#and I don’t think s6 really contradicts this much even as it establishes that they have feelings for each other

[womanaction]

Oh 100% I didn’t mean to imply she didn’t have feelings for him on that level but rather that her other actions didn’t show that she would label him as a “boyfriend” and yet we see immediately in season 7 her thinking back on him as such (predating the soul info) despite the complicated nature of their relationship.

I’m also not sure that “Entropy” reflects any rules of their relationship as much as underlying feelings - she’s hurt because she has feelings for him, just as in Hell’s Bells she’s hurt when he brings a date, but by this point they have “broken up” so he’s not going against any terms of an active relationship. I agree it hurts her because she does have feelings for him, but not because he is her boyfriend (even if he WAS her boyfriend, as she seems to accept later, he isn’t by that point in the narrative).

I’m interested in what you’re referring to in season 6 though, can you clarify?

also it’s weird when people in fandom are so insistent that Buffy and Spike weren’t like “dating” or “together” and like I get that from the text of season 6 but she literally starts out season 7 by talking about dating dead guys plural and how THEY were hotties and throughout s7 she talks about him as her last relationship so. idk if we think of this as a soft retcon or just how buffy thinks about relationships

[dontbipanicjonsa]

Let's talk about 8x04

(Skipping writing about episode 3 because of obvious reasons.)

At this point, it's getting very hard to tell what is Pol!Jon and what is "oh no I fucked my aunt". Their relationship is disintegrating fast.

1) Sansa's motivations.

If there's anything this episode confirmed for me, it's that Sansa is not motivated by a desire for personal gain (not that I had doubts before).

Her line from S6 comes to mind:

"If we don't take back the North, we'll never be safe."

That's it. That's her motivation in a nutshell. Two things are important here, being safe and the North. In her mind they are inextricably linked.

I think she believes (for good reason) that for her and her family's safety, a Stark has to have power in the North. Exactly which Stark is much less important (she's ready to make Bran Lord of Winterfell, she loyally kept Jon's crown safe through S7, he's still the Warden in the North even tho she's the Lady of Winterfell). Basically, Stark power in the North means safety to her.

Another motivation for her is Northern Independence. I think a part of that is again linked to Starks being in power in the North. She doesn't trust people sitting on the Iron Throne. And a part of it is the independence part. She, her family and much of the North bled and died for that independence, and she cannot give it up so easily.

The real motivation she has in this episode tho is protecting Jon. She says as much herself. Tyrion points out that with Jon in the South, Sansa is the power in the North, but Sansa's mind is on keeping Jon North (aka safe). The moment she told Tyrion his secret kinda reminded me of Cat freeing Jaime. It's a dangerous gamble that they're taking, but in that moment they decide to fuck it because if the gamble pays off, then the people they love (Sansa, Arya, Jon) will be safe. Sansa is fighting for Jon in this moment.

2) I don't wanna bitch about Dany but....

Can't she have said any throwaway line acknowledging the whole "the man I thought is my father actually isn't my father" crisis Jon was probably having inside his head??? Did she really just make his parentage all about her?? Nobody tell me she loves him.

Honestly, I think she's a great character (in the books). Going down a dark path, yes, but still great. The show makers appear to be hurrying along her descent now. This entire scene was jarring.

Moving on from the bitching-

Danaerys is really doubling down on the "what's mine", "the rightful Queen", and even "her destiny" now. The problem is that she's technically wrong. Jon has a better claim than her, and she knows it. Saying that he could take what's hers is plain incorrect. Now if she said, "fuck claims anyway. I've worked for this Throne" I would respect that. At least it's self aware.

3) The lady doth protest too much..?

I think Jon spent half this episode saying, "I don't want the Throne", "you are my Queen", and "she'll be a good Queen". Maybe I'm imagining it, but there is urgency in his words. He's trying to convince the people he is talking to. Who is he talking to?

Dany, Sansa and Arya.

Funny thing tho, in that same conversation with Sansa and Arya, it's established that he "did what he had to" because they needed Danaerys to fight the WW. Now this doesn't contradict his tag lines this episode exactly...but they don't seem entirely congruent with each other either. "Had to" implies a reluctance. Like his hand was forced. At the same time, even tho he keeps talking about how she'll be a good Queen, he provides no reasons for why he believes that, no explanation...only these lines. It makes for an unconvincing argument (sorry Jon).

Someone does say that Dany would be a good Queen because "people follow her" (either Tyrion or Jon) but we already know that's not true. People have not followed her since she came to Westeros, and while the show makes a point of establishing that Jon is liked by his people all the more for his role in the Great War, the same cannot be said for Dany.

So here we have Jon and Tyrion both defending "their Queen" hard. It is known that Tyrion, despite his protests, is having serious doubts about Dany. It is known that he is afraid of her (Sansa establishes that in her conversation with him). It is known that he is aware of her "worst impulses".

Why then, is Jon not? Why is he not having serious doubts? Why is he not afraid of her? Why is he not aware of her worst impulses? How can he not be?

The simple answer is, he is.

4) the "stfu or I stg" look.

The look he gives Sansa during the battle planning meet where she suggests letting the troops rest. Honestly? It's a sound suggestion. Jon, who has been Lord Commander, led people in battle, and is generally not known for mistreating his troops should agree with her. So why does he shut her down so hard, and with that look?

Dany says, "the longer I wait, the stronger my enemies grow". Which enemies?

It's a safe assumption to make that Dany is including Sansa in that list of enemies. As Tyrion says to Sansa (I don't remember the words exactly) but something to the effect of "it's easier to give in to her (Dany)" and Sansa immediately catches that Tyrion is afraid of Dany.

Now Jon is forcing Sansa to give in to Dany.....you see where I'm going with this.

This, along with his insistence that Dany is his Queen and she will be a good Queen....

Here's the thing. There are three things that could be happening here.

First, Jon is afraid of Dany and is being extremely accommodating to keep the heat off himself, and forcing Sansa to do the same.

Second, he's really Stockholm Syndromed his way into falling in love with Dany and he means everything he says.

Third, he has miraculously lost his critical thinking skills, his ability to see and hear Dany making some very dark threats (itching to burn KL, increasingly paranoid about Tyrion and Sansa, only concerned with the better claim that Jon now has on her Throne) and all his brain cells.

I know which of these things I want to believe.

5) In love?

Are Jon and Dany in love?

Danaerys is not. She felt something for him, yes, but now that she's discovered his parentage....her priorities are abundantly clear. She does not trust him, she is concerned only with the consequences this reveal has on her claim.

Her reaction is a mix of legitimate fear that this may be the end of her, a more concerning sentiment of "what it will do to the people" because what exactly will it do to the people...? A fear that he will "take what's hers" nevermind that she's supposed to love and trust him and he hasn't done anything himself to prove he's untrustworthy, and a fear of what it will do to "us" (?what?).

Does this make me think she honestly loves him? No.

Does he love her? It doesn't look like it. But we've already established that it's never particularly looked like he loves her. The question now is why does he keep insisting that he is subservient to her? Where does Pol!Jon end and the breakdown of their relationship begin?

The greatest irony of Jonerys is that it's supposed to be the most epic love story, but it's the story of two people that are incapable of truly loving each other.

6) are you seriously telling me

Are you seriously telling me that Jon reluctantly gives away his crown to this woman because he felt that he was left with no choice (and the woman greatly contributed to making him feel that way) and he simultaneously falls in love with her?

Honestly? It's a bit reminiscent of Yggrite. The entire story from Jon going to Dragonstone till now is very reminiscent of Yggrite. I would just like to believe that Jon's character has developed and grown since Yggrite.

And if Dany is Yggrite, then she's an Yggrite who is threatening mass murder and the lives of Jon's family. Are you seriously telling me Jon is capable of loving that (in a healthy way)?

My god. I get what people say now about Jon's character being assassinated. Pol!Jon is really my only option if I want to keep his character somewhat consistent. I guess we have to make our own consistency in this world too.

Note- these are only my ramblings and they are filled with my personal opinion and biases. I'm only saying what I think, not that I'm right.

[agentmanatee]

The MCU, time travel and how the Agents of Shield does not contradict Endgame

I was reading yet another review of the AOS finale when 2 complaints about how it doesn’t fit into the time travel rules established in Endgame really grated and kept me from finishing an otherwise well written article:

The writer complained about the reveal that the team returned to the temple in hazmat suits at the end of s6 and saved the past team. They said it didn’t fit into the rules established by Endgame.

The writer also decried how making the screwed-up timeline of s7 another timeline and thereby confirming the multiverse went against Endgame.

Now, the writer’s grievances would be very fair if they were at all correct. In fact, they contradict themselves. I cannot tell if they are think the rules of time travel Endgame established are because their complaints don’t give much to infer from when taken together. Also, did they pay attention to Endgame at all?

The conversation between Bruce Banner and the Ancient One does an excellent job of explaining the rules of time travel that the MCU is abiding by:

Bruce proposes that they return the Infinity Stones back to their rightful places in time when they complete the Unsnap. These are the terms that the Ancient One agrees to because this will create a stable timeloop as did the hazmat team’s situation above.

Before Bruce makes that suggestion, he points out that they would create branching timelines with a wonderful graphic should they not return the Infinity Stones. This is exactly what Fitz explains in the finale. The changes to time in s7 created a new timeline.

Because Loki escaped with the Space Stone, this is the reality of Endgame’s time travel. We know from the movies that Loki did not escape with the Space Stone in the original timeline. The movie went out of the way to establish the multiverse with hilarious effect. This reinforces that AOS was playing by the same rules as Endgame.

Here’s the thing. Not only did AOS follow Endgame’s rules, they followed their own rules established in s5. As many of us recall, the team was trying to break out of a timeloop (as in point 1) and thereby create a new timeline (as in point 2). The timeline that the timeloop was a part of wasn’t erased when the team broke the timeloop. We see this when they showed Flint and Tess talk about the future of humanity after the team had left their timeline. So the above complaints about time travel in AOS don’t make a lot of sense to me, even if Endgame went by whatever rules the writer thinks. Would it be better for the show to contradict itself than a movie franchise that wants no part in it? AOS deserves better.

[mittensmorgul]

I've watched season 11 again, and I have a question if you're willing to answer. In season 5, Cas was very disappointed about learning God was basically a "dead beat dad," as Dean called it. But when Cas had an opportunity to talk to Chuck, he didn't seem all that interested in talking to him or even asking a question or two. Why do you think they never had Cas interact with Chuck as a son talking to his father when it was such a huge deal for Cas in season 5?

Hi there! I’m happy to talk about this, because honestly I was personally GLAD that Cas treated Chuck the way he did in s11.

(A/N: I was halfway through writing this when my power went out last night, so now that everything is back on I’m gonna see if I remember wtf I was even talking about... if this goes sideways halfway through, blame Potomac Edison)

Cas had already realized long before exactly who and what Chuck was. I mean, not that Chuck was actually God, but that God and “His Plan” was always a load of BS.

Chuck left the angels a lot of conflicting information, and not a lot in the Free Will and Critical Thinking arena. I was just thinking about season 6, and this sort of feeds into a lot of the same distinction between Cas and the rest of the angels. My personal line of thinking earlier this evening was this line in 6.20:

CASTIEL I'm doing this for you, Dean. I'm doing this because of you. DEAN Because of me. Yeah. You got to be kidding me. CASTIEL You're the one who taught me that freedom and free will -- DEAN You're a freakin' child, you know that? Just because you can do what you want doesn't mean that you get to do whatever you want!

Major Tangent Warning, because I gotta write out what I was thinking earlier in order to explain why I am So Pleased with Cas and his reaction to Chuck in s11, which I think of as abject disdain. This is key to everything Cas had learned, to all of his growth as a person up to that point.

What Dean tells Cas here is in direct contradiction to what Raphael’s self-stated motive in restarting the apocalypse was. Also from 6.20:

RAPHAEL You rebelled - against God, heaven, and me. Now you will atone. We'll start by freeing Lucifer and Michael from their cage. And then we'll get our show back on the road. CASTIEL Raphael...No. The Apocalypse doesn't have to be fought! RAPHAEL Of course it does. It's God's will. CASTIEL How can you say that?! RAPHAEL Because it's what I want. CASTIEL Well, the other angels won't let you. RAPHAEL Are you sure? You know better than anyone, Castiel. They're soldiers. They weren't built for freedom. They were built to follow.

Raphael is just doing “whatever he wants,” in the way Dean was trying to convince Cas NOT to. Because if Dean learns anything in s6, it is the cosmic cost of his own actions. Think 6.11, and the lessons he learns having to play Death for a day. As much as Dean tries to work around the Bigger Picture of the Universe, he does understand that there is a right and a wrong, and that some things are worth fighting or even dying for, but the cost might sometimes just be too great. And unleashing all the souls in purgatory on the planet seems like just a different sort of apocalyptic level of bad... like putting out a fire with a flamethrower.

Cas had to make a choice here. He’d chosen his path every step of the way, wrestled with each decision he’d had to make over the previous year leading up to that point, but he’d passed the point of no return, and his direct prayer to Chuck went unanswered, and he never got a sign whether he was doing the right thing or not.

I’ve argued in the past that he absolutely DID get a sign, in the form of Dean telling him to stop in 6.20. But Cas dismissed him, out of pride, out of hubris, out  of desperation to do the one thing he believed could give him the power to stop Apocalypse 2.0, save Heaven, and also save Dean in the process, since Dean would be back on the radar to be Michael’s vessel if Raphael succeeded in breaking him out of the Cage.

And here’s the really tangenty part of the tangent: it just made me think of all the nitwits who won’t wear a mask in public, or follow social distancing rules because MAH FREEDUMB, you’re impinging on MAH LIBERTY. BUT THE CONSTITUTION!

Because yes, we can do what we want, but we can’t do WHATEVER we want when our actions are harmful to others!

The framers of the Constitution could never have foreseen a pandemic like this. But any SOCIETY where people must coexist needs to put some constraints on liberty, and the framers absolutely DID understand this.

They also couldn’t have foreseen air travel, but we have established rules about this. They couldn’t have foreseen cars and traffic lights and interstate highways, and yet we have rules that govern our behavior there, as well. Air traffic controllers, stop signs, speed limits-- we don’t just have the right to drive 90 mph through a school zone and run through red lights. And yet nobody yells BUT MAH FREEDUMB! when they get a speeding ticket.

Polite society ALSO must include *MY* right not to be killed because someone else decided that traffic laws didn’t apply to them, see?

Basically, wear your mask and shut up about it, whiny pissbabies. This is what is required of you to live in a functioning society. You do NOT have the right to infect others with a potentially deadly illness. Full stop.

But back to Cas and the Leviathan infection he’s about to infest the entire planet with...

Dean was effectively giving him the “wear a mask, nitwit” speech, but on a cosmic level.

And Cas had to live with the consequences of his choice, with the GUILT and DEPRESSION that resulted. And he spent the next few seasons desperately trying to make up for what he’d done, to atone and do whatever he could to redeem himself-- to Dean. He’d tried to redeem himself to Heaven, but the more he eventually began to learn about Humanity, the less affinity he felt for his fellow angels, and for Chuck’s construct of Heaven.

Because back to another previous point, Chuck effectively left the angels two opposing sets of instructions: orders to watch over the earth and act as shepherds to humanity, and orders to bring on the apocalypse at any cost. Can’t do both, truly. Even Naomi will eventually say, right before Metatron stabs her in the head, that she (and the other angels) forgot that their true mission was to protect and defend humanity, and she didn’t know when or why that ever changed.

FINALLY back to the point! WHEEE!

Basically, Cas has, in the six years between s5 and s11, experienced “god-ness” from every angle, experienced his own guilt over what he now believes were misguided actions, that sometimes Humanity has a better answer, and there are some things that just aren’t worth it in the long run.

Mostly, he’s realized just HOW deadbeat Chuck has always been. And the revelation that Chuck had actually been God all along? Saw their pain and suffering at trying to STOP the apocalypse all those years before? KNEW FULL WELL that Sam, Dean and Cas were doing everything they could to try and save the world from basically the entirety of Heaven and Hell, who were plotting the destruction of humanity and most of creation with it. I mean... Cas spent s5 begging for God’s help, to save the world, to convince Michael and Lucifer that they did not have to destroy humanity, and Chuck... had done LESS than nothing. He’d sat there and ghoulishly watched the entire mess unfold like a bad tv show... oh wait... :’D

By s11, Lucifer had not reached that point that Cas had. Lucifer had many other issues, having been rejected and locked up for most of existence, and even HE had been the one in 5.22 to try and talk Michael out of enacting Chuck’s battle plan. Lucifer never had the experiences Cas did (and despite being given every opportunity to have them over the next few seasons after s11, he continues to reject those experienced at every turn anyway, only serving to highlight the difference between Cas and, honestly, most of the rest of the angels). Lucifer had a personal need for a direct apology from Chuck for everything he’d been put through-- starting with taking on the original Mark and ending with the cage.

Of course Lucifer didn’t get an honest apology, because in the end, it was all just a theoretical production to Chuck. He had never apologized, in any of his universes, to any of the beings he created. And he never would. And on some level, Cas-- via his experiences, what he himself had already come to understand about God and creation-- already understood this about Chuck.

Cas... didn’t care about him anymore. He cared about HUMANITY, about Chuck’s CREATION. The creator might be a worthless jerk, but what came out of his creation is a thing of ultimate beauty. Humanity, love, free will, and the beauty of the universe is what ends up saving the world in 11.23, so I’ve chosen to accept this read of Cas and his relationship and opinions of Chuck. Because it’s perfectly in line with the “moral” of season 11.

Plus it’s just so personally satisfying to me watching each individual character’s reactions to Chuck, and understanding how that aligns with all of their personal arcs.

Dean: brought the “how could your forsake your creation” of a broken-hearted son who has finally seen the truth. something he worked out YEARS ago between himself and his own father, so it didn’t come with that particular personal baggage and didn’t completely break him in the process (as it may have done with Cas had Chuck revealed himself, say, in 7.01...)

Sam: brought his life-long hope that God was real, his faith in God’s inherent “goodness,” did the Chuck Fanboy for a bit before seeing Chuck a lot more clearly. He was able to relinquish his idol worship of Chuck as the Savior of Humanity.

Cas: had brought his experience of Humanity and Godhood, the entire spectrum of Creation that he had experienced for himself and grown through. Cas, for all his mistakes, had never stopped TRYING to do the right thing, never stopped doing everything in his power to save humanity and creation from every cosmic threat, while Chuck himself had only hidden away and watched from the sidelines, when he’d ALWAYS had the power to make everything good and right and allow the Winchesters their peace. Honestly, what BETTER response than to treat Chuck like a bit of gum stuck to his shoe?

Metatron: who had basically spent s9 trying to turn himself into Chuck Lite, literally plagiarizing his Supernatural novels to create his own origin story as the new God, and failed miserably. What other angel could truly confront Chuck, writer to writer, and call him out for His Story? Even fallen as low as he could go, Metatron understood first-hand the responsibility of The Cosmic Author in ways even Cas couldn’t, because narrative symmetry. Metatron was always about the Word, as God’s Scribe. He was a bad copy of the original with the names scratched out. He basically wrote the worst self-insert fanfic of all time. And that gave him the narrative space to confront Chuck about everything that Cas no longer had. Cas had long since rejected that role, sided with Humanity, and smashed Chuck’s Word. The original tablet-breaker.

Crowley: carried on Crowley-ing. Doing the best he could with what he had, and somehow miraculously BS’ing his way through.

Rowena: recognized the Biggest Power in the room and ingratiated herself to it for comfort and protection, and hopefully for a bit of power and security.

Billie: gosh she just stepped in at the 11th hour to annoy Chuck. :’D

But yeah, I’ve always been incredibly pleased that Cas basically ignored Chuck in s11. Good for him.

[bombshellsandbluebells]

Hey @wolfheartgirl! responding to you here because boy that post is getting LONG

Thanks for joining the conversation! Always good to have more opinions! I’ll admit I also don’t agree with your points completely and I just in general have a different view of the characters and relationships I think. Also, being 110% honest here - I didn’t finish season 6 so I might be iffy on all the details and how they play out. At some point I just really could not bring myself to keep watching, not just because of what was happening but because of how bad the execution of the writing and the acting was. Let’s face it - no matter what ships or characters we like or what side of the fandom we’re on, we ALL deserved better than what we got execution wise. And that’s disappointing. :(

Anyways, onto some body-snatched Bellamy discussion!

1. The Monty Thing - completely fair points! I did forget that they reached out to Wells’ actor first and he was unavailable, which is a shame. But that’s a good reminder that sometimes writing gets dictated on television because of things like that the writers can’t control. I do think you’re correct here, and I was wrong when I said it didn’t make sense for it to be Monty. Monty appearing to Clarke was much more about his legacy and what he had asked them to do than it was about his relationship with Clarke. On second thought, yes he was the only one who really fit there.

What I WILL still argue is, even if it works with Clarke, it still WOULD have had more weight and emotion behind it if it was Bellamy. So basically, it’s fine as is in canon, might have worked BETTER if it was Bellamy.

2. Honesty hour. I don’t know....what Octavia did in season 6. I really don’t. I tried to follow. There was some quicksand and some time travel and I was just really lost and disinterested at that point and I stopped watching and I STILL don’t know what she did in the finale.

Octavia’s redemption is......iffy. As is. I love Octavia. I don’t always love Octavia’s writing. I really don’t like anything I saw of Octavia’s writing in s6 aside from getting paired with Diyoza, though even THAT fell flat for me. And I really don’t understand what role she played in this season at all.

So maybe she would have crossed lines trying to save Bellamy, but I also do think there is a possibility to do something fun with switching the dynamic to being “my brother, my responsibility” and her trying to make up for hurting him last season. Again, don’t know WHAT she did last season, so being part of the Save Bellamy Squad would have at least pulled her into the action a little more. (I know that Octavia’s time travelling quicksand adventures are supposed to help set up the whole s7 thing but honestly.....it’s way too confusing and disconnected from the rest of the season and would probably be better cut.)

3. Inside Man Murphy. Fair! Completely far! Murphy 100% would not have helped them he is ride or die for his family ESPECIALLY after last season. And true, his anger and growing indifference did lead to him helping Josephine! (I didn’t get to 6x11 lmao, but I am kind of glad to hear it was about Abby, not Clarke. That makes A LOT more sense for his character.) And I don’t think CLARKE saying she was proud was OOC - I more meant that in my opinion it doesn’t make a lot of sense for that to hold much weight with Murphy considering he DOESN’T care about Clarke or her opinion of him.

What I will say about this is that not every detail of how the season was written is going to work with Bellamy as the bodysnatched because it wasn’t written for Bellamy. It was written for Clarke to be bodysnatched and so all the details of that storyline are going to support that. The idea behind switching it was an attempt to try to fix some of the main character and relationship arc issues last season with one simple fix, though the entire execution of the plot would then have to be adjusted to fit Bellamy and not Clarke. So yeah, Murphy’s storyline as a WHOLE would probably have to be adjusted - if not completely changed - to make sense with his character.

I was thinking about this actually and I think in general most of Murphy’s storyline needs to change. For instance, why did his near death experience THEN suddenly spark this fear when he nearly died in the finale of s5. It wasn’t necessary to have him nearly die AGAIN just to convince us that Murphy is scared of dying. He always has been. That’s a core part of his character. It’s kind of redundant.

But I was thinking that the main arc Murphy goes on in s5 is that he feels worthless and that triggers his fears of being unloved and abandoned. This is a pretty core part of Murphy too so it makes a lot of sense. I didn’t think the resolution of this arc was the best, but Murphy choosing to save his family and being instrumental in doing so and then Monty and Bellamy risking their lives and the lives of everyone in the finale do a lot to prove to Murphy that he’s not worthless or expendable.

Rather than switching to a completely new arc for him in s6, it’d be nice to keep expanding on this idea. That might mean removing him from his current canon storyline completely (which, although I did like it and it IS in character, doesn’t add much more to his character since he’s already gone though many similar arcs)

What if instead he took on more of a leadership role in saving Bellamy? That’d be something new from him we haven’t seen before. It would echo back to moments in s5 when Bellamy asked for his opinion or he was the one to make a decision for the others. It would be a really exciting new adventure to take his character on and it’d just be new for him. Maybe then he could work closely with Clarke and we’d get an interesting new dynamic there. It’d also let Murphy continue his journey of realizing that he is not worthless, which is nice.

Just spitballing here. I do agree his current arc doesn’t at all work with bodysnatched Bellamy, so it would definitely have to change.

4/5. Ok, here’s where we won’t agree, haha. I’m not a Bellarke shipper at all. I don’t disagree that s6 was very centered on Bellarke. It was, absolutely. My issue is that that is directly at odds with s5. s5 set up Becho in the beginning, forced them through struggles and separated them for most of the season, but then reunited and reenforced their relationship at the end of s5. The clear takeaway seemed to be that Becho was here to stay and strong. Bellamy and Clarke’s dynamic was certainly important, but it wasn’t framed as romantic in s5 and wasn’t, to me, framed to be more important to Bellamy than Echo.

s6 then goes and completely flip-flops that with no development to get there. Becho goes from ending the season strong to finding over nonsense and then Bellamy being completely focused on Clarke. s6 absolutely frames Bellarke as more important, but it’s frustrating that it is so at odds with the season that came before it. If they wanted to switch from Becho to Bellarke - which I’ll admit, I’ll never be happy with - it at least needs to have more development. Because the last we’ve seen, Becho is happy and Bellamy and Clarke are not on the same page and dont’ have the same priorities. If they did want to change that, there just needs to be more growth between Bellamy and Clarke that isn’ reliant on what happened between them several seasons ago. 

So frankly, I don’t think with EITHER of them bodysnatched that can happen. They don’t have the time to get to know each other again (remember, in canon, they haven’t seen each other in six years! you can absolutely re-fall in love with someone you knew, but it isn’t instant) which NEEDS to happen to sell that relationship. It isn’t good enough to me to rely on the development of early seasons when both characters have changed SO MUCH and been separated for so long.

I’m not going to argue whether the writers intend for Bellarke to be canonically romantic because honestly they have been so back and forth about it and unclear in the writing that I’m going to need some outright “I love you”s before I buy it. I do think they’re important to each other, I’m just going to need more recent development before I buy it, espeically after last season ended with Becho going strong.

6. Scrap the sheidheda storyline. Just scrap it. I really dislike it and it adds clutter to an already busy season. I don’t believe it really added anything of importance and just distracted from the other plotlines going on. You’re right it probably wouldn’t work with bodysnatched Bell but like.....I’m all for just getting rid of it. There’s more interesting ways to use Madi than whatever that nonsense was.

7. True! I actually talked to someone else about this. As it is currently written, the nightblood is a problem. However, like I said this plot and all it’s details was written to fit Clarke and it can easily be adjusted and re-written to fit Bellamy. Since bodysnatching and Sanctum was totally new this season, it doesn’t contradict anything previously established to just cut the nightblood thing out. A lot of other random details probably don’t fit for it to be Bellamy either because it just wasn’t written that way.

So yeah! Those are my thoughts :) Whew that was long.

I would also just really love to see everyone saving BELLAMY this time around since he’s always saving everyone else.

[roominthecastle]

Hi Room, What do you think about the finale? Any theorys about why Katarina did that to Red? And what do you think about the Stranger? Thanks!

To me, the finale in general felt okay, which is strangely comforting bc it wasn’t bad. I’m good with an “okay”. “okay” is an improvement (like I still feel TBL is trying while – to use a concurrent example – GOT gave up on itself and its fans spectacularly). There are individual moments that are more than okay to me (DEMBE, the team work, esp Liz & Red, esp esp Liz taking charge and that tiny moment of synchronized tea drinking) and others are less than (e.g. the conclusion to the conspiracy plot is kinda… ?!), but overall I like how S6 played out and my excitement for (lucky number) 7 is intact. Things are in motion and interesting again, and I finally gave myself permission to do a proper, full-scale re-watch during the summer, maybe attempt to chart the timeline, too, which is sth I never expected to consider doing again. I’m even gonna read the comics. In short, this season pulled me back in the Zone.

the rest is behind a cut due to length – @ mobile app users, apologies as always

Red’s identity, Dom’s story, and Liz’s side of these things

The Stranger: Masha was bound to figure out you aren’t who you say you are. What I can’t figure out is Dom. Why would he tell her all that?Red: In an attempt to help her move on.The Stranger: And she believed him?Red: She did. So much so that she‘s decided it’s safe to bring her daughter home.The Stranger: I know Dom meant well. He shouldn’t have told her that story.

So… having seen this scene, I def have more doubts than before, anon, but I still believe that the gist of the Rassvet story (including Red == Ilya) is true. This is (imo) why Red tells Dom “I know the broad strokes, I know who I am, but I need to hear the details you used to sugarcoat the ugly truth to make it look like a fairytale”, i.e. something that Liz has a tendency to swallow (see changed man!Tim or every paternity test they show her), something she was eager to embrace here, too, despite the obvious holes bc – as she told Ressler – “it is sweet and safe, so I’m gonna overlook things that don’t add up and hope it doesn’t come crashing down on me this time”. But it does. Every time.

Whether we like it or not, this is a consistent trait in Liz, this willingness to settle for a sweet, simple story over the messy, complicated truth even when she has misgivings (see her going at Red in 219, “It wouldn’t kill you to lie just once to make someone feel good.”). She’s not stupid, she’s just scared and unsure, imo (and so is Red but, unfortunately for Liz, being pathologically secretive is still what soothes him). But when there is no sweet story available to make Liz feel good/safe or it’s no longer sustainable, that’s when she grows restless/angry and goes on the offensive until she feels safe again. She did this w/ Tim and then w/ Red, too (she literally locked both of them up to gain control), and both times we can eventually hear her say “I was scared of you but not anymore”, and both times she expresses love for a safe & sweet idea and not the full reality of these men who cannot live up to that idea, so the cycle starts up again (well, not w/ Tim as he is now dead but Red is still in the running.)

It doesn’t really matter if the answer she gets is incomplete or untrue. As long as she can make herself swallow it, as long as it brings a sense of security, she will go for it. Tim played along w/ this and that fantasy bubble collapsed every time. Red never did and never will indulge her w/ sweet delusions but by doing so, he also reduces their “feelgood” time together. He hides behind her father’s identity but for her, he breaks cover repeatedly, which to me further signals that he doesn’t wish to take on the roles associated w/ this identity in her life, which clearly clashes w/ her park bench claim of “this is who you will always be to me”. And given Liz’s track record w/ these self-soothing declarations, I think we will once again see her being contradicted.

Having heard of what’s happened btw her and Red, I think Dom decided to tailor the truth to give them a quick-fix. His story brought a sense of safety/certainty that Liz craves – sth Red refused to offer when he told her he had a secret and he had to keep it and refused to give her any embellished feel-good alternative. But now he is on edge bc some of his secrets have been spilled and it was done in a way that maximizes his discomfort (by making him look like a hero when he considers himself anything but, and, ultimately, by undermining his control over his own “narrative” around Liz). I believe this is part of the reason why he tells Dom that he likely made everything worse by telling her that story.

I hope next season they will be pushed to face more of the actual truth together – in all its ugly, messy glory – about what exactly happened and, more importantly, why. Because we still don’t know much of that. Dom only offered a taste but now Katarina is back to mix some sour to the sweet (I am hungry as I am typing this, can you tell ;)

The Stranger: well, we barely have anything to go on here but what we have is already intriguing, i.e. he grew up w/ Red, he seems to know Dom and Katarina personally, he seems to have some serious tradecraft background + connections, and he is among the v few who is trusted w/ Red’s secrets, so he is inner inner circle for sure (and he’s played by Brett Cullen, so… yes please). I still think the childhood pledge from the Rassvet story is an element of truth (it just fits our Red way too much + I see it reflected in “Cape May”), so I think these 3 (the Stranger, Red, and Kat) were likely childhood friends and they all picked similar career paths (or it was picked for them), so the Stranger is likely Russian, too.

Katarina continues to puzzle me to no end, I freely admit. And I am enjoying it (for now anyway). The finale offered some really interesting details here, imo, and I think Red’s 2nd meeting w/ the Stranger is the most revealing.

Red tasked his mysterious friend to locate Katarina bc Ressler’s dig for his real identity triggered an active search for her, too. The Stranger finds her and hands Red a picture saying, “It’s her. I’m telling you, Raymond. Paper trails. The passports. The travel. It’s her.” What we can immediately conclude here is that they didn’t even know what Kat looks like now since it’s not the picture the Stranger used to identify her but her signature methods/movements (knowledge of this implies a close working relationship in the past at the v least). And since he doesn’t hand Red the pic to ask him to confirm it’s her but to show him what she looks like now, we can also conclude that Red had no idea what she looks like now, either, which means that he hasn’t seen her for almost 3 decades and, apparently, he would have been fine w/ maintaining this arrangement if it hadn’t been for the security risk Ressler’s digging exposed them to.

This conclusion lines up nicely w/ two (imo very important) things established in previous episodes:

Red’s hallucinations at Cape May – he sees Kat the way she looked in 1991/92. His mind couldn’t conjure her present image bc his last memories of her are almost 30 years old. This in turn implies that the Hobson’s choice event took place around this time, as well, and that was the last time he saw her. It was the last time Dom saw her, too, if what he tells Liz in “Rassvet” – that it was 28 years ago – is true.

Katarina being dead – whatever happened to Kat, her own father considers her as good as dead now. So does Red and Dom blames him for this loss, going as far as saying he killed her.

Dom: These boxes are all I have left of my daughter.

Red: If Katarina were standing here instead of me, if it were she asking you, what would you tell her?Dom: It doesn’t matter because she is not here and she’s not asking.Red: But if you could tell her–Dom: I can’t!

Dom (to Liz): If my Katarina was still here, she would have let me know. [… her mother sent a letter hoping it] would find her alive. I picked it up because I knew it never would.”

Liz: You said the name Masha Rostova had been lost to history until the manhunt. Now it’s out there and someone’s looking for me. It’s my mother.Red: Lizzie, your mother is dead.

Her mother was dying, Kat never showed. Her daughter was being hunted and it was televised globally – Kat never showed. And clearly neither Dom nor Red expected her to as they both seem to consider Katarina dead despite being aware that she is still out there somewhere. Moreover, they both believe that Liz is better off thinking her mother is dead than knowing whatever the truth is (so it cannot be too good). Add to this Red’s latest remark to Liz – “your mother can’t hurt you” – and things truly get weird and interesting. Was Kat subjected to some special session w/ Krilov, too, that somehow “extinguished” parts of her, practically rendering her old self “gone”? This would be my current best guess (just a shot in the dark, really) and I know it’s crude sci-fi territory but this is TBL we’re talking about.

Whatever happened to Kat, Red was involved in it, and we have several remarks to back this up:

“All the money, all the time and effort, all the favors in the world cannot possibly equal what you took away from her.” (Red, 216)

“There was a woman and her child. Both were doomed. Both would die. I could either save one or lose both. I chose the child. It was the worst thing I’ve ever had to do in my life.” (Red, 319)

“I’m not sure Elizabeth will ever be ready to learn what you did to Katarina.” (Dembe, 422)

“[Katarina] is gone because of choices you made.” (Dom, 320)

In “Cape May”, Red hallucinated forgiveness/absolution from Katarina but we don’t know if this is how she actually felt. It could have been just Red trying to make himself feel better about doing what he felt to be necessary. Katarina in the present doesn’t seem to be in a forgiving mood, tho. She clearly expected to be contacted and she clearly considered Red’s presence a threat.

Red: If Moscow is looking for Katarina, if Agent Ressler’s inquiry has reignited their search…The Stranger: Then I know that could be bad.Red: I want this done before Masha’s daughter comes home.

So… your guess is as good as mine here, anon. All we have for now is a whole lot of vaguing and very little concrete info. I agree, it feels there’s sth more to this but there’s just so little to go on, it could be almost anything. What we can conclude is that the Stranger and Red (and Dom) have stayed away from Katarina for almost 30 years and if it hadn’t been for Moscow’s freshly reignited interest in finding her, this complete lack of contact would have remained. They didn’t even keep direct tabs on her since they had no idea what she looked like or where exactly she was or that she was a threat to Red (otherwise he would have approached her differently, imo).

They clearly do not want Kat to be found – the precise “why” remains to be seen. Red’s first words to her are a warning – “it’s not safe” –, and I think he truly went there to make sure she wouldn’t be scooped up. That was his immediate objective. If she were found, the consequences would reach Liz and Agnes, and heading that threat off is what ultimately motivates Red here (→ “I want this done before Masha’s daughter comes home.”). He didn’t look too enthusiastic to make contact. He didn’t want to, he had to.  And he didn’t tell Liz, which suggests that he wants this separation to remain, which suggests that something is up w/ Katarina that goes beyond the usual “you can’t be in her life bc it’s dangerous” reason. Dom stayed out of Liz’s life, too, for safety reasons yet Red told him to find Liz if anything happened to him. That doesn’t seem to be the case w/ Kat at all. Red himself stayed away from her yet he went to find Dom after Liz “death” and returned several times after that for advice or simply for his company.

The meeting w/ Kat wasn’t a social call and it did not feel like a romantic reunion, either. Red just looked sad and tense to me. And he clearly did not expect to be stabbed, so I don’t think that bit was part of any planned performance. Why he received that treatment is another good question. Kat has clearly come into the possession of some new info that compelled her to go on the offensive. It could be related to their past and that vague remark about what Red did to her OR it is about something more recent that Red wasn’t aware she was aware of?? Right now this moment feels like a convergence of two separate threads: Red came to warn her based on “undisclosed plot point A” and Katarina reacted to him based on “undisclosed plot point B”.

Oh, I love this song, anon. Antis can keep pointing at that awkward kiss (that he doesn’t even initiate, she keeps pushing her face into his) as evidence of some ~epic romance~ all they want, but once again they fail (and/or refuse) to see things in context and “Cape May” was already pretty clear wrt Red’s feelings, I agree. and the finale lines up w/ it, too, which is nice.

Red hasn’t seen her in 30 years yet he only decided to contact Kat bc her looming exposure threatened Liz and Agnes, and when he is shown a picture of her, this is his reaction:

Not exactly what I’d expect from a dude in love (even if it were unrequited). He had a way more emotional reaction to Dembe’s return and he only left like a week ago. This is more like how you react when someone shows you photographic evidence of Bigfoot chilling in their hot tub w/ a beer. And now we know Red knew all along that Katarina was alive, so him “designating” Liz as the woman he loves and confessing (several times both to her and others) that without her he has nothing to live for and saying her name as his last word speak volumes already. So if they wanted to sell Red/Kat, they have already undercut themselves on multiple fronts here by giving literally all the romance tropes to Red/Liz. But I don’t believe they are selling R/K, it’s just another smoke screen + Kat is part of a past both Red and Liz have to settle for the sake of their future. And settling the past is always easier and more fruitful to do w/ a living human than w/ a ghost or a hallucination.

Yeah, I think it’s there to signal that they (Dom and Kat included) go way back and were/are close, like you said. and to indicate shared Russian roots, perhaps. As I said above, I still think Red is Ilya and the Stranger is likely Russian, too, (and so is Dom), so using Liz’s original Russian name makes sense in this context of “Russian togetherness”.

and Red sometimes calls her Masha around Dom, too, bc that’s what Dom calls her bc that’s who she still is to Dom. And I think that’s why Red calls her Elizabeth bc that’s who she is to him, which is a nice little detail further emphasizing that his main/defining connection to her is the present one just as James keeps saying. Or as Red puts it on-screen

I can def see both sides here, anon, and more. Knowing what we know about Red, both are likely among the multiple reasons that underpin his behavior in this scene. Yes, on the one hand, he was pressed for time and wanted that Kat thing done as soon as possible. On the other, he was also kinda closed-off as if he were trying to hold back emotionally as well as physically, which I think flows from 2 main sources: 1) he feels uncomfortable w/ the labels Liz wants to push on him (ever since the pilot he’s been displaying a preference for “partner” and not “father” and he might be reaching his saturation point) and 2) he is still heartbroken and afraid to put himself out there again w/ Liz after three major betrayals in a row. He’s already had a sort of baseline distress due to how emotionally vulnerable he is to Liz at all times, so after this latest heartbreak I think he is just trying to take things slow, leaving space and time for Liz and himself to figure out a mutually acceptable way to fit together.

She’s been using his heart as a knife block to satisfy her own needs and I think it’s making him less and less willing to force himself into slots that feel uncomfortable to him. She just decided that him playing dad and grandad is what suits him but a week ago she thought life in prison suited him the best. I mean… that’s not how you relationship. At all. Relationships are ongoing negotiations where all involved need to consent to their “roles”. It’s not “I hate you now, so I will put you in prison” and then “I love you now, so stay for dinner”. After everything that’s happened, I am not surprised Red is pushing back a little here for the sake of (what’s left of) his own sanity. He is a deeply flawed, problematique human being but he is still a human being and not a toy.

Liz and Agnes are the most important to him and he would never ever force his preferences on them, I completely agree. But that doesn’t mean Liz should be allowed to force her preferences on him esp when those change so often and so drastically bc she clearly doesn’t know what she really wants from him yet. I think this realization is finally truly dawning on this guilt-ridden, lovesick idiot and that’s part of what we see in this scene, esp in that “I don’t wanna intrude” comment that really does feel like a pointed retreat from her abrupt park bench declaration. But of course there is no negotiation w/o talking and that’s what Liz wanted to do before Red shut her down, so…

bottom line (that’s been the same for 6 years): these 2 need to talk.

[sol1056]

multipart ask on Keith

I would honestly love your thoughts on Keith’s character development, specifically him leaving for the Blades in S4. Personally I’ve always been on a fence with how they wrote Keith’s character after that. For one, he started as a lone wolf and I always thought they would subvert that along the way with more character interactions and team building episodes like in S1, but apparently S4 throws all of that away. I thought him forcibly being the leader of voltron would be a great opportunity for development but Shiro takes his place in the black lion and Keith just leaves. 

It really didn't help with all the signs pointing as him as the true leader of voltron when he barely even interacted with the team personally (except for shiro) after that point. To top it all off his “maturation” was a two year time skip montage with his mom and he suddenly became level headed and ready to fly Black. So when he finally returns and become the leader of voltron it felt a bit underwhelming and hollow. To be honest I also find his interaction with the team afterwards kinda out of character [...] 

I just wanted to hear from a writers perspective if Keith leaving was a good idea for his character in general. He had some really good scenes in his time with the Blades but i personally think in exchange it took way too much [away from] his development with the others. I also wonder if it's even possible [to execute well] leaving for the Blades and then becoming the leader of Voltron. 

Here’s a general rule: avoid leaving any of your protagonists at a bus stop. 

A few chapters is already pushing it; the equivalent of 1.5 seasons is out of the question for all but the most superlative of writers. I’ve met superlative, and believe me, no one on the VLD staff qualifies. If they did, they wouldn’t have been writing for VLD in the first place. 

The start of S4 will forever baffle me. Had S3/S4 been broadcast as a complete season, I might’ve assumed there was a technical error, and would’ve tweeted at Netflix and not returned to watch until I got word this really was the midpoint episode. No warning, no foreshadowing, not even a peep out of Keith, and suddenly he’s working with the Blades. 

In an ensemble cast, the point is that it’s an ensemble; you don’t forget one of your core cast at the bus stop while the story-bus trundles on. If Keith were meant as a protagonist, then sidelining him for 1.5 seasons is an even worse crime. If the intent of the story, thematically, is 'stronger together’, shoving one of them out of the picture is pretty much the antithesis. 

This is not to say you can’t do it; in hindsight, I think the clone should’ve been shelved and the real Shiro returned at the end of S3/S4. But that comes with the assumption that a) the team would struggle a great deal more in his absence, b) prompting development that would create a new dynamic once Shiro returned, and c) that Shiro himself would change in some degree, from/during his absence: one that, by definition, that would need to be complete.

In other words, if you’re going to remove a protagonist, two things must happen. One, they must be removed, which Keith wasn’t. The story checks in on him irregularly, and each time, he's treading water while the story moves on. Two, the absence must become a driver: in a sense, the absence is a presence of what’s missing, and regaining the character must be paramount. 

VLD put minor effort into recognizing the impact of Shiro’s absence, limited mostly to the torture-porn of watching Keith isolated in (and by) grief. It couldn’t even be bothered to do that much, when it was Keith’s turn to fall off the team. No one missed him, no one needed him. The result was a clear message there was nothing Keith brought to the team that couldn’t be done by someone else. There was no presence in his absence. 

Consider the few scenes in S4-S6 with anything of Keith. His storyline did nothing to push the main story forward. In S4, the Blades are focused on tracking a new quintessence, a subplot that discovers nothing, provides no twists, and goes nowhere. In S5, despite Keith being with the Blades, the two groups have dropped communication to such degree that neither is aware of the other’s participation in the Kral Zera. 

If you’re determined to leave a protagonist in another castle, for heaven’s sake, use that distance to allow them to continue to impact the main storyline. Make their absence into a working presence that can link the two groups; the complete radio silence just underlines how meaningless the story considers Keith, in the overall plot. 

In that light, Kolivan’s left-field decision for Keith to extract Krolia feels like VLD was grasping at straws, trying to find something to occupy Keith. Worse, that mission contradicts S4: the quintessence is no longer blue, no longer notable for its energy levels, and no longer transported to secret bases in massive quantities by major warships. It’s back to the usual maroon, carried on small cargo ships in limited quantities, and now a dangerous substance with questionable side-effects. 

In a nutshell, VLD left Keith mired in pointless actions with no bearing on the rest of the characters (hello, suicide attempt never mentioned again). Late S5, VLD realized it needed to get a move on, if Keith was to get an upgrade. So it took the easy way out: an overload of exposition flashbacks that neatly evaded any emotional beats between Keith and Krolia. VLD had no idea how to get Keith from point A to around point K, so it settled for just telling us Keith had grown up. On a space whale.

Had we been given a better reason (or any reason) for Keith joining the Blades, had we been given a hefty sub-plot for Keith that led him back to the team in an organic fashion (or at least dovetailed with the main throughline), had the story used those seasons to show us Keith learning with the Blades in a way he couldn’t or wouldn’t with the team... well, for one thing, it’d still contradict the ‘found family’ and ‘stronger together’ themes, since it’d be even more clear that Keith was stronger elsewhere. 

But setting that aside, at the very least, Keith wouldn’t have returned feeling he’d gotten a personality transplant. We would’ve seen his progression, such that any given point along the way would’ve been recognizably Keith, even if the starting and ending points were almost a one-eighty. It’s called character development; most stories do it as a matter of course. 

I’m left concluding that the creators genuinely don’t grasp that characters will change per their experiences. It’s a crucial element in storytelling, because characters are the core of any story. If you can’t figure out what would make a character choose A this time and B next time, you’re failing on one of the most fundamental aspects of characterization. In fact, you’re missing the entire point of a story: character choices are the plot.

I do have to take exception to ‘signs pointing to [Keith] as the true leader.’ I’ve posted before about the mentor trope, and how Shiro’s S1/S2 arc contradicts Keith as Black Paladin. I suggest you read those before coming at me with the assumption VLD did any of the work required to establish Keith's leadership as inevitable. 

It’s possible to have someone strike out on their own, learn valuable lessons, and return grown-up and able to handle the situation they’d originally fled. It’d be a very different story, though, one that isn’t focused on a titular robot, but on a single protagonist’s journey. It’d also be a story that has nothing to do with ‘stronger together,’ as the movement away (to learn) and back (to reclaim) means the protagonist only became stronger when they weren’t with the rest. 

Keith taking command of Black in S6 should feel like a victory in terms of his arc: where once he’d recoiled, now he steps forward. But since we never saw how or why his perspective changed about leadership, all it would’ve taken is a subtle shift in Yeun’s delivery and we could be talking instead about how Keith returned and was still in his ‘you want me to lead, this is how I lead’ pique. 

Shiro’s return creates another turning point where the question would be logically raised, and it’s almost as though (once again) there’s an episode or two we didn’t get. It’d be reasonable for someone to raise the question of whether the team now swaps again. Yet no one does, and we’re supposed to expect Keith --- who waved the little ‘Shiro is Black’ banner far more and for far longer than any other character --- is now content to command Black, with no need to even broach the topic. 

That’s a radically different perspective Keith shows in S7 onward, and it’s a problem created by the lack of development for Keith, in S4-S6. In the course of a single episode, we literally went from Keith being his slightly out-of-his-emotional-depth awkward self, to someone clear-eyed and commanding almost to the point of arrogance. It’s not helped when his original characterization returns for the duration of his fight with Shiro --- only to blip out again as soon as Keith returns to the team. 

And forcing that abrupt shift on Keith’s part meant the rest of the story (and the characters) got shoved around into their respective places and out of shape, as well. Stories are made of characters, and characters are dominos. You knock one over, and it has a cascade effect. Changing Keith from the character we knew to someone else wearing his face could not happen in isolation, and every character around him suffered as well. 

Like Shiro and Lance, Keith had major potential to be a groundbreaking character. He was introduced as the kind of independent, socially awkward, spitfire character usually pushed to the forefront in American media, yet S1/S2 gave him a solid place as Shiro’s greatest supporter. Keith had all the makings of a hero we rarely see: someone who truly believes the title of leader is beside the point, that the team is what matters.

I’m used to Gundam, which almost always strives for a resting place of five (or four) protagonists standing shoulder-to-shoulder. There might be one among their ranks who gets the central position, but the narrative is firmly consistent that should the team lose any one person, it would fall apart. There’s no need to ever tell us the team is ‘stronger together,’ we can see that lesson play out, over and over, whenever the team is divided, split up, or loses someone. 

AtLA followed a similar pattern; by the end, it’s obvious the strengths each person brings to the final battle. There’s no question that every single one is crucial for victory; there’s no point where someone leaves and there’s not immediate and significant impact on the remaining characters’ successes. Sure, Sokka may not be able to bend like the rest of them, but without his brains, they’d be sunk. Katara, Toph, and Zuko might not be able to bend every element, but if any one of them isn’t there, the team is going down. Aang may command the central position, but he can’t do it all on his own. 

While AtLA shone in having characters who visually broke the mold of our usual white-dominated, male-dominated American cartoons, it also broke away from the lead hero + band of intrepid (but far less capable) sidekicks. Like Gundam, it presented a group of characters who grew into a true team. The pictures might show Aang in the middle, but every one else contributes an equal amount, in their own way.

VLD had the makings in its first two seasons to go that route. But its EPs wanted dark and edgy, a perspective too cynical to embrace the optimism inherent in a team-based story. Sure, their deconstruction of VLD’s S1/S2 trope-subversions brought the story to a point where Keith was declared the definitive top guy, the true Black Paladin, head of the paladins. 

Thing is, pushing Keith into that position required altering his personality beyond all recognition, destroying the team dynamic, and gutting any chance of recognizing the other characters as equally integral to team success. In effect, making Keith the de facto leader required destroying the team: and what’s the point of leadership, then?

[sometimesrosy]

A fan asked Bob at SW4 if Bellarke will happen or not in s6 romantic wise and he laughed and said ‘mmmm..s7’ laughing. So do you still think that they were telling a 2 season story instead of postponing Bellarke till their relationship no longer runs its course?

I didn’t hear that. What I heard was Bob saying he couldn’t say anything about bellarke because it would all be a spoiler. So to me, anything he says after “I’m not telling you,” especially if it’s vague and he laughs while saying it, is not evidence. 

I’m just going to assume that he’s not going to tell us anything, no matter how much we want his statements to be confirmation or denial. And as that statement doesn’t say much, contradicts what he already said, and I did not see what he said or the context of it, it doesn’t make sense to consider it evidence before more information can clarify it.

When I talk about Bellarke, I’m not REALLY looking at the external commentary. I might take it into consideration, but as always, I am analyzing the TEXT. My speculation is based on the text. I DO listen when JR tells us what themes and stories he’s going to explore in the main story or in the character arcs. Because that’s part of understanding story. But I don’t take the commentary ABOUT the show to be the show itself. Everything they say has to be held up against what is happening in the story.

When people listen to actor comments at cons, especially after them saying they aren’t telling, and then use that as the ENTIRETY of their understanding, that’s not analysis. That’s gossip. I don’t like gossip. 

Taking what they say and applying it to the canon to see how that affects your interpretation makes it analysis. “If I look at s5 with this quote in mind, how does it affect the story or my understanding of the story.”

My theory that they were telling a s2 story didn’t actually come from Bellarke. It came from Raven, I think. When I felt dissatisfied at her lack of story and character development. She’s always gotten big character development before, so what happened? Murphy got all the character development, and usually his character arc is a side story. And then I was like, hey, he got more development than usual and Raven got less. Oh wait, that’s kind of like they just expanded the story to fit two seasons instead of just one.

And THEN I took that theory and started holding it up against all the other storylines. And i noticed that MANY of the storylines were left hanging. Madi becoming Heda, Kabby, Zaven, The Blake siblings, despite how IMPORTANT a story it was, it left us with Bellamy nearly denying that she’s his family? There’s no way that couldn’t feel unfinished. It’s too important to the entire story. Echo’s story really barely got started. JR told us her story was about family, belonging and loyalty, AND that her character ended season 5 “controversial,” but we never went INTO those themse and Echo wasn’t controversial, so I thought, okay, I can see where those themes COULD fit, and there’s a start to them with the raven-shaw argument, but we never go there. So that said to me that he was talking about his WHOLE story arc for Echo– but we have barely started it? So that’s where it’s going? So he’s telling the story as if s6 was the s5 story. And that fits with my expanded s5-6 storyline. 

And THEN when I look at Bellarke’s place in the story, and it feels like so much was left unsaid, and there are literal major secrets that affect Bellarke’s relationship that are just HANGING there waiting to be spoken to change everything, it is clear that their relationship story is still smack dab in the middle. 

I don’t even know what you mean “postponing bellarke till their relationship no longer runs its course.” You mean baiting? No, man. I think bellarke is currently romantic in canon, so it’s not baiting, it’s HAPPENING. They are smack dab in the middle of it. Love stories are about what happens BEFORE they get together. Getting together is the CULMINATION of a love story. If you stop in the middle of a love story, They aren’t a couple. Heck, you can stop nearly at the end of Pride and Prejudice, and there is no Eliza and Darcy, because we’ve just found out that Darcy is engaged to another woman and his aunt has told Eliza that she has NO CHANCE WITH DARCY. it’s over. donesies. “postponed till their relationship no longer runs its course.” But if you get to the END of the story, you find out that was the motivation for Darcy to realize that Eliza actually cared for him. And he came back to her. And asked her again. And she said not one word to tell him to stop. And then they got married. End story. Bait? No. STORY. 

So what was the Bellarke story line for season 5? They start off separate/dead. 5.01 is about them living WITHOUT each other. The REUNION was a slow reveal that lasted through 5.01, 5.03 and 5.04, and still leaving us kind of unsatisfied. They kept taking steps towards each other, but never really felt TOGETHER until…. well, until the last 30 minutes of the season finale. 

I said. What does that mean then? That means that season 1 was a bellarke story. from 5.01-5.13 in which they told the story of how Clarke and Bellamy were reunited– as soulmates. And I thought about the season and realized that each episode, even the ones where they were not together showed movement IN THE STORY OF HOW THEY CAME BACK TOGETHER. The WHOLE season was about the NON ROMANTIC REUNION.

AND YET! And yet, within the non-romantic reunion of partners, the head and the heart, they dropped HEAVY romantic feelings visible to all. Which were plot points that turned the story. And THEN they refused to to talk to each other about them, or admit that was going on. So now we have the non-romantic reunion with CANON romantic feelings hanging over our heads. 

2199 days of pining. Bellamy torn between his official girlfriend and his soulmate who was back from the dead. And NEITHER of those stories resolved, but both affecting Clarke, Bellamy, Madi, Octavia, Marper and Echo– although she doesn’t know it yet. And THAT she doesn’t know it yet means it’s a story still happening. 

And yet it’s not a cliffhanger. The cliff hanger is the planet. The Bellarke relationship hit a pause in it’s development in their reunion, like the moment before it revs up the engine to go faster, with that 2199 reveal, and Bellamy’s changed behavior but lack of confrontation about it. It’s like a bated breath as we wait for the other shoe to drop. 

So then it became clear to me that they were telling a romantic story in s5. 

I then compared the story they were telling to my speculation for last year, because, of course, I was wrong about it happening so fast. And when I compared the s5 to my ideas about how Bellarke would develop I realized that my theory for last season was actually still correct and still on target, but only half way there. I was rushing the set up because I saw it in my head as the tropes that were already clear. But they did not rush it. They slowly set it up in 5.01, 5.03, 5.04, 5.05…. yeah all season. pulling it out of stories with characters who were not Bellarke, and so actively making romantic Bellarke PART of the narrative for all the characters. 

It was clear to me that s5 was a slow burn love story about the obstacles keeping the soulmates apart. Clarke’s death was solved. Their changes as people was actually the longest story there, and was solved. Their conflict over Octavia and Wonkru was solved. Clarke feelings of not being his people was kind of solved, but that might expand into belonging and spacekru in season 6. So she got back together with BELLAMY but not the rest of the family– wait that’s half way through the story. S5 INTRODUCED B/E and made it a REAL obstacle (in the trope of soulmates it is not going to stop them so i don’t worry about it, but in the narrative it’s a REAL obstacle,) that has been presented, caused Clarke to draw back, served to point out that Bellamy’s love for Clarke is not platonic but ROMANTIC, and put to bed, literally, until morning. A story that is HALF WAY TOLD. 

So. Like, my theory was influenced by some things that JR said, but mainly is working on narrative storylines that are being told, being set up, being resolved or not resolved. Look. I write novels. When you start a story, you finish the story. The 100 writers are proving that they come back to stories to finish them, and it might FEEL like they aren’t addressing them, but they are. The fandom feels unsatisfied with the stories (like bellarke or the blake siblings) because those stories halted in the middle. But if you TRUST them to finish the stories, you can see they are setting up the events that would naturally finish those un finished stories, and they’re using the other characters and the plot to do so. 

So then I take Bob’s (unconfirmed, i still need to see the source,) statement and say, how does that reflect upon what I know and interpret with the show itself and what he and other people have already said.

First question is: What does “romantic” mean? Because if you ask me “is romantic Bellarke going to finally happen in s6, I personally am thinking… errr it’s happening now, so what do you think counts as romantic if you’re not counting the romantic story on screen? Are you looking for the trifecta of confession/kiss/sex? Are you looking for established couple? Are you looking for the culmination of a romantic relationship is marriage, family and children? Then knowing that he’s not allowed to talk about ships, and you’re putting him in an awkward position and he’s awkwardly laughing. I mean. You don’t count romance in front of you so he can say anything, right? None of it will be a spoiler because you don’t see it. Maybe you never will until after you get kiss/confession/sex and an acknowledged relationship where they get to be official. IDK. Sure. s7. Go crazy.

me: stick to the text.fandom: BUT THE GOSSIP IS CONFIRMATION OF RANDOM THEORIES THAT ARE NOT BACKED UP BY CANON!!!

i don’t know nonny. If you don’t want to interpret the show with me and would rather be like BUT BOB LAUGHED AT ROMANCE, i don’t know what to tell you. You kinda got the wrong blogger. Although maybe not, because I just showed you how i dealt with extra-narrative commentary within my analysis. 

Listen. I’m a story geek. That’s what I like. Story. Narrative. Writing. Sci Fi. Character development. When I fangirl, it’s through these things. I am not, nor have I ever been into gossip, rumors, fanwars, shipwars, stan or antis. I like talking about stuff I love. Fandom is too interested in fandom politics, power plays, who said what, character assassinations, and invalidating the canon so that fanon and fandom can be more important. Not my thing. Don’t come to me and go “AH HA!” what do you think about canon now? Did that statement change canon? No. Does it work with canon? No. Did bob already tell us he’s not telling us? Yes. Let it go. They aren’t giving us confirmation of Bellarke, one way or the other. 

[hopevalley]

Do you reckon they are going to write Bill off - give him a judgeship and heave ho - he's on his way out of HV! The extended preview makes it seem like that!

I definitely had that thought. It’s obvious to me that they’re not really sure what to do with Bill as a character. They spent S5 and so far S6 making him into a punching bag for bad jokes (while also writing him as a giant jerkwad). It wouldn’t surprise me too much if they decided they’d had enough of his character taking up space in a main slot and decided to ditch him for younger men with more obvious roles to play.

If so, that’d be a real shame. I have to admit that losing Bill as a character might tempt me pretty hard to stop watching. I don’t like how they age all the women down with layers of makeup. They try to do the same with the men but it doesn’t work very well. I know there were a few times they just made Lee and Bill look about ten years older instead of younger. Yikes!

Anyway, a judgeship would be an easy way to get rid of Bill. I maintain that without a DAMN good bit of character development (aka, a reason for Bill to take it), it wouldn’t make sense for his character to do so. He quit being a Mountie because he had to adhere to the law too much to do his job. Becoming a judge is more of that, but like, with even more eyes on him. That said, easiest way to write it so it makes sense? Bill has his own personal arc featuring an identity crisis. Without his Big Important Job and Big Important Title, he doesn’t really know who or what he is anymore; he’s…lost, I guess. Directionless.  That isn’t hard to imagine, you know? Remember, Bill lost both parents before he was finished with his schooling, but Jonas took him in, paid for that schooling, and put Bill on the path to being a Mountie. If I remember right, when Bill quits the Mounties, he says something like, “For the first time in my life, I get to decide what I want to do.” He’s never had that option. To be fair, lots of people didn’t get that option in that time period; you just did what was expected of you. But you’re not a big important person with power, influence, and an amazing reputation for 30 years for nothing! Quitting that…maybe it felt freeing for a while, but now everything is stale. 

Is he making a difference? Is he really helping anybody as sheriff to Hope Valley? 

Once Nathan shows up, he can assist Nathan, but…that’s all he is. An assist. It’s possible that, for Bill…Nathan’s presence will put him in a position where he’s kind of at a crossroads. He owns part of the café, but it’s possible that Abigail’s dip into the stock market will leave her with more money so she can buy him out. Then what would he do? Retire on that money? Waste away? 

Sure, Jack Wagner’s not really that spry, but we’re supposed to see Bill as exactly that kind of person. He’s a doer–he does things. Hands on. 

So maybe this judgeship offer comes along and he gets some of those old feelings back. You know, the itch to go and do something. To make a difference. To do some good. Hope Valley won’t need him anymore, and it’s not good for him to languish there forever. He has no family left to go to. Just a few friends. Sometimes that’s all a person needs, but…he still has to live the rest of his life. How is he going to spend that time? Meandering around Hope Valley, aimless, without goals?

Anyway, something else the writers could do if they really wanted to make it work, especially since it may be that AJ isn’t going to be making an appearance this season… Assuming AJ is still in prison, she’s been there six months already. I’ve said before her *many* crimes could probably net her 10 years or more as a maximum sentence; just because Georgia told Bill that she would suggest less time than Henry doesn’t mean that she got less time than Henry. It’s still up to the judge. So hey, easy way to get Bill to accept a judgeship? Just bring up AJ. If he was in a position like that, he could protect people like her and punish those who actually deserve it.

Anyway, I hate the idea, but I can figure out how to write it so that it works. My one true talent lol. I find it hard to believe they’d want to toss Jack Wagner into the trash after all this time, but…I guess you never know, right?

I can’t speak for what they’ll actually do, but I’m hoping that no matter what route they choose, they make it count. The way Bill seemed to approach Abigail about it was…odd. Kind of dazed? More emotional than they usually give the character. Maybe he’s just shocked it’s real. I would be.

It’s the kind of thing a young Bill might have thought would have been The Ultimate Goal but which current Bill would probably say, “Ugh, that’d tie me down too much, and I can’t do whatever I want, but it’s still a really high honor…do I want to pass that up?”

As a slight aside, they could have him accept it, be gone half a season, and then return because he actually hated it. I think that’d be absolutely ridiculous (Bill isn’t much of a quitter), but they wrote him as a lazy piece of shit in S5 for absolutely no reason, completely contradicting his established character, soo… shrug?

[ganymedesclock]

I’m biting the bullet and posting my generals’ backstory headcanons before s6 because I can’t lose, either s6 has a bunch of juicy backstory details that contradict me or there’s not much backstory and my headcanons are fine.

Acxa

Sibling theory, she’s older than Keith so she got to have a good childhood growing up close to both her parents, thinks of herself as a human and a galra, doesn’t talk about the non-galra side of her heritage much so this strong-held perception can be a bit of a surprise. After all barely anyone in the empire even knows what a human is and lately they’ve mostly been brought up in terms of “those rebel people who are most of Voltron” so this hasn’t been encouraging her to open up to, say, Haggar. 

Most people pretty much don’t care about what else she is besides “not pure galra”. Even Lotor and the other Generals don’t know she’s human- not that she didn’t trust them, she just doesn’t talk about it. 

There’s a standing draft on galra, including mixed race galra as long as you’re “galra enough”, to go to military academy. It’s somewhat loosely enforced- more or less the discretion of individual commanders who will often use it specifically as a punishment for “tax evasion”, I.E. having kids you don’t tell the government about. Acxa was more or less kidnapped and declared a ward of the state and there wasn’t much Krolia could do about it.

That wound her up in military academy- she started off incredibly scrappy / picked fights with anybody who so much as looked at her crosswise because she didn’t want to be here and everybody was gonna hear about it, but given her mixed race status she was disproportionately punished.

She effectively came out the other side as a perfectionist- buckle down and keep everything under wraps, perfect grades, perfect grooming, perfect record of behavior. The idea of “I’m a disliked minority but if I’m literally perfect, no one can hold it against me.” Which... predictably didn’t work out quite as hoped but it did get her considered for a higher position than a mixed race galra would normally be allowed for with a commander planning on snapping her up as a lieutenant as soon as she graduated.

Incidentally Lotor was sniffing around the academy at that point- he’d gotten himself nicely established resource-wise and had an opening for skilled manpower. As much as Acxa had “cleaned up” in the empire’s eyes, she was still raised by a Blade and Krolia’s rebel sentiment and Acxa’s love for her father, plus the harsh reception she had at the hands of the empire were basically all kindling for a pretty intense revolutionary sentiment- she hated what the empire stood for.

Lotor hit it off with her very strongly in terms of ideals, and his selling point to her heavily was the opportunity to change the empire, this bright future he believed in. Acxa was pretty starstruck by what he proposed and came out of that kind of... considering herself closer to Lotor because she felt like she had a keener sense of what he believed in.

The commander that had wanted her as a lieutenant gave her a relatively intimidating talk about how disappointing it was that she’d “settle for less” but she wasn’t about to be deterred.

Zethrid

Galra soldier mom, kythran dad. They met under... not ideal circumstances, he was technically breaking the law as a smuggler but she had sympathy for his cause (he was trying to protect people back home by getting needed resources to them) and pulled what strings she could to cover him / became his contact within the empire. That partnership became love, they had Zethrid, and kept her hidden.

Zethrid wasn’t found- her mom wasn’t suspected, being a “good soldier”, but her father was caught and executed by the empire, and mom couldn’t save them. That was a pretty hard blow to her emotionally, leaving her feeling like she couldn’t take care of Zethrid and that Zethrid was better off as far away from the empire as possible. She left Zethrid on Kythra with her partner’s relatives and then went back to the empire, cutting off contact entirely.

Zethrid grew up on Kythra raised by her paternal grandmother. She was pretty immersed in Kythran culture- “Zethrid” is a galra anglicization of a kythran name. Huge kythran pride- her granny was a tribal leader and a sweet-faced, stoop-backed woman who uses a cane to get around. The cane is actually a pretty high-powered rifle, as a couple of would-be bandits have found out the hard way. Everybody loves Am-Hal. Nobody messes with Am-Hal. Zethrid metamorphoses into the most well-mannered young lady you have ever seen around Am-Hal because she loves her gran. On the flipside she has high standards for respecting anybody else because if you’re in her esteem, you have to share that category with her gran and not just anybody gets to be mentioned in the same breath as gran.

Of the generals, Zethrid actually had a pretty happy childhood. Learned to shoot on Kythra, thanks to her galra genes she grew tall quickly and got pretty darn strong which in a closed community where the chores are everybody’s problem that was more of an asset than a liability. Really not too cut up about the separation from her mother- doesn’t hold the woman any enmity, but she kinda precluded having a relationship and Zethrid doesn’t really care to go hunting for that. 

Kythra had a history of being a “problem child” for the colonizing empire- they actually did a darn good job fighting back and their lack of permanent settlements and ability to navigate the environment / guerrilla warfare meant the local commander had resorted to different tactics and basically was trying to starve them out with a heavy embargo on resources. This was what had motivated Zethrid’s dad to become a smuggler.

This was what gave Zethrid the idea of going to military academy and becoming a soldier- it’d be good pay and if she could get a position in the occupying fleet she could open up more ways for resources to get to Kythra. In her wildest dreams maybe she could even take out the commander, give ‘em what’s coming to ‘em.

She basically had to pay out of pocket to get to the military academy, and quickly established herself as not somebody to be crossed but if you left her alone she’d do the same. (Most galra cadets think twice about crossing a large intimidating girl who’s very proud of her Kythran heritage and will drop you in the next hand-to-hand drill without hesitation). Easily the most disappointing thing for her was that compared to the ancestral craft of kythran gunsmiths, the standard imperial rifle did not measure up. “Where’s the kick? It feels like I’m shooting a piece of driftwood, not a gun.”

She and Acxa were classmates but didn’t know each other that well. Lotor was interested in securing a potential alliance with Kythra- since it’s technically an imperial colony that wouldn’t raise any eyebrows but they’d proved pretty darn willing to mess the empire up. Between the offer to disrupt the embargo / play some politics around Kythra, and the potential resources he had to offer, he was bidding significantly higher than any other job offer Zethrid had, so she took him up on it.

Ezor

Grew up on a crowded metropolitan planet with a similar population to the Space Mall, so not only was her non-galra heritage one of multiple races present, but she was hardly the only mixed race galra. As a result, she doesn’t have a super strong tie to either her father or her mother’s people- she characterizes herself more as “I’m just some punk kid from Talor.”

Her galra father was technically AWOL who ran away from the fleet to be with his sweetheart, but since there was a price on his head as a deserter, he was limited in the work he could take and with mostly mom supporting the family, it was a struggle to make ends meet. Ezor was the oldest of five children, and pretty early on, got involved doing whatever she could to make money and support her family. Grade school Ezor was a pretty good pickpocket.

Once she got old enough, she held down a lot of different jobs- largely service and hospitality. She developed her particular saccharine attitude holding those jobs, in particular being overlooked and underappreciated- on the surface she acted very conciliatory and eager-to-please because she needed this job but she started assembling a lot of resentment under the surface.

Things got worse when her father was caught by bounty hunters and chose to go quietly rather than potentially draw their attention back to his family. Ezor’s mom wasn’t quite... the same, after that, and started going through the motions for her kid’s benefit but broke down big time. Ezor basically became head of the household, especially when her mother not taking good care of herself led to her getting pretty sick.

At some point, quietly behind Ezor’s back, her mom took out a life insurance policy, so that when she died, the family suddenly received more money than they were expecting. While it wouldn’t last, it would be enough to put Ezor through military school- even grunt soldier pay was a lot better than anything she could get on the civilian side, so she went with it.

Military academy was basically just another job she hated but she was versed in jobs she hated, especially when she could find some common ground and vent her frustrations with Zethrid.

Lotor recruiting her went pretty much like this:

(It wasn’t exclusively about money, like... if you take someone who did customer service for years and offer them assassin training and a position where they can threaten people for talking badly to them, the “and I can easily outbid anyone else offering you a job at this point” was just icing)

Narti

Narti’s the only one of the generals who didn’t go to military school and is, in fact, not recognized as a legal citizen of the empire. She’s also the only general who’s less than half galra. Effectively she was a lab-grown chimera synthesized from multiple donors in an attempt to create a biological superweapon that was funded by a commander who’d formerly been in Haggar’s circle but had gotten kicked to the fringes and was bitter about it and trying to show them all!

Which, not that he had bad ideas, per se, but he was effectively trying to keep this base hidden by putting it in orbit around an unstable star... and there’s a reason nobody would want to go near that real estate. The base started collapsing before the project was, in his opinion, viable, so he abandoned the research and its one living specimen to be destroyed by the sun.

That didn’t happen, because Lotor caught wind of the base being abandoned and some research that its commander didn’t want getting into the wrong hands, and rallied his three new generals for a salvage operation.

Finding a someone, rather than a something, was not what they were expected, but none of them in good conscience really wanted to leave her there- she was mistaken for a prisoner rather than a specimen and rescued. She wasn’t about to clarify otherwise, not really used to the idea of being spoken to and expected to carry a conversation, or acknowledged as a person even. Ezor was the one who gave her the name “Narti”.

The revelation afterwards that she was very strong and had a host of powerful abilities was not one they were all prepared for, and Lotor in particular was deeply uneasy around her for a long time.

Their relationship kind of progressed from “the more I know about you the less easily I sleep at night” to “I, for one, am very glad she’s on our side because I’ve seen what happens to her enemies” to by the time we see them in s3 Lotor’s near-totally numb to it. Just. “Lotor, what the hell is your fourth general” “an associate of mine who does excellent work.”

She was pretty used to operating blind before Kova became her personal helper / eye buddy, but that made her able to read and learn to be a pilot. The more time she spent with the team the more she was developing... some inclination to voice her opinions one way or another, but for the most part she just enjoyed being acknowledged and feeling part of the conversation, even without speaking.