken them up before and resolving them better.

David Jenkins keeps talking about this idea that S2 is getting a hopeful open ending and S3 will get into potential problems, and like... I don't see any reason why they couldn't have done that successfully. They didn't, but they could've.

If S2 grew them enough as characters and then had them agree to try again in the last minute of the finale, they absolutely could have had a kind and hopeful ending where you were confident they could do it. And then a potential S3 can show that. It's a bit rockier than they were counting on, but they have learned enough lessons to not break up. And then the overall plot can build to proposal (start of Act 3) and wedding (the romantic climax). It doesn't have to be a blow out fight to be emotionally cathartic.

(Hell, the main rockier bit that they overcome in the S3 Act 2 portions could be marriage baggage. I'm sure they both have some. It would work.)

In the same way focusing on our character's long term flaws and character-driven conflict makes an Act 1 "happy ending" more difficult, I suspect it makes an Act 2 "happy ending" easier.

Instead they wrote an Act 2 that failed to convincingly start development and got confused on its direction, and then presented a rushed finale ending in a copy of the predictable disaster from S1 as though it's a good thing. They yanked the story at least temporarily into an awkward place where a romcom is trying to sell me on a bunch of serious drama / adventure beats that it has not put the work into, and inviting comparisons to better versions of those same beats in other, more suited media that make it look worse. The need to portray everyone as reaching happy closure overrules sitting with a major character death and using it for any narrative significance, while still letting it overshadow those happy endings because a romcom just sloppily killed a major character with a wound they've literally looked into the camera and said was harmless.

If I'm being entirely honest, Dead Man's Chest ends effectively at Jack Sparrow's funeral and then cuts to the British Navy obtaining a weapon of mass destruction, and it still feels kinder and more hopeful just because I leave with more faith the characters are actively capable of and working toward solving their problems.

OFMD S2, in contrast, has half-convinced me our main couple would live in a mutually obsessed, miscommunication-ridden horror story until they die.

---

Additional Reading

Normally I link stuff like this in the post, but that requires more excitement than I'm feeling right now. Here's my alternative:

Where I thought they were going with Edward - really outlines the mountain of character development they still have unaddressed

Where I thought they were going with Izzy - touches on a lot of themes that might be dead in the water & also context that's still probably relevant to why Izzy got a lot of focus in S2

My scattershot 2x08 reactions

An ask where I sketched out the bones of this argument, and another where I was mostly venting about the fandom response

This one, this other one, and this last one (read the link in op's post too) about genre shifts and failure to pull them off

The trauma goes in the box but it never opens back up - the whole point of Act 2 is that they needed to start opening shit like that - and also they focus so much on needed character growth and so little on following through

They can't even carry through on character growth that we got last season???

Why Izzy's death feels like Bury Your Gays ran smack into shitty writing

EDIT: Oh and this post is REALLY good for outlining the lack of change in way less words than I did

#our flag means death #ofmd #ofmd s2 #ofmd s2 spoilers #ofmd meta #three act structure #character arcs #blackbonnet #genre #blackbeard ofmd #stede bonnet ofmd #my meta #ladyluscinia #ofmd critical

258 notes · View notes

canonicallyobserving911 · 6 months

Text

Buck & Eddie: 7x4 and 7x5 stills in episode order???

When the two separate synopses were released for 7x4, I wondered how 9-1-1 was going to fit everything into the episode that was released via the BTS stills but then I realized they wouldn't be able to especially since the length of each one (without advertisements) is only 42 to 45 minutes. Also, it appears there will be three main storylines, i.e. Athena and Harry, Hen's life changing news and Buck being bothered and bewildered.

After considering all of the information that's been released, a few days ago, I figured the stills of Buck and Eddie in Buck’s loft, the ones of them talking in the firehouse gym and the one of Eddie and Bobby's conversation wouldn't be included in 7x4. Additionally, I remembered the way 3x5 "Rage" ended with Buck and Eddie still on the outs and they didn't reconcile until the end of 3x6 "Monsters" when Buck made Eddie talk to him. With OS recently commenting on someone's IG post about how the two pictures of Buck and Eddie in the loft are from 7x5, it added confirmation to my analysis.

Since I'm a visual person, I like to see things in their totality instead of in increments the way the BTS pics have been released. Therefore, I've put all the stills together in a way that IMO, could be how they'll play out during each episode and there's one picture of Buck by himself that was released but I believe it deals with something else. I've included it at the end because I'm going to do a separate post on it.

Before I delve into this, here's my UNPOPULAR OPINION. I ship Buddie and only Buddie but I have to admit, I'm not really excited about this storyline because IMO, the audience has seen it before in 3x5 and 3x6 when Eddie was temporarily partnered with Lena (post linked here). Sure, he didn't leave the 118 but Eddie did have a new work partner who Buck was clearly not happy about. Also, even though Eddie didn't tell Buck about her, it was evident by Buck's reaction, he was in fact jealous since he thought he was being replaced and it seemed to be part of the reason why he filed the lawsuit (not the only reason but part of it). Reminder, he was ok with being the Fire Marshall until he heard Lena call Eddie's name in 3x4 then once he saw her, he asked Bobby, "You replaced me?"

At this point, in six years, I hoped Buck and Eddie would be at a place in their partnership where they can actually discuss things like adults instead of Buck lashing out. Please don't misunderstand me because I get it, Buck's worried about being abandoned again so it's understandable and this time he doesn't have anyone to cling to. But if they would let him go back to therapy like he went on his own in season 4, maybe he could spend time working on himself and this storyline could have been avoided. Will I change my mind before Thursday... honestly, I'm not sure.

Back to the regularly schedule program...

7x4 "Buck, Bothered and Bewildered"

Based on the look on Buck's face in the stills from them at Air Rescue, IMO, it's likely this scene could happen first because he seems to be bothered and bewildered by how close Eddie and Tommy are. Hopefully there's a scene before this one that explains how they became fast friends but it's also possible it'll be another scenario where Eddie magically contacts Tommy or vice versa and they start hanging out but the audience won't see it the same way we didn't see how Eddie magically got M's phone number? 🤷🏽‍♀️

Full disclosure: I don't trust Tommy Kinard and I've already posted about my reasoning (linked here) and I may elaborate on it but I really don't want to because I'd rather not focus anymore of my attention on the character.

Buck's face in the stills below while he's at the firehouse, appear to be hopeful like he got his "Eddie" back but when he sees him walk away, he gets that sad look in his eyes like he's being left behind again. That's why IMO, it happens before the basketball court scene but after them being at Air Rescue.

I tried to put the pictures below in order but since there's no context for when some of them happen, I added them where I thought they should go. Also, since Buck's bag is still on his shoulder in the third picture with him holding the basketball, I figured it happens before they start playing. Maybe Chimney hands it to him and he looks at Eddie and Tommy like him and Chimney are going to win the game.

IMO, Buck will have a conversation with Maddie before the end of the episode and that's when JLH's leaked script will come into play. Also, I believe Chimney will be the one to tell Buck he's acting irrationally then he'll ask him if something else might be going on. Reminder, he's going to be on the court with them and he'll witness the event.

It appears 7x4 will end with them still upset with one another just like 3x5 ended with them not talking.

7x5 - "You don't know me"

I've already completed a post on the title of the episode (linked here) but I do believe multiple people will say, "You don't know me" throughout the episode, including Eddie possibly saying it to Tommy.

When the episode begins, Buck and Eddie still won't be communicating just like they weren't in 3x6. Also, since there aren't any stills that show Tommy and Eddie discussing an available job position at Air Rescue, the only information that was made available came from one of the promos that included Bobby telling Eddie, "I can't tell you how to feel about this job, only you can do that" so it appears Eddie's going to be presented with the option to leave the 118 again either at the end of 7x4 or the beginning of 7x5 but I think his conversation with Bobby will happen at the beginning of 7x5.

Now, ever since TM (showrunner) released the two pictures below in advance of season 7, they've always perplexed me and it's mainly due to the looks on their faces, more so Buck's because he doesn't look angry or frustrated, he just looks tired like he's retreating or giving up. Initially, I didn't speculate on the pictures because I had no idea what was going on and I'm still not sure but based on the things that have been released regarding the episodes, IMO, Buck will apologize just like he did in 3x6 followed by him telling Eddie that he'll have his back if he wants to leave the 118 and go to Air Rescue. Reminder, the last time Eddie left in 5x10, he told Buck in front of Hen and Ravi but the audience only caught a glimpse of Buck's reaction.

I believe the stills below will happen towards the end of the episode and it will be similar to their conversation that happened in the firehouse in 3x6 with a little bit of the 3x9 kitchen scene thrown in. My reasoning is because they're at Buck's loft and Buck will be sitting alone probably pondering what he should do next since it'll be a strong possibility (for him at least) that Eddie will leave and he'll have to find a new partner.

I think Eddie will say something similar to the things he said in 3x6, "I forgive you. Just don't let it happen again" but this time it'll be different and more along the lines of how they talked in 3x9 (related post linked here).

This is where their dynamic seems to change because unlike 3x9, Eddie's not leaned against the counter, he's actually touching Buck's shoulder and his waist the same way he did in 3x1 during Buck's surprise welcome back party but they're the only two present 👀.

When I saw the picture above, I had an immediate reaction to it because it reminded me of something the audience has seen before. I'm not going to include my thoughts on it in this post but I will do a separate one about it.

The point of this post is to illustrate with the BTS stills how the scenes in the next two episodes with Buck and Eddie could play out. Will they finally take the leap at the end of 7x5 and become a CANON couple or will the show continue to delay the inevitable? Only the showrunner, writers, producers, actors and actresses know the answer to that question. Hopefully, they will start their romantic relationship because it's been six years and there's no reason to keep delaying it.

#buddie #eddie diaz #evan buckley #911 abc #911 season 7 #911 season 7 speculation #911 spoilers #911 speculation #911 on abc #the buckley diaz family #buckley diaz family #911 meta #anti bucktommy #anti tommy kinard #anti eddiemarisol #anti eddietommy #chimney han #bobby nash #maddie buckley

91 notes · View notes

forager-m · 5 months

Text

TWST RARE PAIR WEEK: Day 2 - Reality TV AU

Ship: Kalim Al-Asim x Silver (カーリシル)

Art + Drabble

BREAKING NEWS: Kalim Al- Asim Kisses Co-Star Silver In Last Episode of "LOVE: TWISTED"

05/04/XXXX

Written By: Forager_M

LOVE:TWISTED, directed by Dire Crowley, aired March 18, 2020, is a hit reality romance drama wherein well-known figures are put against each other. The prize? The love of the show's protagonist, Yuu.

However, it seems a different romance has been brewing behind the scenes, revealing itself in the last episode of LOVE:TWISTED Season 3.

Kalim Al-Asim, known for his love of music, dancing, parties, and his fun, happy personality that brings joy to fans all over the globe, suddenly kissed fellow competitor and co-star Silver on screen during the episode's ending segment.

The kiss shocked the cast members, audience and Silver himself. Silver, who is known for his love of nature, his beautiful voice, and his awkward, serious but charming personality is notorious for his blank expressions.

Screenshots of Silver's reaction spread on social networks such as MagiCam, MyLog, and TweetTweet with hashtags: #KaliSil, #SilverLV:TWSTD, #KalimLV:TWSTD trending in Scarabia and Briar Valley for three days after. Fans have taken to making edits, memes, and art of the now iconic kiss scene.

Following the incident, there has been scrutiny of KaliSil moments in past episodes.

TweetTweet user 'YuuOwnMyHeart' posted:

#KaliSil

Episode 5 - Kalim answered Silver when asked who's the most beautiful person he knows. They're so obvious???

TweetTweet user 'Single_Twisted' posted:

#KaliSil

GUUYS THAT PART IN EP 2 WHEN SILVER AND KALIM WALK AWAY TOGETHER??? HELLO??? AND THEM LITERALLY NAPPING TOGETHER IN EP 10??? I'VE BEEN A KALISIL TRUTHER SINCE DAY 1 I KNEW IT.

Other notable moments:

Season 1, Ep 5 - Kalim putting extra food on Silver's plate during lunch.

Season 1, Ep 6 - Silver calls Kalim 'cute' in a segment where he's asked to describe other cast members.

Season 1, Ep 13 - Kalim hears Silver singing and stares at him for 5 minutes before joining in. Song: Once Upon A Dream (Orginal Artist: Aurora)

Season 2, Ep 1 - Silver gives Kalim a surprise gift for the start of the season.

Season 2, Ep 3 - Silver interrupts Kalim when Kalim and Yuu are playing with the water guns in the pool area.

Season 2, Ep 7 - Kalim asks for Silver to sing the song: A Whole New World (Original Artists: Jasmine and Aladdin) with him during the karaoke segment.

Season 2, Ep 10 - Silver bakes a special batch of thumb print strawberry jam cookies for Kalim only.

... And many more moments! Please comment your favorites below!

The cast have released their own statements or posts regarding the KaliSil kiss during interviews and on social media.

When interviewed in 'Chitchat With YUU', Yuu laughed with a knowing look.

"Silver cares deeply for Kalim... And I know Kalim treasures Silver."

Other cast members have posted on MyLog:

Idia

GGS nice rizz Kalim

Re: Riddle

... What???

Leona

Jesus fucking christ right in front of the cameras. I'll hand it to them, that takes guts.

#KaliSil

Cater

CONGRATS KALIM AND SILVER!!!! YOURE BOTH TOTES CUTE TOGETHER <3 #KaliSil

Deuce

Silver and Al-Asim-senpai kissing was really out of nowhere. I didnt expect that! But I think it was really cool!!! Good luck guys, wish u all the best #KaliSil

Malleus

Silver and I have been friends since childhood. I am so delighted and pleased to see him find joy. May love prosper and may your time together be plentiful. #KaliSil

Re: Leona

Wow it mustve been hard for you to figure out how to post. Lots of surprising things have been happening lately.

Epel

No way, you're telling me Kalim Al-Asim and Silver got someone before me thats kinda crazy bro. #KaliSil

Sebek

IT IS UNACCEPTABLE CONDUCT TO KISS IN FRONT OF THE CAMERAS IN SUCH A MANNER. SILVER APOLOGISE IMMEDIATELY.

... congratulations to your union. #KaliSil

Lilia

I'm not ready to walk my son down the aisle yet T T they grow up so fast... #KaliSil

Jamil

Congratulations on growing up and doing something yourself for once. #KaliSil

Re: Epel

Yo who hurt you.

News to come on the couples status on LOVE:TWISTED. Follow for more!

#twst #twisted wonderland #twst kalim #twst silver #silver x kalim #rare pair #twst rare pair week #kalisil #silkali

79 notes · View notes

chaifootsteps · 3 months

Note

I'm sorry if I sound like the classic "ugh, why can't they be just Friends????!1" but after some episodes I just can't keep wondering....

Are friends even a thing in the hellaverse?!

I really, REALLY can't think of any interaction between characters that isn't either oversexual or fells like a natural friendship...

I've seen people say the V's feel like a natural group of friends but....nope, both males of the trio have that oversexual tone and velvette is just there.

No one in IMP feels close to anyone that isn't family or romantic, Blitz is awful to mox, Loona is awful to mox, Millie and Loona are always hating each other and Vías "moment" of calm with Loona feels OC for her.

Same with the hazbin cast, despite there is a possible bound between niffty and Husk being under Alastors control they rarely interact, the supposed love Charlie express to the cast feels plastic since she never got close to anyone really and barely interacted (just that disgusting episode where she sees a friend in pain and wont help cause 'itz meeeeaaaan!!'), and they got rid of the cool friend that cherri was supposed to be in favor of....you guessed it !! Shipping!!! Yay!!!!.

The only "frienship" that could have been great where emily and Charlie, and Veggie with angel in the past when she was supposed to be a sinner...

but I don't feel like Charlies feelings about others are sincere anymore by how unnatural she acts, like she says she cares but doesn't really and Emily, despite being really innocent deserves better...

And veggie isn't a troubled sinner that died in the 90's anymore so that "enemies to friends" regarding a growth of a soft spot between her and angel, and the possibility of them bounding over their shared pain (veg was supposed to be a S*xworker in life) is gone like any hope I could had over this mess...

Sorry for the long rant but I haven't seen anyone pointing it out.

You're right, and I think it's one of those things that hints at something fairly sad about Viv as a person. She can't write sincere romantic relationships to save her life, but she's also just really, really bad at writing friends. Characters might work together towards a common goal, might even hang out together, but there's a lack of empathy, of connection, of real love. Pentious's "friends" let him be dragged off by a crowd of rapists, Husk says he accepts Angel's flaws and then expresses disgust with them two episodes later, and everyone in HB constantly abuses and belittles and threatens everyone else.

The most believable friendship we have is Pilot and Addict Angel and Cherri, and we saw what happened to that.

And yeah, there's no getting around it, I think that's all Viv and how she interacts with people. Viv's closest, most enduring friend is Sam, who she shit talks behind her back and who talks shit about her in turn. And that kind of says it all.

#Anonymous #vivziepop critical #viv stuff #actual blog post

57 notes · View notes

indigomarina · 11 months

Text

Fanfic Idea

Ugh! I had this idea to write a fic about what-if Marinette was evil instead of Gabriel! But now with the whole Shadybug and Claw Noir special coming, I feel I have to wait, so things like 'Good Gabriel's good guy name' and what he calls who makes heroes (currently I'm calling them champion but I don't know anything) are more accurate to the show!

Plot

Essentially, it would've been in this universe, so no Shadybug. Instead, her name would've been Miss Fortune (I've been in this fandom since the beginning, I've always wanted that name to be canon). She takes the image of a shy sweet girl Marinette Dupain-Cheng but when things don't go her way, she becomes Miss Fortune.

Luckily, Paris has a hero in its corner, the amazing Chat Noir who battles the evil Miss Fortune. However, he also has an ally in the form of Papillon, a mysterious benefactor who helps him by sending him champions.

Characters

Adrien will still be our innocent sunshine child, but he has a whole lot more on his shoulders, trying to stop Miss Fortune from wrecking havoc and eventually becoming Guardian.

As Chat Noir, he and the champion have to work together to fight Miss Fortune. I have this system where Miss Fortune has a anti-charm (like Anti-bug) and if the two destroy it, the world healing begins.

Alya is still how she is in the show. Except she despises Miss Fortune. Her blog is towards Chat instead and she insults Miss Fortune anyway she can. She wants to rid the world of Miss Fortune, unaware she's her best friend.

Chloe would be a much better person (she still has some of her original flaws, so she would be not be like Zoe), liking Adrien like a brother and treating Sabrina like a real friend. Of course, Marinette doesn't see their relationship as platonic so she targets her. This version of Anti-Bug would've have Papillon give Chloe the power of the original Ladybug miraculous until Chat decides to give her the bee miraculous to use.

Lila would've been a person who always told the truth and while not all of her stories from canon were true, she does have some real amazing tales. This attracts Adrien to her (again platonically) much to Marinette's chagrin. One story is that Miss Fortune stole her bag once and Chat Noir got it back for her. Marinette thinks Lila is lying and Chat doesn't remember Lila specifically but he does remember giving someone back their bag.

So she briefly becomes Miss Fortune to embarrass her but this just inspires her to become Volpina and her and Chat briefly work together to take her down.

Gabriel is a much better father here! He's still busy and Emilie is still dead. But he's allowed Adrien to go to school and have a less stricter lifestyle. He still misses his wife but goes on a more healthier path instead and tries to move on while helping Chat Noir as Papillon.

Zoe would've been a person who acted nice when in reality, she's a massive witch. She still has feelings for Marinette but Marinette takes advantage of these feeling instead. She assist Miss Fortune also, not liking when things don't go her way. Half of Chloe becoming akumatized episodes would be Chloe either needing the bee miraculous or her helping Chat as a champion. Zoe would play dumb when confronted but some people start seeing the truth through her and Marinette's lies.

Shipping

So Marinette likes Adrien to disturbing degrees. Finding her strange since kindergarten, Adrien at best can be civil towards her. In the Animan episode of this AU, he would've weirded out by Nino's crush on her but would've still helped him, because he's a good friend and he feels he would be a good influence of her.

He and Miss Fortune jokingly flirt with each other sometimes, but they really hate each other with a fiery passion.

Adrien is bisexual in this fic. Who is Adrien's partner? Luka. Instead of liking Marinette, he takes a shining to Adrien instead. Adrien is smitten as both himself and Chat Noir. Luka would be a frequent character in season 1. Often times, Chloe and Juleka (and sometimes Nino) would try pairing them together frequently.

Marinette used to have a crush to Luka and he used to give her a chance but with all the lying and her accidently making it clear she likes Adrien, he also can now only be civil to her.

Chloe is also bisexual. Nathaniel initially has feelings for her instead of Marinette in 'Evilluastor'. Season 1 would plenty of cute moments. Not sure I should write whether they broke up but are on good terms or have them be in a poly relationship with Marc and Kagami.

Down the line, Chloe gains feelings for Kagami. Marinette in this AU, never lets go of her mean feelings for Kagami and instead Kagami enters the scavenger hunt in 'Ikati Gozen' with Chloe, causing the two to bond. Kagami never has feelings for Adrien (but I'll say it again, Marinette doesn't see it that way).

That all I have to write, bye!

#marinette salt #miraculous ladybug #shadybug and claw noir #fanfiction #lukadrien #Evil Zoe #zoe lee salt #Yandere Marinette #adrien deserves better #chlonath #marcnath #chlogami #lukadrian #zoenette #chloe deserves better

235 notes · View notes

fallenmintleaf · 6 days

Text

Been thinking about Tessa and the Murder Trio, and I've started wondering... how do the drones even feel about Tessa, in canon?

Reviewing what we have, it's a bit less clear than I expected, so I'll break down what we actually get in canon for each pair.

Tessa / J:

J having romantic feelings for Tessa is quite the popular fanon of course. I like that interpretation quite a bit myself, and a few subtle details I've seen discussed can even imply it as subtext.

As far as actual text goes, though, J is a loyal sidekick. She follows Tessa's lead and seems proud to assist and protect her. Pretty clearly a positive relationship, and easy to extrapolate further for shipping and fun head-canons.

But canonically, it isn't too different from her relationship with Cyn, or even the "company" in episode 1. Loyal, proud of her capable service, dedicated. Blasphemous as it may be, one could question if she actually cares for Tessa specifically, beyond her position as her "boss".

And this isn't to accuse J of being heartless: she reacts with clear horror at the thought of V (and the other library drones?) being discarded in episode 5. She cares about V (and, I would argue, N) in some capacity. Her rejection of them in episode 8 is easy to read as a defensive denial: casting them as a lost cause in order to justify fighting them to herself.

Even so, I do still interpret J and Tessa as having a close relationship, especially since contrary evidence is lacking.

Tessa / V:

We get basically nothing with actual Tessa. V has a few interactions with Cyn as "Tessa", though. She shows no real loyalty to her, seeming to go along with their excursion into the labs only for N and Uzi. She's very quick to snap at "Tessa" for her inability to protect them, but also seems quick to look past that. Most notably, she's quick to save "Tessa" from a bullet, so it's easy to read her as being as "tsundere" towards her as she is towards N and Uzi.

So canon doesn't necessarily imply a very strong relationship between them, but at least some basic level of loyalty probably existed, at least before Cyn's rampage.

Tessa / N:

This one is pretty interesting. Tessa's adoration of N is very apparent, of course. But we don't actually see any reciprocation from N. With actual Tessa in his memories, he seems to begrudgingly accept Tessa's affection, but his primary focus at the time was Cyn (and the ghost witch sending him messages). Perhaps this can be written off as extenuating circumstances, especially with Uzi's interference influencing his perception of the memories.

The other meeting we see, with Cyn as "Tessa", has Cyn mimic similar affection. N however seems more worried than excited to see her. Especially notable, in the same meeting, he seems delighted to see J (the same goes for V too, on both counts). "Tessa" gets a worried frown from N, where J gets a smile.

"Tessa" of course does little to endear herself to N during their lab mission. N shows plenty of concern for V and Uzi, and almost no concern for "Tessa". However, he still seems willing, if reluctant, to follow her orders, up until he catches her in a lie, upon which he beheads her with no hesitation. Even with N's genre savviness, he did not know she was Cyn at the time. Again, compare to J, who even as an enemy receives a hand-drawn IOU from him.

One can again argue extenuating circumstances, but it stands out for the golden retriever "I love doing anything" drone, doesn't it?

Conclusion:

It is surprisingly easy to build a case that the drones do not actually care about Tessa all that much. And it is even more surprisingly easy to build a case that N rather dislikes Tessa.

Do I think this is the intended reading of the characters? Not really.

I think the murder drones did like Tessa. There's not much positive evidence that any of them disliked her while they were in the manor, and all of them probably felt loyalty to her for repairing them and at least attempting to protect them from her parents.

Cyn's easy manipulation of N and V while pretending to be Tessa almost certainly relies on their lingering loyalty to her, overriding their natural wariness and doubt about the situation, so the fact that they aren't even more hostile and distrusting of "Tessa" on Copper 9 is probably a positive sign for their past relationship.

Still, it's an interesting thought experiment to interpret their relationship with Tessa in different ways and see how it can fit with canon.

Anyway, that's my sleep deprived ramblings on the topic. Hopefully someone finds them interesting!

#murder drones #tessa james elliot #serial designation j #serial designation v #serial designation n

35 notes · View notes

quasi-normalcy · 2 days

Text

Star Trek series rated by Canadianness!

The Original Series - Shatner's from Montreal; Doohan's from Vancouver; John Collicos (the guy who played Kor, the first Klingon) is from somewhere in Canada; and, um...yeah. 4/10

The Next Generation - So, in the episode "Lower Decks", Lavelle tries to bond with Riker over being from Canada (he's actually from Alaska). Also, Matt Frewer and Saul Rubinek are in episodes. 2/10

Deep Space Nine - I was going to rate this one pretty low since it has pretty much only Nicole deBoer and that one scene where Eddington mentions having a "lucky loonie" to go on, but then I realised that the series was literally premised on a brutal colonial project aimed at mineral extraction, and that's like...the *most* Canadian thing. 7/10

Voyager - WTH is this? No Canadians; nothing particularly Canadian. 0/10

Enterprise - Hoshi Sato wants to take leave in Canada after getting tortured with heat. 1/10

Discovery - Points for being filmed in Canada, and most of the extras and personality-less bridge bunnies being played by Canadians (though points off because the one Discovery novel that I've read keeps emphasizing that Detmer, who has the most personality out of all of them, is from Düsseldorf). Callum Keith Rennie's in the last season. 4/10

Picard - um...Alison Pill is there! 1/10

Lower Decks - Let's see...two of the ships have been named the Vancouver and the Toronto. The plot with Barb Brinson is riffing on having an imaginary girlfriend in Canada (one of our most famous exports). Also, I know this isn't canon, but the comics are done by Ryan North, which has to count for something. 4/10

Prodigy - Man, this series doesn't even air in Canada! -1/10

Strange New Worlds - Filmed in Toronto: actually *set* in Toronto in one episode; retroactively makes Khan Canadian (Khanadian?) which...sure. I'll accept that. Points for casting Edmonton's Bruce Horak as Hemmer, who comes from an ice planet and, as an Aenar, has a generally laid-back, pacifistic attitude towards life (which I think is how a lot of Canadians like to think of themselves); points off for killing him off 9 episodes into the first season. 9/10

#star trek #canada

43 notes · View notes

utilitycaster · 6 months

Note

Do you think that Laura and Marisha are deliberately making their relationship somewhat toxic and unsustainable or do you think they see the relationship as healthy? It is just so different from all of the other relationships they have been a part of and not really in a good way. Would love to get your perspective on it if you have one

I am honestly unsure. I would like to say it's deliberate. Prior to it becoming canon, in fact, I, and a lot of other people who were less than enthused by Imogen and Laudna's romance and weren't entirely sold from the start, made the case that we expected they would be talking to each other and would put together a compelling story, not the dull fluff so common in fanon. While whether it's compelling is a subjective judgment, we know for a fact they didn't talk to each other. We know for a fact Marisha was surprised by the question of "Can I kiss you," and Laura was surprised by the answer. We know from a 4SD not long after (4SD #16, Kiss and Tell) that several episodes later they still hadn't talked. We know that Marisha perceives Laudna as holding Imogen back (and that Laudna perceives herself as doing so) from the Rose City Q&A. We know that from 4SD #20 (Episode Twenty) that Laura doesn't like conflict in narrative and Marisha does, and that Laura was thrown by Laudna's regression following Ashton's attempt to absorb the shard (4SD #19, Shard Candy).

I don't know if it's deliberate or not; I don't have any extra insight that isn't public knowledge any fan can easily access. But man, it doesn't feel like these are two actors on the same page about what's going on.

I've touched on this before but mostly in tags or whisper posts but I've always felt ill at ease with a number of for lack of a better term "fandom-approved opinions" and one of the ones that has baffled me the most is this idea that Marisha and Laura have exceptional chemistry. I watched Campaign 1 knowing the endgame ships but deliberately avoiding the fandom, and Vex and Keyleth did not even once occur to me as a thing. I watched the first year of Campaign 2 without a ton of fandom interaction because I was avoiding additional C1 spoilers and it seemed crystal clear that the obvious ship was Beau and Yasha; it felt like Beau and Jester only even had enough potential for me to multiship it as my general "whomever Jester picks" for like, 30 episodes. And yet people - people who didn't even ship either of the above ships and in some cases disliked them- would just say "oh man I can't wait until we get to a campaign where we can finally explore Marisha and Laura's incredible chemistry!" and it's like. I feel like I'm the kid in the Emperor's New Clothes on this! I understand that chemistry is to an extent a matter of taste and subjectivity, but it just increasingly feels like people looked at two campaigns of tables where Ashley was frequently absent and said "well, if I want an F/F ship that's between two of the women in the cast, I guess this is what I have to work with" and repeated to themselves that a flat pamplemousse La Croix was a Piña Colada until they started to believe it. I mean if someone wants to explain it to me in good faith I suppose be my guest and I will try to take it in, but it feels like people just treat this as incontrovertible fact and if you doubt it they're like "don't you have eyes" and it's like, well, pretend I don't. Explain like I'm eyeless and five because I have never understood this. They both have more chemistry with every single other cast member; it's not all romantic but man, I didn't even buy Laudna and Imogen as platonic best friends of two years. I have never had this problem with any other pre-existing character relationships Marisha and Laura have played, platonic or otherwise. It's literally just them. I just never feel like they're quite on the same page.

Back to the relationship between Imogen and Laudna onscreen, this was easily the best conversation since the start of the gnarlrock fight, and it is my hope it doesn't fizzle out the way that did. You can't keep kissing Laudna whenever she fears she's lost forever to Delilah, Imogen. Or you can, but that won't fix the problem. Again: are you disgusted? Do you feel betrayed? If you're not, why did you say that? If you are, how will you move past it? Do you want to be with someone who never feels like they're good enough for you? Laudna, do you want to be with someone who, no matter what they say, you feel you're holding back?

Early in the campaign, my feeling was that of our current situation, switched - Imogen felt her powers were a burden and a curse and Laudna kept referring to them and to her glowingly. It's just...ships passing in the night, no pun intended here. I hope it's on purpose and whatever comes from it is a good story - and either a tragedy or a happy story could be a good one. But I have a nagging sensation that Laudna wants out but is afraid to say no, and Imogen is afraid to let go, and I honestly don't know if the actors have realized this impasse and how the characters might resolve it, one way or another, besides the insufficient bandaid of a kiss whenever the conversation gets too uncomfortable.

#answered #minxie-the-sabertooth-kitty #really the mission statement of this blog is I am the kid in the Emperor's New Clothes #also i know i keep relying on food metaphors sorry i really like food and feel it's fairly universally accessible to understand #anyway. i am sure some will not believe me here but I think I and most people who agree with me desperately wish we liked this ship #i do not think most people who dislike it are actively hoping it crashes and burns it's just #it feels so fundamentally disconnected and lifeless. at least the conflict shocks it into something vaguely animated #the vindication i was right about this lack of chemistry is still ultimately a consolation prize. i promise you i'd rather be proven wrong #i'd rather be wowed by a brilliant dynamic ship i didn't expect to like. but here we are.#cr spoilers #long post

93 notes · View notes

oneatlatime · 7 months

Note

Hiii!!! I’ve been binging through your blog for the past few weeks and I noticed how you talk about how Kataang(Katara x Aang) is portrayed in the show. Honestly yeah, I will admit I didn’t like it at first but now I just don’t really care for it. But I’d be interested hearing an in-depth opinion on the ship(unless you already did and I just never noticed or forgot 😭).

Another question, do you think you’re going to read the comics that came out the series? If you’re asking my opinion I’d say they’re a uuuh 7-8 out of 10 IG?

I do have thoughts on Kataang which I haven't shared yet. Part of me thinks I should wait to answer your ask until I've finished the series; it's obvious to me that these two are being set up to be the big finale couple, which means if I talk about them now I'm probably missing the pieces I need to have a full, well-rounded opinion. But you know what? I feel like talking about them now. So here goes.

Short answer: It peeves me that Aang comes from a culture that seemingly doesn't even have parents, yet he still manages to date his mother.

Long answer: they're both way too young. I'm a huge fan of letting the kids be kids for as long as possible. Especially with these kids, who have been prevented from being kids by the war. As Katara points out in the opening scene of the very first episode, she's been the mother since her own died (or at least she feels like she has had to be the mother). Call me crazy, but I'd rather Katara spend a few years after the war doing dumb childish stuff to recapture that lost childhood than jump straight into a relationship. Isn't the safety and space to do dumb childish stuff one of the things those who are trying to end the war are fighting for? Shouldn't she get to enjoy that? And Aang is just way too young no matter what way you look at it. He's 12 right? I think that would make him a grade 6 student. Back in my day (yells at cloud) Grade 6 students collected yugioh cards and feuded over who had the snazzier lunch box. I could picture a 12 year old having a crush on a slightly older girl that goes to the same school, but it would be short lived and unactionable. I guess Katara would be around 14? So, a grade 8 student. A grade 8 girl would not date a grade 6 boy. It would just never happen.

They've both got bigger fish to fry. Aang is the last Air Nomad AND the current Avatar. When he fully takes on both of those positions, what time will he have for a girlfriend? Katara is the only Southern Waterbender. Whether or not she wants the responsibility, it will be her duty to single-handedly reconstruct a huge portion of her nation's culture from the ground up once she returns south. Does she have the time to ping pong around the globe mothering her boyfriend as he rides giant animals or does Avatar stuff? Say she wants to: what will her family and the rest of her tribe think of the only person who can access such a huge part of their culture riding off into the sunset?

Their current relationship dynamic is still too mother/son. This is more obvious in season 1 than in season 2 (maybe that's growth?) but you can't depict a male/female pair as pieta and then expect me to ship. I think this could change somewhat, but I've already been disappointed in that. I thought that once Katara had mastered waterbending and therefore felt she had something other than mothering to contribute to the group, she would back off with the mothering. And she did, a little, but not enough for my tastes. Maybe as Aang fully steps into the Avatar role and the last Air Nomad role (sidenote: no idea what the latter would look like) he'll move on to a more equal relationship with Katara.

I think Katara is meant for better things than rebirthing a nation. Bending seems to be at least somewhat genetic. So if Aang wants Airbending in any form to survive after his death, he's going to need a billion kids. While I could definitely see Katara wanting children, I don't see her as the barefoot pregnant type.

I'm not convinced that Aang has a clear picture of Katara. She has flaws, which is good! Does Aang see them?

I get the feeling that, while they are helping each others' skills grow as they travel the globe, they are also preventing each others' personalities from growing. As long as Aang is around, Katara has someone to mother. As long as Katara is around, Aang has someone who prevents him from feeling the full weight of his responsibilities. Again, this is worse in season 1, but how often did Katara deny that Aang was to blame for something that was at least somewhat his fault? Aang will never become a fully rounded person until he can look at his flaws and mistakes dead on and say "my bad" without a Katara in the background going "no you're perfect!" Katara deserves to find out what kind of person she is outside of a nurturing role. Quick thought experiment: what if you pair Katara with someone who needs no nurturing, or better yet, nurtures her? And what if you pair Aang with someone as bluntly truthful as Toph? Katara and Aang might find both of those situations uncomfortable at first, but I think it would contribute to their growth.

Aang having a crush on an oblivious Katara would be a great single season arc. I think it would fit both of their characters well, and I think Aang growing past latching on to the first person he saw after the iceberg would be a good way to show that he's rooting himself in his time-displaced present, and fully committing to ending the war. And don't get me wrong, I love Aang and Katara both as a fighting team and as friends.

These kids are all fighting a war, and all kids. I don't mind the supporting characters having romances, because it's not like Sokka or Suki can end the war, no matter how hard they try/might want to. But I'm a big believer in doing one thing at a time, and I think if you're the only person in the whole world who can end a war, then ending the war should take precedence over dating. I'm aware that that's an unrealistic expectation and out of step with the show's theme of balance. In the real world, birth rates skyrocket during war time because people live for the moment and grab happiness (read boinking) wherever they see it. But both these kids are pre-boinking age so I'm going to be a cranky old fart about it.

Being the wife of the Avatar is a position that will often come with being relegated to second place, especially with the amount of work that undoing a century of war will take. Although she works well in a team, Katara is a naturally dominant personality. Katara did enough of putting herself in second place before the series started. I think Katara could very easily fall into the pattern of subjugating her own needs and desires and putting her husband's first, but I don't want that to happen. And one way to prevent that from happening is to prevent her from dating the single most politically important person in the universe. (To be clear, Aang would never deliberately squish a wife like that, I just think the workload of being Avatar and last air nomad would cause that to happen)

A lot of my objections to this pairing are very adult objections. I don't know what I would have thought about this pairing when I was the age of the show's target audience. It undoubtedly would have bothered me less, although I probably would have been put off by how twee it is. As an adult, all I can see are babies playing house.

As for the comics, I hadn't made any concrete plans to read them. I don't know where I'd get access to them. I'm not sure how canonical they are. I guess I should probably decide whether or not I want to read them after I've finished the whole series. I've been told that my girl Jin appears in one of them, so I definitely have some interest. I have also had the Avatar Kyoshi novels strenuously recommended to me. But so much of Avatar's charm, to me, is in the medium. And while comics are closer to animation than books are, they're still static. Avatar does movement so well.

#ask #this got way too long #short short answer: they're too young #not much incompatible about their personalities #plenty incompatible about their responsibilities

80 notes · View notes