#actually don’t answer that because clearly the events of the last 9 months have shown me everything i need to know that actually i am!

[pepprs]

tfw im taking a day off of work today (my first day off since december 😍😍😍😍) and got absolutely shit sleep w fucked up dreams i kept waking up from and just woke up to a text about the stupid fucking book chapter asking me to do one more read through of it as if i haven’t done like 5 in theladt 3 days (and by all appearances been the ONLY one doing so lol)

[kariachi]

Okay, we’re gonna see how much liveblogging I can get done today. We’re still in full Kevin mode, and we’re starting the day with Heads of the Family. I have minimal idea what to expect, but I love Kevin and I love the Bugg Brothers, so it can’t be bad.

Right?

My love for this show’s music selection continues.

Oh good lords, these people take family reunions seriously. There’s a fucking banner. You can see more people in this frame then there was at my last family reunion in it’s entirety. And that was everybody from this farming family that still lived in the northeast within six generations of relation. Not kidding.I know nix and I play with there being too many fucking Joneses but goddamn there are canonically too many fucking Tennysons!

Just, goddamn.

...Last year Ben and Gwen had a burping contest where Ben won by so much a fucking gazebo collapsed on them and several relatives. I’m not surprised, just concerned

And Aunt Kathy damn near banned them from future reunions. Honestly I can’t blame her. Made Max give her a month’s worth of foot massages to re-earn the right to attend.

They’re bringing the deviled eggs.

That is, a sad amount of deviled eggs for the number of people here.

Nobody is happy to see Ben, which, given last year, not surprising.

...yep, that’s a level of offhand rudeness you only get from relatives.

Honestly I gotta write a fic involving family reunions, that’s shit’s gotta be confusing for an Erinaen like Argit.

(probably Great) Aunt Kathy likes bacon in her deviled eggs. The presence of them was likely planned ahead.

There’s a Sweden branch of the Tennyson family. The representatives shown are Sven and Len. I’m horribly amused. Also Max apparently can’t tell which is which.

...Somebody just showed up given a headcount of nearly 600. What is wrong with these people?!

The headcounter’s name is Alfred. He has pumpkin pie. This earns him a point.

He’s Max’s second cousin. This is a relation I can accept as a family reunion.

Somebody is showing off Max’s baby pictures. Making him out to have been a worse-looking teen than he was though. Doesn’t look good, but I was expecting worse from the characters’ reactions.

Also this is apparently Grandma Rita, which given it’s Max saying that I have to assume she’s either his mother or his grandmother, so Ben & Gwen’s great-grandma or great-great-grandma. Probably great-grandma. Either that, or she’s aged real well, or she and Max’s mom had kids real young.

“I’m gonna get some deviled eggs“ Ben says before being stopped by the realization that there, by the food, is his archest of nemesises, Kevin. Who, given there’s nearly 600 people here, may actually belong. I mean statistically, with this many people just attending the reunion, nonetheless in the family, there’s acceptable odds he’s a cousin of some bent.

Also my son, dual-wielding fried chicken

Gwen, concerned Kevin might be related to them. Max, concerned Ben’s going to do something that gets them banned from the family reunion.

“Don’t do anything rash“ like Ben has ever done something not-rash ever in his life

Boys please. I know you’re both disasters but, for five minutes pretend to have something resembling chill.

Ben: *totally down to kick Kevin’s ass for daring to eat a food* Kevin: *certain he won’t because they’re surrounded by innocent relatives* Ben: *does not care one iota* Gwen: *about to have an aneurysm because holy shit is her cousin trying to get them disowned*

I have to admit, I do enjoy the addition of episodes where Kevin is just existing and it’s Ben who’s starting shit? Having a wide range of hows with regards to the boys getting into fights makes sure that we get some real character depth out of both of them, as well as making sure the episodes don’t get samey and that they can always do something new. They aren’t pigeon-holing themselves.

The boys have left to a less target-rich environment and are now fighting because, again, how dare Kevin come to a Tennyson family reunion and eat the food. And we still don’t have any real evidence he doesn’t belong. I mean he makes that ‘where you got all your weird’ comment, but it’s Kevin, if they were twins he’d say that just to rile Ben up.

Me thinks these boys should’ve gone out a little further. Attract less attention.

...Ben knocks Kevin clear across the fairgrounds, jumps into a dumpster to stay out of sight until he comes back for round 2, finds the Bugg Brothers. Of course.

Ben is just having A Day.

A particle decimator. Okay, cool, but why you guys hiding in a dumpster?

It’s a shrinking ray. The plan is to use it to destabilize the national economy, undermine the government, disrupt social order, and wreak havoc among the entire world population. I feel like Maurice needs to start thinking smaller.

And lo, they were using the wrong device and accidentally switched Heatblast and Maurice’s heads. I’m shocked.

This is gonna be a weird episode from here out isn’t it

Kevin, gonna kick somebody’s ass even if he’s not sure what the fuck is going on

Kevin, rolling with the head swapping thing. Though honestly with some of the shit he’s been through this probably don’t seem too bad

I do like how Maurice made a head-swapping helmet and yet he and Sidney have not swapped heads, despite, well, everything.

Ah, this is presumably the device that swapped their heads in the first place. Cool cool.

My son

So clarify, he’s outnumbered, his head in on the wrong body, and the Maurice and Sidney are looming. He shows no signs of concern, or lack of confidence he can handle the situation. He still gets divetackled, but hey

And he’s not doing bad, given he’s wrestling against two guys his size.

And Ben has the helmet

“You need to fix us!“ And how, pray tell, do you expect your cousin to do that, Benjamin?

Welp, Gwen and Max got their heads swapped now.

And the watches timed out, meaning how Maurice and Sidney are basically helpless until shit times back in.

Welp, Maurice and Kevin swapped. So now Kevin’s head is on Ben’s body and Maurice is on Sidney’s. Meanwhile Ben’s head is still on Maurice’s body, Max’s on Gwen’s, and Gwen’s on Max’s.

This play-by-play brought to you by Fanta. Thirsty? Get a fanta.

And now Ben’s head is on a squirrel body. And a squirrel head on Maurice’s.

“Gotta fix this before I get infected with this dork’s genes“ Kevin pls.

Okay, Maurice is whole again, but now there’s a squirrel using Sidney’s body

Wow, Maurice, maybe you should’ve hedged your bets on whether you wanted to leave the helmet in the care of an 11-yo or a fucking squirrel.

And lo, now Maurice is back on Ben’s body and Kevin is on Maurice’s.

And I’m not even gonna give a play-by-play of these last several switches, just assume everything happened including the rise and fall of the roman empire

Kevin is fucking done. Also he and Ben are on each other’s bodies now.

Oooo, I was wondering if this episode came before or after Kev joined up with the Forever Nerd, turns out it’s after. Also this phone doesn’t have the spikes.

Oh gods and Ben is answering the damn phone.

FN: Kevin where are you? Me: Kevin is dead. Yeah, horrible accident involving a sprinkler system, a can of soda, and a mountain lion. Just awful. So, ya know, you may as well just lose this number-

Oh

Oh fuck

Oh gods damn

Okay so Ben imitates Kevin and claims he’s hanging out with his family (which, kudos Ben for trying to cover for him, your sweet child) and the Forever Nerd fucking- The quote-

“Family? *scoffs* That’s a laugh. You have noone. Without me, you’re all alone, remember? Now stop playing around and report back here at once.”

I’m gonna kill him, y’all. I’m gonna kill him and then wrap Kevin in a blanket and feed him cookies and cocoa until he pops.

Even Ben’s like ‘wait, no family?’ Which, given this clearly takes place after Introducing Kevin 11, what is going on in Kev’s life and what did Ben think was going on in Kev’s life?

Also Ben theorizing that maybe that’s why Kev crashed his family reunion, just to be part of one, and gods preserve me that’s a painful thought.

Kevin, critiquing the Bugg Brother’s evil plot.

Ben: If you want your body back you just need to blast me- Kevin: *blasts him*

Maurice and Sidney have been getting on so well this episode, it warms the heart. And makes sense in an episode involving a family reunion and the official reveal that Kevin has jackshit in the way of familial relations. Now to find if this is because he dropped them for being shit, because he’s actually an orphan, or he’s been taken from his family because they were shit.

Rath trying to be friendly and welcoming towards Kevin.

Kevin, just walking away from that shit.

And Max and the squirrel are still mixed up, and continue to be as the family flees the event.

9/11 solely due to Kevin things. My son deserves better.

[nomediaplay]

The chart you posted about girl group fan base is very interesting. I tried to look up similar data using your link but it doesn't work for me. Could you pull a mix and match chart for solo, boy group and older artists cimparicom to see how distribution changes? Say IU (solo) vs BB (older boy band with general interest) vs BTS (the current hype) vs TVSQ (older boy band with dedicated fan base)?

You’ve probably mistyped something - I did the pic in a rather small font and then tumblr resized the pic much bigger making it a bit distorted. Unfortunately I can’t do what you’re asking… Because Melon only show the demographics of the followers/fans for the top-5 acts in each category on the daily “artistchart”.

Melon has this thing they call daily “artistchart”, where each artist is scored 1-10 in 5 different categories and then put into an overall ranking. As I understand the categories (again, I’m not Korean), the first category is sum of daily unique plays across all songs of the artist, second category is increase in amount of followers/fans, third category is increase in amounts of likes of all songs of the artist, 4th category is related to photos (not sure if it’s based on views, likes or comments), and 5th category is about music video views on Melon. So naturally, it’s mostly gonna be rather fresh artists and artists who just had a comeback who rank in the top-5. Anyway, here’s the link: https://www.melon.com/artistplus/artistchart/index.htm. Now above the demographics chart are some tabs: First one is overall. Second is boygroups. Third is girlgroups. 4th is male solos. 5th is female solos, 6th is international artists, 7th is indie artists. In each category, you can at the bottom click to show another 10 so you can see the top-40. But you can only see the fan demographics of the top-5. Of course, the % shown are rounded numbers and in my table I just took the rounded % times the current fanbase to clearly illustrate what it means in actual absolute numbers.

I purposefully decided to pull numbers and post for girlgroups today, because just about now these 5 girlgroups that international fans probably find most relevant among “recent” girlgroups all rank in the top 5. Typically, they’ll fall out when it’s been long since a comeback. If you click the boygroup tab, you’ll find that for 2018.08.12 Wannaone was #6, EXO was #7 and BIGBANG was #9. So it’s difficult to find an opportunity with “all relevant acts” you want in the top-5 on the same day. Of course, the overall picture of what their fans are wouldn’t really change if you take stats from one artist today and compare it to stats for another artist from one month ago. But when it comes to older acts it will be hard for them to ever rank in the top-5, even when they’ve just made a comeback (like TVXQ for example).

Secondly, this fans/followers function is something rather “new” in Melon (and mostly used by “young” users), so it’s not really a useful stat on older acts. TVXQ has like 40,000 followers and BIGBANG has like 300,000 followers while EXO & BTS have like 500,000 followers. These differences rather reflect their fanbases since when this function was introduced in Melon rather than their actual old fanbases. SNSD has like 105,000 followers and I find that pretty amazing considering how little activities and media hype they’ve had the last 4 years… Taeyeon has like 150,000 followers and is 2nd female after IU (with like 450,000 fans) but obviously Taeyeon’s followers would have been many times higher if this would have reflected her OSTs and popularity with SNSD back in 2008-2012. It’s the same thing when you look at fans/followers in the Japanese streaming sites: LINE music and AWA were only launched in 2015 while SNSD’s last Japanese album was released in 2013. So clearly all those people looking up and following SNSD in those apps (event though they’re not releasing new Japanese music) are obviously really big fans.

However, as you said I think the data is very interesting - hence why I posted it.

“How are Melon subscribers different or more credible than Hanteo/ Gaon album sales? They are all inflated by fans. The subscribers won’t ensure artists’ success or change their flops either.”            

Because no normal persons buy CDs in 2018. Hanteo/GAON CD sales are driven by a few crazy people buying crazy amounts of CDs - and how many CDs they buy depend on how much the companies try to milk those crazy fans (and remember the artist gets very little money from these sales). And many of these crazy fans are in fact Chinese people.

The numbers of followers among Melon subscribers on the other hand give a fairly accurate view of how popular they actually are among young-ish Koreans.

Quite some time ago Melon purged stats from non-subscribing users (which at the time caused a bit of a fuss), so nowadays the stats actually reflect paying subscribers. Of course, numbers are still distorted by how crazy international fans subscribe to Melon to support oppars. But even so, only ~100,000 of the ~500,000 followers that EXO and BTS have appear to be from international fans. So while they are many they are still not drastically changing the overall picture at all.

I’m sorry, but maybe you had read some of the posts at Netizenbuzz and though that Red Velvet weren’t liked in Korea…

Why do you think there’s always a big fuss about if RV wear hot fashion or outdated clothes?

Why do you think there’s always a big fuss if RV members are comfortable or uncomfortable with too revealing clothes?

Why do you think there’s a big fuss if RV’s performance in NK was something great to be proud of or something ridiculous?

Why do you think there’s always a big fuss if RV’s new songs are something trendy or something outdated or childish?

Why do you think there’s always a big fuss about everything Yeri does as the youngest and added member?

Why do you think there’s a big fuss about Joy’s acting?

Why do you think there’s a big fuss about what book Irene reads?

etc etc etc about the most ridiculous issues.

And why do you think that Red Velvet, as a group and as individuals, by now have a number of really really big endorsement deals?

The answer is of course simple:

Red Velvet is by far the most relevant girl-group among young girls in Korea. That’s why there’s always some kind of online fuss related to them.

Only Mamamoo is anywhere near - but Mamamoo’s audience (fans and haters) are on average a few years older (seemingly like ~4 years) so what Mamamoo members do doesn’t cause as big of a fuss online as Red Velvet (although at times Mamamoo too does cause a big fuss).

I’m not gonna try to predict what RV as a group or as individuals are gonna do over the next 2-5-10-20 years. Who knows, they might split up and all quit and retire in 2 years.

Heck, I’m not even some RV fan. I do like a lot of their title tracks, but I don’t like them artists the way I like SNSD and other acts. Much of RV’s discography isn’t to my liking and I find it really annoying how they’re singing in these high-pitched un-natural voices on album tracks. I also think that Wendy’s voice isn’t really unique enough to be the main vocalist (which isn’t actually a criticism of Wendy!).

I’ve mostly kept updating on some Red Velvet stuff here because people keep whining at me about how SM is doing a bad job promoting them…

But Red Velvet (whether as a group or as individuals) are all absolutely perfectly set up to have long careers if they want to. Even if they’d all split up and leave SM in 2 years, they will remain hugely influential among young-ish Korean women for the next 5-10 years and continue to make lots of money from CF-deals, concerts, festival performances and acting jobs.

[theastrophilearchitect]

WandaVision series review part 1.

Because I have some things to say.

This is going to be posted on March 19th, at which point the WandaVision (WV) finale will have been out for two weeks; also the day Falcon and the Winter Soldier (FatWS) begins, which I have, for whatever reason, begun to think of as WandaVision's sequel, despite being a completely separate series. In 2019, FatWS was actually scheduled for before WV, so that makes no sense.

Anyway, I'm going to begin with a spoiler-free review of the series as a whole, then I'm going to go into an episode-by-episode breakdown as I re-watch the show, but the spoiler-free section will contain spoilers for the rest of the MCU. This part will cover episodes 1-3, part 2 will cover 4-6, and part 3 7-9. I’d love to do this in one post, but it’s just a little overwhelming.

If for whatever reason you don't know vaguely what WV is about, you've been living as a hermit for literally the last six years. But if you don't know: in 2015, Marvel Studios released Avengers: Age of Ultron (AoU), technically the second movie in the 'Avengers' franchise, but the eleventh movie set in the MCU, the Marvel Cinematic Universe. AoU introduced three main characters to the MCU: Vision, a synthezoid-human-robot-AI-android thing, who I would call a person but it's complicated - his consciousness is derived from the mind stone, one of six infinity stones, JARVIS, Tony Stark/Iron Man's AI assistant, Tony Stark himself, Bruce Banner/the Incredible Hulk, Thor, and Ultron, the villain of the movie, who's more of a robot than Vision, but he's not the point. The movie also introduces Wanda and Pietro Maximoff, known in the comics as Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver, though they are never called this in the movies. The Maximoffs are twins who volunteered for experimentation from HYDRA, an evil Nazi organisation who provide the main antagonists in the Captain America trilogy. We are told they each gained superhuman powers from the mind stone - Pietro has an increased metabolism and improved thermal homeostasis, and Wanda can do neural electrical interfacing, telekinesis and mental manipulation, or, in the words of Maria Hill, 'He's fast and she's weird.'

Pietro Maximoff is promptly killed by somehow failing to dodge bullets, while Wanda and Vision join the Avengers, and eventually fall in love. I'm not explaining Avengers: Infinity War. Or Avengers: Endgame. If you haven't them, why are you reading this?

Anyway, so Avengers: Endgame is the third-to-last movie in Phase Three of the MCU, but is the last part of Wanda and Vision's story pre-WandaVision, and wraps up with Vision dead and Wanda grieving.

So, should you watch WandaVision? Yes. Absolutely.

We already know our two main characters and several of the other characters, including Monica Rambeau from Captain Marvel, grown up, Darcy Lewis from the Thor franchise and Jimmy Woo from Ant-Man and the Wasp, but we're also introduced to a cast of new characters, mainly new villains (but then superhero movies so rarely use old villains), who are well-developed and intriguing - you'll either love them or love to hate them.

The plot leaves you on the edge of your seat - nearly every episode ends on a cliff hanger, and leaves you with a thousand questions. It answers the bare minimum, the final episode leaving us still with some questions, but it is the perfect way to milk our investment.

On the other hand, if you aren't familiar with the MCU, Wanda and Vision, you may have quite a hard time understanding every aspect. So long as you have a vague idea of the context, you can follow the plot, but you won't enjoy it nearly as much. I really don't think it's worth watching the entirety of the MCU solely for this show, but I also think it's worth watching the MCU movies, full stop.

The series is only available on Disney+, which absolutely sucks. I've had a Disney+ subscription since it was released in the UK, so this wasn't an issue for me, but it does generally suck. Even if you are up to date with MCU movies, if you don't have a Disney+ subscription, you can't watch it. The streaming service stopped offering free trials in July 2020 due to the release of the Hamilton pro-shot, knowing they'd get an influx of new subscribers, but not wanting people to be able to watch it without paying. Capitalism at its finest.

Whether or not the cost of one month's subscription for WandaVision is worth it is subjective - though now all the episodes have been released you could easily watch it and only have to pay once.

Ultimately, I would argue WandaVision is absolutely worth watching, though someone who isn't up to date on MCU films wouldn't enjoy it as much as someone who is, and with its runtime of just under six hours, broken into nine episodes, it may not be worth the Disney+ subscription for you personally, especially if you're not up to date on the MCU. However, I would like to end this section on a positive note: I cannot get over how awe-inspiring the storytelling on this show is. Marvel has its issues with storytelling, with things often feeling disjointed in an attempt to remain unpredictable and prevent actors (*ahem* Tom Holland) spoiling events, but WandaVision doesn't feel that way at all. It's unlike any superhero show I've seen before, plays on morality and plays with sitcom formats from the last 70 years, meaning you'll love it even if, like me, you're not a fan of action-focused media - the only long action scenes occur in the last episode.

So, yes. five stars.

~SPOILER ALERT~

Beyond this mark, I'm going to go into an episode-by-episode breakdown, and it will be basically all spoilers from here. If you haven't seen the show and care about spoilers, go away. Please don't spoil yourself.

Also, in each episode's breakdown, I may point out foreshadowing and things I only notice because I've watched it already, so unless you've seen all nine episodes, you may find spoilers even if you only read about the episodes you have seen.

I watched WandaVision episode by episode as it was released, and since the first two episodes were released nearly two months ago, I'm going to re-watch the show and break it down as I go.

Episode One: 'Filmed Before A Live Studio Audience' This episode was released on January 15th along with episode two, and I didn't actually watch it until the Sunday because I wasn't invested yet, and, of all the MCU shows announced, this was kinda the one I was dreading. Before this show, I loved Wanda, but hated Vision, so I also hated their romance. I'd also seen the sitcom-style trailers and was absolutely terrified it would be terrible, so I wanted to finish the season of the show I was currently watching before watching the episodes.

So let's get into it.

The episode is only 29 minutes along, including the nearly-ten-minute credits, which is pretty standard sitcom-episode length. We open with the Marvel introduction, but as the camera zooms out, we're shown the logo in a fuzzy, monochrome, early-1900s style. The aspect ratio also decreases, which is a nice touch but very annoying because the show itself has a larger ratio, meaning there's a lovely thick black border all the way around the frame. But that's just a formatting complaint.

We move into a 50s-sitcom-style song-montage in which Wanda and Vision, looking human like that single scene in Infinity war are coming home, just married. Wanda magically buys the house and with some weird Vision-power stuff, he carries her over the threshold to their new house, and we see the logo.

Thoughts at this point? Just what? How is Vision alive? Why is it black and white? Why is there a musical song? Why are we in the 1950s? How are they married? Why aren't they being Avengers? Just sheer confusion.

Wanda uses her powers in this episode without her typical red-smoke-sparkles, and they make a lot of gags, received with a laughing track, about their powers, but generally follow a sitcom formula, with the plot of having Vision's boss for dinner and needing to impress him.

Also, it’s noteworthy that what little was left of Wanda’s Sokovian accent by Avengers: Endgame has completely vanished.

It's very odd to see Vision as Vision, as in synthezoid would-be-red-if-it-weren't-in-black-and-white face, dressed in regular clothes instead of his cape and superhero get-up. It seems like his superhero clothes aren't actually a part of him, but when he walks through things, they go with him, though he can't take other objects with him. This could be because they were made at the same time as him, but he also takes his other clothes with him. That's just a question as to the limits of his capabilities, though.

We're quickly introduced to their new neighbour, Agnes, cast in the role of Nosy Neighbour, but the cast of this episode stays incredibly small. Agnes mentions her mother-in-law being in town and talks about her husband Ralph, though neither of these characters are introduced.

Vision goes to work, raising the question of why a superhero synthezoid needs an office job, especially one he apparently doesn't know the purpose of.

Later, Vision calls Wanda from work, and she answers the phone as 'Vision residence', which is confusing on a number of levels. Wanda is a perfectly normal name, perfectly able to blend into this setting - Vision is not. Especially when he has no surname and this answering gives the impression Wanda has taken his name, and literally become 'Wanda Vision,' which is likely the point, but confusing nonetheless.

Here comes a 1950s style advert, advertising the 'ToastMate 2000'. In the ad, the two people put bread into the toaster, which toasts and beeps for an unnervingly long time before coming out. We're then told it's made by Stark Industries (Iron Man's company) with the slogan: 'Forget the past; this is your future!' Ominous, and clearly playing into the fact we seem to be on an alternate timeline.

Towards the end of the episode, Vision's boss's wife, Mrs Hart, begins asking questions about their past - where they moved from, how long they've been married, children, etc. - and Wanda and Vision freeze, trying to answer, but apparently unable to remember. Mr Hart, Vision's boss presses, but they fail to answer. Mr Hart begins to choke, and Wanda and Vision freeze, while his wife laughs, telling him over and over to stop it, until he falls out of his chair, and Wanda tells Vision to help him, which he does using his powers, though neither Mr nor Mrs Hart question this, and quickly leave, having barely eaten. Overall, the dinner is apparently a success.

Wanda and Vision realise they don't have wedding rings, and Wanda makes some, in a clearly cut-together shot reminiscent of the intended style. The camera then pans out to 50s-style credits, crediting the two cast members, producer, director, writer, photographer, music director, production manager, supervising editor and several other roles, with names I'm sure have some relevance, either to real cast members or some comic reference, but don't mean much to me.

The camera continued to pan out, showing the episode playing on an old fashioned TV in some kind of technological/industrial room. A hand presses a remote button, and we cut to the real credits, against a background of warped shots of screens, which then zooms into the pixels and we see a load of formations, such as of their house. Credits which are seven minutes long, though the length has nothing to do with the show itself.

One more thing: it's hard to notice during the episode, but during the credits we see a warped shot of Vision, in which his eyes appear human, where previously they've been fairly robotic.

This episode brings up a million questions and answers literally none, so, glad there's another episode, we move on. I enjoyed this episode, and enjoy it more the second time round, now knowing the answers to most of my questions, but it's so frustrating.

Episode Two: 'Don't Touch That Dial' This episode is 36 minutes long including credits, which is still fairly standard sitcom length. I watched this one directly after the first, and my frustration only continued.

Something I've only just noticed watching this the second time through: this episode opens with a recap of the first, and it recalls the events without including character introductions--except for Agnes. The recap includes her introduction, but nothing else of her, which, even though she's technically irrelevant in episode one, clearly means the writers are trying to make the audience remember her.

The comedy-style intro to this episode is in a cartoon-style, which opens with an image of the moon surrounded by six stars which light up in turn, a nod to the infinity stones.

Here, Wanda and Vision--Wanda especially--are wearing less traditional-50s clothes, though the first time round I didn't question this because Wanda's hair was nearly the same--just a little longer and more relaxed--and so was the way it was shot, the black-and-white, and the aspect ratio. I didn't quite make the decade-jumping connection, though looking back it is fairly obvious we've shifted to the 1960s.

Since this episode still follows a comedy formula, in which every episode has its own arc which rarely intersects others, the plot of this episode is Wanda and Vision participating in a town talent show and attempting to blend in. After the intro, we see Vision practising, and Wanda brings out a cabinet of mysteries for their act, which has an image reminiscent of the mind stone on the doors.

With Wanda acting as Vision's magical assistant, he gives her the name 'Glamour,' a nod to her powers, and 'glamour' in the more magical, less-celebrity sense. It also matches Vision's magician's name, 'Illusion,' from which it becomes a nod to the fact this whole set-up seems so abnormal, and, an illusion or glamour.

Before the intro to this episode, we see Wanda and Vision getting woken up in the night by some banging. Later in the episode, we hear whirring and another bang, which prompts Wanda to go outside to investigate, where she finds a crashed toy helicopter, in colour. The helicopter has a sword symbol on it--the first time we see this.

Agnes then brings Wanda a rabbit for the magic act, who she calls Senor Scratchy, a reference to Nick Scratch, a colloquial name for the devil. This was part of what led to initial speculations about which character was actually comic-villain Mephisto in disguise - WandaVision also draws heavily from comic series 'House of X', in which Mephisto is the villain. Obviously, people began assuming Agnes was either Mephisto in disguise, or working for him.

Agnes then advises Wanda about Dottie, the leader of some organisation Wanda is apparently trying to join. Skip to the meeting, Wanda emulates Dottie’s actions to appeal to her. Dottie is then rude to a woman giving some sort of account, but she forgot to ask about the chairs, to which Dottie says ‘Devil’s in the details, Bev.’ Agnes then says to Wanda, ‘That’s not the only place he is,’ which added to the speculation about Mephisto.

The committee Wanda is with is working on the talent show to raise money for the elementary school--’For the children.’ This phrase is repeated throughout the episode, and foreshadows Wanda’s motivations as the show progresses. Wanda meets a woman named Geraldine, who says she feels out of place, foreshadowing her true identity, and how she, personally, came to Westview.

Meanwhile, Vision attends a neighbourhood watch meeting and one of the men offers him a stick of gum, which he takes despite the fact he can’t actually eat food, as a synthezoid. One of the men slaps him on the back fondly, and Vision swallows the gum, which we see as a cartoon of it going down his mechanical oesophagus. 

Wanda stays behind at the committee meeting to help Dottie clean up, and Dottie tells her she’d heard things about Wanda and her husband, which Wanda responds she ‘doesn’t mean anyone any harm,’ and Dottie tells her she doesn’t believe her, as though she’s mentally returned to reality, continuing to foreshadow the reveal in the next few episodes. The camera zooms in, the music intensifies, and a voice comes from the radio beside them, asking if Wanda can hear him. Dottie asks, panicked, who it is, and who Wanda is. The radio short-circuits, and Dottie breaks the glass she holds, cutting her hand, and the blood is red.

The advert in this episode contains the same actors from the previous one, this time advertising the Strucker watch--a reference to Wolfgang von Strucker, a Nazi villain from the Captain America franchise; also the head scientist on the experiments which Avengers: Age of Ultron claims gave the Maximoff twins their powers. The slogan is ‘He’ll make time for you,’ which, even now, I’m not completely sure what it’s a reference to, or who the ‘he’ could be, but it seems to further suggest Mephisto’s involvement, despite that not actually being the case.

Cut to the talent show, Wanda panics because Vision is late. He shows up, walking and acting as if drunk, and we’re shown the gum is stuck around some gears in his gut. On stage, Dottie makes the audience chorus ‘for the children’ again, and Wanda and Vision come out. Because of the gum stuck in Vision, the act goes sincerely wrong, and he uses his powers out in the open, but Wanda manages to use hers to apparently hide this from the audience. They bring out the cabinet of mysteries, and Agnes asks sarcastically if they’re sure they don’t want an audience volunteer named ‘my husband Ralph?’, the second mention of Ralph in the series. 

Vision taps the box with his wand before Wanda gets inside, and the audience starts chanting ‘What’s in the box?’ Wanda panics, does something with her powers, and opens it to reveal a very confused Geraldine inside. Their act ends, and Wanda uses her powers to find and release the gum stuck in Vision, and he seems to ‘sober up’. They try to leave, but Dottie calls them up on stage, praises them and presents them with a trophy for their comedy. Wanda calls up Geraldine, who asks what happened, but they play the ‘magician never reveals his secrets’ card.

They get home, and joke about it, repeating ‘for the children’. Wanda gets up, deciding to get popcorn, and is suddenly quite pregnant, where she very much wasn’t before. There’s a thud outside, and they go to investigate. A manhole cover in the road shifts, and somebody in a beekeeper’s suit, with the sword logo on the back, emerges, face in shadow. Wanda merely says ‘no’, and we rewind to before the thud. Colour then begins to bloom onto the screen, and the episode ends, with an echo of the voice from the radio.

Looking back, I think the shift to colour on Wanda’s part may have been a decision because of the helicopter, and the blood--the beekeeper prompted it, but she’s trying to hide the fact that the things which do not belong are so obviously out of place.

This episode holds no more answers than the last, and has the same comedy tone with the ominous undertones as the last, but also contains significantly more characters and locations, as though this sitcom world has expanded.

And then we had to wait a week for episode 3.

Episode Three: ‘Now in Colour’ And we shift to the seventies. This episode’s recap recalls all the major points of the last episode, including Geraldine’s introduction. This episode is only 32 minutes including credits; longer than the first, but shorter than the last, so we’re still sticking to the comedy format, and the episodes aren’t yet lengthening.

Just a point a little irrelevant to this: WandaVision’s total runtime is about six hours, and we’re getting six FatWS episodes, which is probably about the same runtime but a little disappointing (though that’s mostly because it means there’ll be a couple weeks where we get nothing between it and Loki).

The introduction to this episode is more classic sitcom, with the long pop-style song over a montage of the characters--exactly what you’d expect from the seventies. The episode opens with a doctor at their home, who tells them she’s about four months along, which she obviously isn’t. Vision questions how this happened, but it becomes fairly clear to the audience this is Wanda’s doing. Vision asks the doctor not to tell people about the pregnancy, and sees his neighbour to the non-Agnes side, Herb, trimming his hedge, but the hedge-trimmer is going through the garden wall, and he hasn’t seemed to have noticed. Vision points this out, Herb verbally acknowledges him, but keeps going.

Vision returns inside, and Wanda’s pregnancy has progressed even further. Wanda uses her magic to prepare the baby’s room, and her magic is still missing her signature scarlet, a continuing sign something is wrong. The baby kicks, Wanda describes it as ‘fluttery’, and accidentally makes the butterflies on the baby’s mobile real. 

Vision mentions the name ‘Billy’, and Wanda says ‘Tommy’, ‘a nice, classic American name’, returning emphasis to their efforts to fit in. Wanda gets Braxton-Hicks contractions, and her powers turn on the tap, open the window, flare the lights--the pregnancy causes her to lose control of her powers, and the block’s power goes out. Wanda mentions the people of Westview ‘always seem to be on the verge of discovering [their] secret’, and Vision says something seems wrong there. The music intensifies and the camera zooms in, then we cut back to before he said that, but without the rewind sequence we saw in the last episode.

And Wanda goes into real labour, sending Vision in a panic. Then it begins to rain inside, and Wanda comments she thinks her water has broken.

Cut to commercial! Same actors again, this time for Hydra Soak--’find the goddess within’. It’s a bath product meant to take you away from your problems--a reference to Wanda’s apparent escape from what she was left with after Endgame. I’m not completely sure what all the HYDRA references are about, even after watching the whole series.

It stops raining inside, and Wanda opens the windows to dry out the house, and I cannot get over how perfect her hair is in this episode. It’s perfect in the others, too, but this time, it’s perfectly straight, not a strand out of place, and I just can’t get over it.

Vision goes after the doctor, who was about to go on vacation when he left, and the doorbell rings. Wanda puts on a coat to hide her belly, and welcomes Geraldine in, but tells her it isn’t a good time. Wanda gets a contraction, and her coat transforms. And again. So she throws it off, and uses a fruit bowl to disguise it, but Geraldine doesn’t leave. 

A stork appears behind Geraldine, apparently the one Vision painted on the nursery wall earlier, and Wanda has to do her best to keep Geraldine from seeing it. She tries to make it vanish in a cloud of red smoke, her typical magic, but fails, and Geraldine eventually hears the stork, but Wanda tells her it’s the ice maker. 

The baby, however, it very quickly coming, and Geraldine sees Wanda’s belly. She lays Wanda down, and she births the baby, while light fixtures break and paintings spin, before Vision arrives. My God, her hair is so damn perfect. The baby’s a boy, and Vision concedes to Wanda’s name choice of Tommy. Then Wanda screams again, and Billy is born. For the children.

Vision goes outside with the doctor, and asks about his trip. The doctor tells him that small towns are ‘so hard to... escape,’ yet another ominous implication. The doctor leaves, but Herb is still outside, now without the hedge-trimmer, but with Agnes. They whisper about something, then Vision goes over. Agnes says ‘Ralph looks better in the dark, so I’m not complaining,’ when he asks if they lost power, too. And Agnes asks if Geraldine is with Wanda, as though she is suspicious, though knowing how episode seven ends, her true concern is clear.

Inside, Wanda tells Geraldine she’s also a twin, and the music intensifies. Geraldine says, ‘He was killed by Ultron, wasn’t he?’ in reference to Pietro--Quicksilver.

Agnes says Geraldine is new to town, no husband, and no home.

Wanda asks what Geraldine said, but Geraldine goes back to complimenting her. Wanda presses, but Geraldine’s sudden clarity seems to have gone. Then we zoom in on Geraldine’s necklace, and it’s the Sword logo.

Herb tells Vision Geraldine ‘came here because we’re all...’,but Herb can’t get the words out.

Wanda asks about the symbol, who Geraldine is, but she says she doesn’t answer.

Agnes makes Herb stop talking, and leaves. Vision returns inside, and Wanda tells him, rather monotonously, that Geraldine had to return home. But the camera cuts to the Westview sign, suddenly with a wider, more modern aspect ratio. It’s night, the air ripples like TV static, and Geraldine comes flying out, as though pushed. She collapses on the ground; cars approach, a helicopter casts a spotlight on her. We pan out to some kind of camp, and cut, to that dreaded ‘Please stand by’ credits screen.

And episode three ends, leaving us still without answers, but at least a little confirmation of something malevolent occurring. 

So, that’s my initial overview and breakdown of episodes 1-3. Part 2 will contain episodes 4-6, and part 3 7-9 plus my final thoughts.

But that’s that for this week’s post; the next two parts should be up next week and the week after, unless I have something I want to post more.

Anyway, go drink some water, eat something if you haven’t eaten in the last few hours--you’re amazing, you’re beautiful, and you so deserve everything you have, and more.

Bye!

[formulak-drama]

Rookie part 2

**second part of the Send me a thing: Suho, 1**

You guys had a fansign event in the afternoon so unfortunately you had to still get up early to get ready.

You went to hang up your jacket and the note fell out of your pocket.

"Oh shit.." you pick it up and hesitate as you unfold it.

*Y/N, I'm not sure why you haven't been answering my calls or texts, it might be because of being busy with promotions and such... But I miss you. Please call me?*

You teared up. How could you have forgotten this feeling? Shit. All the feelings you managed to squish down came up like a tsunami and you sank to the floor.

You didn't even know he had been calling. Your manager had your phone and he had been passing on other peoples messages, but he never once mentioned Junmyeon messaging. "So much for on my side" you think, letting out a small sigh and feeling heavier than a ton of bricks. At this point you couldn't even cry, you wanted to, but the tears wouldn't come.

You pick yourself up and get ready to head to the fansign, bracing for a long few hours.

The signing went well and you felt a little better by the end, you never realised how many people your group had managed to catch the attention of!

You had hope that any one of EXO may come by but sadly none did, you wanted to try and pass a message on to Suho.

Fans tried to pry info out of the group about why EXO showed up, but they were quickly told off by staff and hurried along.

Fan theories were sort of amusing to read since some were pretty far out, even going so far to say that EXO had actually helped scout some of the members, which did make you all laugh a little. But all the dating rumors had since been forgotten so you had hope that maybe you would get your phone back.

After the event you asked your manager about it.

"The agency still thinks that it is best you don't have contact until things calm down" he gives the same speech as last time, all empty words.

You sigh, "I'm never gonna see my phone am I?"

"You will, just not yet. I'll talk to the agency tomorrow."

You didn't have any schedule for tomorrow so you doubted you would hear back from him.

A week went by with promo event after promo event, and a few times you had back to back schedules that kept the group so busy that you never seemed to have a chance to ask about it again.

The following Thursday the group had a radio show to prepair for and by then you were so worn out that all you wanted to do was curl up in bed.

At least radio was easier than concert, but since it was also going to be streamed on Vlive you still had to dress up a little for it.

During the show fans had a chance to call in and ask questions, as well as asking questions via letters and other social media.

"Y/N this question comes from a fan letter for you, 'I need advise, the person I like seems to be ignoring my calls after something big happened at school. It wasn't either of our fault, but since then she hasn't been in contact with me... I know she is probably pretty busy with exams, but I want to ask her if she is alright and I want to tell her I'm still thinking about her. Problem is we are in different classes and I haven't had the chance to see her since the incident, what should I do? - S' Wow, thats a hard question. Have you got any advice for S Y/N?" the room fell silent for a minuet since a few of us picked up on the possible (but maybe just a coincidence) meaning of the letter. You look quickly at Jina who glaces past the glass where your manager didn't seem to be paying attention and she gives you a small nod.

"S-ssi, the advise I would like to give you may be a bit hard to use, but I will try my best to offer something good. You said something happened at school that made it hard to talk to her, and with exams going on it's even harder. I'm sure she knows how much you care for her and if she wasn't so busy with exams, that she would talk to you as normal. My advise for you is if you can, just wait and be there for her when exams are over. As for why she might not be responding to you, I remember when I had exams I had to basically lock my phone away to focus on school, so she might have done something similar" and with that sentence your manager whipped his head around with a very unhappy look.

He gestures for the producer to move on and they quickly change topics onto the next letter. (much to the hosts confusion)

You try not to slump in your seat because you knew Jina was going to get an earful for letting you talk like that. You quickly shoot her an apologetic look but she does a small wave to let you know not to worry about her. The rest of the show goes smoothly with less direct questions from fans and more of the light hearted "if your members were the opposite gender who would you date" type quesions.

After the show Jina was pulled aside and the girls looked at you. You desperately wanted to go in there and stand up for her, after all it was you who answered so directly.

She walks out with a smile and pulls you aside. "You are going to love me" she hands you your phone.

"Wha- how?!" you hug her.

"Don't ask, just call him you dummy"

You run to your room. You want to call right away, but you read the messages you've missed.

And holy shit have you missed a lot over the last almost month. Your manager had not once mentioned that he called or messaged, nor that other members had messaged as well.

"Y/N I hope they weren't too hard on you, don't worry! We may not be able to actually see each other outside of work, but there's still the practice room :)" - Aug 5

"Seems they pushed our japanese promos up, if you get this please come to the practice room tomorrow!" - Aug 5

"Y/N?" - Aug 6

"Are you going to come to the practice room? I'll be here for a while, but we fly out tomorrow so I was hoping to see you before we go" - Aug 6

"Please message me? I left you a voicemail, I just wanted to wish you luck on your variety show!" - Aug 9

"Japan promos are going well, I really want to take you here and show you the sights!" - Aug 11

"Congrats on your debut!! You ladies did really well!!!" - Aug 20

"Y/N are you okay? I will stop messaging you, but I didn't think you would let what they said bother you... I don't know why you aren't responding, but I won't keep bugging you.. I'm sorry.." - Aug 25

You tear up, this isn't what you wanted at all!

The voicemail icon taunts you.

"You have 6 new messages, to play your messages press 1"

You press 1

"Hey! Try not to think too much on what they said, this kind of thing will blow over soon enough okay? Call me when you get a chance! Byeee"

"To save this message and go to the next, press 2."

"Hey Y/N! Good luck on the variety show!! I will be watching you from Japan!! *Fighting!*"

"To save this message and go-"

2.

"You did so well on the show!! Don't forget about me when you make it big okay? *he laughs* I know you're busy but we should video chat soon okay?"

2. "CONGRATULATIONS ON YOUR DEBUT!! I watched the stream and you girls did amazing!! That's my girl! I'm sorry I couldn't make it, I have a radio show I'm about to go on for, but I hope you like the surprise I sent!"

2. The tears are pouring down your face as you click into the next message.

"Y/N It's Sehun, Junmyeon really wants to talk to you, if you can call him as soon as possible that would be great"

2.

"I'm sorry..."

You hit the dial button. The phone rings twice before going to voicemail. You hang up before leaving a message.

You try again.

Two rings and voicemail again.

"Junmyeon please pick up. I need to explain!" you say between sobs.

You try again.

Rings once and the line connects. "This is Sehun."

"Sehun please put Junmyeon on." there's silence on the other end of the line. "Sehun? Please?"

"He doesn't want to talk right now..." *click*

"Sehun?" you stare at your phone.

Jina knocks on your door. "Soooo, how'd it go??" she means well, but that set you off.

"He didn't answer" you say between sobs. "What?! What happened?!" you hand her your phone and she read the messages. "Oh shit" she pulls you in. "Gimme a second" she says after a long hug.

She walks out of the room with your phone and you can hear her through the door.

"Look, we don't know each other well, but I'm going to be blunt. Y/N wasn't allowed to have her phone. Our manager told her that she wasn't allowed to have contact with him because the agency decided that was for the best. Clearly they said something different to him, and lord knows that could have been to cause issues, but she is a mess. She needs to talk to him okay? You need to get him to go the that practice room and I will make sure she is there. Now? Yes now! ... Good. I will make sure to get her there."

She shuffles back into your room. "Get ready, you're going to the practice room."

You look at her "I owe you so much" you bow your head.

"Look, I've never seen a couple more suited for one another and I will be damned if I let you let your bias slip away because of the agency trying shit. We know it's tough being in this world, but if I can help make it better for at least one of us that will help us all out in the long run."

She hugs you and pulls you up. "Now lets get you dressed to knock that idiots socks off!" you let out a small laugh.

Outside the practice room you are shaking. Jina left you just after entering the building so that you could be alone right away with Junmyeon when he arrives.

You half expected him to be in the practice room already, but the light was off and the room was empty when you stepped in.

You sit in the middle of the room, facing the mirror waiting for him to get there.

An hour passes and he still hasn't shown up. You want to text him and ask if he is coming, but you don't feel like you have the right to, so you just wait. Another hour ticks by and you just deside to dance for now.

Nothing. It's about 1:30am and you figured that by now he probably wasn't going to come... You pack up your music and text Jina.

"I don't think he's coming..."

"He's still not there?!?! Wow, I'm so sorry Y/N, I'll be right there."

She arrives about 5 minutes later and opens the door. "You have got to be kidding me! He never showed??" you shake your head, unable to provide a verbal answer.

"Well I'd say that's his loss then.. But seriously? Why would he not show?? Sehun said he would get him to come... Weird."

You head back to the dorms in defeat just wanting to forget this day happened.

The next morning you wake up and are greatful they gave you the day off. Originally you planned to use today to convince your manager to get your phone back, but now that you already have it all you want to do is throw it in the Han river and forget it ever exsisted.

You wanted to text Junmyeon to ask why he didn't show up, but you also had no idea how to ask him. Sure you could be blunt, but had you really earned the right to be? You knew he probably was hurt that you never responded and never explained, but that wasn't your fault!

Seongja had made all of you breakfast and the smell pulled you out of your room in your pjs and bunny slippers.

"Mornin sleepyhead!" she smiles brightly, causing you to smile back.

"Morning" you say followed by a yawn.

"Minhee and I are planning to go to the practice room for a bit this morning if you want to come along!" she hands you a plate with food on it.

"Sure, just let me know when and I will get ready" you sit down and eat with the others. "What are you up to then Jina?"

"I want to pick up some new shoes for our promo event on monday, so I plan on mall crawling a bit"

"Gotta be careful" Minhee laughs "people might actually recognize you now!"

"I actually plan on wearing a wig" she winks, causing a burst of laughter from the rest of us.

We finish up breakfast and you offer to clean the dishes before heading over to the practice room.

When you three arrived you heard music coming from the practice room.

-To be continued-

(I AM SORRY, this is longer than I thought since I use notepad to write these)

[sachiro]

Victor/Yuuri and the Media

Alternately titled “Sachiro can find Victor character development pretty much anywhere he looks”.

As an attempt to get over the writer’s block that has been plaguing me for a month and a half, I decided to try and tackle something new. Something that’s a more outside-of-the-box idea in terms of analysis (at least I think) so let’s take a look at an aspect of the series that I haven’t seen talked about too much in terms of character development: the media!

I started thinking a while back about how we can actually see a clear change when it comes to Victor and his interactions with Yuuri in regards to the media, especially when we compare the earlier episodes to the later ones, and it got me thinking. Why does Victor act so protective of Yuuri in front of the media in earlier episodes and what changed by the later ones to the point that he’s so noticeably not there (and at what point did this shift take place)?

Victor himself actually enjoys the media attention and we have that shown to us repeatedly over the course of the show. Yuuri, on the other hand, tolerates the media but while he doesn’t enjoy the attention he isn’t actually a terrible speaker in front of the cameras.

Before we get into the meat of the discussion, let’s take a quick look at how each of them interact with the media when left on their own (at the start of the show anyway).

Victor

The very first time we see Victor, he’s in front of the cameras. His heart may not have been into it but he was still able to pull out a big smile. Even more in our faces later, we see him winking at the crowd at Worlds and sending everyone into a tizzy. He’s very much an extrovert and gets his energy from others around him.

Even after he moves to Japan, and especially once Yuuri and Victor get back into the competitive circuit, we see him thriving off any media attention he can get; whether it’s interviews, at the kiss & cry, or from the attention given to him by his fans.

Yuuri

On the other hand, Yuuri is very docile in front of the cameras. He’ll respond with phrases that you can tell he prepared ahead of time. You can see that he doesn’t really enjoy the attention but he’s been at this long enough to know how to deal with and tolerate it. In contrast to Victor, you don’t see Yuuri waving at the cameras and actively seeking out attention from his fans.

We can see examples of Yuuri on the far side of this spectrum in episode 1 where he actively tries to avoid interacting with his fans. We can also make the assumption that he avoided all media and social media in the space between the GPF and the Stammi Vicino video due to no one having an inkling as to what his career plans were (even though him skipping out on Worlds as the only Men’s Singles skater for Japan would have already been suspect – I wonder what excuse he gave because it definitely would have hit the press either way).

Edit: he didn’t qualify for Worlds at all due to his poor performance at Japanese Nationals, my bad!

As you can probably guess, putting both of them in the same frame would certainly cause some interesting interactions, and that’s exactly what happens! So let’s take a look from the start and see how they managed to somehow get to a point where Victor is leaving Yuuri to deal with the media alone/actually been tame in front of the cameras as seen in the last episodes!

(More under the read more due to length/images so please enjoy the rest of the analysis!)

Victor and Yuuri interactions

The way that Yuuri handles the media is something that we can see Victor clearly doesn’t understand. He saw Yuuri being nervous and decided that the best way to help would be jumping in to support him, many times literally. We see the first case of this in episode 3 at the Onsen on Ice.

It begins with us seeing both of them interacting with the cameras separately. Yuuri stutters a bit and is nervous, falling back on a practiced speech about his hometown (or more notably, not about himself). Victor, on the other hand, goes all out with a costume and is overjoyed to talk on camera -- even going so far as to forget about why he was out there in the first place.

But once you get them both on the same camera, we get to see them interact with each other in front of the media for the first time. In this case, it’s after Yuuri wins the Onsen on Ice and is standing up on the podium with Victor. This moment also begins a pattern for the two of them. Yuuri gets slightly nervous and Victor jumps in to “save” him.

This first moment might have set the precedent but it’s actually really tame compared to the following examples. In episode 3 Victor provides a silent support. He doesn’t actually say anything and lets Yuuri handle himself.

In contrast, the next time we see them dealing with the media together is in episode 5. Victor doesn’t even let Yuuri answer the question about his own skating plans, deciding just to answer for him. And you can tell this wasn’t pre-planned because Yuuri immediately shuts him down for what he chooses to say.

We see Victor do this multiple times in just this episode. Although he lets Yuuri deal with his fans on his own (Minami for example), he gets into the habit of trying to “protect” Yuuri from the rest of the media and will physically jump in front of Yuuri when he’s getting interviewed or answer questions for him. He even goes so far as to give Yuuri a back hug and gives him his advice directly in his ear before his short program knowing that all the cameras are trained on them. Even the times he doesn’t jump in he’s still close at hand such as during Yuuri’s post-SP interview.

And then up comes the press conference in which he physically can’t do any of that. I’m positive that Victor was itching in his seat back in Hasetsu to jump in and give his “aid”, as unwanted as it would have been, and that he ultimately came away with the conclusion that “see what happens when you try and talk in front of the cameras without me?” (for various reasons).

Skipping forward a month, we see them next at the Cup of China. The first time we see the two together here, we actually get something interesting in regards to how they individually handle the media even though they’re both in the same shot. Yuuri gets thrown by a question he didn’t expect (“how strong is my power of love?”) and Victor is hyper and distractible, asking Yuuri about going for food in the middle of the interview.

The only real thing to note here is just how Yuuri reacts to questions he doesn’t expect—that is, he doesn’t. So in a way you could even see Victor excited off-topic question as another attempted “save” although I doubt it was intentional this time.

Victor, however, returns to enjoying the camera attention at the kiss & cry as well as continuing to either jump in front of Yuuri (ep 7 post-skate interview) or comment from the background (ep 6 post-event interview). And of course we can’t leave out his tackle kiss on international TV.

But then something changes at the Rostelecom Cup, and I’m not talking about Victor leaving to go back to Japan before the free skate. 

We see him in an interview at the beginning of the event attempting to actually move the attention away from himself and towards Yuuri. While the words make sense for how far he is in his character development, we then get to see how he follows that up. Victor is then seen basking in the attention of his fans at the stadium before Yuuri yanks him “down to his level” and tells him the performance has already begun.

This is the moment that marks a definite shift in how Victor interacts with the media in regards to when he is on camera with Yuuri whether that be during interviews or at the kiss & cry. The next time we see the two of them, Victor is kissing Yuuri’s skate in a gesture that seems to say “I am stepping down off my pedestal and passing the reigns of media attention off to Yuuri, just as I said I would, so please focus on him. He’s the real star here”.

Going into the final 2 episodes, their interactions with the media have noticeably changed. Victor no longer jumps in front of the camera. He no longer waves and makes heart shapes at the kiss & cry. He becomes a silent supporter for Yuuri or is just straight up absent such as during the post-skate interviews.

I actually feel that this speaks a lot to his character development in multiple regards.

Victor’s focus has changed. Whether he realizes it or not, he stopped thinking about any kind of attention being targeted towards himself and instead has started redirecting that attention to Yuuri. It’s no longer about him on either a conscious or subconscious level. And I think this moment illustrates this point perfectly:

Before we end this analysis, however, we need to take a look at the post-skate interviews for the GPF. Victor is absent in both and we as viewers know that it’s because he has other things going on (concerning, respectively, his grief and then his return to skating). I would like take a second to revisit these moments, however, to look at these disappearances from a slightly different angle.

I mentioned back at the start that Victor jumping in front of the cameras or answering questions for Yuuri was done in a misplaced desire to “protect” Yuuri from them or as a way to support him. At the end of the day that desire came down to one simple fact: he didn’t trust Yuuri to handle himself in front of the media without his support. Whether that be because of the knowledge that Yuuri gets nervous confronting situations where he doesn’t have complete control or because Victor himself is more comfortable taking the reigns in regards to media interaction as a whole, it still boiled down to the same thing.

But comparing where we started in episode 1 to the GPF, as well as the drastic shift in episode 8, I feel like we can truly get a sense of the scope of the journey Victor went through in those 9 months since he flew to Hasetsu. The ultimate reason, not the “why” he left Yuuri to deal with the media alone but the fact that that happened in the first place, is because he trusts Yuuri. He trusts Yuuri to be able to handle himself. He now has the confidence that Yuuri will be okay even if he’s not standing at the ready to jump in front of him if a question gets thrown that Yuuri isn’t completely prepared to answer.

And I feel that more than anything, it ties back into a line we hear Victor say to Yuuri within his first month in Hasetsu because while it may have been Victor’s goal to make Yuuri feel confident about himself, he definitely picked some of it up along the way.

[lynchgirl90]

#TwinPeaks revival: 8 things fans need to know

“Twin Peaks is a mystery that holds other mysteries,” says David Lynch when asked to sum up his legendary TV creation in a sentence. So it’s fitting that he wants to keep Showtime’s forthcoming revival of the cult classic as Laura Palmer as possible: wrapped in plastic and full of secrets. He’s doing it for your own good, you know! “People want to know right up until they know, and then they don’t care,” the director tells EW. “It’s really beautiful and you go into another world not knowing what you’re going to find.” 

 Still, we can tell you some stuff. The 18-hour limited event series is “a feature film in 18 parts,” says Lynch, who wrote the script with Twin Peaks co-creator Mark Frost over a period of three years and shot for 142 days over seven months, but not on Saturdays and Sundays. (Lynch doesn’t do weekends.) The script started in the area of 400-500 pages, but it grew during pre-production, and more so during production, as the cast kept expanding. Lynch used digital cameras for the shoot. “Film is organic, it’s beautiful, no two ways about it, it has a quality that I don’t think has been surpassed, but there’s so many drawbacks to it,” says Lynch, whose movies include lovingly crafted celluloid masterpieces like Eraserhead, The Elephant Man, and Blue Velvet. “Digital has gotten to a good point where you can get a pretty beautiful thing, and there’s a million things you can do with it. And even if you shoot on film, you’re going to end up transferring it onto a digital format eventually. So digital is pretty beautiful, and it assures you you’re going to have a chance of everybody seeing the same thing.”

Angelo Badalamenti, a frequent Lynch collaborator who did the music for the original Twin Peaks, is doing the music for the revival. Lynch is a musician himself, and he plays a mean, home-made guitar. When I asked him if he’ll be playing on the soundtrack, he said no, but then his producing partner, Sabrina S. Sutherland, corrected him. “There are a couple things.”

“There are?” he asked.

“Yes, there are,” she said.

He shrugged. “Okay, then maybe I did.”

Here are some other things that might be true about Twin Peaks:

1. Everyone in Hollywood is in it.

Okay, that’s not true at all, but it sure feels like it. There are 217 people in the cast, including most of the original cast. Notable omissions include Lara Flynn Boyle (Donna), Moira Kelly (who played Donna in the Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me movie), Michael Ontkean (Sheriff Harry S. Truman), Joan Chen (Josie Packard), and Piper Laurie (Catherine Martell ). Jack Nance, a longtime Lynch player (Eraserhead) who played Pete Martell, and Frank Silva, the set dresser whom Lynch famously cast on the fly to play BOB, passed away before the project was conceived. Notable newcomers including Laura Dern, Naomi Watts, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Monica Bellucci, Michael Cera, James Belushi, Tim Roth, Robert Forster, Pearl Jam frontman Eddie Vedder, and more. Lynch won’t say who the newbies will be playing, and it’s quite possible many will have blink-and-you’ll-miss-them cameos. The way some actors tell it, it sounds like some people called up, asked if they could be in the show, and Lynch said, “You bet!” Says Kyle MacLachlan: “I would hear stories from them about how they were heavily influenced by Twin Peaks, and so they wanted to be part of the new series, even if it was just one day of shooting. For others, it was about working with David because he is so phenomenal. It just kept growing.” Asked who Vedder plays, MacLachlan says: “You know, I didn’t know Eddie was there. But I think he sings.”

2. That fan theory you like might be true. Or not.

In the season 2 finale of Twin Peaks, which ended up being the series finale of the show, Agent Cooper enters The Black Lodge and encounters the specter of Laura Palmer (Sheryl Lee). “I’ll see you again 25 years,” she says. Then, after adding, “Meanwhile…,” she strikes a vogue pose and freezes. The popular theory among fans is that the revival — which arrives nearly 26 years after the last episode aired — will retroactively turn the line into a prophecy. Put another way: The new Twin Peaks will be set in the present. Frost said as much in the early press about the project, and if you look at EW’s first look photos from the production, you’ll see there’s no attempt to make the actors look anything any younger than they are. (Although we think it’s odd that many of them still dress as they did back in the day.) But the official word from Lynch — clearly the lead creative pilot on the revival — is that you shouldn’t assume anything about what you’ll see on screen. He won’t even confirm that the original cast will actually be playing their original characters in any real way, except for one: Kyle MacLachlan will reprise his role as FBI Agent Dale Cooper. Lynch himself will be in it, playing Cooper’s boss Gordon Cole, or some version of him. “Gordon is a fantastic person,” is all Lynch will say about the character. What’s it like directing himself? Lynch laughs. “Gordon doesn’t need much direction,” he says.

3. It doesn’t all take place in Twin Peaks.

“It takes place all over the country,” says David Nevins, Showtime’s president and CEO. “Twin Peaks is an important locus, but it’s not the only locus.”

4. Expect a lot of Agent Cooper, and a lot of mythology.

Nevins says that he was prepared to say yes to the new Twin Peakseven before Lynch and Frost pitched the project to him in 2014. But he did need to hear two things; we’ll tackle them separately. First, he wanted to hear that the story would have a lot of Agent Cooper. Check! “I’m really interested in the journey of Agent Cooper — where he’s coming from, where he’s going to, and what the obstacles in his way are,” says Nevins. “That, to me, just as a viewer, was my core interest in what happened to Agent Cooper.”

The original Twin Peaks ended with a number of cliffhangers, none more shocking or disturbing than the fate of Agent Cooper. While trying to rescue his girlfriend Annie from the clutches of former partner Windom Earle in The Black Lodge, Cooper was assaulted by his own dark-side doppelgänger. In the episode’s final shot, we saw that it was Cooper’s dark half — or, to put the same idea a different way, Cooper possessed by demon BOB — that made it out of that red-curtained underworld. “As we left, evil has established a beachhead in Twin Peaks through Agent Cooper,” says MacLachlan, who declined to elaborate further, other than to say that he found it very rewarding to play Cooper’s dark side, and that we might be surprised how Cooper reconciles and resolves this crisis of duality. “Twin Peaks is a cosmology,” says Nevins. “What I think is satisfying about the new version is that it’s a deeper exploration of that stuff. What is the red room? How does the red room work? Where is Agent Cooper? Can he make it back?”

5. Expect pure grade Lynchiness.

The second thing Nevins needed to hear was that Lynch would direct the whole thing. Check! Nevins was quoted earlier this year as saying that new Twin Peaks is “the pure heroin of David Lynch.” Asked to elaborate, Nevins recently told EW: “What I really meant was like uncut and that it’s just a very pure form. We are getting to observe a master artist, master filmmaker getting to use all of the tools that he’s developed over the course of his career. It just feels like that sort of uncut, unadulterated version of it.” That’s important, he says, because “my only anxiety was that the show not feel like the ersatz version of Twin Peaks. We weren’t going to do ‘Twin Peaks: The Remake,’ and David would lend his name and someone else would write and direct it.”

6. Okay, but what kind of pure grade Lynchiness?

Lynch’s films often feel dreamy or nightmarish or both, but some are as linear as The Straight Story and some are as looping as Mulholland Drive. Which one will the new Twin Peaks be? “The honest answer is both,” says Nevins. Adds Gary Levine, Showtime’s president of programming: “There’s a very compelling spine through this story, and yet there are diversions, tangents, fantasy.”

7. It might not be as TV-MA as you think.

Some fans are assuming that Lynch will take full advantage of pay cable’s creative freedoms and deliver an R-rated version of Twin Peaks, à la Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me. “He is taking advantage of cable freedoms and there are moments of very strong material, but David’s pretty clean,” says Nevins. “There’s darkness and there’s scariness, but a lot less cursing and probably somewhat less nudity than most of our other programming. Definitely a lot less cursing…. Part what defines David as such an entertaining filmmaker is he’s got such a range of tones. It’s funny, it’s dramatic, it’s emotional, it’s shocking, and occasionally it’s violent, but a lot of times the violence is more implied than shown. That’s one of the things I really like about the show, there’s just such a satisfying range of tones. I don’t like things that are one thing. I like things that are lots of things.”

8. Lynch wants you to watch the show on a TV with a great sound system.

Lynch doesn’t just take great care making images — he’s also known for his dense, intricate soundscapes. Hence, he really hopes you have a home entertainment system that’ll flatter it, and if not, you’ll invest in one. Because art, people! Art! “It’s not just for me, it’s important for everyone! Sound and picture flowing together in time is the thing, that is cinema, and it’s just so beautiful, it’s got to be protected. So on little speakers on a computer or laptop or something, it’s like you have a B-52 bomber flying close in the sky, just barreling along, and it becomes like a mosquito on the little machine. It’s pathetic.” Besides, we hear there’s someone plays some mean guitar on the soundtrack, and you surely don’t want to miss that.

The Twin Peaks revival debuts May 21 at 9 p.m. ET on Showtime.

(TP)

[yahoo-roto-arcade-blog]

Fantasy baseball roundtable: Judge and jury

The 2017 baseball season is into its second month, still early enough that fantasy owners should remain vigilant on the waiver wire. The Yahoo fantasy baseball crew is here to help identify the players to go after:

Q: Which outfielder, owned in less than 40 percent of Yahoo leagues, are you most interested in adding to your fantasy team?

Brandon Funston: MANUEL MARGOT. San Diego’s top offensive prospect entering ’17 is on a pace for a 15/20 rookie campaign, and he’s hot at the moment (.343 BA in past nine games). 

Andy Behrens: There’s no way the Phillies can possibly remove AARON ALTHERR from the lineup, right? I realize that team threw suitcases full of money at sketchy vets, but Altherr clearly has to play. He’s been an all-category monster since entering the everyday lineup. I’m in. 

Scott Pianowski:  HERNAN PEREZ has shown up in this space before, but you guys have to push him over 40 percent. He’s a versatility ace, and getting a juicy spot in a deep Milwaukee lineup. I’ll also sign off on the Behrens call of Altherr — the Philly outfielder reached base 11 times in the Chicago series and shouldn’t have to sweat the Howie Kendrick return. 

Dalton Del Don: MANUEL MARGOT. Thanks to hitting leadoff, he’s scored 15 runs despite a poor OBP. Margot has added three homers and four steals (he’s already attempted eight stolen bases), so a run at 20/25 seems plausible. Thanks to strong defense (and a weak class so far), Margot is actually tied for the NL lead in WAR among rookies.

Predict the line: Considering that he went undrafted in many leagues, Yankees young slugger Aaron Judge has to be considered the fantasy MVP of the first month of the ’17 campaign. What fantasy recommendation (Buy/Sell/Hold) would you give him at this time, and please provide your prediction for his year-end five-category roto line?

Funston: HOLD. I would love to be selling on this as-good-as-it-gets streak by Judge, but I don’t see enough of an inflated market, frankly. There’s a Judge for Charlie Blackmon deal in that view of the Yahoo trade market, and that’s the kind of swap I’d be looking for if I was a Judge owner. But the reality is that owners aren’t quite buying all the way in on Judge’s historic first month, so the best play is to hold. I’ll predict that Judge averages five homers a month the rest of the way, while his average steadily declines along the way as pitchers figure out new ways to attack the Yankees’ young slugger. Final line: .265, 37 HR, 105 RBI, 90 R, 5 SB

Behrens: HOLD, tenderly. If I were to shop him — let’s say in the Friends & Family league, hypothetically, where I have many needs — I’d want a star, an early-round pick. Judge certainly isn’t a fluke. The kid hit 19 homers in just 93 games at Triple-A last season; he pretty clearly has another 20-plus homers in him. 

Pianowski: It’s one of those forced HOLDS, because a trade forces his owners to make a negative assumption and the other owner to make a positive one. The same rules apply to the Eric Thames owner.  Judge has 20-25 more homers in him, with an average around .260. 

Del Don: HOLD. He strikes out too often to bat much better than around .260ish moving forward, but the power is so obviously real. I wouldn’t necessarily be trying to sell high, as I assume most others realize Judge’s crazy hot start isn’t exactly fully sustainable. I’ll predict he finishes with a line of .285-100-40-115-5, helping his owners win a bunch of fantasy titles in the process. 

Q: Which infielder, owned in less than 40 percent of Yahoo leagues, are you most interested in adding to your fantasy team?

Funston: JOSE REYES. I liked Reyes as a nice late-round sleeper heading into the season and, after a very slow start, he’s finally starting to validate that opinion. In his past eight games, Reyes is hitting .391 with three home runs and two steals. With 3B and SS eligibility, he offers nice utility off the bench.

Behrens: Let’s go deep, people. If you have the old “NA” spot available to you for a minor league stash, please consider Phillies first base prospect RHYS HOSKINS. He’s crushing at Triple-A, following a 38-homer season at Double-A Reading. When he arrives in the bigs, you’ll want him. It’s not as if Tommy Joseph has done anything notable. 

Pianowski:  Are we having fun with MARWIN GONZALEZ yet? Maybe it’s not really a fluke. He’s hit .279 before. He’s hit 13 homers as a part-timer before. He’s stolen 12 bases before, not that he’s a high-percentage thief (call it the Springer Rule). Some mechanical adjustments at the dish are paying dividends. Playing every day goes a long way towards a player’s confidence. 

Del Don: ASDRUBAL CABRERA. He’s coming off a season in which he totaled 28 homers/steals and hit .280 in just 141 games. Cabrera is batting second in the Mets’ lineup and is on pace to score 108 runs. 

PICK ‘EM: Which struggling corner-eligible player would you be most interested in making a buy-low play on right now – Edwin Encarnacion, Kyle Seager, Chris Davis, Evan Longoria, Alex Bregman?

Funston: KYLE SEAGER. Slow starts have become the norm for Seager, who came into the season with a .216 BA in April over the past three seasons. But you know in the end you’ll get 155-plus games played, and something in the neighborhood of .270, 25 HR, 90 RBI – write it down in pen.

Behrens: Any? All? OK, maybe not Davis, because he’s actually doing his usual thing — leading the league in Ks and hitting .220-ish. And maybe not Longoria, because he’s ambiguously injured. But I’d make a play for anyone else on this list. 

Pianowski:  The proven guys get the nod, the Seager, Encarnacion, Longoria group. I’m more Davis believer than disbeliever, but we at least have to acknowledge the downside risk he carries. Bregman’s pedigree is pretty, but he’s just a .264/.329/.425 man in the majors. The preseason helium might have been premature. (I expected Behrens to write in “Schwarber” here, no matter the positions. Oh, wait, there’s a video.)

Del Don: ENCARNACION. I worry a bit about Bregman, especially given how aggressively he was drafted in many leagues, but I’d expect the rest of these veterans to all bounce back over the rest of the season. It’s a little odd Encarnacion has struck out so much in the early going given his career K rate, but Cleveland is a great hitter’s park, and I fully expect him to rebound moving forward. 

Q: Which pitcher, owned in less than 40 percent of Yahoo leagues, are you most interested in adding to your fantasy team?

Funston: ARCHIE BRADLEY (if looking for relief); JESSE HAHN (if in need of a starter). Bradley has been mostly untouchable (.167 BAA) in relief for Arizona, and he might be in play if/when Arizona has to demote Fernando Rodney from the closer role. Among starters, Hahn has delivered a quality start every time out this season. His fastball average (94 mph) ranks top 25 among starters, he’s limiting baserunners (1.03 WHIP), and his home is one of the most pitching-friendly environments in the league.

Behrens: For me, the answer to these pitching questions is usually going to be a non-closing reliever, someone you can use to control your pitching ratios and enhance your K-rate. This week, I’ll go CARL EDWARDS JR., who’s been near perfect for the Cubs. He’s striking out well over a batter per inning this season, just like last year. 

Pianowski:  The last thing I want to do is assume logic with St. Louis manager Mike Matheny, but TREVOR ROSENTHAL might be back in form. He’s struck out 17 batters in 8.1 innings — against just two walks — and has three rogue saves. Meanwhile, Seung-hwan Oh hasn’t looked sharp all year.

Del Don: PATRICK CORBIN. Over his last three starts, Corbin has a 1.86 ERA and a 0.93 WHIP with a 23:4 K:BB ratio over 19.1 innings. His 12.0 SwStr% ranks No. 17 among all starting pitchers this season. There’s a lot of strikeout potential here. 

PICK ‘EM: Which of these veteran closers – Jim Johnson, Francisco Rodriguez, Neftali Feliz (we’ll leave Fernando Rodney out of this because, well, that’s just too easy) – do you think is most likely to lose his job first and, in the event that happens, which set-up man would you expect to benefit from that demotion?

Funston: NEFTALI FELIZ. I’ll go with Feliz because the best closer-in-waiting behind any of these guys is Corey Knebel, who is off to a fantastic start (1.26 ERA, 11.9 K/9 rate). If Feliz continues to run into trouble, I’m guessing Milwaukee would promote Knebel without blinking.

Behrens: FELIZ, because he’s no better than the third or fourth best reliever on his own team. Jacob Barnes definitely has closing-quality stuff, but COREY KNEBEL has been absolutely lights-out. 

Pianowski:  I’m not sure how Jim Johnson landed on this list. He was rock-solid in Atlanta last year, and his current FIP is barely over one. You want to sell your Johnson shares, I’m your first call. I expect the Tigers to mistakenly give K-Rod an extensive leash, so by default let’s vulture FELIZ, with Corey Kneble the slight speculation preference. 

Del Don: FELIZ is definitely the most worrisome for me, as he’s already allowed four homers over 11.2 innings. All three are possible trade candidates, but Feliz’s stuff simply isn’t what it once was. Corey Knebel (and his 34.6 K%) would be the most likely option to take over closing duties should Feliz lose the job. 

Follow the Yahoo crew on Twitter: Andy Behrens, Dalton Del Don, Brad Evans, Brandon Funston, Liz Loza and Scott Pianowski

[hyperfixatingrn]

Rewatch & Explanation

TL;DR: I rewatched all of season 4 and took notes on interesting things, themes, and just general things I noticed. I also responded to supposed plot holes and other questions I’ve seen floating around. The extensive notes are, expectedly, in the “keep reading.”

For anyone who cares: Season 4 of Sherlock fucked me up. Not necessarily because I was depressed by it; it was more because the show literally consumed me for almost the entire month of January. The day after TFP, I looked in the mirror and realized that I had forgotten to take care of myself for over a week.

I wasn’t fully satisfied with season 4 on my first watch, but I liked it enough. But having trusted Moftiss almost implicitly when it comes to the writing of this show, I was really surprised when this season didn’t wow me as much as it usually does. The negative attitude that just erupted with the end of the season and the feeling of impending doom concerning the show’s future was a bit too much for me. I felt my opinions of the season were too clouded and influenced by my own anxiety and other people’s frustrations. But this show has really meant so much to me for the past 7 years.  So, on the Monday after TFP aired, I did what was most therapeutic and rewatched the whole season while commenting on it/answering any questions or assumed plot holes I have seen floating around, so that I could decide my real, final opinion on the season. At the end of the rewatch I cried tears and tears of joy. I really think this season is worth another shot. It wasn’t the best, but that doesn’t mean it was bad. I am finally posting it.

P.S. A side note... I’ve never really done meta and I’m too fragile/insecure to test my abilities out right now. So sometimes I will point out something or a theme/motif but not go deep into why I think it is that way. Sorry!

1. “Sherlock said he knew exactly what Moriarty was going to do next, but he didn’t.”

At the end of TAB, we see Sherlock say he knows what Moriarty is going to do next. This line is referred to in the beginning of TST. Lady Smallwood says, “...You also say you know what he’s going to do next.” To that, Sherlock responds that Moriarty has, “Planned something, something long-term. Something that would take effect if he never made it off that rooftop alive. Posthumous revenge. No, better than that - posthumous game.” What we see here is that while Sherlock does not know “exactly” the specifics of Moriarty’s return, he has basically hit the nail on the head in terms of a “posthumous game,” which we see in TFP.

side analysis: Sherlock asks if it is his birthday in TST, and then it is his birthday in TLD. Cute little wrap up.

2. In TST, we see Mycroft look at a photo of a baby girl and have no idea what to say about it. He goes on to say that he has never been good with humans. This is indicative of how he could put his sister in a prison for 30 years and tell her parents she was dead and allow her other brother to believe she doesn’t exist.

3. “Eurus’s powers are over the top. She is not a superhero.”

In TST Sherlock says, “The world is woven from billions of lives, every strand crossing every other. What we call premonition is just movement of the web. If you could attenuate to every strand of quivering data, the future would be entirely calculable. As inevitable as mathematics.” This theory is brought up a second time in the season in TLD: “Interesting, isn’t it. I have theorised before that if one could attenuate to every available data stream in the world simultaneously, it would be possible to anticipate and deduce almost anything.” As this is brought up TWICE, we can assume is how Eurus operates. It is a foreshadowing of Eurus’s impressive capabilities. She is able to predict and control the world. She is so clever that she makes herself aware of all the data of the world and can therefore predict the future. It is also worth noting that Mrs. Holmes is a former mathematician. So Eurus’s intelligence/attention to the world’s data is as easy for her as mathematics is for her mother. Ahhh... family.

4. In TST, Mycroft reveals that Sherlock wrote his own version of “Appointment in Samarra” as a child because he didn’t like that the man had to die. He writes “Appointment in Sumatra” instead where the man actually outruns death and becomes a pirate. (Sherlock is the softest.) In TFP, Moriarty reveals TO Mycroft (five years in the past) that he wrote his own version of the Nativity as a child called “The Hungry Donkey.” He says that putting a baby in a manger is just asking for it. Sherlock and Moriarty’s fan fictions give insight to the inherent emotional differences between Sherlock and Moriarty. Sherlock is highly emotional and afraid of death, while Moriarty welcomes it. Much like how Sherlock fakes his death, but Moriarty shoots himself in the mouth just to win the argument.

5. “TFP was just a bunch of horror movies in one episode.”

Well, while I lack the knowledge to actually dispute this (I don’t watch horror movies) the horror movie trend was already set in TST. While John and Mary discuss Rosie’s destruction of the front room, they mention a couple of horror movies, The Exorcist and The Omen, and then speak about how Rosie cannot be both the devil and the antichrist.

side analysis: Napoleon is mentioned twice in the series. Once by Craig in TST: “Thatcher’s like, I dunno, Napoleon now.” And once by Sherlock in TLD: “Napoleon Bonaparte... Actually, just Napoleon would do.”

6. A theme of daughters.

I was suspicious of this, but I believe my theory has been confirmed. There is at least one daughter in every episode. TST: Rosie and also the daughter of Jack Sandeford, the owner of the last Thatcher bust. TLD: Culverton’s daughter Faith. TFP: Eurus. In TST, Sandeford’s daughter is swimming in the pool. This is most likely a foreshadow for the deep water nightmares and Eurus’s relation to it. Faith is the daughter of a psychopath, while Eurus is a real psychopath, and Eurus disguises herself as Faith. This obviously isn’t a proper analysis... but the fact is there.

7. Sherlock is off his game is TST, but the revealing part is why.

Sherlock is trying very hard in TST to be Season 1′s “high functioning sociopath.” He wants to be unemotional and focused on only work. He texts during his best friend’s important life events and doesn’t seriously engage with anyone in a manner that is unrelated to work. He is assumes his strategies have succeeded and that he knows exactly what is happening. He assumes Moriarty is behind the busts because Mycroft mentioned that Jim had, “latterly shown some interest in tracking down the Black Pearl of the Borgias.” Which is why Sherlock breaks the Thatcher bust with such arrogance saying, “Let me present Interpol’s number one case. Too tough for them, too boring for me.” He is wrong about what is in the bust, obviously. He misses what is “right in front of him.” Sherlock also loses his cool and goes off on deduction temper tantrums twice in the episode. First, he fake-deduces that a man’s wife is a spy, just because the man thought he had “done something clever,” but it’s actually quite “simple.” In this moment, we see that Sherlock still has a lot of growing up to do. We see it again in his interaction with Mrs. Norbury as he degrades her again and again, even as Mary warns him not to. He ends it with a kicker: “Vivian Norbury, who outsmarted them all. All except Sherlock Holmes.” The second fit proves fatal to his best friend’s wife. In the end, Sherlock must realize that it is not his detached, callous, emotionless manner that gets him to solve the cases AND save the life. It is his heart. That is what is so important about this episode and really why it starts the journey of Season 4.

8. “Families fall out.” - Sherlock

Sherlock says this in TST in response to Mary. Clearly foreshadowing Eurus. What is even more damning is the game he plays with the boy in Morocco. 

Sherlock: Mr. Baker. Well, that completes the set. 

Boy: No, it does not. 

Sherlock: Well, who else am I missing?

Boy: Master Bun. It’s not a set without him.

Sherlock: I suppose I’m not familiar with the concept... happy families.

This is so clearly a reference to the fact that Sherlock is unaware his family is incomplete, yet still completely aware that his family is unhappy. Also Mr. Baker? Baker Street? Mr. Baker is probably a symbol for Sherlock. Sherlock saying that Mr. Baker completes the set shows that he believes he is the youngest child and the end of the Holmes family. The boy then says Sherlock is missing “Master Bun,” who is apparently a “him” in this game, but I think that the metaphor still holds. 

9. “There was no indication that Sherlock dreamt of water. Also how could Sherlock dream of water if he had no idea about the well?”

Well first of all, it is clearly stated that Eurus called him “Drowned Redbeard,” but never told them where he was. So it is perfectly reasonable to believe that Sherlock would be haunted by water as his “dog” drowned in it. We also see that Sherlock’s memories are coming back to him even before he is aware of Eurus. When Mary knocks Sherlock out with the drugged letter he has a dream of Redbeard, playing pirate, and Eurus’s song. Then as the dream fades out you see Sherlock running off in the distance, with another boy. Who we know is not Mycroft, because Mycroft was pretty overweight as a child and also much taller than Sherlock. So this is clearly a hazy memory of Victor coming back to Sherlock. As Sherlock wakes up you hear the crashing of the waves, which again emphasizes the importance of water. When the bullet starts towards Sherlock he instantly has a look of fear as a reflection of water dances across his face and loud sounds of water splash all around him. Here we see another example of how Eurus was right and it is true that Sherlock has nightmares of deep water. In Sherlock’s session with Ella, she asks him, “You’ve been having dreams. A recurring dream?” SO we must assume this is a dream about water as it is a reoccurring motif. Sherlock AGAIN hears Eurus’s song in TLD when he is on the bank after Eurus, disguised as Faith, says, “Anyone.”

10. “Not on my watch.”

This phrase is said three times in season 4. It is said by both Sherlock and Mycroft. Mycroft says it in TST, “I don’t like loose ends, not on my watch.” Sherlock says it in TST and TFP. He says it in TST in response to Mycroft suggesting Mary would be “retired in a pretty permanent way.” And he says it in TFP in response to Eurus. “Five minutes. It took her just five minutes to do all of this to us. Well, not on my watch.” I feel as though the implication of actual minutes gives a deeper meaning to the phrase “not on my watch” in TFP. Like, perhaps it wasn’t actually five minutes, it was much longer or much shorter... Just a thought. Fucky.

11. Planes

This is a weak thought, but again the facts are there... There’s never been a season with more than one plane and in season 4 there are three. The one Mary is on disguised as an American, the one all three of them are on, and the one Eurus is on. And John daydreams Eurus (disguised as the girl on the bus) while on the plane, which is coincidental considering Eurus’s main dream/hallucination is that she is on a plane. 

12. Culverton poster in TST foreshadowing (I just honestly didn’t notice the tagline)

“It’s murder in...”

13. In TST, in between the shots of Norbury being escorted out of the aquarium and John in the cemetery, we see a visual of a casket burning. This cannot be Mary because she would either be cremated without a casket or put in a casket (I’m not an expert, but I’m pretty sure that’s how it works?) After watching TFP for the second time, I can confirm that the casket is either pratically identical or is the Molly Hooper casket in TFP. So the question is: Why? Honestly I don’t know. I’ll get back to you.

14. I wish this was #13, but it didn’t work out that way. So the question is WHAT is 13th? It is on a post-it note on Mycroft’s fridge and he sees it and immediately calls Sherrinford. What does it all mean? That doesn’t mean it’s a plot hole, it just means it’s something that hasn’t been explained explicitly. There is a difference.

15. “Your kitchen window faces east.”

Sherlock says this in TLD in his explanation to “Faith” about how he knew her kitchen was tiny. “Faith” is Eurus. Eurus is the east wind. EAST WIND IS COMING. Obviously a foreshadow that this woman is Eurus and the east wind.

16. Development: Mycroft

In TLD, when Lady Smallwood defends Sherlock’s grief over Mary, Mycroft says, “Everybody dies. It’s the one thing human beings can be relied upon to do. How can it still come as a surprise to people?” He is so callous he almost sounds like Moriarty. However, in TFP, he refuses to take a man’s life, “I can’t do this. It’s murder.” He is the one at Sherrinford who cannot take the violence or death. He is constantly shocked by death in TFP. This is clear human development on Mycroft’s part. He is learning and growing and becoming more human.

17. “Is he with someone?” “Not sure. We keep losing visual.”

I think this part has been vastly overlooked. At the time I believe some assumed (though not me because I know a Sian Brooke when I see one) that this little interaction between Mycroft and the man watching the video feed suggested that Sherlock was hallucinating Faith, but after it was confirmed that she was real, the interaction was glassed over. The interaction signifies, to me, that Eurus has power in the government as well or at least that Sherrinford kept keeping Mycroft from seeing her.

18. Game of chess.

Remember in TEH, we think we see Sherlock and Mycroft enraptured in a game of chess, but it actually turns out to be a simple game of operation. In season 4, there were many visuals of a chess table. The hostages in TST play chess and say, “Chess palls after three months.” In TLD, as Sherlock falls onto his couch after his swirling hallucination, we see a chess table underneath the couch. It also in the last shot of the flat before the scene in which Eurus is revealed. In the promotional photos of TFP, Mycroft and Sherlock are actually playing chess, as opposed to in TEH. This probably suggests that season 3 was easier and more child’s play, and that the struggles the boys are up against in season 4 are much more serious and complicated.

19. Once More Unto the Breach

EASILY my favorite scene in the entire seires, besides the hug and Sherlock/baby scenes. Drugged out Sherlock/Ben reciting Shakespeare is something I thought I could have only imagined in my wildest fantasies. This speech itself is usually pretty tame in comparison, though, in context, it is King Henry V RILING his troops up to try to once again attack a weak spot in the enemy’s walls. What is worth noting is that this is the speech when Mrs. Hudson becomes part of the plan to save John Watson. She watched the video, so she might be aware of what Sherlock is doing, but she decides to speed him up. She becomes one of his troops. Also, at the end of his speech he shoots a picture of Culverton with a quote that says, “You wouldn’t believe the things they let me get away with!” Nice detail.

20. Eurus answers John’s phone

WOAHH. Something I totally missed first time watching. Eurus answers John’s phone while he’s dealing with Sherlock and the person on the other end is Culverton Smith. So... that’s worth noting. Especially considering later that she says that Culverton Smith “gave” her the letter. Also like... John is polite to women and also distracted so he doesn’t call her out on this, but like that ISN’T chill. That’s his first session and she answers his phone? Something was off right away.

21. “Get me a fresh glass of water, please, this one’s filthy.”

VERY funny. I laughed, we all laughed. BUT Eurus actually gets him a new glass of water. A metaphor possibly? We all know that he is haunted by her song and water... sooo.... idk just an idea

22. “It’s gone downhill a bit, hasn’t it?”

Everyone assumed that this scene was an indication that this was a dream. No one really knew who John was. It was off, but maybe for a different reason. Let’s consider the fact that John probably hasn’t really been with Sherlock for a significant time. It’s been over three months since Mary died (because it had been three months from when Sherlock had the drug hallucination after Faith to when he and John met Culverton) and also it has been over half a year since the baby was born. John hasn’t gone out with Sherlock in, I’d say at least four months. And before that he was going out with him less and less because of the baby and maybe his last blogs were rushed or spotty BECAUSE he was multitasking and he had a lot on his mind. So, what we can assume is that the blog HAS gone downhill and people are maybe even starting to forget John Watson, which is frankly John’s worst nightmare and sets off his temper. It also makes me wonder if this is related to why John was looking at an image of his blog in TST.

23. The sheep in the waiting room

This visual IMMEDIATELY reminded me of “The Story of Sir Boast-a-lot” in TRF. I actually thought it WAS the exact same visual at first. The sheep are jumping over a fence which is suggestive of “counting sheep to get to sleep.” SO, it is understandable that some people believed this was a dream. I tend to think that instead it was just a hypnotizing, drug-affected scene. Sherlock isn’t totally there. He feels “psychedelic,” as he just topped up in the bathroom. He’s awake, but he isn’t totally there.

24. “Why did John beat up Sherlock? Why didn’t he trust the evidence in front of him instead of listening to Culverton?”

Well, from what we’ve learned from TFP, Eurus can reprogram people’s minds. Eurus was John’s therapist. Whether Eurus made John more susceptible to insecurity or the death of his wife did, I’m not sure. But what we do know is that in the scene in the mortuary Culverton mocks John’s intelligence many times. He really drives home the point that John’s an idiot and not a real doctor for listening to Sherlock who is too high to know what’s real anymore. These attacks really shake John, whereas I argue they would not have in the past. He is usually rather confident in himself and his abilities. But this insecurity in him is rather noticeable. It is also pretty valid. John is nearing rock bottom already and it takes one more nudge from Culverton to get him to the bottom of the barrel. Whether it was Eurus or Mary’s death that made him so fragile, is up for debate. As for John attacking Sherlock, we can speculate whether Euros programmed John to beat up Sherlock. However, I would like to imagine that John just loses his mind in that mortuary. He is not himself. He hasn’t spent time with the man who keeps him grounded, Sherlock, in maybe over 4 months. His wife is dead. He doesn’t spend time with his daughter. He is losing himself. He takes it out on Sherlock, which is not healthy or good, I agree. I cannot explain this away. I would like to quote John Watson on this one, “Why can’t some things be unacceptable and we just accept that?”

25. “Why did Mrs. Hudson call Mycroft a reptile? A bit overboard?”

Well, right before Mrs. Hudson calls Mycroft a reptile she tells everyone to get out because they’re about to watch John’s deceased wife’s video. She says that “Anyone who stays here a minute longer is admitting to me personally they do not have a single spark of human decency.” And then everyone leaves, except Mycroft, who stays with his eyes fixed on the screen ready to watch. So she calls him a reptile because he has just proved that he doesn’t have a “single spark of human decency.” She is such a BAMF. She is the ideal grandma.

26. “I don’t want to die.”

This is profound for me. Sherlock has always been incredibly careless with his life. In ASIP, he was willing to risk the 50/50 chance of death, just to prove he was clever. In TGG, he anxiously scratches the back of his head with a GUN. He doesn’t appear to value his life. He risks death, or great harm, more times than I can count, just for the high or just to prove he’s clever. BUT, this episode we finally see the turn. We see Sherlock understand that when you die you’re not losing your own life, your friends and family are losing you. “Your life is not your own. Keep your hands off it. Off it.” And now as he faces death, he cries and admits that he doesn’t want to die. This man is not Season 1 Sherlock Holmes.

27. “How did Eurus get the original note??? Why?”

This one is tricky, not a plot hole, just challenging (as Gatiss said). But I do have some theories. Eurus says that, “Culverton gave me the original note. A mutual friend put us in touch.” We must assume, or at least I did, that this mutual friend is Moriarty, unless Eurus made other “friends” on Sherrinford. We can also assume this because Eurus says that Sherlock didn’t get the “big one” (one as in deduction that she added to the note), which WAS “Miss Me?” Now what she says about who gave it to her causes me to come up with three possible theories all of which start which the fact that I assume Culverton is friends or at least in touch with Moriarty as they are both legendary criminals. These are the theories: 1. Culverton decided he wanted to finally be free and confess to everyone permanently (why else would he keep the note after all that time?) and gave Moriarty the note to give to someone to help him out. BUT based off of Culverton’s face when he finds out that Sherlock had a recording device in John’s walking cane, this theory seems unlikely. 2. Culverton gave it as a present to Moriarty because Moriarty is weird and twisted like that and would probably love a present like that. THEN Moriarty gave it to Eurus. And finally... 3. Culverton told Moriarty about the note, Moriarty told Eurus about the note, then Eurus drugged Culverton (with TD-12???) and stole the note herself. So perhaps when she says that Culverton gave her the original note, she’s more being ironic and doesn’t mean it as precisely as it comes off.

28. The gun. “A tranquilizer gun is not the same as a real gun...”

I thought that I was going to have a very difficult time analyzing this or even proving this wrong until I actually rewatched the scene. The focus is never put on the gun. The gun is actually never in focus. Then we hear a gun shot and we look down the barrel of a gun. When you look down the barrel of the gun in the end and the screen turns red, I believe that meant to be a literal red herring because quite honestly, to me, the barrel we stare down in that final moment does not look the same as the gun in the rest of the scene. The gun she is flailing around (out of focus, mind you) seems to have two separate barrels, which is what appears to be the requirement of a tranquilizer gun. And I did some research on tranquilizer guns and what they can look like, and they can look quite similar to a regular gun, not exactly alike, but similar. And then the plot hole question becomes “John is a soldier, shouldn’t he have known the difference?” Well, as capable as John is, I’d like to give him the benefit of the doubt in this situation, because I’ve been to therapy and I know what it’s like to have your guard down and then suddenly realize your therapist isn’t trustworthy. It’s very intense. So a woman he trusted suddenly started locking him in and revealed she was the crazy secret sister of his best friend who he had also vaguely had an affair with and then she pointed a gun to his face. No matter his training, he was not prepared to be in battle mode and check out whether her gun was real. If it looks like a psychopath and talks like a psychopath, assume she’s pointing a real gun at you, was probably his instinct.

29. “So you’re telling me Eurus was just going to “tranquilize” John so he could just run and tell Sherlock??”

Yes... literally that is what I am telling you. She planned a massive, intense, dark game for Sherlock at Sherrinford. Are you telling me she was just going to kill John and risk Sherlock never showing up to her murder island? Of course she wants him to find out who she is. But also she’s a HOLMES. She wants credit for her cleverness. THEN ALSO people are saying, “Yeah ok, but then why did she send a grenade to their house.” As we’ve already discussed Eurus can accurately predict people’s actions almost perfectly. She probably predicted how they would react to the grenade and how they would try and save themselves from the grenade. A point I will make later is that the aftermath of the blast does not seem that devastating. All of the walls are fine. Sherlock and John’s chairs are fine. Papers and stuff are burnt but there is no structural damage. I believe Mycroft overestimated how awful the grenade would be. I don’t even think it would have killed them. They all survived. She wanted them to come. She didn’t plan for five years for nothing. She just wanted to play with their heads.

30. “Why would Mycroft’s first instinct be to smile when he saw his family film rather than the movie he was watching? Rather than wondering what was wrong?”

Well as they (they as in Mycroft and Sherlock) say, “Sentiment is a chemical defect found in the losing side.” Mycroft is clever, but as Mrs. Hudson points out... he’s an idiot and he’s becoming more human every episode. So when he sees himself as an overweight child eating cake next to his “brother mine” of course he smiles. Of course, he’s confused. But of course he smiles.

31. If TFP was going for the horror movie theme, this opening scene really sets it up very nicely. It gave me chills the first and second time watching. 

32. “How could Redbeard have been a child? If he was, how could Mycroft talk about it as if it was nothing?”

Well, I believe there are a couple things of note here. Mycroft, while cold, cares about Sherlock a lot. This is made clear from the very first episode. We see in the TFP that even when Sherlock felt he was bullying him by bringing up Redbeard or the “east wind,” Mycroft was trying to analyze Sherlock and see if his memories had resurfaced, if at all. He’s very sensitive about it. He worries. In the scene in the flat, Mycroft is delicately telling Sherlock about his sister that he forgot existed and I think it would have been a bad idea for him to suddenly drop the bomb that his beloved dog was actually his best friend. Mycroft lies to protect Sherlock. When Sherlock accusing Mycroft of lying, he admits it and says, “It is also a kindness.” Another moment that is revealing is:

John: You don’t lock up a child because a dog goes missing.

Mycroft: Quite so.

So Mycroft is actually hinting that Eurus wasn’t locked up because a dog went missing, but for a much bigger reason: Victor Trevor’s death. He continues to go into depth on why they had to send her away, which reveals a scene in which she draws Sherlock’s death a number of times while her parents talk in the background. Daddy Holmes says, “She knows where he is!” To which Mommy Holmes responds, “We can’t make her tell us. We can’t make her do anything.” This already indicates that it is a much bigger issue than a dog, though I admit I missed it at first glance. If Eurus had drowned a dog, they wouldn’t still be worrying about where the body is. Only a human body would still be necessary for a funeral and also the family. Another side point is that, a dog is usually a family thing, but Sherlock has always described it as “his dog.” At first I thought this was endearing, but then I realized it was because Victor was HIS best friend and that’s how he remembered it.

33. “John knows what grenades are & Mycroft knew what that specific grenade was and could have mentioned it before the motion sensor turned on!”

In terms of Mycroft, he’s not used to field work. You hear him say the second he sees it, “Keep back! Keep as still as you can!” His reflexes are not as sharp as John’s or Sherlock’s because he’s a behind the scenes man. If Sherlock had known what it was he would have formulated a plan in seconds. He’s the “dragon slayer,” he lives for the action. Mycroft however is always on the other side. He panicked, I believe. He knew what he was seeing and tried to warn them, but it wasn’t good enough. He is not perfect or great in the field and we see especially in TFP. As Sherlock points out, “I’m beginning to think you’re not [clever].” In terms of John, this is very clearly not a regular grenade, or one John is used to, because someone would have to pull the plug and throw it, while this is resting on a drone. If John had seen a grenade thrown in a room his response time would be immediate. Again, when called to battle his reflexes are immediate. His question also comes immediately after he hears Mycroft say, “Keep as still as you can!” This I guess begs the question exactly what KIND of grenade are we dealing with? So he IMMEDIATELY, literally immediately after Mycroft says that, asks “What is it?” I think he was asking very specifically what kind of grenade it was rather than being like, “oi doi, what’s that? I’ve never seen one of these before.” He was responding to Mycroft’s fierce reaction. He wanted the specifics based on the reaction.

34. “How are Sherlock, John, and Mycroft not scathed at all after enduring a blast of a grenade?”

To be fair, I think Mycroft vastly overestimated its powers. I don’t actually think it was that deadly. If they had stood in the same spot, sure. BUT, the entire flat was mostly salvageable after the burst, so the bomb couldn’t have been that bad. There was absolutely no structural damage and all of the furniture was fine. I think it was a fire that burned hot but burned quick. It wasn’t that deadly. Eurus wanted them to get to her, so she wasn’t trying to kill them. Think of it like TGG when Sherlock endures the blast of the bomb from across the street, but is not in the bomb, so he doesn’t really get hurt. A second story window is honestly not that high. Yes broken glass, but their backs endured most of the damage. Their arms/elbows went through the glass first so as not to damage their beautiful faces. Who knows if they have scratches on their backs and arms. They were covered for the entirety of the episode. Anything that happened to them would probably be bruises or cuts beneath their clothes. The jump is a bit fantastical, yes. But Sherlock has always been that way. Always. We’ve just always forgiven it or accepted it as part of the world.

35. “How did they get on the boat?”

Helicopter. The new boy on the boat asks if he hears a helicopter, but the older man passes it off as just the weather. But this is the helicopter that helps Sherlock and John get on the boat. Helicopters have drop down ladders or ropes. Not that difficult really. They do it in the military all the time. John is a soldier and Sherlock is clearly very trained in many forms of things so, not that far fetched.

36. “It’s totally ooc for Sherlock to ignore Vatican Cameos.”

Well, yeah. That’s 100% the point. Eurus is intoxicating for almost everyone. Sherlock is so distracted by her psychotic nature that he doesn’t notice that there is NO GLASS. He admits the scheme is so easy “its transparent” (haha pun). But seriously, this moment was supposed to make you feel uneasy. None of them are safe, none of them are in their element. This whole EPISODE is meant to make you feel uneasy. 

37. “The Molly scene was sexist and unnecessary.”

Okay, but like... of course it’s unnecessary. Murder Island is unnecessary. Unnecessary is a very subjective word. The whole point is that Eurus is psychotic and an ACTUAL psychopath who doesn’t understand the benefit of emotions or sentiment. She is analyzing Sherlock for his emotions. She is using people to experiment with his emotions. It’s awful. Molly will survive, her entire life will not be defined by this moment. AND if it is it will be for the best reason. She will finally move on or she will figure out who she is. I’m not saying that this scene was good, but in the worst situations come the best recoveries. To me she is not “throw away” and never was, and I disagree greatly with anyone that says that “this scene proved she is.” I think that Molly is inCREDIBLY strong. It’s like John said in TLD, Molly “see’s through [Sherlock’s] bullshit.” And I really feel like we see that in this scene. She isn’t weak. She is a woman in love, but she isn’t weak. She almost hangs up on him and tells him to stop making fun of her. That is a very brave thing to do. And then, the best part for me, she makes him tell her he loves her first. He must embarrass himself too. She won’t allow herself to be the sole prisoner of this game. THEN after he says it, she almost hangs up. Molly is a bad ass ok? This scene isn’t fun. But Molly is a great character. Just since season 1, she has proved time and time again that she survives and every time you think she’s been broken she comes back better. In that scene, Molly was crying and having a bad day so, I assumed that she had broken up with her fiancee Tom. I should have done some engagement ring analysis from the rest of the season, BUT in TFP she is definitely not wearing an engagement ring. So by this analysis this is honestly just an awful time for her and why she’s crying so much. And as to her still loving Sherlock, I still love people I shouldn’t and have never even been with and they have broken my heart. It’s just that until you find the right person, you’re in love with the person you were in love with before. She is not destined to be the girl that never gets over Sherlock Holmes, she just hasn’t found the right man yet. It is not sexist or anti-feminist to be in love with someone for a long time. Loo even tweeted that herself. The really important part about this scene is what it does to Sherlock. When Sherlock finds out that he did that to Molly for NOTHING? He breaks a fucking coffin. He is DEVASTATED. He hates that he has to embarrass her like that. Which is soooo different from Season 1 Sherlock who embarrassed Molly all the time without even realizing it. For me this scene is beautifully dark. After murder island Sherlock definitely came back and was like, “Molly I’m so so sorry. I thought your flat was going to explode and that was the code word.” And she would be like, “Oh. You’re a bastard, but okay.” Long live Molly Hooper.

38. “Why is Molly talking to her home screen?”

On smart phones this is actually completely possible. You can have a call and do a million things at one time. You can click the home button and still be on the call. I’m sorry, but this question is really lazy. This might have actually been a mistake while making the show, but even if it wasn’t like... we all know that it is possible to still be talking on the phone while your phone is on it’s home screen. Maybe she accidentally clicked the home button.

39. “How did Sherlock destroy a coffin without hurting himself?”

Because it was a cheap ass coffin. Couldn’t we all tell the second we saw it that it was a cheap ass coffin? It’s tiny and flimsy. He also, when he starts actually grabbing at pieces and destroying it, pretty clearly grabbed it by the fabric (so it was soft on his hands) and flung it around.

40. A big moment for me in this episode was watching Mycroft watch John and Sherlock, like anytime they did anything. He realized how crucial John was. Especially after Sherlock destroys the coffin, John just goes over and tells him he has to get it together and helps him up and Mycroft clearly analyzes this. And in the next scene he is calculatedly callous to help Sherlock decide to shoot him instead of John. Sherlock reads into it immediately. It made me cry. 

Sherlock: Even your Lady Bracknell was more convincing.

Mycroft: You said you liked my Lady Bracknell.

41. “It’s out of character that John didn’t react when Sherlock had a gun to his head.”

John trusts Sherlock and this was Sherlock taking control of the situation. This is what John knows. In that moment, EURUS actually starts freaking out and you realize that Sherlock is now in charge. I don’t know if John believed that Sherlock would actually end up shooting himself. I know Sherlock believed it; he was willing to die for Mycroft and John, but I think John was perhaps in shock, maybe also not wanting to startle a man with a gun to his chin, but I also firmly believe that he finally had some hope.

42. “How did she get them from Sherrinford to Musgrave so quickly?”

Who said it was quickly? We have to assume they were out for hours. It was daytime when they were at Sherrinford and it’s the middle of the night at Musgrave. Sherlock even asks the “little girl” how long he’s been gone and she says, “hours. Hours and hours.”

43. “John is a doctor. He should know what kind of bones they are.”

This comment actually makes me laugh really hard hahaha. Look, it’s pitch black so he can’t see, he’s wet so his sense of touch is off, and also it’s been .05 seconds. He’s a doctor identifying bones with no eyes, not an archeologist. Give him a minute. He gets it eventually.

44. “Why does Victor eat out of a dog’s bowl?”

He doesn’t. This comment also makes me laugh REALLY hard ahahhahah. Eurus put it there for dramatic effect. Holmes siblings can’t resist a flair for the dramatic.

45. “Sherlock’s reaction to John in the well is so ooc. Remember how he reacted when John was in the bonfire?”

Okay, these are two ENTIRELY different events and reactions for MANY reasons. In the bonfire incident, Sherlock had no reason to believe John was in danger before Mary received the texts. Sherlock was enjoying his chips (well, to a certain extent... “You’re suicidal. you’re allowed chips.”) when Mary interrupted his evening. In TFP, John and Sherlock have been tested throughout the entire episode, so Sherlock was bound to already assume that John was in some kind of cell or dark, dingy place when they awoke. In TEH, Sherlock and John were not on speaking terms at the moment and Sherlock hadn’t truly spent time with him in two years. The idea of losing him just like that was, imaginably, very rattling. It prompted the first “Oh my God,” that we have ever heard out of the mouth of Sherlock Holmes. We can assume it is unnerving for Sherlock to ever think of losing John, but in that moment he was just not even close to ready, okay? In TFP, Sherlock and John are back to normal. They shared that lovely, tender hug, released all of their tension and are now basically as good as new. Their banter in the beginning of the episode was very classic. Sherlock has nothing to prove to John right now in terms of his loyalty to him and their friendship. ALSO John in TEH was literally unconscious, underneath a soon-to-be blazing bonfire that was miles awake from Baker Street. The response time in terms of saving John’s life needed to be much quicker in TEH. In TFP, John is fully conscious and aware in a flooding well that’s on the property Sherlock is standing on. He is also chained to the bottom of this well. Sherlock has no idea where this well is and there is also a little girl who he believes is about to die. He knows John is a very capable man who, at least in this instance (unlike TEH), is conscious and vaguely able to try and fend for himself while Sherlock tries to not only save his life but a child’s. We see the same sort of heat and fear in Sherlock when he insists, “I AM FINDING YOU!” but it is just a different situation. John is not burning and he can try to survive a bit longer while Sherlock buys them time. These are the same married men in a different scenario.

46. “Okay but a CHILD? You wouldn’t stop looking for a CHILD!”

They probably didn’t! Remember, Mycroft has been lying to them! There was no dog and they definitely didn’t stop looking after a short amount of time. Remember Daddy & Mommy Holmes talking about how Eurus knew where Victor was? Well, that was them TRYING to find him. Trying to figure it out. Still searching for the body. If they they did stop looking, it’s only because they looked for so long. Child gone missing is a common report and many cases don’t get solved. And you also certainly don’t think to first look in a well because your son’s best friend’s sister just might have pushed him down there. 

47. After Sherlock solves the song’s puzzle he stands on the beach in his mind palace and young Eurus runs around him playing with a toy plane as she asks Sherlock to play with her. Maybe I was overstimulated the first time through, but I did not notice this. It gave me goose bumps.

48. “How could Sherlock forgive her? After she did all those things?”

Because he’s her brother. When he ran into the room after realizing who she is and says, “But I’m not a stranger am I? I’m your brother,” I instantly got emotional. Because in that moment it’s not about the psychopath, it’s about the terrified girl who never got to grow up or have a family. Eurus has been in a holding cell, alone, since she was a child. To me that is inhumane no matter how seemingly insane the child is. Children are children. She was never taught how to behave because she was never given a chance.  She’s a psychopath, but she craves love. Yes, people died because of her; she’s a villain. But, he’s Sherlock Holmes. She is his family and he’s going to save her. Sherlock understands what Mycroft didn’t. Like Daddy Holmes says, “Whatever she did. Whatever she became. She remains our daughter.” Family is family, man. There’s not much else too it.

49. “They saved John with a ROPE? HIS FEET ARE CHAINED.”

I originally agreed with this argument/plot hole until I realized... really, in what universe would a legitimate fire department or police department carry around a plain ass rope to save people with? They probably threw down the well’s rope (don’t wells usually have ropes to like pull up buckets of water?) to give John something to hold himself up and continue to “try as long as possible not to drown” (his feet weren’t chained right to the bottom. They had about a feet of chain on them) to give the rescue teams time to actually get down there and... rescue him. We didn’t see the rescue and John grabbed at the rope pretty anxiously (because he was dying), so we all just assumed that it was how he got out. But it’s also a pretty bad plan to pull a fully grown man (lol. even considering how short this man is) up a very deep, rough and stony edged well with a thin rope. So yeah... let’s not assume that he was saved with a rope just because that’s all we saw.

50. “You were always the grown up.”

There are some people complaining about this line and saying it is inconsistent. I actually find it completely consistent with a parent’s view of what a grown up is. A grown up is intelligent and emotional and able to make the correct decision. Yes, we see Mycroft taking care of a Sherlock’s most childish self a lot of the time, but when it comes to decision making, Sherlock has him beat by a lot. Sherlock is emotional and intelligent. He is able to make a more informed, adult decision. 

51. She just wanted to play with him. And now they’re doing violin duets together as she’s in solitary confinement. My heart swells.

52. The commentary on “Who you really are? It doesn’t matter.”

That quote itself, alone, is definitely not great. Who you are does matter. Always. But lets look at the context of the quote. “I know who you really are. A junky who solves crimes to get high. And the doctor who never came home from the war... Who you really are, it doesn’t matter. It’s all about the legend.” This quote is to say, you two, as individuals, are messes. But that doesn’t matter. Together you are one unstoppable legend. You are two halves of a whole. John Watson showed Sherlock where his heart is and if that’s not a love story...

Soo THAT’S IT. I hope you enjoyed...

@huglocked, @sherlock-addict 

[kansascityhappenings]

Joe’s Weather Blog: The 2017-18 Winter Weather Forecast (WED-11/22)

Happy Thanksgiving Eve! For those who follow the Weather Blog over the years…we always release the Winter Forecast early (it’ll be on the air tonight on FOX 4 KC at 9/10PM) as a thank you to all my readers for their support of the blog each day and through the years. Wednesday night newscasts on the eve of Thanksgiving may find you running around traveling or with friends and not actually sitting in front of the TV…so now you get to know our thoughts for the upcoming winter. Some of it is just for fun…some of it it science…the end result hopefully is something close to what will actually happen. We’ve had our hits…our misses and our “if only” times through the winters. Sometimes we get the trends right…others we don’t…that’s the nature of doing the somewhat impossible I guess. It’s tough enough forecasting a winter storm usually 24 hours ahead of time…let alone trying to pick out a number for one station (KCI) over the course of about 4 months or so. At least when we’re wrong we’re not afraid to tell you. Let’s see how things pan out this year.

I used to write hugely EPIC blogs on days like today…I think my record was something like 3000 words a few years ago. This blog won’t be like that (good for you). I’m basically just going to show you the graphics that have been created for the newscasts tonight and also add some of my personal thoughts at the end of the blog about what I’ve noticed over the last couple of months. I’ll try (gulp) to keep that part of the blog somewhat short…but you know me :).

Of note as well…I may revisit MY ideas again towards the 1st day of the winter. IF you remember last year at about this time…I was somewhat more bullish for snow…but said during the “forecast” that IF we weren’t in business by 12/15 we weren’t going to do well with snow totals in KC that winter. Well we didn’t and we didn’t. It was a paltry winter for sure. The funny thing is, I’ve been talking to many of you who seem to want more snow this winter than what we’ve seen. So with that thought hanging out there…let me get an idea of where YOU stand for this winter. I’ll try and use the results in teh next few days on FOX 4 News!

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OK so without any further ado…let’s get into the forecast from the team. FOX 4 KC was the 1st station to approach Winter Weather forecasting as a team and the tradition continues again this year. I’ll post the individual forecast thoughts and ideas abut the trends for the season…then in the end I’ll put in the team average which serves as our “official” forecast for the season. The measuring point is KCI airport. Of note as well…snowfall variations around KC (like most other places) can be ridiculous most times…I’ve seen 0-12″ snows in the region from individual storms. Again picking one point in a viewing area to base a forecast off on is a bit crazy. It would be easy to say we’re forecasting 5-35″ of snow in the viewing area and in the end that type of forecast can’t miss (and in reality could happen…since the viewing area goes from the Lakes region well south of KC to the IA border) but we’re going for a point on a map really.

Let’s start with Michelle Bogowith.

Here are her ideas…

and her forecast for the winter season

Next up is Karli…

and Karli’s forecast for the winter season is…

next on the way is Chief meteorologist Mike Thompson…

and now Mike’s forecast for the season…

and finally…last but not least…yours truly.

and drum roll please…answering the #1 question I get every year in November especially…”how much snow do you think we’ll get this year”?

OK we now have the individual forecasts…

now let’s average things together and come out with our official forecast!

Now you know! IF you want you can stop reading right now…but if you want a somewhat deeper dive…keep on reading because you know me

My overall thoughts…

Like I mentioned earlier…this will be more of a jump in the shallow end of the pool and not 2000 words worth but I wanted to give you some insight about what I’m seeing and have noticed over the last 2 months or so.

I tend to look at stats more than anything…and the one glaring number to me is what Michelle brought to my attention a while back I think…and that is that we’re NEVER had 3 years of snow totals IN A ROW with less than 10″ of snow. There is a 1st time for everything I guess…but I don’t think this is that 1st time. I hope not at least because I have a tendency to forecast higher snow totals than many…and I’ve been burned by it. With that said, I’ve started out over 10″ as a base and went from there.

Other factors…there is a La Nina in place. I’ve written about this quite a bit lately in previous blogs. We’ve shown how it could influence the weather…and at least to me, for the last 4+ weeks it’s been doing so nicely. In previous blogs I’ve written about our average snows during these events…but it’s important to note, at least in my opinion, this will be considered a weak to perhaps moderate La Nina. There are heavier snow trends in moderate events for KC. Right now we’re in “weak” status and are forecast to stay there for the rest of the winter. A bump up in “strength” does have a statistical bump up in snow in KC. Something worth monitoring. An important note…while La Nina is out there in the Equatorial Pacific Ocean unless it’s overwhelmingly strong, I’m NOT a huge believer in this one factor being the end all be all of winter weather forecasting…there are many other variables.

One of them is the amount of “blocking” that occurs in the northern latitudes. There has been a prevailing tendency in the last 4-6 weeks of a lot of blocking up there forcing colder air masses to drain southwards into the northern US and draining farther south at times. This is a characteristic of La Ninas. This one (La Nina) is more focused towards eastern South America which tends to favor more blocking and jet stream influences in the North Atlantic. This has an effect on our weather locally…as I mentioned in a blog over the past weekend I think.

These various indices (NAO, AO and others) all have some role in how things can play out in the Plains. My deep dive this past weekend when it came to significant snows in KC over the last almost 40 years shows that the NAO (North Atlantic Oscillation) has MORE of an effect on bigger snows in KC than the Arctic Oscillation value (AO) that we monitor as well. We love to see both being negative in nature though as a “heads up” about potential though. See my blog from this past Sunday for more information about these values and their importance.

Clearly however there is a “difference” this fall compared to last fall when looking at the average temperatures in teh northern hemisphere. Last fall the colder air was always over towards Asia it seemed.

Notice the blues showing the colder air compared to average…over on the other side of the world!

  Except for a brief period in December in 2016…it seemed like this cold air would have a tough time coming to our side of the world for any real length of time…

This year there has been more noteworthy cold through parts of Canada…even at times Alaska.

Now notice where at least “some” of the cold is located…more in Canada

and IF we just look at the last few weeks (through 11/20) it’s really more pronounced…

Now that is more serious cold in Canada and draining southwards at times!

We’re running almost 3° below average this month though yesterday compared to almost 8° ABOVE average last November heading towards the winter season (and this continued for most of the winter in 2016-17).

Looking at the snow that’s on the ground NOW…there is more compared to last year at this time…slightly encouraging for winter enthusiasts I think.

November 20th, 2016 snow cover (via Rutgers Snow Lab)

Now this year’s snow cover…

at least Southern Canada has filled in somewhat. I would like to see some more across the northern US though. This keeps the cold air masses up there cold when they come down here.

These are just a few things I look at…there are others as detailed in the blog in previous writings…of which the bigger ones to me are the persistent area of higher pressures towards Alaska and also the persistent area of higher pressure in the SW part of the US…Phoenix hasn’t had a drop of rain this season yet and they’re on the 91st straight day without moisture.

A visualization of historical dry streaks in Phoenix. The current one of 88 days is 39th longest and climbing. Longest is 160 days (1972). #azwx pic.twitter.com/SN28jAqHwm

— NWS Phoenix (@NWSPhoenix) November 20, 2017

https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

Perhaps a connection to our drier weather this month as well…as we’ve been more in a persistent NNW/NW or WNW flow of air aloft…that type of look isn’t the greatest for “large” storms in the “big” picture. It won’t continue all winter though…so we’ll need to “make hay” when it isn’t doing that…the issue is will we have cold air around when that happens. This type of flow though could allow a few more clippers to add to our snow totals that come from the NW and dive in perfectly for fast hitting snows.

I’m also concerned about more “glazing” type of ice scenarios this winter for the area.

So when looking at ALL of that AND some other things…that’s why I’ve come up with MY 16″ total…I’ve been vacillating between 15-20″ for the last few weeks…average is 18″ so yes I’m predicting a BELOW average snow season in KC but more than what we’ve seen in the last couple of years!

Joe

      from FOX 4 Kansas City WDAF-TV | News, Weather, Sports http://fox4kc.com/2017/11/22/joes-weather-blog-the-2017-18-winter-weather-forecast-wed-11-22/

from Kansas City Happenings https://kansascityhappenings.wordpress.com/2017/11/22/joes-weather-blog-the-2017-18-winter-weather-forecast-wed-11-22/

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How We Planned The Beach House Kitchen

The beach house kitchen will be our seventh kitchen project (!!!) after redoing three of our own (this one’s our favorite), a showhouse that we did in 2014, a spec house for a local builder in 2016 (seen below – we loved that blue tile), and a local teachers’ lounge that we redid last year.

And while that sounds like a lot of kitchens to have under our belts, the process can still feel pretty daunting – probably just due to the sheer number of decisions that a kitchen reno brings. “What’s the most functional layout? Is that too many drawers or not enough? Will I live to regret the lighting? Is it all going to come in within budget?” So many questions. And decisions. And changing of minds.

But as much work as it is to plan, stress, overthink, and replan a kitchen – it can easily be one of the biggest improvements you can make to a house. And now that we’re so close to FINALLY installing the beach house kitchen (hello light at the end of the tunnel!), we thought we’d take you through the steps (and kitchen planning tools) that we used to make our plan.

That photo above is what the space looked like as of last week. The lights are hung, trim is getting painted, and the floor holes are all patched with matching reclaimed pine. Once they’re sanded and sealed we can begin the kitchen install! It’s feeling very real all of a sudden. And it’s a far cry from what it looked like when we first started planning the space last year:

I won’t rehash all of the floor planning we did (it’s in this post) but you can see where we ended up below. Well, mostly ended up (the master bath got rearranged one more time to accommodate a shower). But the important part is the kitchen, which you can see in the upper left of these schematics:

We made those initial floor plans in Photoshop (like I’m sure all the professional architects do…. right?) so it wasn’t precisely to scale and not even close to something we could rely on to order cabinets. So having made the decision to order our cabinetry from Ikea, we turned to their free 3D kitchen planning software.

It’s not my favorite interface in the world (you can read all my pros & cons in this post) but if you’re using Ikea products, it’s a great way to plan the precise items you’ll need. We also used it when ordering our laundry room cabinets and our bonus room built-ins (shown below), both of which we’ve been very happy with – so Ikea was a no-brainer for keeping the beach house kitchen looking good, without costing a fortune.

We went through a few different ideas and layouts within the software – like do we do upper cabinets or skip them? We eventually landed on no uppers, just because we’re suckers for open shelves and the cabinets were looking pretty heavy in the rendering, even in white (we want the room to feel balanced, not left-heavy with too much stuff on that wall as you walk into the room). And since this is going to be a weekly vacation rental, nobody is going to be living here for months on end, so we realized we’d have plenty of storage space for vacation goers – especially with the extra cabinets that we added to flank the back door.

One challenge with the Ikea software is that you can’t pull in products that aren’t theirs – so I couldn’t render our 40″ pink stove or the exact dimensions of the fridge we’ve had our eye on. And I can never get their shelves to look the way I want (this is reminding me that I really need to relearn Google SketchUp). So the renderings are a little imperfect, but this one is probably the closest to what it’ll be like (just add sconces, pendants, and shelves in your mind).

Before ordering, we also loosely mapped things out in real life to make sure we liked the clearance of everything. You can see our fancy stand-ins for the island. Not the big saw, just the wood scraps on the floor. Told you they were fancy.

It’s also pretty hard to get a sense of the finishes in these renderings, so we ended up making some mood boards to be sure we liked the road we were headed down. Here’s the final one, but I’ll show you how we got to this mix in a second:

1. Stove / 2. Faucet / 3. Hood / 4. Sconces / 5. Island Pendants / 6. Counter (inspo pic) / 7. Cabinet doors / 8. Fridge (inspo pic)

From the get-go, Sherry and I both agreed we wanted this kitchen to feel casual and unfussy. The beach is supposed to be relaxing, so we wanted the kitchen to feel the same way. One of our first big inspiration pictures is shown above as #7, because it just looks very chill. Still plenty nice, but not too formal or uptight (which is generally right where we’re aiming with this beach house). Sorry, I can’t find a source better than this one.

The flat-fronted cabinets really stood out to us in that picture because we’ve never been drawn to them before. They always struck us as crazy modern or too commercial (like a school cafeteria from the 90’s). But after hunting down more inspiration photos on Pinterest, we were officially flat-front converts for the beach house.

(sources: left image, right image)

You’ll also notice that 4 out of these 5 photos don’t show upper cabinets, which further confirmed our lean towards a more unfussy/casual look with lots of open space for the eye to move around.

(sources: left image, right image)

We haven’t chosen hardware yet because we’re waiting to see how everything looks once we have it installed – but the idea of leather pulls is pretty cool (and clearly they’re very popular with flat-front drawers). We’re considering a few other options, and we also might try to hunt down some wood knobs to play off of some of the old wood doorknobs in the house. We’re hoping the right choice will be much clearer once we can actually hold up some samples in the finished space, but here are a few of the ones we’re considering: 1 / 2 / 3 / 4 / 5 / 6 / 7 / 8 / 9

Another big source of inspiration for us is Orlando’s kitchen. He revealed it on Emily Henderson’s blog right around the time we were ordering ours, so it helped us lock in our decision to do butcher block counters (we actually switched our plan last minute to get the exact ones that he chose – these from Ikea). We even ordered extra butcher block so we can make our floating shelves from the same stuff.

(source)

People have mixed feeling about butcher block in a rental, but we like that it’s affordable (like 10 times more affordable than some other options) and we LOVE that we can sand and refinish any major beatings that it might take (can’t say that if someone cracks/scratches/stains an expensive stone slab). We’ve actually heard a ton of helpful info from those of you with butcher block counters about how to seal them / treat them so they look good and last, so we’ll definitely be sharing all of that once they’re in (and we’ll be honest about how they hold up too – so stay tuned for photos and stuff as they get used and abused).

Orlando’s kitchen was also reassuring because he used the exact fridge we were considering. We don’t have space for a large fridge and we worried this one might look cheap, but – phew! – it looks great.

All of these decisions were made back in April, and we happened to lock everything in right as Ikea was having their semi-annual Kitchen Event Sale (more on that in podcast episode #52). The total (for cabinets and counters) would’ve been about $3200 – but we got 20% off our entire order thanks to the sale. Which saved us about $600 and brought the total closer to $2,600. That even includes the sink, soft close drawers/doors, and a pull-out trash can!

But even with most of the big items ordered, we still had lighting to figure out. Our first challenge was actual brightness, because I, John Petersik, am a lighting over-thinker to the Nth degree. First, we nixed the idea of adding recessed can lighting because we worried it would feel too “new” for the look we wanted in this 100 year old house. We have a few recessed lights elsewhere, so we’re not totally against them for the house, but the kitchen/dining room ceiling is SUCH a large plane, we wanted to avoid having a bunch of glowing circles dotting those pretty extra-high ceilings.

In the past we’ve relied on recessed lights to provide most of the functional lighting in our own kitchens, with pendants providing task and accent lighting. But in the beach house, our kitchen lighting – two island pendants and three sconces (along with two lights over the dining table nearby) – would need to do it all. So we quickly realized we needed to nix anything with a solid shade, so that every bulb could cast light in all directions instead of just shining it down. For instance, anything like the ones in our house’s kitchen were immediately out of the running. Sorry, guys.

Even with that no-shades rule helping us narrow things down, we still had a ton of lights that we were considering. So I mocked up this graphic to get a better sense of how our options looked with the rest of the kitchen. This was a failed option we were just playing around with at first (note the solid shades on both the sconces and pendants) but it was a huge help to see things this way. The subway backsplash isn’t for sure either, just a nice simple choice that lets us focus on what lights could work best:

We considered a few multi-light pendants, but most of them got eliminated for being the wrong style (these felt too modern) or so large that they dwarfed the island (or broke the bank).

A lot of the lights we typically would choose in a heartbeat (like these guys from Ballard Designs) felt too traditional for the vibe we were going for once we saw them in the mockup. Much of that had to do with the pink stove I think. It’s really cool and old and fun, but it might not lend itself to anything too formal.

The other thing we started bumping up against was scale. For instance, we started to think these beauties were the answer to all of our problems: glass shades, vintage look, right finish…

…but I was alarmed by 6″ measurement in its description (and that was the LARGER option they offered). My rendering above wasn’t to scale, so I started making a new version that was a bit more representative of size – particularly of the light in proportion to the eight foot island. That shed A LOT of light on the situation (pun completely intended). These were definitely too small.

I’ll cut to the chase. We ended up with this, as you saw in the original mood board up top. The pendants are 15″ wide and the clear shades allow them to throw light in every direction. Oh how I wish they were still on the Internet to link to them for you (they’re even prettier in person than in photos) but they seem to be out of stock everywhere. They were Trent Austin from Wayfair, so cross your fingers they come back someday.

We love how large the glass shades are without feeling heavy. The room instantly feels a lot closer to “done” with them hung, like they’re just begging for an island to be there. And the rest of the cabinets. And the appliances.

The sconces have shades that are wire mesh, so the light passes through them just like we wanted. We actually saw them in a showhouse shortly after ordering them and they looked GREAT all lit up. You can see how they’re not solid a bit better in this shot (there’s one more across the room too, which you can see in the second picture in this post).

Okay and one last mock-up. We also did this one that included plans for the adjacent dining area, just to try to picture how that would work with everything going on in the kitchen. Of course it has a pair of capiz pendants, because it wouldn’t be a beach house without Sherry’s favorite material of all time.

We opted for two lights over the dining table so that from the couch in the living room, the kitchen lights wouldn’t intersect at an odd place (once centered fixture would have). We also thought it would be fun to try two smaller pendants instead of one large chandelier. They don’t look great in the shot above because they’re hung higher than they’ll eventually go (and there’s no table under them to ground them). Oh yeah and the capiz is all still wrapped in its plastic shipping. Mummified capiz is the new black.

So that’s where we are. We’re headed out there soon to finish restoring the tub upstairs and to see how a few last floor repairs went upstairs. There are just a few tiny things on the to-do list (like finishing a railing for the back stairs) and then floor sanding and sealing can begin! After that, we can finally get started on making this kitchen come to life… and finally get those Ikea boxes out of our garage, which I’m also pretty stoked about.

Psst- You can read all about our past progress at the beach house by clicking into Our Beach House category. 

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How We Planned The Beach House Kitchen

The beach house kitchen will be our seventh kitchen project (!!!) after redoing three of our own (this one’s our favorite), a showhouse that we did in 2014, a spec house for a local builder in 2016 (seen below – we loved that blue tile), and a local teachers’ lounge that we redid last year.

And while that sounds like a lot of kitchens to have under our belts, the process can still feel pretty daunting – probably just due to the sheer number of decisions that a kitchen reno brings. “What’s the most functional layout? Is that too many drawers or not enough? Will I live to regret the lighting? Is it all going to come in within budget?” So many questions. And decisions. And changing of minds.

But as much work as it is to plan, stress, overthink, and replan a kitchen – it can easily be one of the biggest improvements you can make to a house. And now that we’re so close to FINALLY installing the beach house kitchen (hello light at the end of the tunnel!), we thought we’d take you through the steps (and kitchen planning tools) that we used to make our plan.

That photo above is what the space looked like as of last week. The lights are hung, trim is getting painted, and the floor holes are all patched with matching reclaimed pine. Once they’re sanded and sealed we can begin the kitchen install! It’s feeling very real all of a sudden. And it’s a far cry from what it looked like when we first started planning the space last year:

I won’t rehash all of the floor planning we did (it’s in this post) but you can see where we ended up below. Well, mostly ended up (the master bath got rearranged one more time to accommodate a shower). But the important part is the kitchen, which you can see in the upper left of these schematics:

We made those initial floor plans in Photoshop (like I’m sure all the professional architects do…. right?) so it wasn’t precisely to scale and not even close to something we could rely on to order cabinets. So having made the decision to order our cabinetry from Ikea, we turned to their free 3D kitchen planning software.

It’s not my favorite interface in the world (you can read all my pros & cons in this post) but if you’re using Ikea products, it’s a great way to plan the precise items you’ll need. We also used it when ordering our laundry room cabinets and our bonus room built-ins (shown below), both of which we’ve been very happy with – so Ikea was a no-brainer for keeping the beach house kitchen looking good, without costing a fortune.

We went through a few different ideas and layouts within the software – like do we do upper cabinets or skip them? We eventually landed on no uppers, just because we’re suckers for open shelves and the cabinets were looking pretty heavy in the rendering, even in white (we want the room to feel balanced, not left-heavy with too much stuff on that wall as you walk into the room). And since this is going to be a weekly vacation rental, nobody is going to be living here for months on end, so we realized we’d have plenty of storage space for vacation goers – especially with the extra cabinets that we added to flank the back door.

One challenge with the Ikea software is that you can’t pull in products that aren’t theirs – so I couldn’t render our 40″ pink stove or the exact dimensions of the fridge we’ve had our eye on. And I can never get their shelves to look the way I want (this is reminding me that I really need to relearn Google SketchUp). So the renderings are a little imperfect, but this one is probably the closest to what it’ll be like (just add sconces, pendants, and shelves in your mind).

Before ordering, we also loosely mapped things out in real life to make sure we liked the clearance of everything. You can see our fancy stand-ins for the island. Not the big saw, just the wood scraps on the floor. Told you they were fancy.

It’s also pretty hard to get a sense of the finishes in these renderings, so we ended up making some mood boards to be sure we liked the road we were headed down. Here’s the final one, but I’ll show you how we got to this mix in a second:

1. Stove / 2. Faucet / 3. Hood / 4. Sconces / 5. Island Pendants / 6. Counter (inspo pic) / 7. Cabinet doors / 8. Fridge (inspo pic)

From the get-go, Sherry and I both agreed we wanted this kitchen to feel casual and unfussy. The beach is supposed to be relaxing, so we wanted the kitchen to feel the same way. One of our first big inspiration pictures is shown above as #7, because it just looks very chill. Still plenty nice, but not too formal or uptight (which is generally right where we’re aiming with this beach house). Sorry, I can’t find a source better than this one.

The flat-fronted cabinets really stood out to us in that picture because we’ve never been drawn to them before. They always struck us as crazy modern or too commercial (like a school cafeteria from the 90’s). But after hunting down more inspiration photos on Pinterest, we were officially flat-front converts for the beach house.

(sources: left image, right image)

You’ll also notice that 4 out of these 5 photos don’t show upper cabinets, which further confirmed our lean towards a more unfussy/casual look with lots of open space for the eye to move around.

(sources: left image, right image)

We haven’t chosen hardware yet because we’re waiting to see how everything looks once we have it installed – but the idea of leather pulls is pretty cool (and clearly they’re very popular with flat-front drawers). We’re considering a few other options, and we also might try to hunt down some wood knobs to play off of some of the old wood doorknobs in the house. We’re hoping the right choice will be much clearer once we can actually hold up some samples in the finished space, but here are a few of the ones we’re considering: 1 / 2 / 3 / 4 / 5 / 6 / 7 / 8 / 9

Another big source of inspiration for us is Orlando’s kitchen. He revealed it on Emily Henderson’s blog right around the time we were ordering ours, so it helped us lock in our decision to do butcher block counters (we actually switched our plan last minute to get the exact ones that he chose – these from Ikea). We even ordered extra butcher block so we can make our floating shelves from the same stuff.

(source)

People have mixed feeling about butcher block in a rental, but we like that it’s affordable (like 10 times more affordable than some other options) and we LOVE that we can sand and refinish any major beatings that it might take (can’t say that if someone cracks/scratches/stains an expensive stone slab). We’ve actually heard a ton of helpful info from those of you with butcher block counters about how to seal them / treat them so they look good and last, so we’ll definitely be sharing all of that once they’re in (and we’ll be honest about how they hold up too – so stay tuned for photos and stuff as they get used and abused).

Orlando’s kitchen was also reassuring because he used the exact fridge we were considering. We don’t have space for a large fridge and we worried this one might look cheap, but – phew! – it looks great.

All of these decisions were made back in April, and we happened to lock everything in right as Ikea was having their semi-annual Kitchen Event Sale (more on that in podcast episode #52). The total (for cabinets and counters) would’ve been about $3200 – but we got 20% off our entire order thanks to the sale. Which saved us about $600 and brought the total closer to $2,600. That even includes the sink, soft close drawers/doors, and a pull-out trash can!

But even with most of the big items ordered, we still had lighting to figure out. Our first challenge was actual brightness, because I, John Petersik, am a lighting over-thinker to the Nth degree. First, we nixed the idea of adding recessed can lighting because we worried it would feel too “new” for the look we wanted in this 100 year old house. We have a few recessed lights elsewhere, so we’re not totally against them for the house, but the kitchen/dining room ceiling is SUCH a large plane, we wanted to avoid having a bunch of glowing circles dotting those pretty extra-high ceilings.

In the past we’ve relied on recessed lights to provide most of the functional lighting in our own kitchens, with pendants providing task and accent lighting. But in the beach house, our kitchen lighting – two island pendants and three sconces (along with two lights over the dining table nearby) – would need to do it all. So we quickly realized we needed to nix anything with a solid shade, so that every bulb could cast light in all directions instead of just shining it down. For instance, anything like the ones in our house’s kitchen were immediately out of the running. Sorry, guys.

Even with that no-shades rule helping us narrow things down, we still had a ton of lights that we were considering. So I mocked up this graphic to get a better sense of how our options looked with the rest of the kitchen. This was a failed option we were just playing around with at first (note the solid shades on both the sconces and pendants) but it was a huge help to see things this way. The subway backsplash isn’t for sure either, just a nice simple choice that lets us focus on what lights could work best:

We considered a few multi-light pendants, but most of them got eliminated for being the wrong style (these felt too modern) or so large that they dwarfed the island (or broke the bank).

A lot of the lights we typically would choose in a heartbeat (like these guys from Ballard Designs) felt too traditional for the vibe we were going for once we saw them in the mockup. Much of that had to do with the pink stove I think. It’s really cool and old and fun, but it might not lend itself to anything too formal.

The other thing we started bumping up against was scale. For instance, we started to think these beauties were the answer to all of our problems: glass shades, vintage look, right finish…

…but I was alarmed by 6″ measurement in its description (and that was the LARGER option they offered). My rendering above wasn’t to scale, so I started making a new version that was a bit more representative of size – particularly of the light in proportion to the eight foot island. That shed A LOT of light on the situation (pun completely intended). These were definitely too small.

I’ll cut to the chase. We ended up with this, as you saw in the original mood board up top. The pendants are 15″ wide and the clear shades allow them to throw light in every direction. Oh how I wish they were still on the Internet to link to them for you (they’re even prettier in person than in photos) but they seem to be out of stock everywhere. They were Trent Austin from Wayfair, so cross your fingers they come back someday.

We love how large the glass shades are without feeling heavy. The room instantly feels a lot closer to “done” with them hung, like they’re just begging for an island to be there. And the rest of the cabinets. And the appliances.

The sconces have shades that are wire mesh, so the light passes through them just like we wanted. We actually saw them in a showhouse shortly after ordering them and they looked GREAT all lit up. You can see how they’re not solid a bit better in this shot (there’s one more across the room too, which you can see in the second picture in this post).

Okay and one last mock-up. We also did this one that included plans for the adjacent dining area, just to try to picture how that would work with everything going on in the kitchen. Of course it has a pair of capiz pendants, because it wouldn’t be a beach house without Sherry’s favorite material of all time.

We opted for two lights over the dining table so that from the couch in the living room, the kitchen lights wouldn’t intersect at an odd place (once centered fixture would have). We also thought it would be fun to try two smaller pendants instead of one large chandelier. They don’t look great in the shot above because they’re hung higher than they’ll eventually go (and there’s no table under them to ground them). Oh yeah and the capiz is all still wrapped in its plastic shipping. Mummified capiz is the new black.

So that’s where we are. We’re headed out there soon to finish restoring the tub upstairs and to see how a few last floor repairs went upstairs. There are just a few tiny things on the to-do list (like finishing a railing for the back stairs) and then floor sanding and sealing can begin! After that, we can finally get started on making this kitchen come to life… and finally get those Ikea boxes out of our garage, which I’m also pretty stoked about.

Psst- You can read all about our past progress at the beach house by clicking into Our Beach House category. 

*This post contains affiliate links

The post How We Planned The Beach House Kitchen appeared first on Young House Love.

How We Planned The Beach House Kitchen published first on http://ift.tt/2r6hzQy

[truereviewpage]

How We Planned The Beach House Kitchen

The beach house kitchen will be our seventh kitchen project (!!!) after redoing three of our own (this one’s our favorite), a showhouse that we did in 2014, a spec house for a local builder in 2016 (seen below – we loved that blue tile), and a local teachers’ lounge that we redid last year.

And while that sounds like a lot of kitchens to have under our belts, the process can still feel pretty daunting – probably just due to the sheer number of decisions that a kitchen reno brings. “What’s the most functional layout? Is that too many drawers or not enough? Will I live to regret the lighting? Is it all going to come in within budget?” So many questions. And decisions. And changing of minds.

But as much work as it is to plan, stress, overthink, and replan a kitchen – it can easily be one of the biggest improvements you can make to a house. And now that we’re so close to FINALLY installing the beach house kitchen (hello light at the end of the tunnel!), we thought we’d take you through the steps (and kitchen planning tools) that we used to make our plan.

That photo above is what the space looked like as of last week. The lights are hung, trim is getting painted, and the floor holes are all patched with matching reclaimed pine. Once they’re sanded and sealed we can begin the kitchen install! It’s feeling very real all of a sudden. And it’s a far cry from what it looked like when we first started planning the space last year:

I won’t rehash all of the floor planning we did (it’s in this post) but you can see where we ended up below. Well, mostly ended up (the master bath got rearranged one more time to accommodate a shower). But the important part is the kitchen, which you can see in the upper left of these schematics:

We made those initial floor plans in Photoshop (like I’m sure all the professional architects do…. right?) so it wasn’t precisely to scale and not even close to something we could rely on to order cabinets. So having made the decision to order our cabinetry from Ikea, we turned to their free 3D kitchen planning software.

It’s not my favorite interface in the world (you can read all my pros & cons in this post) but if you’re using Ikea products, it’s a great way to plan the precise items you’ll need. We also used it when ordering our laundry room cabinets and our bonus room built-ins (shown below), both of which we’ve been very happy with – so Ikea was a no-brainer for keeping the beach house kitchen looking good, without costing a fortune.

We went through a few different ideas and layouts within the software – like do we do upper cabinets or skip them? We eventually landed on no uppers, just because we’re suckers for open shelves and the cabinets were looking pretty heavy in the rendering, even in white (we want the room to feel balanced, not left-heavy with too much stuff on that wall as you walk into the room). And since this is going to be a weekly vacation rental, nobody is going to be living here for months on end, so we realized we’d have plenty of storage space for vacation goers – especially with the extra cabinets that we added to flank the back door.

One challenge with the Ikea software is that you can’t pull in products that aren’t theirs – so I couldn’t render our 40″ pink stove or the exact dimensions of the fridge we’ve had our eye on. And I can never get their shelves to look the way I want (this is reminding me that I really need to relearn Google SketchUp). So the renderings are a little imperfect, but this one is probably the closest to what it’ll be like (just add sconces, pendants, and shelves in your mind).

Before ordering, we also loosely mapped things out in real life to make sure we liked the clearance of everything. You can see our fancy stand-ins for the island. Not the big saw, just the wood scraps on the floor. Told you they were fancy.

It’s also pretty hard to get a sense of the finishes in these renderings, so we ended up making some mood boards to be sure we liked the road we were headed down. Here’s the final one, but I’ll show you how we got to this mix in a second:

1. Stove / 2. Faucet / 3. Hood / 4. Sconces / 5. Island Pendants / 6. Counter (inspo pic) / 7. Cabinet doors / 8. Fridge (inspo pic)

From the get-go, Sherry and I both agreed we wanted this kitchen to feel casual and unfussy. The beach is supposed to be relaxing, so we wanted the kitchen to feel the same way. One of our first big inspiration pictures is shown above as #7, because it just looks very chill. Still plenty nice, but not too formal or uptight (which is generally right where we’re aiming with this beach house). Sorry, I can’t find a source better than this one.

The flat-fronted cabinets really stood out to us in that picture because we’ve never been drawn to them before. They always struck us as crazy modern or too commercial (like a school cafeteria from the 90’s). But after hunting down more inspiration photos on Pinterest, we were officially flat-front converts for the beach house.

(sources: left image, right image)

You’ll also notice that 4 out of these 5 photos don’t show upper cabinets, which further confirmed our lean towards a more unfussy/casual look with lots of open space for the eye to move around.

(sources: left image, right image)

We haven’t chosen hardware yet because we’re waiting to see how everything looks once we have it installed – but the idea of leather pulls is pretty cool (and clearly they’re very popular with flat-front drawers). We’re considering a few other options, and we also might try to hunt down some wood knobs to play off of some of the old wood doorknobs in the house. We’re hoping the right choice will be much clearer once we can actually hold up some samples in the finished space, but here are a few of the ones we’re considering: 1 / 2 / 3 / 4 / 5 / 6 / 7 / 8 / 9

Another big source of inspiration for us is Orlando’s kitchen. He revealed it on Emily Henderson’s blog right around the time we were ordering ours, so it helped us lock in our decision to do butcher block counters (we actually switched our plan last minute to get the exact ones that he chose – these from Ikea). We even ordered extra butcher block so we can make our floating shelves from the same stuff.

(source)

People have mixed feeling about butcher block in a rental, but we like that it’s affordable (like 10 times more affordable than some other options) and we LOVE that we can sand and refinish any major beatings that it might take (can’t say that if someone cracks/scratches/stains an expensive stone slab). We’ve actually heard a ton of helpful info from those of you with butcher block counters about how to seal them / treat them so they look good and last, so we’ll definitely be sharing all of that once they’re in (and we’ll be honest about how they hold up too – so stay tuned for photos and stuff as they get used and abused).

Orlando’s kitchen was also reassuring because he used the exact fridge we were considering. We don’t have space for a large fridge and we worried this one might look cheap, but – phew! – it looks great.

All of these decisions were made back in April, and we happened to lock everything in right as Ikea was having their semi-annual Kitchen Event Sale (more on that in podcast episode #52). The total (for cabinets and counters) would’ve been about $3200 – but we got 20% off our entire order thanks to the sale. Which saved us about $600 and brought the total closer to $2,600. That even includes the sink, soft close drawers/doors, and a pull-out trash can!

But even with most of the big items ordered, we still had lighting to figure out. Our first challenge was actual brightness, because I, John Petersik, am a lighting over-thinker to the Nth degree. First, we nixed the idea of adding recessed can lighting because we worried it would feel too “new” for the look we wanted in this 100 year old house. We have a few recessed lights elsewhere, so we’re not totally against them for the house, but the kitchen/dining room ceiling is SUCH a large plane, we wanted to avoid having a bunch of glowing circles dotting those pretty extra-high ceilings.

In the past we’ve relied on recessed lights to provide most of the functional lighting in our own kitchens, with pendants providing task and accent lighting. But in the beach house, our kitchen lighting – two island pendants and three sconces (along with two lights over the dining table nearby) – would need to do it all. So we quickly realized we needed to nix anything with a solid shade, so that every bulb could cast light in all directions instead of just shining it down. For instance, anything like the ones in our house’s kitchen were immediately out of the running. Sorry, guys.

Even with that no-shades rule helping us narrow things down, we still had a ton of lights that we were considering. So I mocked up this graphic to get a better sense of how our options looked with the rest of the kitchen. This was a failed option we were just playing around with at first (note the solid shades on both the sconces and pendants) but it was a huge help to see things this way. The subway backsplash isn’t for sure either, just a nice simple choice that lets us focus on what lights could work best:

We considered a few multi-light pendants, but most of them got eliminated for being the wrong style (these felt too modern) or so large that they dwarfed the island (or broke the bank).

A lot of the lights we typically would choose in a heartbeat (like these guys from Ballard Designs) felt too traditional for the vibe we were going for once we saw them in the mockup. Much of that had to do with the pink stove I think. It’s really cool and old and fun, but it might not lend itself to anything too formal.

The other thing we started bumping up against was scale. For instance, we started to think these beauties were the answer to all of our problems: glass shades, vintage look, right finish…

…but I was alarmed by 6″ measurement in its description (and that was the LARGER option they offered). My rendering above wasn’t to scale, so I started making a new version that was a bit more representative of size – particularly of the light in proportion to the eight foot island. That shed A LOT of light on the situation (pun completely intended). These were definitely too small.

I’ll cut to the chase. We ended up with this, as you saw in the original mood board up top. The pendants are 15″ wide and the clear shades allow them to throw light in every direction. Oh how I wish they were still on the Internet to link to them for you (they’re even prettier in person than in photos) but they seem to be out of stock everywhere. They were Trent Austin from Wayfair, so cross your fingers they come back someday.

We love how large the glass shades are without feeling heavy. The room instantly feels a lot closer to “done” with them hung, like they’re just begging for an island to be there. And the rest of the cabinets. And the appliances.

The sconces have shades that are wire mesh, so the light passes through them just like we wanted. We actually saw them in a showhouse shortly after ordering them and they looked GREAT all lit up. You can see how they’re not solid a bit better in this shot (there’s one more across the room too, which you can see in the second picture in this post).

Okay and one last mock-up. We also did this one that included plans for the adjacent dining area, just to try to picture how that would work with everything going on in the kitchen. Of course it has a pair of capiz pendants, because it wouldn’t be a beach house without Sherry’s favorite material of all time.

We opted for two lights over the dining table so that from the couch in the living room, the kitchen lights wouldn’t intersect at an odd place (once centered fixture would have). We also thought it would be fun to try two smaller pendants instead of one large chandelier. They don’t look great in the shot above because they’re hung higher than they’ll eventually go (and there’s no table under them to ground them). Oh yeah and the capiz is all still wrapped in its plastic shipping. Mummified capiz is the new black.

So that’s where we are. We’re headed out there soon to finish restoring the tub upstairs and to see how a few last floor repairs went upstairs. There are just a few tiny things on the to-do list (like finishing a railing for the back stairs) and then floor sanding and sealing can begin! After that, we can finally get started on making this kitchen come to life… and finally get those Ikea boxes out of our garage, which I’m also pretty stoked about.

Psst- You can read all about our past progress at the beach house by clicking into Our Beach House category. 

*This post contains affiliate links

The post How We Planned The Beach House Kitchen appeared first on Young House Love.

How We Planned The Beach House Kitchen published first on http://ift.tt/2qCHnUt

[additionallysad]

How We Planned The Beach House Kitchen http://ift.tt/2fxRI48

The beach house kitchen will be our seventh kitchen project (!!!) after redoing three of our own (this one’s our favorite), a showhouse that we did in 2014, a spec house for a local builder in 2016 (seen below – we loved that blue tile), and a local teachers’ lounge that we redid last year.

And while that sounds like a lot of kitchens to have under our belts, the process can still feel pretty daunting – probably just due to the sheer number of decisions that a kitchen reno brings. “What’s the most functional layout? Is that too many drawers or not enough? Will I live to regret the lighting? Is it all going to come in within budget?” So many questions. And decisions. And changing of minds.

But as much work as it is to plan, stress, overthink, and replan a kitchen – it can easily be one of the biggest improvements you can make to a house. And now that we’re so close to FINALLY installing the beach house kitchen (hello light at the end of the tunnel!), we thought we’d take you through the steps (and kitchen planning tools) that we used to make our plan.

That photo above is what the space looked like as of last week. The lights are hung, trim is getting painted, and the floor holes are all patched with matching reclaimed pine. Once they’re sanded and sealed we can begin the kitchen install! It’s feeling very real all of a sudden. And it’s a far cry from what it looked like when we first started planning the space last year:

I won’t rehash all of the floor planning we did (it’s in this post) but you can see where we ended up below. Well, mostly ended up (the master bath got rearranged one more time to accommodate a shower). But the important part is the kitchen, which you can see in the upper left of these schematics:

We made those initial floor plans in Photoshop (like I’m sure all the professional architects do…. right?) so it wasn’t precisely to scale and not even close to something we could rely on to order cabinets. So having made the decision to order our cabinetry from Ikea, we turned to their free 3D kitchen planning software.

It’s not my favorite interface in the world (you can read all my pros & cons in this post) but if you’re using Ikea products, it’s a great way to plan the precise items you’ll need. We also used it when ordering our laundry room cabinets and our bonus room built-ins (shown below), both of which we’ve been very happy with – so Ikea was a no-brainer for keeping the beach house kitchen looking good, without costing a fortune.

We went through a few different ideas and layouts within the software – like do we do upper cabinets or skip them? We eventually landed on no uppers, just because we’re suckers for open shelves and the cabinets were looking pretty heavy in the rendering, even in white (we want the room to feel balanced, not left-heavy with too much stuff on that wall as you walk into the room). And since this is going to be a weekly vacation rental, nobody is going to be living here for months on end, so we realized we’d have plenty of storage space for vacation goers – especially with the extra cabinets that we added to flank the back door.

One challenge with the Ikea software is that you can’t pull in products that aren’t theirs – so I couldn’t render our 40″ pink stove or the exact dimensions of the fridge we’ve had our eye on. And I can never get their shelves to look the way I want (this is reminding me that I really need to relearn Google SketchUp). So the renderings are a little imperfect, but this one is probably the closest to what it’ll be like (just add sconces, pendants, and shelves in your mind).

Before ordering, we also loosely mapped things out in real life to make sure we liked the clearance of everything. You can see our fancy stand-ins for the island. Not the big saw, just the wood scraps on the floor. Told you they were fancy.

It’s also pretty hard to get a sense of the finishes in these renderings, so we ended up making some mood boards to be sure we liked the road we were headed down. Here’s the final one, but I’ll show you how we got to this mix in a second:

1. Stove / 2. Faucet / 3. Hood / 4. Sconces / 5. Island Pendants / 6. Counter (inspo pic) / 7. Cabinet doors / 8. Fridge (inspo pic)

From the get-go, Sherry and I both agreed we wanted this kitchen to feel casual and unfussy. The beach is supposed to be relaxing, so we wanted the kitchen to feel the same way. One of our first big inspiration pictures is shown above as #7, because it just looks very chill. Still plenty nice, but not too formal or uptight (which is generally right where we’re aiming with this beach house). Sorry, I can’t find a source better than this one.

The flat-fronted cabinets really stood out to us in that picture because we’ve never been drawn to them before. They always struck us as crazy modern or too commercial (like a school cafeteria from the 90’s). But after hunting down more inspiration photos on Pinterest, we were officially flat-front converts for the beach house.

(sources: left image, right image)

You’ll also notice that 4 out of these 5 photos don’t show upper cabinets, which further confirmed our lean towards a more unfussy/casual look with lots of open space for the eye to move around.

(sources: left image, right image)

We haven’t chosen hardware yet because we’re waiting to see how everything looks once we have it installed – but the idea of leather pulls is pretty cool (and clearly they’re very popular with flat-front drawers). We’re considering a few other options, and we also might try to hunt down some wood knobs to play off of some of the old wood doorknobs in the house. We’re hoping the right choice will be much clearer once we can actually hold up some samples in the finished space, but here are a few of the ones we’re considering: 1 / 2 / 3 / 4 / 5 / 6 / 7 / 8 / 9

Another big source of inspiration for us is Orlando’s kitchen. He revealed it on Emily Henderson’s blog right around the time we were ordering ours, so it helped us lock in our decision to do butcher block counters (we actually switched our plan last minute to get the exact ones that he chose – these from Ikea). We even ordered extra butcher block so we can make our floating shelves from the same stuff.

(source)

People have mixed feeling about butcher block in a rental, but we like that it’s affordable (like 10 times more affordable than some other options) and we LOVE that we can sand and refinish any major beatings that it might take (can’t say that if someone cracks/scratches/stains an expensive stone slab). We’ve actually heard a ton of helpful info from those of you with butcher block counters about how to seal them / treat them so they look good and last, so we’ll definitely be sharing all of that once they’re in (and we’ll be honest about how they hold up too – so stay tuned for photos and stuff as they get used and abused).

Orlando’s kitchen was also reassuring because he used the exact fridge we were considering. We don’t have space for a large fridge and we worried this one might look cheap, but – phew! – it looks great.

All of these decisions were made back in April, and we happened to lock everything in right as Ikea was having their semi-annual Kitchen Event Sale (more on that in podcast episode #52). The total (for cabinets and counters) would’ve been about $3200 – but we got 20% off our entire order thanks to the sale. Which saved us about $600 and brought the total closer to $2,600. That even includes the sink, soft close drawers/doors, and a pull-out trash can!

But even with most of the big items ordered, we still had lighting to figure out. Our first challenge was actual brightness, because I, John Petersik, am a lighting over-thinker to the Nth degree. First, we nixed the idea of adding recessed can lighting because we worried it would feel too “new” for the look we wanted in this 100 year old house. We have a few recessed lights elsewhere, so we’re not totally against them for the house, but the kitchen/dining room ceiling is SUCH a large plane, we wanted to avoid having a bunch of glowing circles dotting those pretty extra-high ceilings.

In the past we’ve relied on recessed lights to provide most of the functional lighting in our own kitchens, with pendants providing task and accent lighting. But in the beach house, our kitchen lighting – two island pendants and three sconces (along with two lights over the dining table nearby) – would need to do it all. So we quickly realized we needed to nix anything with a solid shade, so that every bulb could cast light in all directions instead of just shining it down. For instance, anything like the ones in our house’s kitchen were immediately out of the running. Sorry, guys.

Even with that no-shades rule helping us narrow things down, we still had a ton of lights that we were considering. So I mocked up this graphic to get a better sense of how our options looked with the rest of the kitchen. This was a failed option we were just playing around with at first (note the solid shades on both the sconces and pendants) but it was a huge help to see things this way. The subway backsplash isn’t for sure either, just a nice simple choice that lets us focus on what lights could work best:

We considered a few multi-light pendants, but most of them got eliminated for being the wrong style (these felt too modern) or so large that they dwarfed the island (or broke the bank).

A lot of the lights we typically would choose in a heartbeat (like these guys from Ballard Designs) felt too traditional for the vibe we were going for once we saw them in the mockup. Much of that had to do with the pink stove I think. It’s really cool and old and fun, but it might not lend itself to anything too formal.

The other thing we started bumping up against was scale. For instance, we started to think these beauties were the answer to all of our problems: glass shades, vintage look, right finish…

…but I was alarmed by 6″ measurement in its description (and that was the LARGER option they offered). My rendering above wasn’t to scale, so I started making a new version that was a bit more representative of size – particularly of the light in proportion to the eight foot island. That shed A LOT of light on the situation (pun completely intended). These were definitely too small.

I’ll cut to the chase. We ended up with this, as you saw in the original mood board up top. The pendants are 15″ wide and the clear shades allow them to throw light in every direction. Oh how I wish they were still on the Internet to link to them for you (they’re even prettier in person than in photos) but they seem to be out of stock everywhere. They were Trent Austin from Wayfair, so cross your fingers they come back someday.

We love how large the glass shades are without feeling heavy. The room instantly feels a lot closer to “done” with them hung, like they’re just begging for an island to be there. And the rest of the cabinets. And the appliances.

The sconces have shades that are wire mesh, so the light passes through them just like we wanted. We actually saw them in a showhouse shortly after ordering them and they looked GREAT all lit up. You can see how they’re not solid a bit better in this shot (there’s one more across the room too, which you can see in the second picture in this post).

Okay and one last mock-up. We also did this one that included plans for the adjacent dining area, just to try to picture how that would work with everything going on in the kitchen. Of course it has a pair of capiz pendants, because it wouldn’t be a beach house without Sherry’s favorite material of all time.

We opted for two lights over the dining table so that from the couch in the living room, the kitchen lights wouldn’t intersect at an odd place (once centered fixture would have). We also thought it would be fun to try two smaller pendants instead of one large chandelier. They don’t look great in the shot above because they’re hung higher than they’ll eventually go (and there’s no table under them to ground them). Oh yeah and the capiz is all still wrapped in its plastic shipping. Mummified capiz is the new black.

So that’s where we are. We’re headed out there soon to finish restoring the tub upstairs and to see how a few last floor repairs went upstairs. There are just a few tiny things on the to-do list (like finishing a railing for the back stairs) and then floor sanding and sealing can begin! After that, we can finally get started on making this kitchen come to life… and finally get those Ikea boxes out of our garage, which I’m also pretty stoked about.

Psst- You can read all about our past progress at the beach house by clicking into Our Beach House category. 

*This post contains affiliate links

The post How We Planned The Beach House Kitchen appeared first on Young House Love.

[lukerhill]

How We Planned The Beach House Kitchen

The beach house kitchen will be our seventh kitchen project (!!!) after redoing three of our own (this one’s our favorite), a showhouse that we did in 2014, a spec house for a local builder in 2016 (seen below – we loved that blue tile), and a local teachers’ lounge that we redid last year.

And while that sounds like a lot of kitchens to have under our belts, the process can still feel pretty daunting – probably just due to the sheer number of decisions that a kitchen reno brings. “What’s the most functional layout? Is that too many drawers or not enough? Will I live to regret the lighting? Is it all going to come in within budget?” So many questions. And decisions. And changing of minds.

But as much work as it is to plan, stress, overthink, and replan a kitchen – it can easily be one of the biggest improvements you can make to a house. And now that we’re so close to FINALLY installing the beach house kitchen (hello light at the end of the tunnel!), we thought we’d take you through the steps (and kitchen planning tools) that we used to make our plan.

That photo above is what the space looked like as of last week. The lights are hung, trim is getting painted, and the floor holes are all patched with matching reclaimed pine. Once they’re sanded and sealed we can begin the kitchen install! It’s feeling very real all of a sudden. And it’s a far cry from what it looked like when we first started planning the space last year:

I won’t rehash all of the floor planning we did (it’s in this post) but you can see where we ended up below. Well, mostly ended up (the master bath got rearranged one more time to accommodate a shower). But the important part is the kitchen, which you can see in the upper left of these schematics:

We made those initial floor plans in Photoshop (like I’m sure all the professional architects do…. right?) so it wasn’t precisely to scale and not even close to something we could rely on to order cabinets. So having made the decision to order our cabinetry from Ikea, we turned to their free 3D kitchen planning software.

It’s not my favorite interface in the world (you can read all my pros & cons in this post) but if you’re using Ikea products, it’s a great way to plan the precise items you’ll need. We also used it when ordering our laundry room cabinets and our bonus room built-ins (shown below), both of which we’ve been very happy with – so Ikea was a no-brainer for keeping the beach house kitchen looking good, without costing a fortune.

We went through a few different ideas and layouts within the software – like do we do upper cabinets or skip them? We eventually landed on no uppers, just because we’re suckers for open shelves and the cabinets were looking pretty heavy in the rendering, even in white (we want the room to feel balanced, not left-heavy with too much stuff on that wall as you walk into the room). And since this is going to be a weekly vacation rental, nobody is going to be living here for months on end, so we realized we’d have plenty of storage space for vacation goers – especially with the extra cabinets that we added to flank the back door.

One challenge with the Ikea software is that you can’t pull in products that aren’t theirs – so I couldn’t render our 40″ pink stove or the exact dimensions of the fridge we’ve had our eye on. And I can never get their shelves to look the way I want (this is reminding me that I really need to relearn Google SketchUp). So the renderings are a little imperfect, but this one is probably the closest to what it’ll be like (just add sconces, pendants, and shelves in your mind).

Before ordering, we also loosely mapped things out in real life to make sure we liked the clearance of everything. You can see our fancy stand-ins for the island. Not the big saw, just the wood scraps on the floor. Told you they were fancy.

It’s also pretty hard to get a sense of the finishes in these renderings, so we ended up making some mood boards to be sure we liked the road we were headed down. Here’s the final one, but I’ll show you how we got to this mix in a second:

1. Stove / 2. Faucet / 3. Hood / 4. Sconces / 5. Island Pendants / 6. Counter (inspo pic) / 7. Cabinet doors / 8. Fridge (inspo pic)

From the get-go, Sherry and I both agreed we wanted this kitchen to feel casual and unfussy. The beach is supposed to be relaxing, so we wanted the kitchen to feel the same way. One of our first big inspiration pictures is shown above as #7, because it just looks very chill. Still plenty nice, but not too formal or uptight (which is generally right where we’re aiming with this beach house). Sorry, I can’t find a source better than this one.

The flat-fronted cabinets really stood out to us in that picture because we’ve never been drawn to them before. They always struck us as crazy modern or too commercial (like a school cafeteria from the 90’s). But after hunting down more inspiration photos on Pinterest, we were officially flat-front converts for the beach house.

(sources: left image, right image)

You’ll also notice that 4 out of these 5 photos don’t show upper cabinets, which further confirmed our lean towards a more unfussy/casual look with lots of open space for the eye to move around.

(sources: left image, right image)

We haven’t chosen hardware yet because we’re waiting to see how everything looks once we have it installed – but the idea of leather pulls is pretty cool (and clearly they’re very popular with flat-front drawers). We’re considering a few other options, and we also might try to hunt down some wood knobs to play off of some of the old wood doorknobs in the house. We’re hoping the right choice will be much clearer once we can actually hold up some samples in the finished space, but here are a few of the ones we’re considering: 1 / 2 / 3 / 4 / 5 / 6 / 7 / 8 / 9

Another big source of inspiration for us is Orlando’s kitchen. He revealed it on Emily Henderson’s blog right around the time we were ordering ours, so it helped us lock in our decision to do butcher block counters (we actually switched our plan last minute to get the exact ones that he chose – these from Ikea). We even ordered extra butcher block so we can make our floating shelves from the same stuff.

(source)

People have mixed feeling about butcher block in a rental, but we like that it’s affordable (like 10 times more affordable than some other options) and we LOVE that we can sand and refinish any major beatings that it might take (can’t say that if someone cracks/scratches/stains an expensive stone slab). We’ve actually heard a ton of helpful info from those of you with butcher block counters about how to seal them / treat them so they look good and last, so we’ll definitely be sharing all of that once they’re in (and we’ll be honest about how they hold up too – so stay tuned for photos and stuff as they get used and abused).

Orlando’s kitchen was also reassuring because he used the exact fridge we were considering. We don’t have space for a large fridge and we worried this one might look cheap, but – phew! – it looks great.

All of these decisions were made back in April, and we happened to lock everything in right as Ikea was having their semi-annual Kitchen Event Sale (more on that in podcast episode #52). The total (for cabinets and counters) would’ve been about $3200 – but we got 20% off our entire order thanks to the sale. Which saved us about $600 and brought the total closer to $2,600. That even includes the sink, soft close drawers/doors, and a pull-out trash can!

But even with most of the big items ordered, we still had lighting to figure out. Our first challenge was actual brightness, because I, John Petersik, am a lighting over-thinker to the Nth degree. First, we nixed the idea of adding recessed can lighting because we worried it would feel too “new” for the look we wanted in this 100 year old house. We have a few recessed lights elsewhere, so we’re not totally against them for the house, but the kitchen/dining room ceiling is SUCH a large plane, we wanted to avoid having a bunch of glowing circles dotting those pretty extra-high ceilings.

In the past we’ve relied on recessed lights to provide most of the functional lighting in our own kitchens, with pendants providing task and accent lighting. But in the beach house, our kitchen lighting – two island pendants and three sconces (along with two lights over the dining table nearby) – would need to do it all. So we quickly realized we needed to nix anything with a solid shade, so that every bulb could cast light in all directions instead of just shining it down. For instance, anything like the ones in our house’s kitchen were immediately out of the running. Sorry, guys.

Even with that no-shades rule helping us narrow things down, we still had a ton of lights that we were considering. So I mocked up this graphic to get a better sense of how our options looked with the rest of the kitchen. This was a failed option we were just playing around with at first (note the solid shades on both the sconces and pendants) but it was a huge help to see things this way. The subway backsplash isn’t for sure either, just a nice simple choice that lets us focus on what lights could work best:

We considered a few multi-light pendants, but most of them got eliminated for being the wrong style (these felt too modern) or so large that they dwarfed the island (or broke the bank).

A lot of the lights we typically would choose in a heartbeat (like these guys from Ballard Designs) felt too traditional for the vibe we were going for once we saw them in the mockup. Much of that had to do with the pink stove I think. It’s really cool and old and fun, but it might not lend itself to anything too formal.

The other thing we started bumping up against was scale. For instance, we started to think these beauties were the answer to all of our problems: glass shades, vintage look, right finish…

…but I was alarmed by 6″ measurement in its description (and that was the LARGER option they offered). My rendering above wasn’t to scale, so I started making a new version that was a bit more representative of size – particularly of the light in proportion to the eight foot island. That shed A LOT of light on the situation (pun completely intended). These were definitely too small.

I’ll cut to the chase. We ended up with this, as you saw in the original mood board up top. The pendants are 15″ wide and the clear shades allow them to throw light in every direction. Oh how I wish they were still on the Internet to link to them for you (they’re even prettier in person than in photos) but they seem to be out of stock everywhere. They were Trent Austin from Wayfair, so cross your fingers they come back someday.

We love how large the glass shades are without feeling heavy. The room instantly feels a lot closer to “done” with them hung, like they’re just begging for an island to be there. And the rest of the cabinets. And the appliances.

The sconces have shades that are wire mesh, so the light passes through them just like we wanted. We actually saw them in a showhouse shortly after ordering them and they looked GREAT all lit up. You can see how they’re not solid a bit better in this shot (there’s one more across the room too, which you can see in the second picture in this post).

Okay and one last mock-up. We also did this one that included plans for the adjacent dining area, just to try to picture how that would work with everything going on in the kitchen. Of course it has a pair of capiz pendants, because it wouldn’t be a beach house without Sherry’s favorite material of all time.

We opted for two lights over the dining table so that from the couch in the living room, the kitchen lights wouldn’t intersect at an odd place (once centered fixture would have). We also thought it would be fun to try two smaller pendants instead of one large chandelier. They don’t look great in the shot above because they’re hung higher than they’ll eventually go (and there’s no table under them to ground them). Oh yeah and the capiz is all still wrapped in its plastic shipping. Mummified capiz is the new black.

So that’s where we are. We’re headed out there soon to finish restoring the tub upstairs and to see how a few last floor repairs went upstairs. There are just a few tiny things on the to-do list (like finishing a railing for the back stairs) and then floor sanding and sealing can begin! After that, we can finally get started on making this kitchen come to life… and finally get those Ikea boxes out of our garage, which I’m also pretty stoked about.

Psst- You can read all about our past progress at the beach house by clicking into Our Beach House category. 

*This post contains affiliate links

The post How We Planned The Beach House Kitchen appeared first on Young House Love.

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How We Planned The Beach House Kitchen

The beach house kitchen will be our seventh kitchen project (!!!) after redoing three of our own (this one’s our favorite), a showhouse that we did in 2014, a spec house for a local builder in 2016 (seen below – we loved that blue tile), and a local teachers’ lounge that we redid last year.

And while that sounds like a lot of kitchens to have under our belts, the process can still feel pretty daunting – probably just due to the sheer number of decisions that a kitchen reno brings. “What’s the most functional layout? Is that too many drawers or not enough? Will I live to regret the lighting? Is it all going to come in within budget?” So many questions. And decisions. And changing of minds.

But as much work as it is to plan, stress, overthink, and replan a kitchen – it can easily be one of the biggest improvements you can make to a house. And now that we’re so close to FINALLY installing the beach house kitchen (hello light at the end of the tunnel!), we thought we’d take you through the steps (and kitchen planning tools) that we used to make our plan.

That photo above is what the space looked like as of last week. The lights are hung, trim is getting painted, and the floor holes are all patched with matching reclaimed pine. Once they’re sanded and sealed we can begin the kitchen install! It’s feeling very real all of a sudden. And it’s a far cry from what it looked like when we first started planning the space last year:

I won’t rehash all of the floor planning we did (it’s in this post) but you can see where we ended up below. Well, mostly ended up (the master bath got rearranged one more time to accommodate a shower). But the important part is the kitchen, which you can see in the upper left of these schematics:

We made those initial floor plans in Photoshop (like I’m sure all the professional architects do…. right?) so it wasn’t precisely to scale and not even close to something we could rely on to order cabinets. So having made the decision to order our cabinetry from Ikea, we turned to their free 3D kitchen planning software.

It’s not my favorite interface in the world (you can read all my pros & cons in this post) but if you’re using Ikea products, it’s a great way to plan the precise items you’ll need. We also used it when ordering our laundry room cabinets and our bonus room built-ins (shown below), both of which we’ve been very happy with – so Ikea was a no-brainer for keeping the beach house kitchen looking good, without costing a fortune.

We went through a few different ideas and layouts within the software – like do we do upper cabinets or skip them? We eventually landed on no uppers, just because we’re suckers for open shelves and the cabinets were looking pretty heavy in the rendering, even in white (we want the room to feel balanced, not left-heavy with too much stuff on that wall as you walk into the room). And since this is going to be a weekly vacation rental, nobody is going to be living here for months on end, so we realized we’d have plenty of storage space for vacation goers – especially with the extra cabinets that we added to flank the back door.

One challenge with the Ikea software is that you can’t pull in products that aren’t theirs – so I couldn’t render our 40″ pink stove or the exact dimensions of the fridge we’ve had our eye on. And I can never get their shelves to look the way I want (this is reminding me that I really need to relearn Google SketchUp). So the renderings are a little imperfect, but this one is probably the closest to what it’ll be like (just add sconces, pendants, and shelves in your mind).

Before ordering, we also loosely mapped things out in real life to make sure we liked the clearance of everything. You can see our fancy stand-ins for the island. Not the big saw, just the wood scraps on the floor. Told you they were fancy.

It’s also pretty hard to get a sense of the finishes in these renderings, so we ended up making some mood boards to be sure we liked the road we were headed down. Here’s the final one, but I’ll show you how we got to this mix in a second:

1. Stove / 2. Faucet / 3. Hood / 4. Sconces / 5. Island Pendants / 6. Counter (inspo pic) / 7. Cabinet doors / 8. Fridge (inspo pic)

From the get-go, Sherry and I both agreed we wanted this kitchen to feel casual and unfussy. The beach is supposed to be relaxing, so we wanted the kitchen to feel the same way. One of our first big inspiration pictures is shown above as #7, because it just looks very chill. Still plenty nice, but not too formal or uptight (which is generally right where we’re aiming with this beach house). Sorry, I can’t find a source better than this one.

The flat-fronted cabinets really stood out to us in that picture because we’ve never been drawn to them before. They always struck us as crazy modern or too commercial (like a school cafeteria from the 90’s). But after hunting down more inspiration photos on Pinterest, we were officially flat-front converts for the beach house.

(sources: left image, right image)

You’ll also notice that 4 out of these 5 photos don’t show upper cabinets, which further confirmed our lean towards a more unfussy/casual look with lots of open space for the eye to move around.

(sources: left image, right image)

We haven’t chosen hardware yet because we’re waiting to see how everything looks once we have it installed – but the idea of leather pulls is pretty cool (and clearly they’re very popular with flat-front drawers). We’re considering a few other options, and we also might try to hunt down some wood knobs to play off of some of the old wood doorknobs in the house. We’re hoping the right choice will be much clearer once we can actually hold up some samples in the finished space, but here are a few of the ones we’re considering: 1 / 2 / 3 / 4 / 5 / 6 / 7 / 8 / 9

Another big source of inspiration for us is Orlando’s kitchen. He revealed it on Emily Henderson’s blog right around the time we were ordering ours, so it helped us lock in our decision to do butcher block counters (we actually switched our plan last minute to get the exact ones that he chose – these from Ikea). We even ordered extra butcher block so we can make our floating shelves from the same stuff.

(source)

People have mixed feeling about butcher block in a rental, but we like that it’s affordable (like 10 times more affordable than some other options) and we LOVE that we can sand and refinish any major beatings that it might take (can’t say that if someone cracks/scratches/stains an expensive stone slab). We’ve actually heard a ton of helpful info from those of you with butcher block counters about how to seal them / treat them so they look good and last, so we’ll definitely be sharing all of that once they’re in (and we’ll be honest about how they hold up too – so stay tuned for photos and stuff as they get used and abused).

Orlando’s kitchen was also reassuring because he used the exact fridge we were considering. We don’t have space for a large fridge and we worried this one might look cheap, but – phew! – it looks great.

All of these decisions were made back in April, and we happened to lock everything in right as Ikea was having their semi-annual Kitchen Event Sale (more on that in podcast episode #52). The total (for cabinets and counters) would’ve been about $3200 – but we got 20% off our entire order thanks to the sale. Which saved us about $600 and brought the total closer to $2,600. That even includes the sink, soft close drawers/doors, and a pull-out trash can!

But even with most of the big items ordered, we still had lighting to figure out. Our first challenge was actual brightness, because I, John Petersik, am a lighting over-thinker to the Nth degree. First, we nixed the idea of adding recessed can lighting because we worried it would feel too “new” for the look we wanted in this 100 year old house. We have a few recessed lights elsewhere, so we’re not totally against them for the house, but the kitchen/dining room ceiling is SUCH a large plane, we wanted to avoid having a bunch of glowing circles dotting those pretty extra-high ceilings.

In the past we’ve relied on recessed lights to provide most of the functional lighting in our own kitchens, with pendants providing task and accent lighting. But in the beach house, our kitchen lighting – two island pendants and three sconces (along with two lights over the dining table nearby) – would need to do it all. So we quickly realized we needed to nix anything with a solid shade, so that every bulb could cast light in all directions instead of just shining it down. For instance, anything like the ones in our house’s kitchen were immediately out of the running. Sorry, guys.

Even with that no-shades rule helping us narrow things down, we still had a ton of lights that we were considering. So I mocked up this graphic to get a better sense of how our options looked with the rest of the kitchen. This was a failed option we were just playing around with at first (note the solid shades on both the sconces and pendants) but it was a huge help to see things this way. The subway backsplash isn’t for sure either, just a nice simple choice that lets us focus on what lights could work best:

We considered a few multi-light pendants, but most of them got eliminated for being the wrong style (these felt too modern) or so large that they dwarfed the island (or broke the bank).

A lot of the lights we typically would choose in a heartbeat (like these guys from Ballard Designs) felt too traditional for the vibe we were going for once we saw them in the mockup. Much of that had to do with the pink stove I think. It’s really cool and old and fun, but it might not lend itself to anything too formal.

The other thing we started bumping up against was scale. For instance, we started to think these beauties were the answer to all of our problems: glass shades, vintage look, right finish…

…but I was alarmed by 6″ measurement in its description (and that was the LARGER option they offered). My rendering above wasn’t to scale, so I started making a new version that was a bit more representative of size – particularly of the light in proportion to the eight foot island. That shed A LOT of light on the situation (pun completely intended). These were definitely too small.

I’ll cut to the chase. We ended up with this, as you saw in the original mood board up top. The pendants are 15″ wide and the clear shades allow them to throw light in every direction. Oh how I wish they were still on the Internet to link to them for you (they’re even prettier in person than in photos) but they seem to be out of stock everywhere. They were Trent Austin from Wayfair, so cross your fingers they come back someday.

We love how large the glass shades are without feeling heavy. The room instantly feels a lot closer to “done” with them hung, like they’re just begging for an island to be there. And the rest of the cabinets. And the appliances.

The sconces have shades that are wire mesh, so the light passes through them just like we wanted. We actually saw them in a showhouse shortly after ordering them and they looked GREAT all lit up. You can see how they’re not solid a bit better in this shot (there’s one more across the room too, which you can see in the second picture in this post).

Okay and one last mock-up. We also did this one that included plans for the adjacent dining area, just to try to picture how that would work with everything going on in the kitchen. Of course it has a pair of capiz pendants, because it wouldn’t be a beach house without Sherry’s favorite material of all time.

We opted for two lights over the dining table so that from the couch in the living room, the kitchen lights wouldn’t intersect at an odd place (once centered fixture would have). We also thought it would be fun to try two smaller pendants instead of one large chandelier. They don’t look great in the shot above because they’re hung higher than they’ll eventually go (and there’s no table under them to ground them). Oh yeah and the capiz is all still wrapped in its plastic shipping. Mummified capiz is the new black.

So that’s where we are. We’re headed out there soon to finish restoring the tub upstairs and to see how a few last floor repairs went upstairs. There are just a few tiny things on the to-do list (like finishing a railing for the back stairs) and then floor sanding and sealing can begin! After that, we can finally get started on making this kitchen come to life… and finally get those Ikea boxes out of our garage, which I’m also pretty stoked about.

Psst- You can read all about our past progress at the beach house by clicking into Our Beach House category. 

*This post contains affiliate links

The post How We Planned The Beach House Kitchen appeared first on Young House Love.

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