#a lot of their relationship revolves around escapism and in little wives... they were only trying to hold on to that for a little longer

[balkanlila]

Whatever you do, don't you ever think about Jo and Laurie and how the idea of romantic love affected both of them, just don't. do. that.

[ryuumarsart]

Alright...hear me out...

What if Bojack and Mr. Peanutbutter were bisexual rather than straight? Like many of my recent ships, this came to me towards the end of the series when [spoilers] Bojack moved in with Mr. Peanutbutter and I realized that I needed this stupid ship. I thought, "Let's get these predatory men away from women by shipping them with each other lol" and this happened. I know a lot of their arcs revolve around being straight as hell and it's questionable to make such flawed characters queer, but this is just for fun. Basically, in this AU Bojack is bisexual, with a preference towards men. His childhood is made even worse as a queer child in a highly homophobic household, especially from his father. Thanks to this and compulsory heterosexuality, he has to suppress his love for other boys and only let himself like girls. He is a little more free once he escapes his family, but not by much. He ends up in a secret relationship with Herb, the first time he can embrace his sexuality fully. This makes his later betrayal so much more painful as Herb is not only hurt by a friend, but heartbroken. When it comes out that Herb is gay, he begs for Bojack to come out and stand with him in solidarity, but he refuses for his career's sake. Furious, Herb tries to out him, but Bojack plays it off as an act of desperate slander. After this incident, Bojack falls back into the routine of only letting himself date girls, although he longs to pursue his male crushes. This routine of cycling through women to convince everyone, including himself, that he's straight contributes to his belief that he can never truly love someone. The only person that he comes out to is Diane (definitely after she finishes writing his book) who keeps his secret no matter how infuriating he is. Meanwhile, Mr. Peanutbutter is bi as well, with no real preference either way. His family was low-key homophobic, so he never really came out to them, especially since he had a habit of moving through relationships quickly and ignoring his same-sex crushes. On the way to stardom, he quickly learned that queer people were not welcome in Hollywood, so he continued his facade. He definitely had a celebrity crush on Hank Hippopopalous. He falls pretty hard for Bojack, but since Bojack is so clearly straight, he moves on to Katrina. Every time his love dies for one of his wives, he finds himself back at Bojack. This makes his little obsession with Bojack a little more reasonable, like how he always wanted to hang out with him and made Diane hang up the phone "in case Bojack calls" and defends him despite all the terrible things Bojack does, since he is not just trying to force everyone to like him, but is in love with him. He worries about Bojack each time he spirals, but feels like there isn't much he can do to help. He too comes out to Diane, partly as "proof" that she is different from his past two wives who he didn't come out to. This backfires though once they drift apart as she starts to understand why he cared so much about Bojack and she questions the validity of their relationship. Mr. Peanutbutter truly loved her, but she can't believe that someone like him could love someone like her, using his sexuality as an excuse (making her a little biphobic in this, but she learns better later don't worry). Once she's over him, she's just annoyed that these two gay disasters should just KISS ALREADY and leave women alone. When stuff hits the fan and Bojack is losing everything, the only one still by his side is Mr. Peanutbutter, who is secretly happy to be in that position. He desperately wants Bojack to just forget the outside world, forget everyone else, and live happily with him, despite knowing that it isn't realistic. He goes to Todd's party, worried about Bojack when he is kicked out, but wanting to be there for his best friend. He ends up leaving early to return to an empty home. After many failed calls, he checks Bojack's old house, finding EMTs already there. He is devastated and comes face-to-face with his feelings for Bojack as his death hits harder than he expected. He is overjoyed when Bojack lives, even if he has to serve time in prison. He visits him in prison when he can, although he can tell that Bojack wishes that his other friends would as well. Bojack comes to value these visits though when Mr. Peanutbutter has to miss a couple because of work. Mr. Peanutbutter continues to support him when everyone else continue to live better lives without Bojack, giving him a home after his release. (The rest of this is me forcing a happy ending lol) After SO LONG, Bojack realizes that he has someone to love him unconditionally and finally accepts his love for men. He comes out publicly because it's not like people could hate him more than they do. Mr. Peanutbutter does as well, but less dramatically. I imagine that Bojack still has so much trouble saying "I love you" so he uses some drawn out reference to say it to Mr. Peanutbutter. They live out their days as an old gay couple trying to improve themselves with each other for support (and LOTS of therapy oml). tl:dr In this AU they're both bi and suffer from compulsory heterosexuality, but end up together as two flawed people trying to move on from their pasts and improve themselves.

[twdmusicboxmystery]

8x02: Details and Themes

Morning Everyone! Today I’m going to go over details from the episode I didn't mention on Monday, and some themes I saw running through the episode (which might also end up running through the entire season or at least 8a).

Details:

In the first scene with the Saviors, there's some kind of belt or possibly dog collar on the table. The woman, Mara, also calls her people "fishies." Oceanside reference? When she got on the walkie talkie, she calls three people. The first two don't answer. The third one does. (Once again, lots of threes in this episode.)

At one point during the fire fight, we see a 101D on the building in the background. Kind of interesting as this was episode 101.  

It occurred to me Morgan's "I don't die," might have actually foreshadowed the deaths of Freddy and Andy. I think so mostly because of what Lennie James said on TTD. He said in the moment, Morgan was trying to warn them to stay away from him, because he doesn't die, which means people around him might. They did. I know a lot of people think it's foreshadows his death, and it still might, but it definitely foreshadowed the deaths of the two men he said it to.

Dwight's Note:

It also mentions "Browning." That's a type of gun Dwight is telling them to look for. The interesting this is Beth's knife (the one that's been missing since S6) was also a browning. It's looking more and more like symbolically, Beth is the weapon they're searching for. It's also very interesting that, for right now, the weapons seem to be missing.  

Oh, for the Xs? There were two sets of 8 Xs each. Kind of interesting.  

Someone suggested not everyone might understand what I meant when I said Shepherd was a big deal. Remember there was an Officer Shepherd at Grady, played by Teri Wyble? She's one of many of the Grady crew who've put suspicous things on social media in past months.  

Here's another cool detail I missed but @wdway caught: the ceiling above Daryl is broken and open in this shot. 

It looks very similar to the ceiling here in Still. 

Remember my Hole in the Roof Theory? Check it out HERE. Because we've seen this during key episodes and sequences around Beth and her arc, this gives me tons of hope that this situation with Daryl is about Beth and will lead to her.  

Female Room  

Wanted to give some screenshots of this room. Originally I thought the little red flowers on the pillows were lady bugs. They're not, but I'm still side-eyeing them. 

Lots of candles on the tables and a covered (hmm, could that be “hidden”?) lamp. Three of those big ones can be seen, but two sets of three hanging on the wall in sconces. Then there are those red/green curtains.

Gracie’s Room

I wanted to look more closely at the baby's room. @wdway caught this picture. 

We're pretty sure the back of the chair, seen in the mirror, is painted with three hanging POSSUMs. *coughs Beth*. Now that I’m looking, I think there’s also an eagle with spread wings above them, much like we saw on the wall in Still. 

There’s also a yellow truck of some kind. There are many animals in the mural on the wall and in the mobile hanging over the baby's head. I mentioned on Monday the dog and the frog, both of which are Beth symbols we've seen before. Others we could read into, but most I can't connect specifically to Beth's arc. The tiger could = shiva. Various meanings for lions and elements. One super-interesting thing is that the 8th thing on the mobile is this: the same symbols we saw made by the Scavengers when they surrounded TF in the junk yard. Hmm.

Rabbit  

This has been circulated a lot in the past few days. I'm sure many of you have seen it. As far as I'm concerned, we're looking at a few distinct possibilities here. Remember that we’ve seen the rabbit motif around Beth a lot. (X)

1. Possibly this little girl is Gracie rather than Judith. If so, it's possible certain spoilers I posted about HERE are wrong, and Judith may die. Let's hope not.

2. The little girl in the flash forward could still be Judith. Maybe Rick takes care of Gracie too, and Judith is just playing with Gracie's doll. Gracie's in another room or with someone else.

3. Maybe Gracie dies (Gimple alluded to something ominous on TTD) and Rick takes the doll and gives it to Judith.  

4. Could be purely symbolic. I actually like this option the best. Why? Because I think it makes a great case for Beth. By showing the rabbit in the dream/flash forward with the girl we'll assume for the moment is Judith, it creates a statement about the relationship between Rick and Judith. Judith is Rick's daughter, but not biologically. They went out of their way to tell us that last season. He just began caring for her and now she is his daughter. If the same is true of Beth and Gracie, the doll could symbolize that. Another sheriff (the new one in town) is taking care of Gracie and is pretty much her parent, or will be, even if the child is not biologically hers. Just a theory. And a head canon. ;D

5. @Brynn_81 (IG) also suggested it could be a link to Sophia. I've talked before about the "missing girl" theme that connects Beth and Sophia. Remember Sophia had a doll Daryl found in the river. I think that option has a lot of promise as well. Will be interesting to see if Daryl actually picks this doll up out of the crib. The river he found Sophia's doll in in S2 could feasibly be linked to Oceanside.  

6. Then there's this:

They COULD be lying purposely about this being Judith, but I kinda doubt it.

The thing is, we have pretty good evidence that the Old Man Coda isn't reality any more than the picnic scene was. It's Rick's vision of a perfect future. I don't think we should necessarily take the stuffed rabbit's presence as entirely literal. Just my two cents.  

As far as the handcuffs Daryl found, @thegloriouscollectorlady pointed out that, in order to get out of those cuffs, the person's hands would have to be small. Merle cut off his hand in S1 because it was the ONLY way for him to get out of the cuffs. Men generally have bulkier hands than women. The blood shows that whoever it was probably scraped up their hands seriously pulling them out of the cuffs, but they managed it without lobbing off a limb, right? It just stands to reason the prisoner was either a woman or possibly a young person/child. Though honestly most young people/children would be too intimidated by the situation to break out.  

And yes, if you hadn't figured this out yet, we're hoping the person who was in the cuffs and who possibly stayed in the Happy Room is Beth. She escaped/is missing and, though they don't realize it, is probably the "weapon" Rick and Daryl are searching for. Hopefully. ;D

Another thing we discussed was Sherry's pregnancy test in S7. It was negative, and obviously not enough time has passed for Sherry to have had a baby. I'm not saying she's the mother. But it may have been symbolic of something. I think it was a necessary element in 7x03 for Daryl to completely understand the situation between Sherry, Dwight, and Negan, but even so. We often see symbols operating on many levels, and I think it also may have foreshadowed this arc. That one of Negan's other wives got pregnant at some point, perhaps? That he's hiding a baby who would come into the narrative? Will probably make more sense as we go along.  

Horse Picture

I think this is pretty well-circulated too. I totally missed it and @katkhaos pointed it out to me. We see the picture taken from Hilltop in this shot. Why is that important? Horse Theory. Black horse = Daryl, white horse=Beth. The taking of the picture was obvious a purposeful plot device, since it was totally necessary for Simon to confiscate it. What are the chances it randomly shows up in this shot a handful of episodes later? If white horse = Beth, I think someone's about to stumble upon her.  

Episode to Episode Parallels

So here's something we talked about in the Safe Zone, and most of the credit for putting it together in a cohesive way goes to @katkhaos. It occurred to us how many parallels there are between S8 and S1. Yes, we already knew that. I don't just mean with symbols and repeated sequences/shots. I mean episode parallels. Check it out.  

Episode 1x01: Rick at gas station and meets Teddy Bear Girl.

Episode 8x01: Rick and Carl at gas station. Repeated shots. Meets Teddy Bear Girl (same actress).

Episode 1x02: Rick meets Morales in Atlanta.  

Episode 8x02: Rick meets Morales on the 4th floor of the Savior's compound.

Episode 1x03: Rick meets Daryl. Morales is there.  

Episode 8x03? 

Obviously Rick and Daryl already know each other this time around. But I think it's interesting that Daryl specifically wasn't present when Rick first saw Morales, to "echo" (Gimple's word) season 1. We didn't see Rick, Daryl and Morales all in the same place until 1x03. I'm assuming the same will be true in 8x03. Daryl's not far, after all. It's just a matter of time before he sees Morales too.  

Another thing to take into account? Episode 3 is where Rick reunites with Lori and Carl. A.k.a the sheriff reunites with his long-lost family after a journey to find them.

So I'm gonna throw this out there. I know I've said pretty strongly I think she'll return in episode 4. I still think it'll be an important episode because of the Alone head stone, and she may still return in it.  But I'm cautiously hopeful about episode 3. We have a lot of things pointing to it, and then there are these absolutely perfect episode parallels, the callbacks to Merle, etc. I won't be bummed if we don't see her this week (not any more than with any other time we haven't, anyway ;D) but I think it's a real possibility. *fingers crossed*

What @katkhaos suggested is that, especially as Gimple said the things about episodes 1-4 melting our brains, maybe the plan was always to parallel 8x01-8x04 with 1x01-1x04. Episode 1x05 is when TF gets on the road and goes to the CDC + leaves Jim behind. All of episode 6 is with Jenner at the CDC. Episodes 1x01-1x04 revolve around Rick waking up, finding his family, reunions, and Merle going missing. It'll be very interesting to see what episodes 8x03 and 8x04 bring us.

Re-Watching, I noticed this picture. During his fight with the savior, this cabinet ended up across the door of the Happy Room. That’s super-suspicious to me. Again, I think maybe Beth was staying in this room at some time. The first thing this reminded me of was when Daryl pushed the shelf over-top of Noah in 5x06, and he became trapped, with a walker trying to get through the door to get him. The other thing it could parallel to is Shane pushing a bed in front of Rick’s hospital room door. If that’s the case, you can see how this might parallel Beth and be a S1 callback.

Themes:

I noticed several times throughout the episode, various people mentioned things about how their friend or comrades weren't there, but would be soon. It was said several times by the various groups. @thegloriouscollectorlady and I also talked about how Rick and Daryl climb up to the fourth floor of the building. Now, there were a lot of parallels to Grady here, just in terms of the building/spatial layout. They climbed up an elevator shaft. It definitely wasn't on the ground floor. They were searching through lots of hallways and closed or locked doors. (We saw lots of keys and locks at Grady.) 

But Beth was kept on 5th floor of Grady, not the fourth. I'm wondering if this is part of the same theme: Almost there, but not quite. If Beth is running around here somewhere (like she was in the cuffs or staying in the Happy Room, it might also explain (symbolically) why she's not there. Why everything's empty and Rick and Daryl haven't found what they're looking for yet. They're almost there. Almost to where someone will return, but not quite yet. I don't know if this is just a theme for this episode, or if it will keep going for a handful of episodes.

The other theme had to do with confidence. There was a lot of talk of confidence or the lack there.  There was all of Ezekiel's talk and speech to Carol about being confident, even if you were faking it. We saw this theme in actions too.  

It specifically showed Freddy shaking before they opened the doors, and then he was killed. And then there was Eric. There were several times in the first part of the episode where Eric got this determined look on his face and did something brave, like shoot more saviors or provide cover for the others in his group. As time went on, things got worse. Francine was killed and Tobin was shot in the shoulder, and Eric started to look very scared. It was only after his lack of confidence took hold, that he was shot.  The idea is that confidence is more likely to win out, and usually does. When people give into fear, they're more likely to be injured and/or killed.

I actually really love this theme because there's so much truth to it. If you know anything about the law of attraction, you'll know what I mean. It's definitely something the writers are pushing this season. It actually goes hand in hand with other themes I've mentioned before, such as characters not actually dying until they accept their own deaths. Anyway, just really interesting.

One final thought from @bluesandbeth about Morales being alive. She said it's obvious Gimple doesn't like loose ends. If he just HAD to tie up Morales' story line, then Beth's must be driving him nuts. Even if we're totally wrong and she isn't alive, at the very least we'll have to see those missing 17 days/unexplained scenes at some point.  

But @bluesandbeth was reminded of Abraham's line in 6x06 (major Beth-symbolism episode). "Loose ends make my ass itch." Kinda thinking Gimple penned this line with an evil grin on his face. ;D

Okay, that's it for today. Anyone have anything to add?