#and i'm just writing in a fugue state until it's done or i run out of steam

[wisteriagoesvroom]

wrote 800 words tonight... idk that those 800 words are going anywhere good, but i wrote 800 words!!

[recurring-polynya]

Writing/Art Update 2.20.2024

Well, I had another very solid week. I hesitate to call it good, because I didn't actually enjoy it very much, but I did grind out 8,642 words last week. I finished Chapter 8 and made a solid dent in Chapter 9a. Basically, I just tried to write at least a thousand words a day, which I accomplished almost every day. Yesterday, I only did 800, but I did 2000 on Sunday, plus the 800 was the ending scene for the chapter, so I deserve a little grace there. And it was a three-day weekend for my kids!

I am at the stage of the fanfic where most of the ambiguity is gone--I know what scenes are left and I just gotta write them. It doesn't matter if I want to or not, the fanfic isn't going to be done until I write them, so I just do it. I always worry that writing in this mindset is going to produce bad, unlovable writing--like, if I don't love writing this, how is anyone going to love reading it? Historically, though, that doesn't bear out--big chunks of Call Me Back and What We Do with Our Hearts were written in this exact fugue state, and I often end up loving them after the fact, and they still contain parts that are really funny or insightful or heartfelt or whatever. I literally do not know how this is possible, it just is. Also, like: there is going to be editing. It is truly astonishing how hard it is to slap anything at all down on a page and then how easy it is to shape it up into something good later on. It is a lot like throwing flat colors down on a piece of art and then adding a little texture and shading later.

The other thing I don't like about writing in this mode is that it makes me actually insane, which I don't like. I just roll word counts and percentages around in my head 24 hours a day and I'm not really able to relax and do things that are not grinding away at my writing. I can do it for short periods of time, but I think I have too much of this story left to tough it through, plus, like, what's the point? This is the thing I allegedly do for fun, and even though I really really really want to be finished, I feel like I should actually try to enjoy the process a little, at least.

So anyway! My first goal for this week is to be less insane about my fanfic. My second goal is to finish Chapter 9a (I think I have about 3-4k to go). My third goal is to edit Chapters 7 and 8 and send them to the beta.

After that, I'll just have 9b (of which I've already written about 4k) and the epilogue to do. After that, of course, there's still more editing, a beta pass for chapters 8->the end, and then I may try to read the whole thing through again from the beginning. So, 3 weeks, maybe, give or take a little?

In the interest of trying to have a little fun, I think I'm gonna try to post some previews for the next couple weeks? In the past, people have enjoyed previews. Today's is a little long, but it's the opening to the whole thing. It's below a cut for those who'd rather wait until the whole thing comes out.

“I don’t know if they’re trying to capitalize on Boy’s Day, or what,” Rukia said, idly inching her hand toward the plate of hot, steaming gyoza sitting on the countertop next to Renji’s stove, “but they’re having some sort of Seafood Festival out in East Sixth.”

A dish towel appeared out of nowhere, the tip whipping painfully against Rukia’s hand.

“Ow!” Rukia howled.

“They’re hot! It’ll hurt worse if you jam one of those in your mouth whole like I know you were gonna,” Renji replied, stuffing the dish towel back into his obi, and juggling the pan of gyoza he was currently frying. “What about a Seafood Festival? Why the Hell is the East Sixth having a Seafood Festival?”

“It’s being put on by the Train Museum, I hear,” Rukia continued grumpily, rubbing at her hand. “I guess they’re hauling a bunch of spring fish up from the Shiranui Sea at the other end of the line. It only takes a few hours to get out to Six. There’s probably carts making the run that we could take, but I would honestly just flash-step, at least on the way out. I want to eat my own body weight in katsuo. Possibly your body weight in katsuo.”

“Mmm,” Renji replied noncommittally, dumping the rest of his gyoza onto the plate and turning off the stovetop.

“I was thinking of asking Hisagi if he wanted us to take some pictures and do a little write-up for the Bulletin,” Rukia went on. “Get us a little walking-around money.” Not that Rukia lacked for pocket money, but it was a little more expensive than their usual weekend activities, and Renji got a little cagey when she tried to treat him to things.

“That’s a bad idea.”

“Why? We had fun the last time we played reporter!”

“Grab the bowl of sauce, would you?” Renji gestured with his chin as he picked up the plate of dumplings and the teapot to carry them to the table. “Don’t you remember when they built that damn train line? Took ‘em over over thirty years, and there were three to four articles every single Bulletin about the delays, the graft, the politics, the environmental impact, whatever. People got so mad about the idea of a train inside the Seireitei that it doesn’t even go anywhere useful. I didn’t even know they used it for anything aside from twee holidays for bored nobles.”

“I heard a story from my friend, Lady Akizuki, that the old head of the Seshimo clan actually lives on the train! He hasn’t set foot outside it in fifteen years!”

Renji cocked an eyebrow at her. He looked like he desperately wanted to hear about the Train Noble, but also did not want to be a guy who cared about Train Nobles. “Anyway, don’t mention the train to Hisagi unless you got six or seven hours to kill. Preferably when I’m not there.”

Rukia picked up the big, fragrant bowl of ginger dipping sauce with both hands. “It was just an idea. So what do you think? Do you want to go?”

“When is it again?” Renji asked, frowning.

“It’s running for all of May, but the weather has been so nice lately, I thought maybe we could go next weekend,” Rukia suggested. 

Renji was quiet for a moment, but Rukia figured that maybe he was just focused on serving her dumplings, which was, in her opinion, very important. 

“Ru,” he finally said slowly, as he poured her a cup of tea. “There’s something I need to tell you.”

“Is it that you want to go to the Seafood Festival with me?”

Renji took a big breath through his nose and let it out again. “If things work out, I’d love to go later in the month. Next weekend’s not gonna work, though.”

“Oh.” Rukia frowned. “That’s fine. That’s no big deal.” She looked down lovingly at her gyoza and then up at Renji hopefully. “Itadakimasu?” she asked hopefully.

Renji blinked. “Huh? Oh, yeah, please help yourself. That… that wasn’t the thing I had to say.”

“Well, spit it out, already,” Rukia groused, her mouth already crammed with gyoza. “Why are you being weird?”

Renji still hadn’t touched his own food. He had circled his right wrist with the thumb and middle finger of his left hand and was rotating it back and forth. He used to make that gesture a lot when he was young, and Rukia realized that she hadn’t seen him do it in years.

“I’m having some surgery,” Renji finally said. 

Rukia froze. After a long moment, she slowly finished chewing her dumpling and swallowed it. “Are you okay? What’s going on?”

“I’m getting my arm fixed.”

Rukia watched him rub his wrist for another few seconds. “Did it not heal correctly after the, um, accident?” “The accident” was when Byakuya had stabbed him through the forearm during a demonstration fight the week prior. Everyone was being very polite about it.

“Wellll…” Renji drew out. “I mean, no, that healed up fine. Very clean cut, Senbonzakura, as always. But, uh, while I was at the Fourth, the topic of my burnt-out kidou ducts came up. Captain Unohana thinks she can fix ‘em. And I’ve decided to, um, let her try.” “Oh,” said Rukia. Her chest was filling up with a lot of strange feelings. “Oh.”

[fresne999]

"You may write me down in history With your bitter, twisted lies, You may trod me in the very dirt But still, like dust, I'll rise."

Still I Rise (as indeed all the other poetry quotations in this post) Maya Angelou

Because I'm in a poetry mood and thought I'd see how this goes.

A little OFMD meta

Little Prince Ricky, a minor prince, serving now an empire, manages to claim in a single sitting that once pirates are dead, their stories will be lost to the ages and that by his killing off the republic of pirates, he is the greatest pirate of all. That he will write the history with himself as the central figure. Which maybe. But since this isn't his story, probably not. He crab shuffle runs off stage for a S3. 

"Does my sassiness upset you? Why are you beset with gloom? ’Cause I walk like I've got oil wells Pumping in my living room."

Spanish Jackie in her gown of glitter scales made to serve liquor to singing British troops. Stewing. Never tripping despite the legs put out in her way. 

Serve the wine. Never fear poison, there is a taster.

Well, yes, and no.

Bring down the good stuff, which resides so innocent on the shelf. Set aside for some rainy day, Jackie always prepared for. When in her own establishment, where in her own home, laid low she would not stay. 

Singing, bragging sailors over their rule of the waves. They've never heard of Canute, I guess.

Bring down the good stuff. Not a Mithridates. That fellow rendered himself immune to poison to avoid being killed. Spanish Jackie had a different plan. She's the man in black. She is no man. She is a black woman in her home invaded by princes of the sea. 

For this bottle, this plan, to exist, she must always have known that the Republic of Pirates would fall. That she would need an exit.

Not even telling the Swede that she was iocane-powder poison-protecting him.

They were right, those soldiers. They'd never be slaves. They'd be corpses.

No Stede, you didn't do that. Jackie, prosthetic hand to cheroot smiling lips, she did.

Just like moons and like suns, With the certainty of tides, Just like hopes springing high, Still I'll rise.

Ed attempts to be fully present in his life. Stop talking. Except he is in fact narrating his life.

I felt Ed so hard in that moment. Writers. We narrate our lives. 

He viewed the sea as a battlefield, and attempted to be that classic trope. The humble wanderer. Shane. Kane/Cane. Like a blade of grass. A heron. Until the whole internal monologue dissolves into a wave. As it should.

He tossed his leathers into the sea as an embodiment of what Frenchie was talking about at the beginning of the season. Burying his feelings like in a box, but where the box is the sea. A battlefield of the waves.

The British do not rule him. But he has to figure out just where he belongs.

What he's good at and what nourishes him. Not fishing. We get that. Not creating yet another father figure. 

His fugue state on seeing the burning ships. The British voices fading into ringing. Stede's call.

I'm fascinated by the way Ed's memory here of Pop-Pop (not your Pop-Pop) is slightly different in tone from the way the had-enough fisherman sent him away from the fishing camp. 

To be wave washed.

Did you want to see me broken? Bowed head and lowered eyes? Shoulders falling down like teardrops, Weakened by my soulful cries?

Izzy came a long way since S1. Transformed from an angry man focused on job title and work and the legend that he and Ed had created to someone who finally comprehends the importance of the community of which he is now a part. In its last breath. The last gasp of the golden age of pirates. 

S1 Izzy would have agreed with Prince Ricky that he was the brains of the operation, or gone on about how he's the only reason, blah, blah, blah work gets done. S1 Izzy sided with the British to bring Ed back into line. Izzy is the reason the British lock stepped into Jackiez the first time. When revenge meant the empire had other reasons to move on.

S2 Izzy's understanding of where he is and what this community means has transformed. A place that welcomes. A new family.

In that mindset, challenging Prince Ricky to kill him. To kill all the pirates, because they'll live on. Because they're good. A reframing from the devil into something else. A wave. A light.

Foreshadowing too.

The passing into the west of old selves. Lives. Ages.

Does my haughtiness offend you? Don't you take it awful hard ’Cause I laugh like I've got gold mines Diggin’ in my own backyard.

Zheng Yi Sao dragged Stede (yes, Stede she did) to safety. Only to sit disconsolate under the bridge of disconsolation. The bridge that is broken. 

Queen won't stay there, of course. Stede needs rescuing. Again. Soldiers will come and soldiers will die. 

Stede's…the pirate that he is. A failure his whole life. But blessed by being the central character, things have a way of working out. But he is correct that Zheng cannot succeed alone. There's such a valuable lesson in accepting being bad at something, but going on to try anyway. 

It's the opposite of burying your sorrows in a box. It's knowing they are a part of you, inform you, are probably why you make bad decisions, but moving forward. That it's okay to be soft. Sometimes softness is what is needed. 

Letting Stede go have his moment with Ed while Zheng holds off an army. 

Of course, with Blackbeard, she could kill more. She saw what he did there. Revenge. 

To the New Revenge, which is the old revenge. Which is in fact no Revenge. Sailing out to a new horizon. 

You may shoot me with your words, You may cut me with your eyes, You may kill me with your hatefulness, But still, like air, I’ll rise.

Lucius, ah Lucius. There's still trauma to process. But I think it's a crucial thing that Lucius lets go of Blackbeard as the embodiment of that trauma. Replicating into every aspect of his art and the world. 

Blackbeard set Lucius on the road to Rat Boy, but he isn't actually the ones who perpetrated the whole Rat Boy chain of events.

Until Lucius lets go of Blackbeard is a dog, a flower, a whatever, then he can't process. He can't integrate what's happened and move on. 

He'll spiral, time to time. That's trauma. But that's also Charibdis, and Calypso knows that focusing only on the whirlpool isn't actually a way to process trauma. 

Black Pete can be there for him. His matey. Keeping his boat afloat. Keeping each other's boats afloat. 

Does my sexiness upset you? Does it come as a surprise That I dance like I've got diamonds At the meeting of my thighs?

Poor Pop-Pop (not calling him simple because yeah, I can see where that's a bit…yeah no). The man thought he hired a fisherman, and instead he hired a fisher of men. Philosophizing when there was work to be done.

Go back to something you're good at. So Ed does. Multi-task and put paid to the can Ed read discussion to show that not only can he read, he can read and kill at the same time. 

What a lovely letter the sea (Calypso) brought forth. Message delivered. Message received. We wrote our names on each other in permanent ink.

Nothing that can be undone by the fall of the Republic of Pirates. Nothing so simple could topple such intertwined. A sort of weaving that.

Back under the unruled waves.

Of course, Ed would be able to dive back under the ocean and find his leathers. 

To open the box. To pull out what's buried under the waves. Yet another phase. Because that's life. Casting things aside. Burying them. Then figuring out how to reintegrate them into a whole self when the time is right. 

Life is a dick, but this is a core universe. Where leathers can be completely unharmed by a day or so sunk beneath the salt. Of course, Ed could dress in them while underwater and so walk from the sea Venus.

No clam shell. But a whole lot of sexy.

To meet love on the beach. With a side bit of spinning death.

Out of the huts of history’s shame I rise Up from a past that’s rooted in pain I rise I'm a black ocean, leaping and wide, Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.

I'll admit, while I have heard bits of Rule Britannia (and certainly the melody), I had no idea what the rest of the lyric lines in every refrain was. Huh. The way the song presents the whole thing is that the British will never be subject to tyrants. But the context of the British soldiers / sailors singing their song to the captured pirates. People of color. That's the show creators putting a big neon sign of "These are the villains of the series!" That and toxic masculinity. There can be two villains. Especially when one props up the other.

What do the crew in their dungeon cell do? 

Lucius loses a shirt (he is down to his skivvies, but keeps the jeans he loves). Someone pees on the fabric (offscreen - good). True facts, wet fabric is much less likely to tear. 

But I want to take a moment here to reflect on the symbolism of something soft like fabric bending iron. The original use of the term soft-ware (etymology - check it out) bending hard-ware. Something woven by women and in fact the main occupier of women's time since thread didn't spin itself. 

Something weak, but by virtue of thousands of threads woven together (plus unfortunate fluids), bending metal. 

Leading to go Frenchie. Go Frenchie. Go.

Leading to Captain Frenchie. Long may they sail the waves and fuckery as they go.

Leaving behind nights of terror and fear I rise Into a daybreak that’s wondrously clear I rise Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave, I am the dream and the hope of the slave. I rise

I rise

I rise.

[arkadiaasks]

How is Season 3 of GX trash? This is literally the TVTropes description: Season 3 is considered by many fans to be the series' start of its true highest point owing it to Jaden's Character Development, better pacing, and an overall darker tone with much more dire situations.

It's basically a bad action movie, or at least devolves into one. Or a phoned-in sequel where the author is writing for the check.

I have an extremely low opinion of Director Tsuji due to how his run of Cardfight!! Vanguard (it follows his impersonal space force villain fetish to its logical conclusion and it basically killed Vanguard as a meaningful competitor to Yu-Gi-Oh!) and a lot of the second half of GX Season 3. But basically? It's style over substance, especially as you move into the second half.

The first half is good and has decent set-up and general follow through and escalation, resulting in some really fun intense climatic Duels.

But. Basically?

The second half of the season has the writers more or less stumbling over each other's feet with regards to writing decisions. If you've ever actually watched it, the tone just gets really off kilter and doesn't even work as well as the tone for the first half of Season 3. And basically plot points (namely who or what The Supreme King exactly is changes from week to week).

Jim's sacrifice really doesn't get well built up because the Orichalcum Eye comes out of left field without build up from earlier in the season.

O'Brien's character basically gets shot to hell.

Amon and Echo basically get their heads blown out spontaneously with no real meaningful clarification that "Yes, they're dead for reals, holmes."

Shou, Edo Phoenix and Kaiser basically act in really weirdly out of character ways (yes I know why Shou does but it just comes off as edge for the sake of edge).

The show tries to clean itself up in the fourth quarter but you have a lot of 'but the damage was already done' problems, and it adds a heavily unnecessary twists of past lives I've never seen defended in a meaningful way.

GX's pacing was generally fine as it ran on "we do this for 11-13 episodes and then we complicate the plot in a new way", which is how a good production does its story for syndicated TV in Japanese animated long runners.

I'm also suspect of people who only really got into GX with Season 3 as "The real GX" as anecdotally, those types were basically bullies, transphobes, or gaslighting manipulative sexual abusers or all three combined. (But I will acknowledge this is a personal bias)

Or the types so fucking insecure about their media they need it to be Grimdark so their friends don't judge them for watching a kid's show. (At which point, my dude, drop your friends if they're gonna be shitbags to you)

And honestly, Judai's character development only works with Season 4 to contextualize the trainwreck Season 3 became (which itself was an attempt by the writers to try and get the show back to the more dramedy setting they had been shooting for for Season 1 but got shot down for reasons similar to why the Dark Signers arc turned into Kiddy Nobody Did Nuffin Wrong Town)

Season 3 is honestly just a mess, especially with Cour 3. Takegami and Yoshida and the rest of the writers were given an idea by Takahashi (the Supreme King concept) and could not figure out what they wanted to do with it.

He was simultaneously an extra dimensional ruler that already existed. A past life. Judai's trauma giving him a Batman of Zur-En-Arrh autopilot fugue state. It just wanders around in circles, and doesn't figure out what it wants to be until meaningfully at the end.

And.

Yoshida clearly not interested in the past life baggage. Or a forced / phoned-in addition of The Light of Destruction again.

Basically tosses Season 3's events into a trash can outside of broad strokes, in favor of addressing plot points from Season 1 and 2 about the main cast, and using loose ends from the first season to construct the story's endgame.

It's basically treated as a failure by the staff themselves except for it as a vehicle to do cool stuff in Season 4.

[outercrasis]

Fic authors self rec! When you get this reply with your favorite five fics that you've written, then pass it on to at least five other writers. Let's spread the self-love. 💖

Ahh, thank you for sending me this Jen! I had to give this one a good think 💕 These are in no particular order!

Bonded - I put my blood sweat and tears into this bad boy (which is why it takes me forever to write oops). Even when I'm not writing this fic I'm thinking about it almost daily, expanding and changing things in my mind until it fits just right. I think this fic hosts some of my best writing and I'm nowhere near done with it.

prudence travels the country investigating paranormal claims and reports. when you get a call about a possible vampire, you don’t hesitate to check it out. what you don’t anticipate are things going sideways and getting yourself bound to the vampire for the foreseeable future. if you’re lucky, you’ll make it out of this ordeal alive.

The Distance - This fic reminds me of how far I've come. This fic is actually a reworked older fic of mine that never made it's way to tumblr. It's really fulfilling to change the story the way I have and to make both the reader character herself and her relationship with Din deeper.

a love that can go the distance. pilot!reader

Always You - I busted this fic out so quickly, I feel like I was caught in a fugue state while writing it. I'm incredibly proud of it though and I really like how tight and concise I made the main fic.

the covert is lost, you and your brother are on the run looking for other mandalorians, and you find the last one you expected to find. mandalorian!reader

One Condition - This is another fugue state fic, but I really like my prose in here. I feel like I truly captivated the vibe that I was going for and sometimes I forget I wrote it but the rediscovery is always so pleasant.

he can steal everything with only one condition.

Questions of a Creed - This is one of the very first things I wrote and while it's not necessarily popular bc it's a character introspection I am still very proud of it. I really loved taking the deep dive look at Din.

a character introspective on what din’s creed means to him. 

[serenagaywaterford]

1) Feel free to keep rambling! Not only I love talking with level-headed fandom people, but our opinions seem to converge (even if my wording comes off as weird/wrong because of Tumblr's word limit). Anyway. I had many issues with S2, besides Serena's arc I mean (I'll get back to her). Blessed be the goddamned plotholes! Fred becomes a cockroach that just won't die (Red Center), because he's essential to the plot. Same goes for Aunt Lydia. (Although I'm kinda glad that she's alive, because

2) I LOVE Dowd’s acting and I’m excited about her background story.) Emily comes back from the Colonies and is smfh 100% healthy. Moreover, Gilead has been surprisingly lenient with Fred and Serena’s constant fuckups in S2 (mutilated fingers aside). June won’t leave with Emily, bc MOTHERHOOD (more like there’s a s3 on the horizon and drama is needed). And don’t get me started on that slow pace. The beginning and the finale were explosive of course,but some mid-season episodes?

3) They were dragging on and on. Examples? 2x11, where only 2 things happen: a) June gives birth to Nicole, b) Fred and Serena make it clear that they want to tear each other apart (duh). The only redeeming qualities of that episode was the wolf symbolism and the excellent cinematography. I get it, the series is successful and has more seasons ahead. But if only they had squeezed some episodes, it would have been so much better.

—-

OMG YAY!!! I’m gonna answer these in pieces since I’ll prolly flood a giant essay otherwise. Cos, lbr, if I didn’t know better, I’d swear I had multiple personalities and was secretly sending these to myself from a fugue state, that’s how much we agree! Cos I’ve just read through all your messages and sat here going “YES! YES!” lol. I think you, me, maybe 5 other people on tumblr, and 1 TV reviewer are of the same mindset and it’s such a relief to find others who are reasonable and critical about the show/Serena.

Yes, Fred not dying was just so fucking stupid I couldn’t deal. Like, it’s not even like, “Well, he didn’t die which is crazy but he’s horribly injured and disfigured cos I dunno, he was like 15 feet FROM A MASSIVE BOMB EXPLODING.” But noooo. Instead we get Fred in hospital with a scratchy throat for like a few weeks, and when he comes back he’s got a little bit of a limp. No burns, nothing. And, to top it off, he’s got all the strength and balance of a perfectly healthy man to whip the shit out of his wife. I get they needed to get him out of the way and out of service so Serena and June could have all sorts of treasonous hi-jinks together but surely… they could have considered having Fred not 15 feet from the bomb. It killed handmaids that were way farther away than that. Just a thought. Deffo an eye-roll moment.

Aunt Lydia I’m less irritated about simply cos, like you, I love Ann Dowd and think she’s done a fab job. And we honestly haven’t got enough of her backstory and I wanna know that too. I think this show can only really captivate if it tells ALL the women’s stories, not just the victims. Like how does a woman become an Aunt? How do they justify that? Or is it simply a type of socio-religio-politcal brainwashing, akin to a lot of Nazi Party supporters? Is she a True Believer? Like, honestly, wtf is up with her? Like, cos so many of us can empathise with the Handmaids and we understand how that came about–but it takes more sides to tell a full story. So, Aunt Lydia being back… I’m not too fussed about. I really do consider Emily so damaged that I would never trust her with a baby–but that’s me. She’s been so broken, so traumatized, and like I don’t blame her at all ofc, but she needs softness and patience and no stress ever again. Like, she is not well emotionally by any stretch.

Which leads into the Colonies bullshit. That was just really bad writing. She, Janine, etc, were there for MONTHS. Like, June ran away and was gone for 92 days (Thanks for that count, Serena!). And then add on whatever time passed between her being returned to the Waterfords house and when Lilly set off the bomb. That is a long ass time to be splashing about in radioactive waste. Emily’s teeth were falling out, right? Like, how she went from literally dying of radiation poisoning to “Totally healthy enough to pop out some totally healthy babies!” I’ll never understand. The loss of the Handmaids in the bombing isn’t a good enough reasoning. A dictatorship like Gilead could easily have just conscripted a bunch of Econowives with the sweep of a pen. That is how these militant theocracies work. They’re already half-indoctrinated anyway. It was dumb to put Emily and Janine there in the first place if you knew they had to come back, as they are main cast members.

I always thought Fred and Serena were getting away with too much but I wrote it off as Fred (and Serena lbr) being a HUGE part of bringing about Gilead in the first place so they get some leeway. But then, you see Warren and Cushing being dealt with fairly severely for basically hearsay. (Okay, Warren’s I get cos you had outcry from Janine in a massively public display and backup from Naomi.) I guess because Fred/Serena’s fuckups were a little more ~private, they could excuse/lie about them/cover them up them easier? Cushing was dealt with way to easily. Like… no. “Fred” signs some paper and suddenly Cushing is being disappeared immediately. I suppose Fred took over Pryce’s place in the hierarchy? Who knows. And from what I understand, nobody in SOJ knew about June’s escape to the big country house. But c’mon, one Handmaid kills herself, the new one another starting shit every where she goes with other Handmaids and is pals with two of the most notorious other Handmaids (Emily and Janine), then is “kidnapped”, is partners with the bomber, then runs away again, then again… Sigh.

June not leaving… I just… it was so obvious that she wouldn’t cos otherwise there is no show. But why bother with all that drama then. Like, what if Emily hadn’t been there??? June had no way of knowing she’d be meeting up with Emily. She would have just dumped Nicole in some van and run back? Ugh.

And the pace was bad. ITA. There are whole episodes I don’t even bother with on rewatches. I thought the season premiere was great, then it fell of a cliff and lost my interest until about the 5th episode? Then it got going nicely (altho 2x07 wasn’t great either), then took another nosedive in 2x10 and sort of coasted almost aimlessly until the finale. I don’t like to hate on June but honestly the really 100% June-centric episodes bore the shit out of me. 2x02/03 and 2x11 being the biggest culprits. I’m just tired of the excessive use of flashbacks that all basically say the same thing now. And Moss is a great actress but there’s such thing as too much of a good thing. Not to mention, Nick and June bore me to tears as well (SACRILEGE! Send the indignant rabid fangirls on a rampage into my inbox!) so when there’s a lot of focus on that clusterfuck of inanity, I tune out. I can’t help it. I find them so annoying lol. (Which is were I usually lose common ground with basically everyone in this fandom cos everyone loves Nick for some reason I just cannot understand. If you like him, I apologise! I just can’t. I liked him more at the beginning but as it’s gone on the less I give even the slightest shit about him.)

Also, like I found 2x02 and 2x03 to just be… a waste of time? Like, okay, we got to see the Econopeople and how they live or whatever but to me, there was zero point to the whole thing because we all know June isn’t going to get away with it. So, why waste 2 whole episodes building to something everyone knows ain’t happening just for the sake of some worldbuilding that I’m guessing could have been done some other more cogent way? 2x04 was basically just to show more breaking June down in various ways. Then 2x05 was just to show the Colonies and had a lot of filler in it about that. I still don’t understand the point of the “wedding” bits. It wasn’t uplifting or hopeful at all. It was still really dark, like killing the Wife. I only really liked watching Serena go apeshit because her babyslave isn’t making proper gossipy conversation. It’s just an interesting angle cos finally Serena gets what she asks for with a super obedient Offred, and low and behold, it actually sucks and she wants June back. Story of Serena’s life and she never fucking learns lol. And Aunt Lydia flexing on Serena was hilarious. I just enjoy watching them go head to head. Not to mention the grotesque child brides thing. Gross. Super gross. Like, a bunch of stuff happened but I’m not convinced it needed to be dragged out over 4 episodes like that. Not to mention it was all really depressing. I remember watching and going, “JESUS, this show is fucking depressing. Why am I torturing myself?”

But yeah, 2x11 was super slow and all the important things that happened (that you listed) could have taken 10 minutes. Like I get too that she had to see Hannah in order to… make her decision in the finale make sense??? Was that the reason? I still don’t know. All of this could have been dealt with way more quickly and with just as much emotional gravity had it been done well.

I really like Moira but she’s been given shit all to do. I liked how we got a little insight into her and Odette. A LITTLE. But a huge weakness is that the Toronto peeps are so divorced from the drama that it often seems, not pointless, but something like it. It definitely slows the pace down to a crawl. That’s why I thought 2x09 worked well because it married both worlds. (I will never understand why 1x07 exists the way it does. What a stupid episode. I do not care about Luke’s journey, tbh. I’m here for the women–good, evil, or inbetween; not an entire episode devoted to him–especially not when we could have had Moira’s instead. I accept that his is intertwined with June’s attempted escape but… meh. It’s just like I will never care about Nice Guy TM Nick’s backstory or character. I don’t care about Fred’s childhood, or Warren’s marriage, or Luke’s manbabying, or Nick’s manpain. Eek.)

I dunno. Personally I think it could have been tightened up a bit better. But again, what do I know? I’m just a viewer. I’m sure other viewers have completely the opposite opinion.