#and like we know she finally tells them her secret but it's just soooo unsatisfying that it's fade to white off screen

[gigai-dumps]

I've made my peace with Ena5 but damn, I wish I could be happy for the MizuEna feast but I can't when it's at the expense of Mizuki's lackluster arc conclusion. U_U

[vivalamusicaltheater]

Ok so now that I’ve thought a while about svtfoe finale I have some opinions

Things I liked:

Marco taking the wand from moon and Marco and Star walking through the portal hand in hand

The firstborn STILL tried to warn & help Star, even after she DIED. What a good unicorn daughter

Marco trying to use Star’s spells and then just creating some spells on the fly figuring it’d work better

Marco was willing to get STABBED to help Tom

We finally got to see Eclipsa’s butterfly form (and baby Meteora got a butterfly form)!

Baby Meteora learning how to dip down being plot relevant

Moon & Comet moment. Even tho Moon’s character isn’t great rn, I’m glad she got a moment with her mom

That Tomco moment (“ok can we recognize that Marco JUST FLIPPED A HORSE!” “I FLIPPED A HORSE!”). They are such good friends (and would’ve been such a cute ship), I love them. It’s really a shame this show didn’t do the tomstarco route (preferably in my opinion with Star and Tom both dating Marco but not each other, I’m not a huge fan of Tomstar and Star hasn’t proven to be a particularly good girlfriend to Tom, but it could be good either way).

Seeing the past queens again I love their designs (I want to know what Celena’s secrets are...)

Globgor, Eclipsa, and Meteora get to stay a happy family

Actually, surprisingly, I kinda liked Ponyhead in this episode? (A little bit). I liked how she tried to cheer Star up and then went “oh not again” when she thought Star was gonna get back together with Tom which I appreciated bc they’d already been together twice before and it hadn’t worked, and I liked that Ponyhead was aware enough to realize that probably wasn’t a good idea for them to try again

Janna! Her bonding moment with Marco where she actually said they were friends was so cute! And sbsjsvsjshs she dropped her heart rate to 0 for Marco what a legend. Janna Ordania, true ride or die.

More Jackie and her gf Chloe screen time (even if it was a few seconds. It was nice to see anyways)

Meteora and Mariposa get to grow up together after all

Star and Marco get a happy ending (and the show didn’t end with them kissing which was nice)

Oh does deleting the magic mean deleting the neverzone meaning Marco’s not 30 anymore?? I really really hope so that’d make any Marco ship so much less creepy. I’m accepting that as my canon thank you very much

Things I’m not sure how I feel about:

Hekapoo’s...complete neutrality towards her upcoming death? Ig it’s good that she evidently realized she’d done some bad stuff but uh...???

The pudding being able to keep your mind sharp in the magic dimension. On the one hand, I liked that there’s a REASON Glossaryck likes pudding so much and that we finally got an explanation for it, on the other hand I sorta wish that they’d figured that out BEFORE now. Now it kinda seems like the writers just needed something to explain how the Butterflies could stay focused in the magic dimension (but again, if they needed a plot device I’m glad it’s the pudding so...idk)

Ok what was the purpose of Tom riding the evil unicorn. I don’t get it. Don’t hate it or love it, am just confused.

Marco getting stabbed and hiding it from Tom and Star was some Good Angst Sh*t. The fact that that had absolutely no purpose, however, was not. I wish either Marco didn’t get stabbed, or there was actually some consequence to Marco getting stabbed as it was kinda pointless otherwise

The fact that both Star and Marco were willing to leave their families and worlds for the chance to be together. Obviously they care about each other, but they’re willing to give up their lives and families at 15 to be together? :/ (side note those shots of Marco huddled against the magic dimension rock were really pretty)

The portal thing. It didn’t make sense

Mewni and Earth being cleaved together. I mean on the one hand that’s cool, on the other hand that seems like it’s gonna create so many problems & just leaves me with a lot of questions. For example won’t humans just oppress monsters like mewmans did? Can Tom get back to his family? Is the underworld part of the Mewni dimension or is it it’s own? Did all the dimensions get merged into Mewnearth or just Mewni and Earth? How will Earth culture and Mewni culture learn to coexist?

Moon redemption. It seemed too easy, she didn’t really have to work for it! I mean her character was growing on me pre-her-working-with-Mina, but then she was revealed to be working with Mina and she made SOLARIAN WARRIORS I mean come on! I kinda wanted her to be redeemed bc I was unsatisfied with the Mina twist, but the way they did it was kinda :/ I want Star to be able to have a good relationship with her mother, but since Moon Did That and didn’t really face any consequences besides her daughter being mad at her for an episode...

That Solaria & Eclipsa & Meteora moment. I mean it was cute Solaria accepted them but she literally created Solarian warriors and committed monster genocide soooo...that’s definitely not enough to redeem her and it’s not great that she’s portrayed sympathetically

Things I didn’t like:

That they actually went with the “erase all the magic” plot line. Svtfoe is about Star the rebel princess, frequent subverter of expectations, so it was weird to me that they actually destroyed the magic and there wasn’t some twist like the four butterfly queens work together and unlock some super butterfly form or join hands in a circle around the Solarian Warriors and say the Whispering Spell or something else to defeat Mina. I’m surprised Star seeing her supposedly finished tapestry didn’t motivate her to find a different way because she’s Star Butterfly, rebel princess who fights for what’s right and nobody can tell her what she has to do, she finds her own way.

Eddie and River bumbling and telling Mina about the magic sanctuary. I wish River had saved Globgor bc it would really show he can be competent and would also be cute bc dad solidarity

Mina, after being built up as the big bad, was defeated way too easily

Glossaryck, the MHC, (and presumably all of the queens’ spells INCLUDING THE LASER PUPPIES) just. Died. I mean the MHC sucked so oh well about them and glossaryck was kinda the reason this all happened (which btw is very confusing. Why did he give the first queen the wand if he knew all this crap was gonna happen anyways?) so I’m not super sad about him but Star’s spells didn’t deserve that, nor did the other queens’, or the laser puppies!!

The fact that Moon and Star grabbed tha alligators by the eyeballs. I know that this is such a small thing but in the series finale for the main character to still be doing stuff that hurts other characters like that and for it to be treated as a joke...it just sits bad with me. They’ve tried to develop Star, and been mostly successful, but for her to still be doing stuff like this and being a bad girlfriend to Tom and spontaneously deciding that she hates magic and needs to get rid of it no matter what happens to magical creatures and such after she’s supposedly grown so much just seems counterintuitive and bad. Like I swear Star’s my favorite character (bet that’s a surprise with how much I’ve talked about Marco this post) but sometimes it’s so hard to like her it’s annoying

Mina lived. I mean what was the point of that? She’s not gonna learn to not be racist towards monsters and it looked like she got pretty killed by the unicorn in the magic dimension so like. What’s the point of her coming back

All the cruelty towards unicorns. I mean, the firstborn DIED. We saw her SKULL. What the F*CK that’s messed up! And the other unicorns died too, and the dark one also disappeared except for its skull. What was that about?! Were we supposed to just not care bc they’re made of magic? Bc if so that didn’t work

No but seriously it’s so messed up that Star’s unicorn daughter DIED and we saw her SKULL and it’s just treated as a joke what the hell that unnerved me sm

It was very anticlimactic how there weren’t any real challenges to the Butterflies destroying magic. Neither Mina nor the evil unicorn got anywhere close and for the series (not just season but SERIES) finale, you would think there’d be more of a final fight, and more tension/suspense so the final payoff seems more satisfying. Idk I just thought it went way too fast, especially for the actual end of the show. I thought the full time should be used for fighting Mina, not starco development (and I say this as a person who likes starco)

The cheek marks being gone. I know it makes sense with the plot of getting rid of the magic, and because mewmans were originally just humans, but since I didn’t like the magic-being-deleted plot line and because I have some sort of sentimental attachment to the cheek marks apparently, I don’t like that they’re gone

The uncertainty towards Tom/most characters from other dimensions’s fates. Again, I like starco, but even the most die-hard starco shippers probably think that the way characters who weren’t Star or Marco were just written off was unsatisfying, right? In particular, Tom deserves WAAAAAAAY better than he got. And Kelly, is her dimension merged with Mewnearth? Was the vision Ponyhead was describing actually what happened to her?

[xistentialangst]

Revisiting EMP - yay or nay?

Gathering my thoughts on TST. 

First, I want to say how much I *loathe* the “redemptive Mary” arc and explain why it’s so wrong, because I see a lot of casuals accepting it at face value. 

1. Mary shot Sherlock. He literally died. Only superhuman love for John Watson brought him back from the dead.

2. She would have shot him again at the empty house if her face wasn’t plastered on the building.

3. It was never explained WHY she shot him. To keep John from knowing about her secret identity? That justifies killing your husband’s bff who has offered to help you out? Similarly, we never see her apologize about it or justify it except as she’s dying. “Oh, so sorry I murdered you that one time.”

4. When Mary shoots the coin she’s a bit off -- meaning perhaps she really did intend to kill Sherlock but “missed” by a few milimeters? There are other explanations for who called the ambulance (my money is on CAM).

Then at the end of HLV, and all of TST we have Sherlock, Mary and John basically acting like none of this happened and everything is fine. We get AGRA’s backstory and hey, it’s not all that bad. Sure AGRA, the team, “did things for money”, which probably meant bad things like assassinating innocents too, but heck, Mycroft used them so they couldn’t have been that bad. And Mary did try to leave that life behind. etc.

If this were HONESTLY going to be left like this, with Mary as the redeemed hero, I’d hate this show to my dying breath. 

BUT IF MARY’S REDEMPTION IS ALL BALONEY FUZZ, WHAT ARE THE OPTIONS? 

OPTION #1. TST all happens “in the real world” of the show but it’s all a deliberate trick. Mary is really evil.  This would have to mean:

1. Mary deliberately played the role of ‘hero’ and sacrificed herself in order to permanently separate John and Sherlock. Mirrored with Emelia Riccoletti. Maybe Mary was already dying so “she made her death count”. But yet -- didn’t she just give birth like 6 months ago? Wouldn’t her doctors then or, you know, her HUSBAND doctor, have noticed if she was deathly ill? But maybe it’s a secret twin? Let’s move on....

2. Somehow, probably during TFP, Mary will be revealed as the ultimate villain. Mary must actually be dead, because I can’t buy that everyone in that room was in on it or wouldn’t have noticed it was all fake. So we’ll get some new posthumous backstory on Mary that shows she was a villain all along and never loved John at all but merely hooked up with him to hurt Sherlock. Or possibly Mary is a twin and one of them died but the other will show back up at the end. (”It’s never twins.”)

In this scenario, we get Mary finally revealed as a total psychopath, the answer to Moriarty’s “Burn the heart out of you”. (with Mary as either Moriarty or his minion), and John perhaps confesses that he wasn’t happy with Mary anyway.

But we still have Sherlock being SOOOO blind for ages and ages, and John acting like... what? Why would he go back to her after she shot Sherlock? At all?  So, this option is problematic. It’s still possible, absolutely, and I’d say it’s the most likely scenario. Because I’m coming to accept that MOFTISS are willing to sacrifice logic for drama. But still pretty unsatisfying. John continues to just be a victim and have no agency. And I can see that “Sherlock is blinded by sentiment” but that badly and for that long? Ugh.

OPTION #$2: EMP. 

None of what we saw in this episode was ‘real’ but it was only a “one possible future” projection from coma-Sherlock. This solves the ridiculous “redeemed Mary” arc. 

In favor of EMP: 

* Lots of inconsistencies in TST like characters and things being mirrored on screen for no good reason (Sherlock on the stairs when Lestrade and John are taking the piss, John and Mary in bed, the door in the Watson flat).  Alternative explanation: These are deliberate artistic choices to tell us subconsciously that ‘something is wrong’, that we’re not getting a reliable narrator. Instead of EMP it could just be telling us that Mary is lying or Sherlock isn’t seeing things correctly.

* We have little lines of dialogue changing like “Mummy is coming” vs “I’m coming”. No idea what an alternative explanation is.

* Jumping in front of a bullet? Like seriously? That’s as stupid and unrealistic as the delayed action stabbing. 

* There’s the weird water/MP imagery the first time Sherlock notices the statue of Thatcher bust and a few other times. Alternative explanation: it’s another one of the show’s “visually demonstrating something happening in Sherlock’s head” that he’s noticing something is wrong (the shark/Mary/Moriarty) but does’t fully understand yet. We had tons of this sort of thing in ASiB. So it doesn’t necessarily mean EMP, but it’s suggestive nevertheless.

Against EMP:

* I’m frustrated with the apparent writing inconsistencies if this is all EMP. We see so many scenes that don’t include Sherlock such as Lestrade and Hooper in the hall, John and Mary in their flat, Mary’s New Jersey woman bit on the plane, John’s flirtation with bus lady. Let’s say Sherlock is imagining this entire episode -- then some of those feel very OOC to me. The whole “gingersnaps” scene at the start. Why would Sherlock imagine himself as that much of a buffoon? The infidelity. Sherlock might guess that John would be unhappy with domesticity and might fall prey to temptation with some random woman. I can see that. But the whole thing with the flower in John’s hair feels too much of a “real dad” moment for Sherlock to dream it up. Then there’s the scene on the plane where John is feeling guilty remembering his affair. That feels more like a true John moment than something Sherlock would imagine about John. There’s the little parenting convo between John and Mary about 666 and the Omen and all that--that felt like something only real parents would be exhausted/exasperated enough to say, not something Sherlock would imagine new parents to say. Or we have John and Lestrade teasing Sherlock about the baby and Sherlock being clueless. With some of these things, it’s difficult for me to believe that the character of Sherlock would imagine them in his head --they seem outside his realm of experience not to mention why he would BOTHER imagining such things on this future path that are so mundane and don’t directly affect him or the mystery. So that remains my strong bone of wariness about EMP.  Alternative explanation: Moftiss simply aren’t that bothered about being consistent with Sherlock’s dream narrative and just want to to have fun showing this ‘alternate path’. 

* I think people will lose their shit if this turns out to all be a dream.  In Dr. Who they let the audience in early on to the fact that it was a dream. So then you’re always thinking “is this still a dream then”? Like, TST would make so much more sense to me as a dream if they’d interspersed little bits of John sitting at Sherlock’s bedside or even ANY bedside (keeping it cryptic). I honestly don’t feel like they’ve given us enough SURFACE CLUES to set up EMP for the general audience. Like, not just flipped cameras and shit, but bigger, more obvious things. Like in TAB when the entire room shook and then they’d break back to the “real world”, or characters were saying things like “you’re in too deep, you need to wake up!” That sort of thing was just not present in TST. And I think the fact that it’s not there is really significant. 

* The birth announcement in the paper. I know many dismissed this as just being PR, but I’m still disturbed with the idea of non-Sherlock characters breaking the 4th wall about the baby and Sherlock being on the phone all the time (i.e. not in a coma) if Sherlock is actually in a coma dreaming all this time.

At this point, it seems like BOTH option 1 or 2 are problematic and have some major story holes.  On the other hand, if neither is true, and Mary retains her redemptive arc til the bitter end, I will stick a fucking fork in my eye.

Thoughts welcome.