#also. this is STRICTLY about the finale not s5 as a whole

[cowlovely]

okay. i never understand what people mean when they say they pretend the merlin finale never happened/anything to that effect, so:

[doofus-and-dragons]

This will more than likely be the last one of these I have. So, for the last time, here is my live reaction to the final season of TMA. These will be in no particular order because ice been listening to it over the span of a couple of weeks. I only listen to it at work.

TMA S5 Spoilers ahead

The cabin episode made me so sad. The eyepocolypse had even taken away their domestic bliss

I really don't remember the trenches that well. It's not a fear of mine, so it didn't shake me or stick well enough. Still good tho

The sickness episode sent me right back to senior year of highschool. I had to take a minute KXNSKXN

REVOLUTIONS WAS AMAZING I LOVED THE POETRY AND THE ACENGING OF SASHA BY KILLING NOT!SASHA. I love it.

At first I thought the worms was about Jane again but I was very wrong. It was a very interesting take!

Curiosity made me incredibly sad. I feel bad for Eric, Micheal, and Sarah(? Trinity? I don't remember. She was set on fire by a desolation avatar I think)

Also: Gertrude x Agnes perhaps???? Or at least solemn pinning? Maybe I just think it's slightly tragic to make it so and sometimes angst is good yknow?

Roots was ok, but the only part that stuck out to me was the jealous Martin scene. I listened to it like 3 times. I kept rewinding it just to list to it.

Fire Escape was SO good! It gave me a kind of manic energy as I listened to the descriptions of the fire.

Martin in the Lonely again made me cry. That's it.

"Who's this? Your boyfriend?" "Yes actually." "Oh...so is there anyway this doesn't end in me dead?"

The Basira and Daisy stuff actually did make me feel bad for Basira. Like, it's the apocalypse and she's having a whole ass crisis.

SALESA WAS INCREADIBLE

I wonder how he faked his death... man is talented and smart, I'll give him that

Skipping ahead to Martin's domain. Loved that. My boy isn't strictly human and I love that he can't deny that fact anymore.

Martin: Something something "one of you"

Jon, being a smug theater kid bastard boy: "One of us."

Like I heard that and I imagined him smirking ominously and gesturing with both his hands

He sounded so pleased that his boyfriend, as miniscule a role it had or that martin had, was like him, and I love that for him

I'm so glad Melanie and Georgie are happy. Though, the cult does weird me out (cults give me the heebie jeebies. It was a very nice touch!)

They deserve nice things.

Also, my favorite of the Cult members was Anil's character. I can't remember his name right off the top of my head, but he was wonderful. Anil did amazing with that little cameo/role

The scene where's he's arguing with Martin reminds me of that Jojo meme with jotoro and dio, but instead of stands they have their poetry clutched tight in their fists

"I dont need a poet." No, Jon, because you already have one. His name is Martin

Of course Jon gets trapped in the ocean when he doesn't have big string martin to row him out of it XD

SOMEWHERE ELSE SOMEWHERE ELSE SOMEWHERE ELSE

Annabelle Cane is wonderful, I'm so glad Jon didn't kill her. She's so chummy with Martin up until she has to be a dramatic villain and I love that for her!

The ladder episode made me grin like a maniac manly because I would be the Martin in that situation. I love the feeling of falling/floating, but I hate actually getting myself to fall. I physically can't do it. I can barely dive into the lake from my papaw's boat

Martin, there are thousands of fanfics that dive into you two getting together without the trauma. Don't even.

NO JON THE PLAN

Hey, real elias! That's where him being a stoner comes from! Because he is one! Nice.

I love og Elias, and I would protect him with my life I don't care.

Oh wait it was just Magnus dreaming

JON NO THE PLAN FUCKING HELL

I almost cried when Martin was yelling at Jon. The boys are fighting

THE KISS HOLY SHIT ALEX SAKD THEY WOULDNT KISS THEY KISSED AH

They're somewhere else being happy and domestic now you can't change my mind

[queerxqueen]

hi i just thought i’d mention first that i LOVE your blog, i’m fairly new to byler tumblr and you’re the sole reason i feel so enlightened and hopeful now! :D your takes are always splendid. anyways, i wanted to add on to the other recent anon you replied to about how “canon” byler would be by vol 2/s5. it got me thinking and now i’m very positive they’d end on a good note - we’re well aware of the massive build up that’s been going on between mike and will since s1 pretty much and it would only make sense for mike to reciprocate with how he’s written + the conflicts between him and el. i’m very sure it’s likely they could go the route of coming to an agreement of some sort by the end of vol 2 where mike and will recognize they are past being just friends, but also not crossing the established relationship line just yet.

i rewatched vol 1 the other day for more clarity on things i may have missed on the first watch since i am weak for hidden meanings, and a very prominent part of that for me had to be the m*leven fight vs the byler talk. obviously this has been analyzed to the moon and back since the season dropped, so we all know these two scenes very clearly parallel each other. and although they are parallels, it is SO obvious the undertones completely contrast.

taking a look at the mike and el fight, we see how they’re struggling to communicate, mostly on mike’s end in reassuring that he truly loves el in a romantic sense. it’s brought up that this has been a reoccurring problem in their relationship, especially recently. neither of them are being completely honest with each other. of course problems are caused - i believe that was the whole point of their relationship from the start in a whole “never meant to be” kind of thing. their fight really demonstrates how unable they are of understanding one another on a subconscious and intimate level.

this can be compared to the mike and will talk later on, except, of course, it’s all soft and sweet (and homoerotic if i had a say). the mood has taken a one-eighty; we see mike and will being easily open with each other and seemingly more vulnerable as they reconcile as opposed to mike and el. mike and will can read each other extremely easily, and this is made clear with the lines “oh, i didn’t say it” “you didn’t have to” or something along those lines, cuing the soft looks and watery eyes, yadda yadda.

these scenes are alike in the way mike views his relationships with these two people who are arguably the most important to him - essentially, both of these conversations could’ve turned out to be a heart-to-heart, except they weren’t. why is that? the difference with byler and m*leven is exactly this - m*leven just simply isn’t on that level of emotional understanding, which would be odd if mike and el were intended to be endgame. it’s not healthy and it’s not good writing.

all of that introduces the point that mike and will don’t have to go to drastic lengths to interpret how they care for each other. just a look or two, and they’re aware of what the other has to say because that’s how their dynamic is purposely built to highlight just how close they are. and of course mike and el are close, but not to this extent. byler is different, because that’s how they’ve been intended this whole time and more light is finally being shed onto that. having this in mind leads me to believe the more plausible outcome for byler in vol 2 will be presented in a way without pushing the idea that they HAVE to be in relationship for them to be seen as romantic (which is what we saw with mike and el when they quite literally jumped into a relationship after knowing each other for barely a week and a year of separation). it is possible to make it clear for mike and will, as well as the audience (bc most of the straight peers are,, something else), that they are strictly NOT platonic, and i trust the writers in doing that well. whether that be prompted by will’s painting or something else more dramatic or not, i feel like this is the best approach that would satisfy even the GA.

as for s5, that’s when i’d expect them to advance into an actual established relationship, because BOY do they have some things to deal with first. anywho, sorry this isn’t necessarily an ask, i just needed to word vomit somewhere. i hope this doesn’t sound too crazy and delusional PLEASE TELL ME IM NOT CRAZY

ahhhhh YES ANON i love this analysis, thank you for sharing!!!

they really couldn't have been more overt with the byler versus mileven parallels in how they interact and communicate and solve problems together

and i agree--i think season 4 will set up their requited feelings and then season 5 we'll get to see them in an actual relationship, especially if there's a time jump.

thank u for wordvomiting in my inbox i seriously love it lol

[byronictrash]

so I was thinking about the whole hbo supernatural thing and all I could think was how it would fit in my major spn interpretation which is TRANSFEM SAM WINCHESTER!!!!

• changed her name to samantha for pure praticity

• is a lesbian, so all the romantic part is pretty similar to the canon, monsterfucking and all

• in which dean got a little confused about the distinction of gender ≠ sexuality at first like “wait but why did you become a girl if you like girls?” (he doesn’t know a lot of queer people, give him some time)

• AND SPEAKING OF DEAN! the biggest ally of all times. at first he doesn’t understand lots of stuff that seems obvious to sam (“why are you putting on a suit?” “dean we’re going to a small town, the case will be way harder if everyone is staring at me”), asks indiscrety questions (“can i ask you something?” “it depends” “you wanna chop your dick off?” “NO YOU CANT ASK IT”) but over time he starts to get it more naturally

• despite his numerous hook-ups, dean has never spent so much time in his life in a company of a woman so even the smallest things are extraterrestrial to him (“hey whats that bowl in the microwave?” “depilatory wax” “OH CMON SAMMY I WAS GOING TO HEAT UP MY DINNER THERE”)

• of course, there would be a scene where they met some hunter friend of john who says shit about sam, misgender her etc and dean goes FERAL, fist fighting with the guy and stuff. later sam yells at dean, saying she doesn't need dean to protect her and the argument would escalate to all the times that dean treated her in a condescending way, dean yelling back that dad said it was his job to take care of her and sam yelling even louder that dad would probably dead by now (in this moment all the lamps in their room (and in the street) simply explode, but they ignore. it was probably some short circuit…. right?)

• ok lets talk about john. still the same asshole, still gave a gun to kid who was afraid of the boogeyman, still tried to summon azazel when his son was in comma in 02X01 BUT now he also has a whole series of microaggressions with sam. she’s not stupid, she know the dad she has so doesn’t come out until she’s in stanford, SO john finds out sam is trans in 01X16 when john see sam after two years wearing a skirt and holding a .45 gun. he looks at her up and down and doesn’t say anything however, suddenly stops calling sam sam and starts calling her strictly samuel.

• it got worse after s1 season finale with the whole azazel possessed john > sam had the opportunity of killing azazel/her dad > couldn’t do it > azazel escaped > the winchesters get hit by a truck. when sam questions her father about being worried about the colt while his own son is dying, john explodes with her “you know samuel this is all your fault, once again you couldn’t just man up and pull the fucking trigger, kill the thing, you had to be same old sissy and chicken off, if your brother dies its his blood in your hands”

• aaaaaanyway, lets go back to our girl :D

• her style is kinda a mess. makeup done in a hurry, most of her clothes are mid skirts, hoodies and long dresses but now and then she spends a week wearing baggy jeans and band t-shirts, like dean’s, and no makeup at all. when he asks her “where is the whole angry teen outfit?” sam would simply respond its “because of the praticity, it’s tough to fight with a vampire in a dress lol” dean knows its because sometimes sam’s internalized transphobia ft repression gets loud

• her music taste is mostly grunge, punk and some alt bands she discover in stanford but dean call all of it emo “oh fuck off sammy, i let you drive once and you already put this emo shit” “dean this is literally nirvana, you cant call everything made after the 80’s emo”

• when she came out to bobby his reaction was literally “so now you’re a girl?” “uh… yeah” “gonna change your name or something?” “now is samantha but sam is still fine” “okay, now look this sigil... (and went back to the lore they were searching)”

• sam’s catholicism being more portrained on screen and how the dilemma of being a Christian and queer filled sam with religious guilty

• her paranormal powers also showed up sooner and since the beginning she knew something was wrong. her throat felt sore every time she recited the rituale romanus and holy water made her skin itchy. the older she got, the harder those “symptoms” became and with her denial, desire to be normal combined with religious guilt, it was easier to just convince herself that all this was just god punishing her for living in sin.

• surprisingly, all the demons and angels (and most of the monsters) even being assholes treats sam with the right pronouns

• which make sam and cas fist encounter even more interesting because cas literally turns to dean and go “is this your sister, samantha winchester?” “yeah” “ABOMINATION”’

• samruby second (cause the real first was ruby killing the seven deadly sins and stuff) encounter on the other side was a little more like "why are you following me?” “because youre tall and tall women are sexy as fuck” (then sam’s brain was short circuited for a sec because her height make usually makes her dysphoric)

• between s3-s4, dean still in hell, there would be a scene of one of the first times that sam drank blood to exorcise a demon with her mind. so here they are, demon tied in a chair and trapped in a trap, sam with blood all over her chin and ruby looking at her all heart eyes. Sam tries to do the exorcism but it doesnt work so ruby says sam needs more blood. Sam responds that shes nauseous and if takes any more shes gonna puke (cause you know voluntary vampirism came too natural in canon and that disturbs me) so the demon, who's wearing a cheerleader as a vessel, laughs and says "you know sammy, for real women blood tends to be a natural thing". ruby kills her on the spot.

• speaking of the catholicism (and the blood drinking) again, sam prays every single time before/after drinking demon blood, ruby mocks her for it but she doesnt care. its a weird feeling because even thinking that what shes doing is right, that she needs to get strong to kill lilith, it still feels bad, unholy in some sense.

• of course lucifer tempted her in s5 not only appearing as jess but also saying things like "why samantha, after all, are you willing to sacrifice yourself for a society that treats you like scum, that looks at you like a freak?"

• no need to say that in 05x04 "The End" episode when dean faces lucifer using sam as his vessel, she's wearing an outfit way cooler than that abbey-road-john-lennon-white-suit (to know what i mean search amanda seyfried 2018 met gala look THATS WHAT IM TALKING ABOUT!!!!!)

• even after being clean of blood drinking, sam still has some of her paranormal powers. she can't do exorcises with her mind anymore but she can move small objects with telekinesis (she doesn't do it in front of dean cause she knows it would scares the fuck out of him)

i also had a list of some episodes rewritten in this au but this list is already long, guess i'll post later

[raymondebidochonlifechoices]

Are you confident Bughead will be endgame on this show? That’s literally the last strand I’ve been holding onto, but the thread is weakening. I really can’t believe that they would take this ship, their absolute most popular and loved one, and just end it like this forever. I am so angry with the writing!!

Hey there, anon! It is unbelievable, isn’t it?

What a tricky question you ask! confidence + prediction + the Riverdale writers ... As Jughead would say: yikes!

The thing with these writers is that they use a lot of words without knowing their meaning. “Endgame” is one of them. “New” is another. “Exciting”. “Darkness”™. “Adult stories”. “The message”…

Dangling the bughead “endgame” carrot at the end of one or two seasons of no bughead or -worse- of b*rchie and j*bitha f.e. is not an endgame. The general definition of endgame -outside of chess- is: the last stage of a process. If the process (i.e. the season’s content) isn’t about bughead, then bughead coming together at the very end is not an endgame, it's a peripeteia i.e. a sudden or unexpected reversal of circumstances.

In shipping, endgame is a couple that will inevitably end together (for ever and ever and ever). In order for something to be inevitable, you have to create that sentiment, you have to build the couple up.

There’s an article about the misappropriation of the word “endagame” that I find particularly funny, as it starts by mentioning Riverdale!

Anyway, this is a long-winded way to say that, yes, I do believe that the show will end with bughead and varchie as their main canon couples. It’s just that, like you, I’m so very tired with these story lines. There is satisfaction to be had at the notion of endgame but a seasonful of investigative bughead would be infinitely preferable. For me (and I can only speak of myself) the journey is more important than the destination -even if for the simple reason that -in TV show time- it lasts longer!

Why do I think bughead is still … that word? Everything’s under the cut, so as not to clutter your dash!

1. A lot of people have been theorising that what happened in 5x18 was not the original plot. I agree.

Let’s start with 5x18 varchie.

Their break up came completely out of left field. Its unexpectedness is reminiscent of 4x17. I make fun of how s5 is a reboot of s1+s2’s leftover ideas, so another copy-paste shouldn’t feel out of place, and yet … really? Another repetition? To what end? If the season’s goal was not varchie, b*rchie was already there waiting at the beginning of the time jump! Why abandon that plot? In terms of romantic varchie time, that was extremely limited, since after their kiss in 5x7, Veronica’s divorce kept them apart until 5x17 … Why have Archie being extremely jealous of Chad, Veronica getting involved in all of Archie’s schemes (firefighters, bulldogs), Archie getting involved in Ronnie’s (rescuing daddykins) or Veronica telling her father she chooses Archie over him in 5x17? Also, for those who remember, there was this by the-writer-who-shall-not-be-named.

The reason of the break up is as ludicrous as Veronica moving into Archie’s childhood bedroom (with its effing slanted roof!) on the premise that long term the Andrews’ residence has more room! (By the way, I don’t know what surprised me more: that Veronica thought that Archie and uncle Frank would know who Ina Garten is or that Jughead didn’t.) Why is Veronica astounded by Archie’s involvement in the same activities he has been involved in all through the season?! For f***’s sake, she’s the one that gifted him the fire truck!

Ok. Now let’s give 5x18 j*bitha a try.

For me, 5x18 could either have gone bugheadwards or j*bithawards. J*bitha had some heartfelt talks, a hand touch, a hallucination and a kiss. Bughead had one unfinished heartfelt talk (the only one in the whole season for Betty), two shoulder touches, two hallucinations and Jughead attempting to reconnect with Betty (without specifying what his intent was, it's true).

While I do think that j*bitha is a ship that has been adequately teased, the way they were explored in 5x18 was … not underwhelming exactly (after all, they’re not my ship, so I didn’t have any expectations about them) but … maybe lukewarm is the word? They had but minimal dialogue, only enough to establish that Tabitha’s parents were in town. Then a song where Tabitha initially rejects Jughead, although she had been supportive before. Then another song, where the lyrics were heavily altered and didn’t make much sense anyway (we hadn’t been properly introduced to the Tates) but where the original lyrics were very compatible with Bughead’s history and state of being as of 5x17. The kisses were ok, I have no problem with the actors’ chemistry. But -and this is strictly a personal opinion- Jughead’s flirting scenes (not the make-out ones, you perverts!) with Cora were better and so was the j*bitha kiss in 5x10. For the 5x18 j*bitha to flow, more dialogue and more flirting was necessary (always a persona opinion). So, no, I don’t think j*bitha were supposed to sing what they sang in 5x18.

Production for s5 wrapped up one week after the official announcement of the 5 special episodes for Riverdale and The Flash: “we expect it will take us until Fall 2022 to get back to a regular schedule” was the official quote. Re-organising the cw’s overall schedule didn’t happen overnight. Yes, more likely than not, the writers knew about the specifics of s6a before shooting 5x18-5x19 and had time to re-write them.

2. The couples spoilers for s6 do not make sense plot-wise.

If the end-goal for 5x19-6x1 had been b*rchie, j*bitha and v*ggie all along, these were pairs already happening (except from v*ggie) at the beginning of the time-jump. As for v*ggie, last time we saw them, Veronica pulled a face when she heard that he had had (still has?) an affair with Hermosa. And what about Nana Rose?! (ok, that was a joke! ... or was it? 👀)

The majority of both the fans and the general audience are bugvarchie shippers. Teasing b*rchie and j*bitha as a means of maintaining the viewers’ interest in a will they/won’t they way, only works if the audience finally gets what they want. In this season. Not the next one! There is so much trolling one can take after all. In the space of 1.5 year (4x17-5x19) b*rchie will have been teased ... THREE times (and still lacking build-up)!

I cannot myself see b*rchie, j*bitha and v*ggie as endgame couples. For the audience to invest in them after 4 years of bugvarchie, the writers have to a) give j*bitha an absolutely incredible development that will surpass bughead and the cinematography to go with it (good luck with that) and b) undo Archie’s character (highly unlikely) and/or give Betty a lobotomy (at which point a lot of people will quit en masse, because Archie as The One All The Girls Want just doesn't resonate with the majority).

I have no idea if s6a is an AU or not. But if it’s not, no one will be left to watch 6b.

Can I guarantee a bughead endgame? Of course not. I have no idea how the minds of the Riverdale writers work. But I do think that Jughead and Betty getting back together is more than wishful thinking.

Fervently shipping Jughead/Betty, Jughead/his book and Betty/therapy, sincerely yours, @raymondebidochonlifechoices

I hope you have fun with the Riverdale universe regardless, dear anon. Riverdale has given us one of the most beautiful getting-together stories in s1 and lots and lots of beautiful canon bughead afterwards. Here's to many more! Much love to you!

[flying-elliska]

so, I finished the magnus archives ...(spoilers)

unfortunately i'd been spoiled for most of what happened in it but it was still cool to listen to especially since the audio work on it was incredible (those haunted tape noises are the coolest thing i've ever heard on a podcast, it was so slick)

it worked for me on the level of the emotional reaction. it was very sad and poignant. i often find horror stories difficult because either the characters are assholes and then i don't care and the whole thing becomes pointless for me or i get too attached to the characters and then I'm devastated when bad things happen to them and this was definitely the former. I really wish these characters existed in a spooky paranormal fantasy/workplace comedy-drama where they could get the comfort and overwinnings they deserved, but alas. i get they were bound by the genre though and that bad things needed to happen. i think they did a good job of balancing the horror and tragedy and not making it too grim at the same time.

it didn't blow me away either tbh, like for instance the s4 ending did. but i think after all the insane levels of world-building up they did, it was bound to be a bit underwhelming, with some arcs and characters left underused (Agnes!!!!). it misses a bit of a wow factor i had at other times in the series. the thing with horror is that there is only so far you can push character growth before it becomes too optimistic, and so when you go really deep into a character arc that's not strictly a corruption, it can often feel frustrating and unfinished in terms of emotional payoff.

I have mixed feelings about s5 as a whole. It's really cool that they experimented with something new, the concept of the fearscape is fascinating, and some of the statements are among my favorites in the whole show (the Sick Village, Recollections, the Gardener, Wonderland, the Processing Line, Moving on...) and really bring the cosmic horror/metaphor for the horrors of capitalism/ableism/abuse/etc in a way that feels strangely cathartic and understanding and glorious - but a lot of the others, especially in act 2/3, felt very forgettable and repetitive, and less like stories that could stand on their own, which i loved about the more traditional statements. Once it becomes clear that Jon (and Martin as a consequence) can't really be hurt, and the more it all becomes very detached from the real world, the sense of doom and foreboding that they did so well throughout the whole show kind of vanishes. The tension weirdly feels lower because the worst has already happened. I really believe in 'more is less' when it comes to scary things, and in a hell world where everything is horrible everywhere, it has less impact after a while. I did love the relationship between Jon and Martin providing those moments of humanity and warmth in the midst of it all, though, that was sweet.

the end itself...well, I found the dilemma interesting on a character level. of course Jon would sacrifice himself ; he feels so guilty he would doom the entire world to die rather than have to shoulder even more guilt for the fears potentially conquering other dimensions. he's spent so long feeling powerless and out of his depth that he would grasp this chance to finally make a choice and have agency and protect at least some people and keep the fears from extending their reach. but i love that he wasn't able to see it through either. it's so human. him and Martin breaking their promises to each other isn't miscommunication, it's deeply rooted in their respective personalities. of course Martin would do anything not to lose Jon since that love is basically the thing that saved him from the Lonely.

i don't think any of the options they had were the 'right choice' - both were shitty and atrocious, but the one that ended up happening is the one i would have picked, because it leaves some space for hope. If Jon had chosen to end their world to trap the fears, killing billions of people in the process, that would have been certain doom. With the fears sucked into other dimensions - first of all they had no certainty that the fears didn't already exist somewhere else, and any of the other worlds still have a fighting chance. I mean, it still sucks tremendously, it's very scary and ethically questionable and a massive risk, but at least it's open and it leaves it up to the people in the other worlds to make their own choices. And their world has a chance to recover. I find the idea that people remember what happened and the concept of a post-post apocalyptic world fascinating. I also really like that Melanie, Georgie and Basira (and the Admiral) made it out alive, and that we don't really know what happened to Jon and Martin. For a horror podcast that's super dark, violent and depressing, it's kind of awesome how they managed to sidestep 'bury your gays' very elegantly.

I've read this head canon somewhere of Jon and Martin being scattered across dimensions as these not-quite-human anymore entities that work to warn people and counteract the fears, powered by love and the desire to make things better, and I think that's my favorite post-canon option, because while it's still kind of a horrible fate it's also the one that gives them the most agency and it's also kind of romantic (way too much for a horror podcast, I'm aware, but i like that open endings like these allow you to make your own decisions about what happened).

also, the Web won, which is terrifying. the idea that it's using people as neurons ! horrible. amazing.

on a philosophical level I'm not sure i find the whole thing all that interesting, as a thought experiment, because i don't believe the universe is this consistently evil in the real world, so i don't find it super relevant. I'm also not the kind of hardcore fan who remembers a lot of details about previous seasons, so maybe I'm missing something.

But yeah overall I think in terms of storytelling this remains a pretty decent ending with enough layers to make it satisfying. it wasn't transcendent but it didn't ruin the whole thing, at least (*cough cough the Black Tapes*) and I can see myself listening to it again in a few years. and i'm definitely going to need a few fix-it fics now.

[unproduciblesmackdown]

after i posted that reblog & was washing dishes it was like, oh no, there was what now feels like an obvious neon point to make that i sure did not, so here i go also just giving it its own post

basically just that, in the context of this “do other people think winston is Smart, do they think he is ‘smart’ in a way that is considered an intinsic positive quality attributed to that person rather than like, well this external result i guess indicates the mechanics of your brain are good enough to produce this but it’s hardly a positive for you as a person, b/c you’re probably worse at being a person for the fact all your stats go into running endless arithmatic in there, on that note do they think he is definitively Not smart outside the [external results] of math aptitude, has winston internalized anything from this assessment & according treatment by others” that point of winston so often being right about things outside of stuff to do with math / otherwise directly quant related matters sure seems to indicate he’s not Just Good / Smart At Math, but having to compile a post about instances he’s had these valuable / accurate contributions to make was sure motivated in part by these instances not necessarily being obvious, b/c in the show when he says “off topic” things / isn’t just sticking to the quant stuff people are mostly just trying to get him to shut up / even as he’s saying this Correct, Useful stuff people are just like, revving up the disdain b/c he’s talking / acting wrong & annoying. the Extrinsic quality of his social approach making the inferred Intrinsic quality that winston’s clueless/useless or whatever & thus so’s whatever he’s actually saying, it’s wrong & it would’ve been better if he hadn’t said anything at all

plus it only kind of backs things up that i don’t think like, for viewers it’s meant to be completely obvious that winston is out here like, being insightful & perceptive & generally paying attention to everything on his own & keeping up with all of it & being attentive to / right about social elements of goings on, w/his ideas about what other people are like & what their feelings & motivations might be & how that might be playing into / relevant to various situations....a particularly clear & relevant example being his 4x11 admonishlogue, which was naturally a subjective spontaneous spiel while he’s worked up & irritated rather than like, yes this is the objective 1000% accurate rundown of the situation, but it was right enough for taylor to have listened & then we get their 4x12 conscious course correction / them acknowledging They Were Wrong & Are Sorry, & if you’re not a billions viewer failing to realize axe & taylor have these parallel plot threads in 4x11 & that taylor’s speech in 4x12 wasn’t out of nowhere, about & inspired by nothing, with no context, the implication is that taylor recognized winston made some points / was influenced thusly......but also, [all the billions viewers who didn’t get that at all] is kind of relevant here b/c you Can just suppose that automatically everything winston says is wrong & useless, & furthermore the 4x11 scene “resolves” with mafee jumping in & saying as much & just taking the Pwning A Nerd route to shout someone down into dropping the point, as always mafee doesn’t really argue with any of the actual things winston was saying, but if you’re operating with the understanding that the Axe Cap Approach of bullying less epic winner guys into shutting up is the extrinsic behavior that indicates any & all intrinsic positive qualities, aka they’re just Always Right b/c they’re the cool guys, & annoying insecure math nerds like winston are always wrong, well then

which is then also relevant to how winston of course wouldn’t / couldn’t fit in at axe cap but Can work for taylor.......thinking of how, you know, there’s these characters who are regarded as Extra Smart who also have to be perceived by other characters & viewers as having these extrinsic qualities that Intuitively indicate / prove their intrinsic smartness, i.e. / e.g. how, say, taylor has to “seem” smart pretty much immediately, to a character like axe (who can also have these moments of, without external successful results that would “prove” anything, will just be “evidently” smart in what he does/says in an exchange & how he does it), because their other extrinsic qualities would seem “wrong,” & thus what people might infer about their intrinsic qualities based on that would be negative, but axe can recognize their smartness & prioritize it over them being The Tough Guy / having successfully bullied their coworkers (or co interns) until they had some superior position because of that or the other stuff that’s supposedly the Right way to do things that proves you’re a Winner in any / every way....but, while at axe cap / dealing with now coworkers (or now subordinates) or other people in the business, taylor still had to navigate those situations even with axe’s conferred protection / approval / blessing, requiring having to consciously adopt certain extrinsic / external approaches b/c they know it’s the only way to get people to listen or take them seriously (on top of how already the approach they had re: interpersonal / social exchanges & presenting themself was titrated in the hopes of people taking them seriously / inferring helpful/positive things about them)

and then when it comes to tmc / taylor for real having the final word / ultimate authority on everything, they don’t want their employees to Have to put on the same kinds of performances they sometimes did, and they sure don’t want their employees to have to act like what was the norm at axe cap re: cool tough guy winners being terrible to everyone as a way to prove your worth, and they sure are not going to Make or even encourage anyone to do any of that. and even if any intrinsic smartness(tm) of winston’s doesn’t extrinsically manifest in the way axe cappers, or even mase cappers, think that it could/would/should, taylor’s more concerned with his intrinsic talent than extrinsic demeanor, and even if they’re suggesting these are at odds, they aren’t quite 100% directly connecting them, i.e. they’re not saying “well, your demeanor means you’re a dumbass but you’re still smart somehow,” the issue is just that he was too grating & rude to them in 3x03 (& beyond that is still Not sweet / “being a dick”) which is now, in some notable contrast with what they said in 3x03, being considered as this separate matter rather than “of course you can’t work for me b/c you hate yourself too much to Really be effective,” now it’s like, well yeah you were annoying but also you’re still skilled enough to consider....and by kompenso they obviously think he’s actually worth hiring, b/c there he is, hired, & kept on, & brought to tmc at axe cap, & still here (with him only Apparently being on thin ice when taylor has given enough control of mase carb to wendy that they no longer exactly have the final word / ultimate authority (and even if they kinda do, they don’t just wanna immediately / completely take advantage of that))

but naturally what really counts even beyond this is that, besides being the person who of course hired winston in the first place / wants him around b/c he’s good at math, taylor also just actually also always listens to & genuinely considers what winston says and, as seen in 4x11 to 4x12 for one, can actually change their mind / reevaluate a situation / decide they might’ve been wrong because of what he’s said, on top of instances like 5x03 where they’re also listening to him like, yeah he’s talking about math, but he’s Also contributing some personal, qualitative leaning insight, thanks to admitting that, you know, This’ll Be The First Live Test, he’s not saying “well yeah the numbers totally back us up” but he’s still saying that he himself thinks they can do it, and they do it.......so yeah the point is taylor must of course think he’s Smart At Math but they must also consider / (realize) that he’s also smart at other shit / just in general and, even if other characters / viewers might think that the way winston behaves / seems he must Not be smart, taylor is always listening to him & is definitely not instantly writing it off / interpreting it as outright Wrong / simply experiencing radio static ft. “ugh hate that this guy has to be so annoying” as soon as he speaks....so shoutout to taylor for that, and maybe there’s a parallel in how, their first time around at axe cap, taylor could sort of avoid axe cappers giving them as much shit as they might’ve b/c they had some protection from axe, the top shit giver, and here’s winston able to be treated as smart & valuable despite the fact other people wouldn’t see him that way b/c taylor, the smart value detector,  wants him here

but you know, Not shoutout to the fact that taylor’s kind of the exception in reliably listening to Everything winston might have to say / taking him seriously & realizing that he has good contributions besides Just strictly in the quant realm, and that for the most part characters (and viewers) are kind of just automatically like boooo everything winston says is dumb and wrong and we hate him.....while, you know, the whole time he’s so often “secretly” Right about plenty of things, as long as there’s anyone actually listening and not just automatically writing him off as The Guy Who’s Wrong About Everything But Numbers

(feels relevant enough to put in the text as a postscript here: Of Note the way that axe cappers react to winston in s5, the weird contradictory 5x01 quantphobia like “they’re smarter than us and better at us. at math ig, but i guess also in general. and this is an own i guess” and “also they’re not better than us at math even or whatever,” and then dollar bill’s apparently assuming some quant would just guaranteed be able to make him money, but he’s also stomping in with no real leverage and so you’ve just got him pitting his usual bluster and bravado “this means i’m intrinsically a winner” approach against winston, whose social approach means he’s a dumb wrong nerd, but also please do your good math for me, and you know, it doesn’t really work out for bill and was just a waste of everyone’s time, kind of a failure of bill’s not only to convert his Winner Axe Cap Behavior directly into making money / succeeding but trying to do so by actually getting the math guy to do the valuable shit for him....and then they kind of all forget he exists which is very fine by me b/c you know, winston can’t really just exist in the general axe cap scape and ideally taylor should always be in the group he’s in, although it also helps if rian’s someone who just listens to him normally / hadn’t immediately judged his extrinsic / intrinsic qualities negatively (she is))

[revasnaslan]

I'll be honest about Annilis, I love him and his sympathetic background AS well as his awful approach to keeping Hec-tor safe, because he's probably in some legitimate danger but he took it too far. I love HP, but I also wanna beat his ass too. Just grab him by the ears and yell, "What are you doing you idiot sandwich?!" I just wanna ask him "Are you even happy? And no getting pegged by a Shade isn't happiness." Don't want him to die though, only because it's a cop-out for actual punishment.1/2

2/2 That's what kinda bummed me on HP in-show, he did so much horrible shit, was an arrogant living "God", and he was just killed? That easy? HP's hubris was grotesque and he deserved a worse punishment than just a lightshow to the face. HP was also a non character in the end and whatever characterization he did have was lost quickly, gonna admit. But, an arrogant jerk dying that quickly is too easy a punishment, he has to suffer the consequences of his actions and experience his loss in detail.

sorry I'm sending you so many asks about HP. But dear God did the show drop the ball on Horde "supposedly endgame villain who was woefully underutilized until the last minute and even then was handed the villain ball to make sure what credibility he did have was lost" Prime. Could have been great, his story was there, but Crew-ra wasted time on frivolous characters(star siblings might have been cool but s5 needed to work on its existing characters, not introduce new ones)and wasted plot points.

I actually have done a ton of analysis on why prime just doesn’t work as a villain for pretty much six months now. Like I started doing this pretty much the day that the finale dropped cause I never liked S5 at all. There’s just much wrong with it, strictly from a narrative prospective than I cannot get over it, which I why I’ve kind of retreated into doing Fuck Canon aus. And I don’t think the major problems plaguing prime is that he’s a bad person or a cult leader or whatever, that would be fine. This is a matter of set up and pay off. This is a matter of narrative structure. Those are my major problems with everything about this.

Anyway, I guess we’ll try a flaccid attempt at positivity, just to make it clear that I am not coming strictly from a point of view of hate… the one thing I remember liking about prime is that creepy dinner scene. Loved that scene, I was so giddy when they dropped it as a teaser clip, and I got to enjoy it in peace for like a day and a half before my love for the show went crumbling. Prime is absolutely on his game in that scene, I can very clearly see his mind working, because my interpretation of the scene is that he’s trying to bait glimmer into giving him information. Did he actually intend to harm adora? Who knows! Does it matter? Not really, considering he got the information he wanted, which was what was needed to work the heart. I can feel the tension in that scene, that is how he should have been for the rest of the season.

So what the fuck happened? *cracks knuckles* well let’s see shall we.

Foreshadowing It’s Fun Cause It’s A Thing I’ve Heard Of

So I think we all remember just how shocking it was when prime actually showed up, and he wasn’t anything like we’d all come to assume he’d be based on what had been said about him up until that point. What we had been fed was essentially that he was cold, calculating, and didn’t look upon “defects” well. He saw the clones as disposable. And they set up that aspect of his character just fine, and I don’t have a problem with how that was set up.

What they utterly failed to properly set up (and even contradicted themselves on) was the cult thing, and how prime is essentially this messiah figure to the clones. I highly suspect this occurred because they were writing the show as they went along, and hadn’t fully fleshed out prime’s whole deal until he actually appeared at the end of S4, but that’s just my own speculation given some of the things that had been said in interviews regarding other aspects of the writing (namely that micah was apparently not supposed to be alive in the first place and that happened because of a miscommunication between noelle and one of the other writers).

Regardless, there are a number of things that should probably have been done differently in order to properly foreshadow prime’s cult leader status, that actually would have heightened hordak’s characterization as well. For one thing, there’s a reason we all assumed that the galactic horde was merely a military program and it’s because of how hordak acts throughout the first four seasons. We can talk in circles about headcanons until we’re blue in the face (i.e., he might have memory problems), but the fact of the matter is that those are headcanons and that hordak’s entire narrative changes from one of an ableist family to one of a religious trauma seemingly on a dime come the very end of S4 when prime shows up.

imagine how satisfying the foreshadowing would have been if hordak had actually been spouting dogma the entire show (i.e., “cast out the shadows” and “all beings must suffer to become pure”) only for it peter off once he’s befriended entrapta, if he had been calling those who he respected brother/sister instead of force captains (which is a far more militarized word to use, and judging by the galactic horde isn’t even a term they use), if he had still been dressed in his uniform and only actually started dressing differently after entrapta had helped him? Hell, he never even so much as implies that entrapta is leading him astray before he’s back with prime, he doesn’t even seem particularly distressed about being around her most of the time, and the only reason he even gets persnickety with her is because of his medical condition.

One point I’m going to expand on for a moment is the whole “brother” thing, because that is actually a very good way of explaining what I mean. Now, hordak doesn’t actually mention any other clones at all from what I remember. This is contrary to all of the clones in S5 referring to each other as “brother” pretty openly and it being seen as a term of respect. However, the only person that hordak actually calls “brother” up until S5 is prime, and this inadvertently ended up making the word seem far more neutral than it should have been considering the context of S5. The word “brother” is actually a control tool, and if they had wanted to establish that sooner, hordak should have been calling anybody he respected that.

So, either the writers hadn’t actually thought of that part of the narrative yet, or they’re just that bad at foreshadowing.

There are also three instances of the narrative contradicting itself with regards to prime, one in S3, one in S4, and one in S5. The first is that hordak wanted to make a new body for himself. While one could argue that this was meant to be foreshadowing that prime takes new bodies whenever his old one failed (which is fine, that works as foreshadowing), the act of hordak admitting that he was intending to do that is what actually creates the snag. With the context of S5, we learn that becoming a vessel is meant to be a place of honor, but this comes with the caveat that it seems like only prime is allowed to take new bodies. So why the ever living fuck would someone as “pious” and “unworthy” as hordak think that was something he could ever be allowed to do, much less that prime would welcome him back with open arms if he did it. But there’s zero hesitation on hordak’s part, he doesn’t even mention that this is something usually only reserved for prime.

The second is that prime literally looked at the heart of etheria and said it was “unlike anything [he had] ever seen” despite canonically fighting the first ones, so he’d presumably have recognized the energy signature that first one’s tech gives off and be like Oh Shit. This one in particular drives me absolutely nuts because if I was writing a villain who had lived long enough to fight the people this mystical weapon was created by I would never write them saying that what the actual fuck. My gripe here is not that prime is ancient, that’s fine, I could’ve vibed with that. But the fact that he not only fought the first ones but also recognized mara is really egregious in a way that borders on parody for me. Like what a flimsy excuse for him to be connected to adora (and we’ll get to that!)

The third and final one is that hordak was allegedly thrown out for his defects. That’s what we were told, that’s what a major facet of hordak’s trauma is centered around. However, at the same times, prime seems like… oddly fixated on hordak in a way that usually implies something deeper is going on here. That was why I was so convinced that hordak wasn’t remembering something clearly, because why would prime spare him instead of killing him immediately after returning if he was defective enough to warrant being thrown out? Come S5, prime seems to have forgotten about the pesky little plot detail that is hordak’s defects, since they never come up again! Nope! Hordak is not only completely healed of his ailments (which Can I Get A Yikes?) but he’s also been welcomed back to his original position as prime’s right hand by the mid-point of the season, and he stays there until the finale unless the plot demands he be elsewhere to interact with entrapta cause hordak was added in post. You can’t even argue that he was keeping hordak alive because eThErIaN kNoWlEdGe because he has those fucking mind chips. Literally every single person he’s chipped is connected to the hivemind because of that. He’d have every single bit of knowledge that he could possibly want right there at his fingertips. He doesn’t need hordak alive at all.

Which brings us to…

It’s Almost Like He Wasn’t A Villain To The Proper People

The thing about villains is that, in order for them to not feel out of place, in order for their defeat to actually give a true feeling of satisfaction, you kind of have to put them up against the right people. The reason that prime ultimately fails in this respect is that he is not adora and catra’s villain, despite the narrative pushing him as that…

I actually once joked on twitter that if the rise of skywalker had come out when S5 was being written, then prime would have likely ended up being revealed as adora’s long lost grandfather in some attempt to make his fixation on her seem warranted. That’s the level we’re at in terms of how connected the two of them appear to be for the villain and hero thing. They just are not connected, and prime has absolutely no reason to be this fixated on her. They tried to explain it with she ra and prime being old enemies, but that’s equally as confusing because a) mara hadn’t mentioned him up until that point, b) this inclusion actually makes the first ones creating a superweapon look justified since prime is such a huge threat, and c) she ra is explicitly stated to have been on etheria long before the first ones even colonized it, so why the fuck is she just gallivanting around the cosmos fighting cult leaders?

And to be clear, if this whole prime versus she ra had actually been hinted at, I would not be taking so much issue with this. But as there was absolutely zero mention of him, it just comes off as egregious and very, very sloppy on their parts.

Prime also should not be as fixated on catra as he is, that doesn’t make sense at all. I know why this happened in particular, though, and it’s because the writing team was so in love with her that they just had to give her this arc. That just makes its inclusion all the worse to be honest. Why does he go to such great lengths to use catra to torture adora, why does he go into a total breakdown after catra escapes? He isn’t connected to either of them…

… because he is hordak and entrapta’s villain.

that prime didn’t immediately want entrapta dead continues to confuse me to this day, nearly seven months after the fact. Like you mean to tell me that this cult leader, who is presumably used to complete obedience from his followers, finds one of the wayward members of his proverbial flock lost on some backwater, who didn’t want to be found, and he knows exactly who is responsible for sewing those seeds of discord in this poor lamb’s head. And he doesn’t immediately want entrapta dead?

Not only does prime never mention her, despite it being very easy to push a plotline about how it’s necessary because she’s perceived as a danger to the rest, and especially to the poor lost soul who was ultimately returned to him. Instead, prime just doesn’t seem to realize entrapta exists. He doesn’t know who she is despite literally reading hordak’s mind. He doesn’t even seem to interpret her as threat considering he wasn’t worried about putting her and hordak right next to each other in the finale. He should have been using hordak to torture entrapta, and he should have had his break because hordak escaped him. That whole scene where catra is under mind control and adora was trying to snap her out of it was textbook entrapdak. Hordak should have been the one to delve into the hivemind to help adora. It was his story and it was taken from him when he was sacrificed on catra’s narrative arc altar.

And this is ultimately completely fixable. Because they had a villain they could have been using for adora and catra the whole time. Shadow Weaver. Y’know, their mutual abuser who was the main cause of strife between the two of them, and the person who kind of set the plot in motion since she’s the reason catra is the way that she is?

He Blew It. Super Hard. Complete Buffoonery.

Ultimately one of the biggest writing fumbles with prime is that he is just really fucking dumb as the plot demands, and it doesn’t make any kind of narrative sense for him to be that way, it is literally just him being at the mercy of the writers who need him to do something stupid so they can push the plot forward since they made him too overpowered for it to happen any other way.

There’s numerous instances of this across the season, including him bringing entrapta aboard the velvet glove when the very person he would have had very good reason to not let her near is standing right there, and him deciding to give catra pretty much free reign of the velvet glove and seeming to decide to trust her despite him knowing damn well that she’s likely to betray him the second he does something she doesn’t like, and the time he literally left adora to be beaten by catra instead of just killing her outright when she couldn’t even activate she ra. And in all these cases he had the fucking nerve to seem surprised when it happened?

However, there is one plot point that I feel illustrates how goddamn stupid he is to move the plot forward, and it’s the mind chips.

I mean one of the reasons I dislike it is going back to how little foreshadowing the writers actually seem capable of committing to. There is nothing to indicate in the narrative that prime actually employs mind control on anybody besides the clones, and this becomes especially egregious when we later meet the star siblings, and we find out that there are large swathes of the universe that are seemingly not chipped? It just screams like they needed some type of angst plot point for catra, so they had to find a way to make it work.

But the very inclusion of the mind chips as a plot point makes prime look so ridiculously dumb, because we are told those chips connect people to the hivemind, we are explicitly shown this for catra angst. So a) why does he need hordak around at all, because the excuse he needs to know about etheria doesn’t work since he literally chips like half of the etherian population later on anyway, b) if he needed information on the heart of etheria, why didn’t he just chip glimmer outright, it would have saved him a lot of time and hassle, and c) if he knew damn well that catra had betrayed hordak numerous times and was likely to do the same to him, why didn’t he just immediately chip her so he could mitigate two problems. If he had chipped catra immediately, he wouldn’t have lost glimmer, and it would have been next to impossible for adora and bow to storm the velvet glove through the means that they did.

When your main villain is that fucking stupid, the tension is completely sapped out of your narrative, and prime doesn’t have enough character unto himself to continue holding up his own arc. He is a sexy lamp cardboard cutout that just happens to be brought onto the scene when they were in need of someone to throw the idiot ball at. Prime is supposed to be this thousand year old body hopper who has the wisdom of the ages, and yet he was defeat by a group of teenagers driving a clown card held together by nothing but duct tape and prayers.

Anyway!

Guess Who Just Got Murdered!

Anon, I completely agree that the way prime got taken out was just… hm. Well, it was a choice, given how they had written the rest of the season.

I’ve said this before, but I really wish I could actually enjoy hordak yeeting him, but I just don’t feel anything. That scene is a culmination of an arc that never happened because hordak was barely on screen for S5. It feels like we’re missing this whole season-long arc about how hordak managed to break free of prime and was actively working against him, and that scene is the lowest point, right before the greater scope villain is ultimately defeated by the protagonist. Which just furthers my point that prime is really hordak’s villain, because hordak reads more like a protagonist than I think the writers actually intended for him to.

Since you mentioned anillis, I feel the need to comment on him as well, because I do know exactly what happens to him at the end of my au, because I actually planned for his ending from the beginning and built his arc towards that point. The very bare bones spoilers is that he isn’t going to die, because a) he needs to live with the consequences of his actions and b) him dying would affect hec-tor horribly, especially since if anybody had to deal the killing blow it would be hec-tor. And hec-tor doesn’t deserve to be forced to do that. He wants freedom, he doesn’t want his brother dead by his own hand.

So, I completely agree that just killing prime off feels a little… like a cop out? I’m not going to get into a discussion of how he was defeated by the power of (romantic) love because my issue there is not with the trope itself, but ultimately how it was handled, and that also has to do more with my grievances with how catradora was ultimately handled than my grievances with prime. However, him being like… exorcised…

Well it sure does clean up some loose ends that we don’t want to discuss huh?

[whentheynameyoujoy]

Women in SPN—Is it Really That Bad?

TL;DR: Somewhat, yeah, it kinda is.

This is going to be a series of long ones, people.

Before I jump head first into this giant vat of weird toxic shit, let me say something:

The thing about most of the female characters is that on their own? They’re perfectly fine, ranging from serviceable to the occasional flash of thematic brilliance. Barely any of them qualify as “this is hateful on its face and incompetent regardless of context and the writers should feel bad for ever conceiving of it”, i.e. the normie benchmark for justified criticism. It’s only when you put these characters next to each other that a worrying pattern emerges;

Although discussions about sexism in the media were very much a thing in the mid-2000s, as well as shows with characters whose primary role wasn’t to serve a man’s needs, I can’t honestly claim that the flaws of SPN are out of the norm for its time; and

The first few seasons could really do with a PSA at the start of each episode, something along the lines of “A part of the reason why female characters are killed off or written out with such regularity is rabid superfans who couldn’t abide anything with tits brushing against J2, srsly, the writing team and the 2000s’ fan base were a match made in hell, except it wasn’t the writers who couldn’t do with bitching on their LiveJournals about the gall of women to exist in the show, choosing instead to harass the creators and actresses and wives and call them every sexist insult under the sun AND I MEAN WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU PEOPLE HAS THERE EVER BEEN A CESSPIT AS DISGUSTING AND NUKEWORTHY AS THE SPN FANDO—“

Anyway.

SPN has a legacy (as a posterchild for not knowing when to bow out gracefully, but legacy nonetheless) and isn’t watched in 2005 but in the year of our Lord Today. Meaning that as time goes by, the issues surrounding the show’s production retreat into the background and only what’s on the screen remains, to be judged on its own merits.

So let’s run down a list of the more noteworthy and relevant female characters of the first arc, focusing on their characterization, role in the narrative, and end. In the conclusion to this series of posts, the sum of characters will be analyzed as a whole to see if there are any unique tendencies in the show’s handling of women as opposed to that of men. I’ll do this for the original five seasons as the recent finale went out of its way to say that nothing after season 5 was strictly speaking necessary so why bother.

(Also because I died of frustration in season 8 and vowed not to subject myself to any more of the post-apocalypse fanfic era)

Angels, while strictly speaking genderless clouds of energy, will be classified as men or women depending on the apparent gender of the vessel they spend most of the time riding. The same goes for demons where I also take into account their stated gender while they were alive. That’s because although beings like Meg, Ruby, Anna, or Lilith can’t technically be considered women in the show’s present day, their consistent preference for conventionally attractive and/or female vessels throughout the original arc makes claims of genderlessness essentially meaningless. For all intents and purposes, we’re watching girls and women on screen.

Baby—the only true NB of the first run

All right, time to jump.

Say hi to our ladies!

Mary Winchester

Killed in the very first scene to give the story a reason to exist, she remains an active presence throughout the first arc where she has a wide-reaching influence on the plot and characters, driving the conflict on several levels. Fleshed-out more and more with each appearance to be more than just “the dead mom”, she’s portrayed as protective, pro-active, capable, and assertive, mirroring the duo’s desire for normal life and their inability to have it. Her story comes full-circle in season 5 when the personal tragedy of her fate is embedded in the wider tragedy of the Winchester family curse and the overall theme of destiny.

Status: Dead as of s5

Importance: Major

On her own: Textbook example of fridging… and that tropes aren’t bad in and of themselves.

Jessica Moore

Comparatively, if anyone doubts fridging can evolve into something meaningful, Jess drives the point home by having no personality and no point but to prop up her boyfriend before she ends up pinned to the ceiling, the reveal of which is the most interesting thing about her entire existence. At best she’s a symbol of Sam’s civilian life, at worst an obstacle to be removed for the story to happen.

Status: Dead as of s5

Importance: Major in terms of manpain, non-existent otherwise

On her own: A cardboard cut-out, barely qualifies as a character

Missouri Moseley

A psychic and the primary reason why John Winchester even knows to wipe his ass. Appears once over the course of the first arc yet everyone wants her to come back years later—that’s how awesome she is. Has this fantastic trait of being compassionate and empathetic while not taking a single speck of shit from anyone, especially when it comes from the two main dumbos who might just as well have been raised in a barn. Is very particular about the pristine state of her coffee table.

Status: Alive as of s5, killed in s13 (wait, what?)

Importance: Major…ly wasted potential

On her own: As strong a character as Bobby Singer, and as worthy of being elevated to the main cast.

Lori Sorensen

The writers can’t figure out why anyone in the universe would care about Jess either so they insert an intentionally awkward romance subplot to convince people the time’s not yet ripe for Sam to stop grieving and start slaying. The result’s… erm… well, awkward. Lori’s naïve, sheltered, devout though accepting of her non-repressed friend, and sort of on a religious crossroads because of her hypocritical preacher father. I guess the virginal power of her virginal virginity does… something in the plot? Primarily a vehicle for Sam to mark the stages of his moving on.

Status: Alive as of s5

Importance: Minor

On her own: A bit done. Like a bit lot. Like a “could be a trope namer” bit lot.

Meg

Boom, baby!

Arguably the chief antagonist of season 1 and one of the best things about it. The first one to point out the pervasive toxicity of the Winchester family business, so props for perceptiveness. Possesses the standard qualities of a lower-level henchman—manipulative, no-nonsense, and quietly sinister which, while not exactly groundbreaking, sets her apart from the other bad guys in the season as they tend to have no distinguishing characteristics at all. Plus Nicki Aycox makes the role seem more unique and “lived-in” by projecting a sense of understated amusement at the two main chucklefucks. Is one of S1’s turning points in blurring the lines between monsters and humanity. Has a face transplant twice—once to have revenge (good on her) and the other time to pursue someone else’s goals again before getting stomped into the ground like a mook.

Status: Alive as of s5 (?), killed in s8

Importance: Major

On her own: The actresses do most of the heavy lifting. Which doesn’t mean I don’t love watching the character burst onto the scene and announcing the end of the Winchester brand of bullshit.

Layla Rourke

A terminal cancer patient in a religious cult, she’s a more mature take on a Lori-type character and the themes of faith and doubt. Serves as a conduit for Dean’s budding survivor guilt, self-loathing, and sense of worthlessness. Is kind and cheerful, with strong hints that she’s relying on forced optimism to get through the days; also understanding of the circumstances of others while realistically freaked about the possibility of death. Weirdly, she enters the episode already in a state of acceptance and leaves it just as accepting when it’s confirmed that yeah, she’ll die soon. All expressions of anger at the injustice and senselessness are left to her mother which somewhat undermines the “struggling” portion of Layla’s character and renders the final scene where she makes peace with her fate a bit hollow.

Status: Implied dead

Importance: Minor in the overall narrative, major in the episode and Dean’s development

On her own: I want to like her, I really do, just… if only she were allowed to get pissed, once.

Cassie Robinson

Dean’s ex and that’s pretty much all there is to her. I struggle to pinpoint a single personality trait of hers—the 2000s idea of a “strong woman” and “not like other girls”, perhaps? Undermined as a love interest because TPTB don’t show the happy or any parts of her relationship with Dean so really, why should anyone care if two sniping assholes with little to no chemistry get back together? Memorable for being in a horribly scored softcore scene which YouTube tries to convince me lasts for shy over a minute, not the week I remember it to. Involved in the show’s first and last attempt at incorporating the issue of anti-black racism.

Status: Alive as of s5

Importance: Minor

On her own: She’s in the racist truck episode. ‘Nuff said.

Sarah Blake

A sophisticated people-person conversationalist with a love of high art and a deep sense of introspection. Ascends to the state of godhood by being able to pull off pigtails while adult. Bonds with Sam over responding to loss by crawling into a shell but deciding to move on. Doesn’t care for your fancy schmancy fine dining, Romeo. Isn’t ashamed to openly talk feelings which includes her explicitly asking Sam if they have a thing going on (honestly, this is such a breath of fresh air for a normcore romance). Despite being scared out of her wits, she refuses to be shoved into the helpless civilian box after learning about the existence of the supernatural; Dean creates a Pinterest wedding board in response.

Status: Alive as of s5, pointlessly dragged back to be murdered in s8

Importance: Minor in the overall narrative, major in the episode and Sam’s development

On her own: A great love interest that has enough writing behind her to fool you into thinking she’s something more.

Up next, whenever I feel like it, seasons 2 and 3!

[acephysicskarkat]

A bunch of disappointments and issues I found in S5 per @therodrigator6‘s request for Grist for the Content Mill.

Note that this is not an exhaustive list, it’s just all I could think of right now.

MAJOR STRUCTURAL ISSUES

Rushed or unfinished redemption arcs. This is most notable for Shadow Weaver (who sort of spontaneously gives up on being Just The Worst offscreen well before her sacrifice) but is also obvious for Catra (gets rescued in E5, is a full member of the team by E8, and this is without appearing in E7) and Hordak (never even admits that waging 25 years of imperialist warfare is wrong, gets forgiven anyway). There’s never more than a minute’s interval between “I’m sorry” and instant forgiveness except in E2, when Entrapta’s past actions actually mean something, and E4, where it just kind of feels forced and awkward and Bow kind of feels OOC.

I wanna mention Catra’s twice just because of how questionably written and rushed it was. Her resentment isn’t really addressed, none of her past actions apart from bullying Scorpia ever matter, Adora just starts to trust her immediately, and her wrestling with her temper is achieved by applying a light coat of sarcasm on a few lines. It’s just really badly done.

Underuse of the ensemble cast. Did Glimmer and Bow do anything between episode 8 and the final battle that wasn’t replicated elsewhere? The failsafe, for example, was something SW already knew about, so while it was nice seeing Bow’s dads again, that whole plot point seemed pretty much useless. Did Entrapta and Scorpia ever interact even though Scorpia literally left her entire life behind for Entrapta’s sake? Was it strictly necessary to only chip exactly the people who might not immediately forgive Catra, plus Spinnerella? Why were so many characters chipped offscreen and popped up for a few seconds in the conclusion just to explain why we never heard about them all season?

Several episodes being essentially dead air for the purposes of character development. “Shot in the Dark” could so easily have been used to have Adora and Catra deal with the issues in their relationship but that would require admitting that their relationship had issues and S5 had no time for that shit.

PETTY QUIBBLING

Adora’s desire to find her family is forgotten about. This would have been really easy to resolve, too: have Horde Prime offer her family, she has flashbacks of the Princess Alliance, the BFS and maybe even Catra and the Horde kids, and is like “I already have one”. I guess it kind of answers it when it says the First Ones are extinct, but 1) Adora barely seems to notice this, and 2) as an answer, it leaves a big old gap related to how Adora even exists if Horde Prime has had to archive memory of her species’ existence. (You can fanwank something but why should you have to?)

The show spent four seasons building up parallels between Catra and Shadow Weaver - they get similar rants about not being trusted in “Light Spinner”, Catra’s S4 outfit has the same asymmetrical sleeves as Shadow Weaver’s outfit, Adora outright compares them in the tie-in - and they just don’t do anything with it. Nobody really recognises or addresses the parallels.

Similarly, the parallels between Horde Prime’s actions late in the season and Catra’s actions in seasons 2-3 are right there and nobody seems to notice, not even Catra. Trying to control people and use them as weapons against their friends? Being willing to destroy the universe to punish your foes, even if it kills you too? REMIND YOU OF ANYONE NOELLE

As @freezingmyblitzballs has already pointed out, the symbolism of Adora’s new outfit representing her friends in different ways is great, but it doesn’t end up meaning anything or being used to drive the conclusion. Rather, the conclusion appears to be that Adora and Catra are just Special because of Mumble Mumble Unconditional Love.

Horde Prime’s vulnerability to magic doesn’t seem to mean anything because it never explains what that means. Is it that only magic can tear apart his possessing spirit? It would’ve been nice to know what that meant before the season finale!

Horde Prime’s religious symbolism can ring a bit hollow since the belief system appears to be “Horde Prime good” and “peace good”. We never see true believers, just Horde Prime and people mind-controlled by Horde Prime.

The Grayskull answer is bad and stupid and doesn’t make sense in the context of Light Hope’s initial introduction to Adora. More than that, why did a question people barely cared about merit more work on wrapping it up than Adora’s quest for her family? And why did it get so little foreshadowing, to the point where Razz appeared to be Mara’s only emotional connection outside the First Ones?

[faelapis]

i'm so glad ian jq confirmed that the diamonds aren't redeemed and haven't changed at all, i'm so tired of your takes and its good to see that canon is actually behind me. they're bad and not redeemed. steven was manipulating them and theyre never gonna get better :)

right, i forgot liking a tweet, which people do from a myriad of reasons - from an ex-crew member who did not work on (most of) s5 - outweighs everything said,  done, and expressed by the creator and synthesis of the crew as a whole.

i guess it also outweighs the show itself, which is so far-removed from steven “manipulating” them that it’s almost farcical. steven is completely upfront with them - he tells them he’s not pink, and he wants them to help the corrupted gems. which the diamonds do, for plenty of reasons. it’s not just because they want to hang out with ‘pink’. white wasn’t even there for that suggestion.

if you know how to read tone and body language, you could tell that’s not something steven said to be sly. that’s something he earnestly felt in the moment. it’s hard to manipulate people after you’ve already said you want their help, they already agreed, and you didn’t suggest hanging out until way later.

like… the show is subtle at times, yes. but it’s not impossible to tell whether someone’s lying or expressing their genuine feelings.

but yeah, sure. let’s throw all of that out the window, because youtube and tumblr are persistently horny to be validated to say Diamonds Bad / SU doesn’t Actually forgive. thank you for showing me the light. i am forever grateful /s.

i guess because of this, we’ve also gotta take every piece of ship art from every crew member as Forever Canon, even if RS hasn’t expressed approval, and none of those sentiments have actually made it into the show. anything a crew member *likes* is now canon. so i guess lapidot, amedot and pearlmethyst are all canon, that’s gonna delight and irritate a lot of people. oh and lapis has also been getting it on with jasper in secret, that’s Really gonna upset people, but there’s nothing we can do about it! someone clicked ‘like’, so i guess that must reflect the Crew Consensus of Canon!

i guess the only “real” problem is, that’s gonna make this “diamonds bad” take really contradictory in a world where this also exists:

so, uh… have fun figuring that one out.

this is a matter of interpretation, but if you really think every tweet liked by one of the crew’s members is canon, rather than canon being created by both the synthesis of crew discussion & the final word belonging to rebecca sugar, then… maybe consider that you’re cherrypicking. also, it could be a distinction between being “in the process” of evolving vs having “already” evolved. or just not thought through, because again, it’s just liking a tweet. defending a thing you used to work on. which is Very easy to do.

one thing i do know is, i highly doubt it was saying the diamonds are irredeemable. or that SU is less forgiving than you think. there’s a mild distinction in the tweet even i agree with, which is between “steven also had his own reasons” vs “steven did it Only because he wanted to be their friend” - the latter of which is false. he wanted to heal corrupted gems.

but that doesn’t mean the diamonds aren’t evolving. they are.

steven literally acknowledges that himself - “you guys have really gotten better at showing affection” is textual confirmation that they have changed. they can be imperfect and still make an effort to become better people.

“change your mind” was called that for a reason. much like spinel, white diamond internally realizes she was wrong, and works to change. that’s reinforced by the newly released “the tale of steven” book by rebecca sugar, aka the person who ian himself has said is the true arbiter of canon.

like. it’s very “for the kids at home”, so… here’s white, indeed realizing she was wrong, and spelling it out for you:

at their lowest point, steven always tries to be compassionate towards the diamonds. he doesn’t leave anyone in despair after their “was i wrong all along?” realization. he offers them hope, empathy and cooperation.

in that scenario, i really don’t care whether or not you wanna strictly define that as “redemption”. some people use that term way stricter than others. what i care about is whether the characters are given A) hope, B) change, and C) a happier ending than is traditional for a ‘villain’.

whether or not you think they’re fully redeemed or just trying to change… to me, that’s a distinction without a thematic difference. the overarching story remains the same - the diamonds are going to be fine. they’re trying to be better, and their current actions are having positive effects. that’s good.

in the movie, steven leaves homeworld because he wants to live peacefully after saving the galaxy. he was being smothered by the other diamonds, yes, but he’s didn’t go cuz he was secretly punking them the whole time. & he’s the one who needs to learn he’s not entitled to a “happily ever after”. he can’t leave anyone behind. steven has to keep trying every day, to help as many people as possible. everything will keep changing, including people around him.

so… in that spirit, if the diamonds aren’t fully redeemed, then neither are anyone. you gotta keep growing to be your best self.

matt burnett - one of the head writers throughout all five seasons, and whose words have been reflected both by the show and by RS herself - said it best: there are no strict heroes or villains in this show. everyone are much more complicated than that.

[kingofthewilderwest]

There are two main ways fandom analysts can connect the dots in a story: 1). by studying only in-universe events as though they are the only real things, or 2). by looking at a meta perspective beyond the shows/movies/etc. themselves and considering writer intent/commentary/etc. I think that a good combination of 1 and 2 gives us valid analytical reasons for talking about Johann’s role from Riders of Berk to present times.

From a meta perspective (the #2 technique I mentioned), no, Johann definitely would not have been conceived of being an antagonist in Riders of Berk and Defenders of Berk. The writers of the show at that time likely would have had no idea that the DreamWorks Dragons television show would extend beyond those two seasons. Those two seasons were designated as the only two seasons of How to Train Your Dragon shows at the time. So since Johann is nothing but a jabbering trader in those two seasons, we can see by that chunk in itself he was not designated an antagonistic role at that time. ROB and DOB didn’t intend to have foreshadowing.

But! From an in-universe (#1 technique) perspective, it is 110% valid to connect the dots from Race to the Edge back to Riders of Berk. Our new knowledge of Johann can be used to better understand who he was in Riders of Berk and Defenders of Berk times. In fact, the best way to analyze from a strictly in-universe perspective is to gather all facts from across officially published materials... and give the most reasonable and consistent explanation for how those points all come together. The most reasonable and consistent explanation is the one that takes in all data and fits all the data together as neatly as possible. So, the most reasonable and consistent explanation about Johann is that we can study and understand he had motives in the earlier years, being as RTTE S5 reveals Johann has been infiltrating Berk for years. This means that he would have had covert motives during episodes like “Dragon Flower.” It’s entirely legitimate to analyze Johann like this. It’s what is the best way to connect all the points of all published materials.

That said, I do believe that we can meta discuss Johann’s villainy at an earlier stage of RTTE production than last-minute-shove-together-before-S5-airs. The reason for this is that the writers started writing the last five episodes of Race to the Edge Season 6 in August 2016. This was very shortly after Season 3 aired (June 24, 2016). Timeline-wise this means that the writers would have been writing Season 5 before Season 3 aired. It might have even been around the time that we first saw Season 2 that they first started drafting episodes about Johann being an antagonist - and drafts usually come after brainstorming, besides! All this pushes Johann’s antagonistic character development earlier and earlier and earlier.

Now, the writers would have not just written the scripts and then tossed them to be produced and not looked at them again. Throughout the production phase of a show, there is going to be editing, revising, voice acting recording, potential scene deletions and reworkings (consider T. J. Miller’s ad-libs), and basically a whole lot of work before we even get to the animation stage. This means that the writers would have been able to simultaneously touch and influence the content of early seasons at the same time they start their script drafts of later seasons. This means that Johann would easily have been planned and written as a villain before one of you lovely folks detected a personality shift in Johann in Season 4. At the very least, given the dates above, Johann would have been planned to be a villain by Season 3 production times.

Now the twitter post mentioning the RTTE S5 plot twist was written a lot later in 2017, basically a year after Douglas Sloan announced they were drafting the final five episodes of the entire RTTE show. The twitter post isn’t because they suddenly decided to do a turnabout for Johann in 2017. That’s not how producing animation happens. It’s because Sloan would have been neck-deep in the final production stages for Season 5 and preparing for it to be released on Netflix. With S5 on his mind, the plot twist of Johann being a villain would be something he’d revel at anew. Reflecting upon the earlier decisions they made, he and Art Brown would then muse about “What were we thinking?” It’s not some sort of, “What were we thinking? We just threw this together! We weren’t thinking at all because we shoved it in out of the blue!” Instead, it’s more likely a, “Hey, we’re looking back and what we’ve done, and WHOA! This is a plot twist we’ve been working on a while and I’m reflecting on it because it’s a big twist and I’m finally seeing it in action!”

There’s also overall show plot pacing to consider. RTTE was originally said to be four seasons, but the writers always said RTTE would try to lead into HTTYD 2 times. This means I bet they always wanted to implement Dagur, Viggo, and Krogan as villains. Krogan, after all, is the character that leads into Drago. We only barely got to Krogan by S4. Sure, they had probably originally made RTTE more compact before the season extension, but it’s to note they didn’t even introduce Viggo until the very end of S2. They didn’t mention Viggo or Ryker at all in S1, back when it was most likely they would not have known about the six seasons. The slow-ish pacing from the start of the first season... despite the fact they would have wanted to get to both Viggo and Krogan... suggests that the writers knew PRETTY early during early seasons that they would have six seasons - and thus they would have known early-on they would need to prepare for the length of that.

It means they probably would have had Dagur, Ryker, Viggo, and Krogan as definites very “early on” - perhaps with the potential for Johann to be added. So they would have been planning for six season-like plot arcs from way way way early. Even if the writers didn’t plan Johann to be an antagonist when they first started RTTE, it’s possible Johann was a “maybe” concept that was suggested earlier during brainstorming, and then left open until they had written more solid lines and saw they had the episode length to insert the idea in.

There’s nothing out of the blue about these calendar dates; the timeline of tweets proves they didn’t pull this out of their butts without forewarning, work, and preparation. I’m not saying RTTE is the best about long-story arcs - that’s where it’s weakest, usually, to be honest - but I’m also not saying this was unprepared. It looks like it was prepared. And I bet that if we go back to RTTE from earlier seasons and really study Johann, it’ll be consistent with the revelations we learn about him at the end of this season.

So then, how do we explain some things like Johann being nervous around Viggo and the dragon riders in Season 4? It’s to note that Johann is nervous around Viggo and the others when they’re searching his ship... when Hiccup and company are nearby. Johann certainly has to act nervous around Viggo in front of Hiccup and the other riders - it’s part of his pretense! There is no part in Last Auction Heroes where Johann is alone with Viggo or Ryker (it’s also to note we don’t know when he joined up with them... could be more recent than S4); at all times, Johann is near enough to the dragon riders that he must be in his charade. The only time Johann is alone with the dragon hunters, he’s shown to be skittish - not because he’s with the dragon hunters, but because some of them are fighting and he doesn’t want to get caught in the skirmish.

I think it’s not too hard to conceive why Johann’s helped the dragon riders. In Riders of Berk and Defenders of Berk times, Johann would have wanted to be near Berk to learn more about dragons. The Hairy Hooligans guarded their secrets from many tribes like the Outcasts and Berserkers, so Johann gaining the Hairy Hooligans’ trust was vital for him to key in on useful information. Furthermore, he would not have had a conflict between 1). a quest for the Dragon Eye or other information, versus 2). helping the Hairy Hooligans. Hiccup and his friends were not in any location to interfere with Johann in this search for dragon information. So, for him, talking and being friendly with the Hairy Hooligans was a very logical and useful thing for him to do - beneficial and the best way to get the information he needs!

By Race to the Edge times, it’s still in Johann’s best interest to help Hiccup rather than stick obviously, solidly with Viggo. There are several possibilities to consider for why he continued helping the riders:

Johann could be stabilizing his alliance with Hiccup and the others to retain trustworthiness. By helping them “against Viggo/Ryker/etc,” Johann makes himself incredibly inconspicuous to them. This has huge long-term advantages considering that Berk is the most sophisticated society when it comes to human-dragon relations.

It could have been the easiest way to access Dragon Eye information. Hiccup and his friends are very good at unlocking information about the Dragon Eye and learning new information about dragons beyond what the Dragon Eye states. Yes, Viggo seems to have a better knowledge of the Dragon Eye... but consider: how many people would Viggo share incredibly important information to? Hiccup and his friends could have been more likely to tell Johann information about dragons than Viggo would have been likely to share that same information to Johann. Thus, Johann would want to help Hiccup and company because he would gain more information that way. 

Johann might not have been allied with Viggo at the start. Again, we don’t know when Johann started actually allying completely with Viggo. It’s possible Johann was working by himself (or working for other people not associated with Viggo) in the early seasons - in which case he would certainly prefer the dragon riders he was friends with to have the Dragon Eye over a trader he was not friends with. Johann wouldn’t randomly help Viggo if they weren’t yet allied!

For that matter, if Johann allied with Krogan first, it makes sense why he wasn’t working with Viggo. Krogan and Viggo weren’t on the same page at first, and frankly they still have a lot to work out.

It could have been necessary to keep himself undercover. Once Johann reveals himself, he reveals himself, and loses all possibilities of connecting with Berk and using them as sources. While that might mean working against Viggo and other potential/actual allies... it would also mean that Johann, in the long run, is still in the better grounds. It would be more prudent to keep himself undercover and lose one short-term battle than to reveal himself and lose the long-term “war.” 

So, through a combination of using RTTE current data to make a new interpretation of ROB/DOB, and through looking at timeline dates, I don’t think this plot point was as late game or out-of-the-blue as you suggest! Of course I’m not Douglas Sloan or Art Brown or anyone actually in production, so I can’t say for sure - but here is where I’d place my bets!

Thanks so much for engaging with me on this fun topic.

[wildwoodgoddess]

Okay, we need to talk about John...

Absolutely full respect and compassion to everyone who felt triggered by what John did to Sherlock in TLD. I can understand why you’re upset and why you are wondering if John is still a good guy or if he crossed a line that can’t be uncrossed. 

Below the cut, I’m going to take a look at it from a literary, story-telling perspective, so if that’s going to be too spoilery, too triggering, or too infuriating for you, might want to skip this one. 

I’m approaching this strictly as story. Story is there to help us make sense of the real world, to serve as an emotional release, to inspire, to warn, to help us explore ideas, etc. 

But it is not supposed to be the same as real life. Story is better structured, more purposeful, and more deliberate than real life. It’s also more heightened and larger-than-life. 

So none of the below is meant to be taken as justification of real-life violence. This is story. 

I can’t tell you for sure why Moffat chose to have John beat up on Sherlock. And I’m not going to say it was necessarily the right choice—it's art. Declaring an artistic choice to be right or wrong is very subjective and I’m not asking anyone to like the choice he made. 

But I do have some guesses based on literary devices and structure of why he went that direction, so I thought I’d share those with you—and then you can feel about it as you wish. 

First, story structure: 

I’ve discussed story structure in relation to Sherlock before, on my website, and I don’t think I’ve ever transferred those meta to Tumblr yet. 

But basically, there is a set structure to telling a story that most filmmakers (and Sherlock episodes are approached as films) use because it works the best for the audience. And because Sherlock episodes contain an ongoing story arc, we can also apply that same structure to the show as a whole, with S4 (instead of S5) bringing this story arc to a close. 

You can read my meta on that here (I assumed a 5-series arc instead of 4), but the relevant part for TLD is that we’re well past the half-way point, which was the vow Sherlock made at the wedding. 

That greater commitment he made must be tested, and immediately after, he was plunged into more complications and higher stakes. 

At some point in all this testing and higher tension, the hero breaks or seems to have completely failed. This is called the Dark Moment, or Major Setback, or other similar term. 

The dark moment or major setback began with John rejecting Sherlock. I believe it culminated in John beating the crap out of Sherlock, and then saying goodbye at the hospital. 

The dark moment is, as it says on the tin, the bleakest, lowest point in the story. And the deeper you make that abyss, the more rewarding the story will be when the hero finally succeeds. 

One of my favorite writing teachers has the mantra “How can you make this matter MORE?” So many writers tend to pull back, to go easy on their characters. That lowers the tension of the story, it makes the story less impactful. A good story—no matter if it is a quiet, slice-of-life story or a high-octane adventure story—pushes its characters to the breaking point. 

What is the one thing this character would never do, think, or say? Put them into a position where they must do, say, or think exactly that. —Another common advice from the same writing teacher. 

Basically, the Dark Moment should be as dark as you can possibly go within the plausibility of your story. There’s a 10 Commandments of Storytelling list from the author of The Princess Bride going around, and one of the commandments is pretty much exactly this. 

Because this is ultimately a relationship story between John and Sherlock (and it is—whether or not that relationship becomes romantic or not, the structure is exactly the same), at the Major Setback, they had to “break up.” I warned about this in my meta and here on Tumblr. 

And it had to be John walking away. Utterly rejecting Sherlock. That’s how a romance structure works. It’s not meant to be realistic, necessarily. It’s meant to show how the hero and the love interest transcend all odds to find their way back to each other. 

Low stakes in a story are boring. We always say we just want them to be happy. And I think that fluffy, happy fic serves a lovely and good purpose. But an actual TV show that lacks the necessary tension and emotional lows and only gives the emotional highs gets boring. 

It’s cliche, but you do need the bad to appreciate the good—in a story. 

I believe Moffat chose to have John beat up Sherlock because it reaches a lower and darker dramatic point than merely having him reject Sherlock or stop talking to him. He rejected and stopped talking to Mary—his “break up” with Sherlock needed to be bigger and worse and more heartbreaking than that because he and Sherlock are the primary relationship in the show. 

Did that HAVE to include violence? Mmm…perhaps not. But other options would have been yelling horrible things at him. Refusing to see him. …I’m not sure what else. 

John refusing to see Sherlock kind of prevents the story moving forward. There needed to be a confrontation. Something utterly rock bottom. That way, the reconciliation would be more powerful. 

Yelling horrible things at Sherlock would not be as visually interesting as having him “yell with his fists.” Moffat is a screenwriter—a visual storyteller. Given the choice, he’s probably going to pick visuals when he can. 

So, they hit rock bottom, but ultimately, John’s better self prevails and there is a beautiful, poignant reconciliation. 

You are not likely to see the beating addressed in any meaningful way in the show because immediately after the Dark Moment comes the Final Push—the all-out last-ditch effort for survival and to, in this case, beat the bad guy.

Working out John’s physical aggression and anger problems is low tension. It doesn’t add to the high stakes and action that is coming in TFP. They are going to have to fight, together, to beat the bad guy in order to earn their happy ending together. 

And I do firmly believe it will be together. Whether that’s romantic together or platonic together, I don’t know. But the story is about the two of them, always, so obviously the story will end with the two of them happy and together. 

But it’s unlikely that the show is going to have them address the beating in any real-life way because it doesn’t fit into this part of the story arc. We got a sense of John’s regret in his interrogation with Lestrade and in his discussion with Sherlock at the end of the episode. I’m pretty sure that’s all we’re going to get.

What About John’s Character? Was this OOC? 

Not at all. The Dr. Watson of ACD is quite a bit different than the John Watson of BBC Sherlock. Our John has always had a simmering anger about him. He’s always been physical—in good ways and bad. He’s always been a man of action, and not so good with spoken words. 

If he was to reach his breaking point, of course it was going to be physical and violent. Again, I’m not saying this is good. It’s not. But he’s never been a saint.

Larger Than Life: 

Another aspect of storytelling is that you need your characters to have a heightened reality, a larger-than-life quality. Ultra realistic, mundane characters are boring. 

But you also need some sense of emotional authenticity in order to make these larger-than-life characters relatable to the audience. 

This plays out in the way you choose to have your characters express their emotions. It’s not that you try to replicate real life, exactly. In a story, you try to grapple honestly with the experience of being human, but you do it in a way that magnifies it, draws attention to it, and creates an emotional response in the viewer. 

In John’s case, the point was to explore the ripping, violent, overwhelming emotions that come with experiencing a tragic loss, especially one that left loose ends and lingering guilt. The beating was a visceral, visual representation of those emotions. Yes, Moffat could have used words, facial expressions, tone, and Martin Freeman would have done a great job with it. 

But a violent confrontation, as awful as it is, represented those deep, wordless emotions far more effectively than dialogue or other non-verbals would have. It’s not meant to be taken as real life. The emotions, yes, absolutely authentic and real. But the violence—it was a way for the audience to visualize those emotions. 

I don’t think they will handle the aftermath of it “realistically” in the show, and I don’t think we are meant to view it “realistically” either.  

I’m sure that’s going to be a controversial idea. And there’s definitely a conversation to be had about how toxic masculinity denies a man any emotional expression other than anger. 

But I really don’t think Moffat chose the beating because he’s a violent person or enjoys violence or feels like that’s the only way for a man to express himself. 

I think it was an artistic choice based on the John Watson they created for this show and based on what would fit the narrative structure and be the best way to visually portray John’s emotions. Whether it was the best artistic choice is a fair debate--I’m not honestly sure I would have made the same creative choice in my writing. I don’t know what I would alternately have done, either.

What I did love, that balanced out all that ugliness, was when John, in the end, managed to express his emotions and grieve in a way that allowed Sherlock to comfort him. That was healing, that was beautiful. And it sent a clear message that violence wasn’t cathartic, it didn’t make anything better. 

What made it better, was love and gentleness, forgiveness.