#and s6 treated it's female characters the worst it ever has to date

[bellamygateoldblog]

I get it, Lexa's death was handled extremely poorly and the writers deserve to be criticized for it. But it's worth pointing out that a major (major, i got sick of it and stopped scrolling after a while) chunk of comments in response to that tweet seem to only want to talk about Lexa, and not the racism or misogyny prevalent within the show, too. These are things we should be talking about in equal measure. Like it just reminds me of a completely tone deaf post I read a while back that said bellamy, the biracial asian male lead, is the "safer" and better option to die in the end simply because he's a man and "it's not a good look to kill off their bisexual protagonist" on a show with a habit of murdering black men.

[aimmyarrowshigh]

Dark Greetings this Spooky Season Ms. V. Can we get a list of your favorite Halloween movies and specials? I know you have seen *everything* and I am trying to go beyond my usual rewatches this holiday month.

V. AIMMYARROWSHIGH’S CRITERIA FOR HALLOWEEN EPISODES

Does the Halloween element combine convincingly with the usual universe of the show (ex: Lizzie McGuire 2x09 “Those Freaky McGuires” is not good as a Halloween episode because it changes the rules of the Lizzie McGuire universe, whereas Community 2x06 “Epidemiology” is a GREAT Halloween episode because it manages to logically introduce zombies to the regular Community universe)?

Does the Halloween element advance the plot of the episode/series (ex: the reason Boy Meets World 5x17 “And Then There Was Shawn” is literally the best Halloween episode ever made is that it uses the horror movie tropes it satirizes to provide a CRUCIAL turning-point to the plot of the show)?

Is the Halloween episode in the forefront enough that it’s clearly a holiday episode (ex: HAVING ONE JACK-O’LANTERN ON A DESK DOES NOT A HALLOWEEN SPECIAL MAKE, LAW & ORDER 16x03 “GHOSTS”! You gotta go ALL-IN, like Bob’s Burgers 3x02 “Full Bars”!)?

Does the Halloween theme balance well between spooky and warm-n-fuzzy (ex: Criminal Minds 11x21 “Mr. Scratch” is too fucking bleak, but Criminal Minds 12x06 “Elliott’s Pond” has a joyous/celebratory tone to the ending despite being a genuinely scary episode)?

Is it generally a well-written, acted, and designed episode of television (ex: Saved by the Bell! 3x26 “Mystery Weekend” is seriously, not exaggerating, the worst thing I’ve ever watched in my life; Psych 1x15 “Scary Sherry, Or Bianca’s Toast” is a triumph of the medium)?

THE BEST, bar none, Halloween special ever made is Boy Meets World 5x17, “And Then There Was Shawn.” Period. There can be no argument, except MAYBE Community 3x06, “Epidemiology,” but I like “And Then There Was Shawn” better because the parody and homage as less… biting? And because I think it continues and addresses the emotional core of the regular BMW season better than “Epidemiology” does for Community s3. “Epi” DOES plant the seed (…heh) for the Season 3B major plot arc of Shirley’s pregnancy and Chang Deciding To Murder, but it gets some major minus points for mocking Yvette Nicole Brown’s weight with other characters’ responses to her costume, tbh. And “And Then There Was Shawn” is just fucking iconic. It is THE Halloween episode manual, IMO, if there were to be a textbook on how to write a perfect Halloween episode for your sitcom.

HOWEVER, I also have to give major props to Bob’s Burgers and Psych, as complete series, for their CONSISTENTLY excellent Halloween episodes. A lot of series that have multiple Halloween eps really phone it in after one or two, because they don’t have any more ideas for how to incorporate Halloween pastiches while maintaining the overall feeling of the series (tbh B99, while the Halloween Heists are excellent in general, is/has been coming very close to this line, and I think that if they HADN’T had to switch out the Heist to Cinco de Mayo in s6, they would have jumped their Heist Shark [and I think they know it, too, because it was lampshaded in the episode itself]) or they just straight-up don’t have any more ideas for what or how to have the characters they’re bound to parody or pay homage to a Halloween thing after they’ve already done one or two. And let’s be real: those one or two have probably been either The Shining or Rear Window, because those are pretty much the two that every show starts with.

Bob’s manages to make every Halloween episode feel very fresh and organic to the series, which I think they do have some leeway to do because of the nature of cartoons keeping the Belchers living a kind of loop of never aging, yk, but amazingly they’ve only done the “Tina feels too old to trick or treat, maybe? Nope, she’s not 14 yet, so there’s still time!” thing in a way that felt tropey once (in 3x02 Full Bars). They’ve been able to address Tina being 13/in 8th grade, and worrying about it being almost too late for her to keep trick or treating, in ways that were in-character and added to the overall episode in 4x02 Fort Night, 5x02 Tina and the Real Ghost, and 9x04 Nightmare on Ocean Avenue Street, without me rolling my eyes at the screen and going “TINA, EVERY SINGLE SHOW WITH A TWEEN IN IT HAS ALREADY DECIDED THAT THE AGE AT WHICH YOU MUST STOP TRICK OR TREATING IS FRESHMAN YEAR OF HIGH SCHOOL, COME ON NOW” which… at this point, is a Feat. Because like, I’ve POSTED over a thousand Halloween episodes, right? But I’ve watched and screencapped ::checks folder:: 3,905 Halloween episodes since 2014. Which is, um, a. lot. The ACTUAL BEST Bob’s Burgers Halloween episode is 6x03, “The Hauntening,” which is just… achingly perfect television. I know I’ve posted about it before (probably a couple times tbh) but the way that it aired originally back-to-back with The Simpsons 27x04, “Halloween of Horror,” so that the evening of Sunday cartoons juxtaposed eight-year-old Louise whose family worked so hard to scare her like she wanted with nine-year-old Lisa’s family working so hard to keep her from being too scared and make sure that she felt safe… reader, I FUCKIN CRIED. Little girls being deeply loved while also Spoopy Things!!!!!! IS WHAT HALLOWEEN SPECIALS ARE!!! FUCKIN!!!!!! ABOUT!!!!!!!

Psych, though, has the benefit of not really having any, like… central tone to the series? Beyond “friendship” and “having fun with joking,” tbh? So it’s able to do what a lot of series get docked “points” for in my Foolproof Halloween Special Ratings System That Is Completely Subjective To My Tastes And Mood, which is really just run full-tilt into parody and homage without really worrying about overall tonal connection to the rest of the season or series. 1x15, “Scary Sherry, or, Bianca’s Toast,” while it DOES fall victim to the way-too-common Halloween episode trap of making mental hospitals into a Scary Thing (they are a medical normality and a necessary thing for health for many people and should not be feared), is delightful Spooky Fun AND has the benefit of having Shannon Woodward in it.* We all know by now that if an episode of any show has Shannon Woodward as the guest star, it will by default end up being one of the best, if not THE best, episodes of that series. It’s just how having Shannon Woodward as your guest star rolls. I also really like, with Psych’s Halloween episodes, that quite a few of them understand the underlying thematic scope of Horror, which is “The Monstrous Feminine Is A Thing And All Horror Tropes Are Actually About Women’s Interior Lives Because Men Can’t Write Women And Fear Women Always,” yk, in a way that is neither TOO Actual Horror, which I am too afraid of to Do, or too trite and demeaning, which is the other basic trap that Halloween stuff falls into A Lot. Like, Scary Sherry is very much about women villainizing other women, avenging other women, and being in very specifically-female pain, even though Shawn & Gus are still the lens through which we solve the mystery, and so are 4x04 The Devil Is In The Details And The Upstairs Bedroom and 6x03 This Episode Sucks. But they give their Monstrous Females dignity and breadth, which is impressive, ESPECIALLY since they’re one-off guest characters. Also, 3x15 Tuesday the 17th is just plain funny and well-done, like, just give it props for the title alone.

*(Speaking of Shannon Woodward, another amazingly good Halloween episode is Raising Hope 4x07, “Murder, She Hoped,” which is among my very favorite Rear Window homage episodes and has probably the funniest gag in ANY Rear Window ep, in Martha Plimpton floating across the screen in the Grace Kelly silk nightgown and peignoir and announcing that it was on sale at Walmart, can you believe?! and honestly, yes. Perfection.)

Also excellent:

• The Addams Family (1991) + Addams Family Values (1993) • Scooby-Doo and the Ghoul School (RAISE YOUR HAND IF YOU WERE GAY FOR SIBELLA AS A CHILD!) • Scooby-Doo and the Witch's Ghost (RAISE YOUR HAND IF YOU'RE GAY BECAUSE THE HEX GIRLS!) • Halloweentown + Halloweentown II: Kalabar's Revenge • Mom's Got a Date with a Vampire! • Z•O•M•B•I•E•S (to a lesser extent, Z•O•M•B•I•E•S 2) • Clue (1985) • Coraline • Corpse Bride • 6teen 2x00 Dude of the Dead • Arthur 21x00 Arthur and the Haunted Treehouse • Lamb-Chop in the Haunted Studio • Arthur 8x04A Fern-kenstein's Monster • Arthur 10x02 The Squirrels • WandaVision 1x06 The All-New Halloween Spooktacular (I KNOW YOU, SPECIFICALLY, DEAR @plavoptice, HATE MCU!WANDA AND I DON'T BLAME YOU, YOUR REASONS ARE VERY VALID! But this is a good Halloween special so I'm putting it on my list In General.) • Boy Meets World 2x06 Who's Afraid of Cory Wolf? • Ghostbusters (2016) • Gravity Falls 1x12 Summerween • Leverage 4x02 Ten L'il Grifters Job • The Loud House 2x40 Tricked! • Mockingbird Lane 1x00 Unaired Pilot • It's The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown! (Classic, etc.)

I'm SURE I'm forgetting some that I'll rewatch this year myself. I'm a big Halloween Baking Championship fan, tbh, which is on Discovery+ now so I recommend that if you like mostly-relaxing nice people baking cakes that look like bats and such.

I'm also IMMENSELY INTENSELY EXCITED for The Muppets' Haunted Mansion on Disney+ next week!!!

[nymph1e]

Okay fuck it, I gotta give in, I gotta watch through Supernatural. AFAIK, it's all on Netflix; at least I saw it on there in passing. Going into this, is there anything I should be aware of? Are there any episodes I should skip, any seasons? Should I start from season 4? I know the basic plot and concept, and I know it's very monster-of-the-week. But aside from me highkey shipping Destiel already, that's all.

Well my first piece of advice would be

but uh, let’s fucking ~GO~

If you’re actually jumping into this hellhole (why why why) don’t start at season 4. It’s tempting, but seasons 1-3 are some of the best shit in the whole show, also having context for Sam and Dean’s characters, and their relationship with the supernatural up to season 4 really highlights how fucking wild the introduction of angels is in the show. it’s basically a complete paradigm shift.

I would recommend you watch seasons 1-5 basically as is, though if you’re in a rush, season three is kinda skippable as long as you read a general synopsis. This is the original arc of the show and it shows. A friend of mine, @sammwinchestersdimples​ has said she’d have been fine if the show had ended there, and I can totally see her point. After season five things start to get... uhhhhh... not as good. THAT BEING SAID some really amazing seasons come later, and you’d get nowhere NEAR the Full Destiel Experience without them. What REALLY sucks is that all the seasons have good moments in them, so even if the seasons are generally bad, they’ll have episodes of GOLD. But fuck it, here’s a season-by-season breakdown.

Season 6 - This is the first... “eh” season. There’s a lot of character choices made in this one that I don’t like. The plot also doesn’t quite seem to know what to do with itself and it has no real main villain... or I guess it has a twist villain? This is also the season where they start chucking in the typical “no homos” you get when a show is queerbaiting, so they can point to the no homo bits and claim the queers are delusional.

Season 7 - The absolute WORST season, imo, is season 7, and it features Cas the least out of all the post season 4 seasons. You can tell the writers genuinely tried to write Cas off here. Not to mention the main plot is completely stupid. HOWEVER this is the season where we get golden things like Cas showing up to Dean’s prayer naked and covered in bees, and the episode where Charlie (best girl) is introduced and Dean subsequently has to flirt with a dude because she, a lesbian, cannot. (Wow so straight, Dean)

Episodes Not To Skip:

6x03 - A good Cas/plot episode (spot the famous destiel quote)

6x04 - A good all-round episode, also Jackles directed it so  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

6x09 - This is one of the Batshit Episodes. Definitely watch.

6x10 - On the one hand, Cas episode. On the other, no homo, megstiel episode. Your choice.

6x11 - Good episode.

6x15 - THE ULTIMATE META EPISODE. Sam and Dean are teleported into Jared Padelecki and Jensen Ackles’ lives on the set of Supernatural and it is so batshit.

6x17 - Jolly good episode, and nice destiel content.

6x18 - Time travel episode, which is always fun.

6x19 - “Baby in a trenchcoat.” ‘Nough said.

6x20 - The Man Who Would Be King is the destiel episode. It is infamous in the fandom, and for good reason. It’s not just a good destiel episode, but one of the best episodes in the series. With banging lines like “Freedom is a length of rope. God wants you to hang yourself with it.” and “For a brief moment, I was me again.”

6x21 & 6x22 - The last two episodes are kind of must-watches after TMWWBK, trust me.

Episodes Not To Skip:

7x01 & 7x02 - follows on from s6 final. You don’t wanna skip.

7x05 - Good general episode

7x06 - Again, good general episode. Sets ups plot for the season.

7x08 - Ugh. So the A plot for this episodes invoves Becky, the insane, stalker, fandom-insert character, roofie Sam into marrying her (and it’s heavily implied they have sex - and it’s treated as a joke despite being LITERAL RAPE). BUT this is the episode where Garth is introduced and Garth is fucking amazing. So. IDEK.

7x10 & 7x11 - Plot important.

7x12 - Time travel episode! See if you can catch the bi!dean moment ;)

7x17 - Cas is back! Or is he???

7x18 - GARTH EPISODE

7x20 - CHARLIE!!!! WATCH THIS EPISODE!!!!

7x21 - Cas episode. It’s... interesting.

7x22 - The tagline for this episode is “Sam and Dean seek out an Alpha” 😭. It’s a Cas episode.

7x23 - If Cas weren’t in this episode I’d say skip it.

Season 8 - A fantastic season. If The Man Who Would Be King is the destiel episode, season 8 is the destiel season. When you watch this, DM me so I can RANT about all the amazing destiel this season. It’s also, again, a great season in general I remember watching it as it was airing it was soooo good. You have the arrival of the Bunker, you have Kevin and Charlie being awesome, some nice sprinkles of batshit episodes, BEST BOY BENNY rocks up in all his glory. Fucking epic season. Only downside it Sam’s character takes a bit of a dive. I’d recommend you watch through all of this season.

Episodes To AVOID:

7x13 - I literally pretend this stupid fucking episode doesn’t exist. Basically Dean impregnates a woman with Super Pregnancy and she has a daughter who becomes an adult within hours and then dies. The end. Everyone hated it. Man fuck this episode. Of course it was written by Buckleming.

Season 9 - Sadly, after how amazing season 8 was, and how spectactularly season 9 was set up, this season is a disappointment. It’s an ok season. It’s not bad, it’s not good, it’s just a bit all over the place.

I was going to give you the normal episode list to not skip, but looking through, most episodes this season should be watched for one reason or another. Either they’re Cas heavy, they do some interesting character building, or they feature one of the awesome side characters like Charlie or Jody.

This season is probably the height of the war in the writers’ room about destiel. Some writers want to no homo the whole thing and back way off, while other writers want to lean into it hard. So in the same season where SPOILER Cas loses his virginity to a random reaper woman and Dean kicks Cas out of the bunker to fend for himself, you also have Cas’ fatal flaw used as propaganda against him by Metatron being that he’s "in love” with humanity Dean. /SPOILER Whatever you do DON’T SKIP THE FINAL FEW EPISODES. TRUST ME.

Season 10 - Haha oh dear. This season is likely the biggest for wasted potential. You saw the end of season 9, right? You go “HOLY SHIT YES LET’S DO THIS” and then they do... season 10. They really became experts at setting up an awesome season only to fuck it up in delivery, right? Again, not a bad season, per se.

Episodes To AVOID:

9x05 - In which Dean wants to fuck a dog. I am not joking. I wish I were. Basically a spell-gone-wrong makes Dean doglike. it’s weird. it’s batshit. Not the good kind.

Season 11 - Season 11 is a pretty good season! They tried to give Dean a female love interest but Jackles said  ✨No✨ and played Dean as brainwashed and uncomfortable the whole time and I love him for it. Of special note this season is the episode Baby (11x04), which is my favourite episode in the series! It’s funny, it’s heartwarming, it’s weirdly shot. I love it! We also get casifer this season which is awesome! Some episodes are skippable, but they’re generally good episodes.

Episodes NOT to Skip (ignore the 10 year special):

10x01 & 10x02 - Great episodes, Dean in this is *chefs kiss*.

10x04 - *sighs* Fan Fiction. A 200th episode that is simultaneously a love letter to fans and laughing in fans’ faces. I’ve never liked this episode for the second-hand embarressment of it all, but you should watch it and see if you like it.

10x06 - Pretty good episode.

10x07 - Jody AND Donna! Fantastic episode!

10x08 - Dadstiel rears his ugly head. I fucking love how Cas adopts two (2) kids over the course of the series and in both cases Dean eventually goes “ah fuck, I guess I gotta co-parent this thing”. Also we get some KILLER destiel this episode. hey go on a DATE and Cas tells Dean he’s a good person ^_^

10x09 - Good episode. Much destiel.

10x10 - Charlie episode!

10x11 - Teen!Dean! Need I say more?

OK so I just had a look, and you really just need to watch every episode from this point in the season on. Enjoy!

Season 12 - Another example of a TERRRIBLE season, is season 12. Season 12 is also one of the most destiel-heavy seasons in the show. You see the issue? Like, it’s got a stupid plot that makes no sense and has no fucking cohesion, but you also FINALLY have the writers going “fuck it” and all in on the destiel. After this point Dean never has another non-Cas love interest and vice versa, they stop giving us whiplash from baiting and no-homoing. IF the conspiracy theory is true, and the end of the show is shit because of executive meddling, this season is the one where the writers decided they were gonna push for destiel endgame.

I gotta tell you the truth, I skipped this season in my rewatch, so all of my memories are from years ago when it first came out. This seson was the last that I watched live (for a reason). Should you skip it? No. But I’m not well informed enough about this season that I can point out what episodes you should or should not watch.

Season 13 - Congratulations! You’ve reached the point where the show’s gotten consistently good again! (just in time for most of the audience to have already left lol). We start off with SPOILERS Dean mourning Cas like he’s lost the will to fucking live. I’m talking complete despondence, praying for Cas to come back, lashing out in anger at everything, one of the darkest points we’ve ever seen him at on the show, then pulling a 180 and being super happy the second Cas comes back. /SPOILERS They also introduce Jack, who is the SECOND child Cas decides to adopt and Dean ends up co-parenting (Sam too). In fact, Jack is explicity Sam, Cas, and Dean’s kid.

Season 14 - Another good one. My only issue is where they decided to take the plot at the end of the season. I’d recommend watching it all, regardless.

Season 15 - And so we’ve come to the end of the line. This season was... well it was actually pretty good. It started off with what we hellers lovingly refer to as the “divorce arc” where Cas and Dean have a big blow up, and Cas leaves, but that ends with Dean praying on his knees for forgiveness and a nice hug. Honestly this season you can cut the tension between the two of them like a knife, and you can tell Misha and Jensen were doing it deliberately.

I’d say watch up until 15x18, then you decide what to do with the last two episodes. If you want you can watch them to understand just why people put their conspiracy theory hats on, or you can send me another ask and I’ll rec you some post 15x18 finale fics! There’s one fic that’s a replacement for 15x20 written in script format that is particularly good.

Anyway that’s it. It’s kind of left me a little sad, to break down the show in this way. Especially coming up to season 15 nd remembering all the wasted potential. Honestly if you do decide to watch the show, good luck. I hope you enjoy it. I’m also glad you never had to be put through the bullshit false hope that came about after 15x18.

[yiangchen]

ok but literally what the fuck was s5? i have spent so much time trying to defend clarke and bellamy from people who hate one and prop up the other, but honestly, they were BOTH fucking IDIOTS in s5. they both had ooc moments. like,,,, i can kinda appreciate what the writers were trying to do a lot of the time, but it was not executed well. like AT ALL. 

yes, mothers are irrational sometimes about their kids’ safety, but what they are not (normally) is dumb, and i’m sorry, but clarke was dumb as fuck for like half of the season and her motivations were ALL over the place. bellamy is her best friend. she radioed him every day for over six years and ONLY him. she would NEVER just leave him to die like that. NEVER. no matter what he has done, she has always forgiven him. no matter what. that’s what made bellarke bellarke. her unwavering faith in him (and his in her). and yet, he does one (1) thing she disagrees with and she doesn’t even try and hear him out??? she thinks running is the best solution?? that she and madi won’t get hunted down and killed eventually??? that maybe she should not at least consider for one second that maybe staying and fighting while she has people to protect her and madi by their sides would be a smart move??? the answer to all of these is a fucking no. she doesn’t think, and that’s the problem. clarke is the HEAD. idc that she’s supposed to be the “heart” now. people don’t just change like that. it doesn’t matter than it’s been six years, you can’t just change THAT much. okay, i’m not gonna say it’s impossible, but if they wanted us to believe that clarke had changed, why did we not get to SEE that development? she’s supposed to be the heart as a parallel to how bellamy was the heart and how he handled his relationship with octavia back in s1, but we didn’t get to see HOW SHE GOT THERE. we got half an episode. that’s it. and it’s NOT enough!!! it’s fucking not. if you’re gonna have clarke griffin radio bellamy blake every single day for six years, never losing her faith in him for even a day--not even after over a year had passed since he was supposed to have been home already--then you’re gonna have to show me more of the trauma she endured. you’re gonna have to show me more of her relationship to madi--the one that has become more important than any other relationship. because how else do you explain her acting irrationally and leaving bellamy to die like that? it makes ZERO sense. we did not see enough of her development for that. you cannot have four seasons of clarke growing to care about bellamy in the most beautiful development i have ever seen and then just erase it all in one (1) episode, not to mention the fact that clarke REFUSES to destroy the chip!!! so,, this was something she left her best friend in the entire world for and yet she can’t destroy it because it contains the memories of her dead lover who she only spent less than a few weeks with in canon--a week in s2 and a week in s3? are you kidding??? that is not how you pay tribute to a dead character. you don’t fuck over the LIVING female lead and have her motivations make no sense at all to pay tribute to a DEAD guest character. and then they had the audacity to have clarke shock madi?????? everything she did was supposed to be for madi--to protect her--and now the writers had the audacity to have her abuse her??? are you fucking kidding me??? and please show me the parallel scene of bellamy physically harming octavia. because you know, clarke’s supposed to be him now, i guess. oh, wait?? it doesn’t exist!!! BELLAMY never physically harmed octavia so CLARKE also never should have physically harmed madi. i just...bellamy and madi are supposed to be the two most important people in her life and yet she slaps one of them and leaves him to die and then wrestles the other one to the ground and shocks her????? and she never even apologized for slapping bellamy or shocking madi?!?! add that to the fact that clarke hardly showed ANY emotion at all during the entire time she thought bellamy was dead to the point where we didn’t even know that she thought he was dead until she found out he wasn’t!!!!! we’ve already seen how clarke handles thinking she could be the reason that bellamy blake is dead and that was in s2 and she was literally a fucking control freak about his safety 24/7, and you’re telling me that same woman hardly felt anything at all until she found out he was still alive!?!? IDK WHO THAT WOMAN WAS THAT DID THOSE THINGS BUT IT WAS NOT CLARKE GRIFFIN !!!!

and bellamy??? trying to use a child because he thought it was the best way to save everyone? i’m sorry but in what fucking world--i repeat, in WHAT FUCKING WORLD--would bellamy blake, mother father of all children who have ever existed, think that the best way to save everyone would be to use a child as a pawn in a power struggle??? i don’t care that madi agreed. OF COURSE she agreed. she was told clarke would die if she didn’t ascend!! and this is the same child that joined a cult in order to save her mother. so like???? of course she was gonna agree to ascend?? and then i get that bellamy is mad that clarke left him (and slapped him--i was mad too!!), but you’re telling me that bellamy never even felt bad at all or even apologized for how things went down? madi told him clarke would never forgive him for this and he knew that and you could tell he hated that it had come to that, but then later at the end of the season and into s6, he never apologizes for that??? for breaking her trust?? bellamy blake NOT apologizing for causing a loved one harm?? again, IN WHAT FUCKING WORLD?!? and then there’s the fact that he was willing to take the rover and run to save raven, e.cho, murphy and emori but the second clarke suggests that plan because she doesn’t want madi to ascend, suddenly bellamy is all nope nope nope, we can’t do that! like....WHAT. literally what. the. fuck. it makes no sense!! and i swear to god, half the time, it felt like bellamy was just going through the motions with everything. it just didn’t seem like him. it didn’t matter that he was still doing things for clarke, like in 5x03. it didn’t matter because there was still something OFF. even the stuff with octavia i don’t think was handled well at all and i hate octavia!!!! me, a known octavia hater, a known advocate for wanting bellamy to tell his sister off, wasn’t happy with him doing just that???? and it’s because it didn’t feel like it was bellamy doing it!!!! i wanted to see the bellamy i knew and loved in s4. i wanted to see THAT bellamy telling her off. not this emotionally-repressed shell of a character that used to be him. which brings me to another thing: it’s not that who bellamy was after those six years was not realistic. it’s that we didn’t get to see him develop during those six years. there were ZERO flashbacks. Z E R O. for the male lead there were zero flashbacks to explain the man he became and we were just supposed to accept that he’s the kinda guy who jokes about his sister’s almost death now??? the kinda guy who would ever cross the line into dating territory with the girl that is quite literally the root cause of his trauma??? that he would trust her--the girl who got his girlfriend killed--just because “it’s been six years!!!” and “people change???” and you know, we just have to accept ALL of that. no explanation but bellamy running around polis in 5x06 with the sole purpose of being a mouth piece for the writers???? IDK WHO THAT MAN WAS BUT IT WAS NOT BELLAMY BLAKE !!!

jfc, s5 was seriously the WORST season of this show. HANDS DOWN. literally what the fuck was that??? bellamy and clarke, i’m so sorry, you didn’t deserve that complete and utter bullshit. both of them were ooc as fuck and they didn’t make sense half the time. i felt connected to clarke in s5a, but then 5x09 came around and she just fucking lost me!! and bellamy didn’t seem like himself the ENTIRE season. it wasn’t until s6 for me that he finally came back from the war. speaking of s6, oh my fucking god. the bellarke of it all was amazing. i loved josephine as a villain. but that was pretty much it!!! everything else was terrible. i hate that clarke was treated like complete and utter shit by the biggest hypocrites and then was forced to forgive them instantly by the writers. why is clarke not allowed to be mad?!?!?! i certainly still am!! and on another note, why did leaving bellamy in s5 have to be her biggest regret??? why couldn’t it have been leaving him in s2?? we went all the way back to s1 with things she regrets and yet we couldn’t go back to her leaving him at the end of s2???

honestly, i don’t understand why so much of this had to happen. you could literally remove s5 from the timeline of the show and just change a few things and it wouldn’t change anything!!! s5 was basically jroth acting like octavia had never mistreated bellamy before and needed to give him a reason to finally cut her out his life for a little bit. it was jroth acting like clarke had never regretted leaving bellamy before and needed her to leave him so that she could feel like shit about it and give her “friends” a reason to hate her. it was jroth acting like we couldn’t have had bellamy risk everyone for clarke and clarke only in the season directly after he’s forced to leave her to die. it was jroth acting like we couldn’t have had clarke and bellamy talk about her radioing him the season directly after the episode we found she radioed him for 2,199 days. it was jroth acting like s1-4, for the most part, just didn’t exist. it felt like we were watching the pilot of a new tv show. because clearly we weren’t supposed to care about anything that had happened in s1-4! certainly not the relationships that we had grown to love! and here’s the best part!!! we were supposed to forget all about s1-4 in s5, but ONLY in s5. and then we were supposed to remember it all again in s6 so that it made sense when clarke was the only one who had to be called out for nearly every wrong thing she ever did in those seasons. only...it still doesn’t make sense!!! because contrary to what raven reyes believes, other characters on this show have done horrible things, said they were sorry, and then done them again!!!!!!!! it’s like the main fucking theme of the show if you haven’t noticed, jason!!!

okay, i’m done. and wow, it feels good to finally let that out, especially the part about s5 bellamy and clarke both being morons lmfao. because they were!! they are my favorite characters and the only reason i still watch, but even i have to admit they were not themselves. 

[thelillykane]

for the salty ask meme #6 #1 #4 #5 and #12 Just pour all the salt, jennie!

oh my god i just refound this in my ask box so sit tight i’m gonna try & answer real quick~~~ 

1. What OTPs in your fandom(s) do you just not get? + 4. Do you have a NoTP in your fandom? Are they a popular OTP?

as always, the answer is l*cas and p*yton like!!! it doesn’t make sense to me AT ALL how people ship this couple and consider them to be like soulmates when l*cas spends half of season one, all of seasons 2 & 3, half of season four, and the majority of season five being blatantly and vocally in love with other women* (mostly brooke but then in season five he’s literally engaged to and planning to marry lindsay and um friendly reminder kids that he’s not the one that calls off the wedding!!! he’s not at the altar going “yeah i love p*yton” he’s literally…devastated when lindsay leaves him and he even tries to win her back but like sure ok i guess he loves p*yton) 

also, like…p*yton literally only wants to date him the second he becomes unavailable which isn’t even me being mean it’s just the goddamn truth!! he wants to date her in s1, she isn’t interested, and then he starts to move on (and she finds out brooke has a crush on him let’s sip that fucking tea together) and she decides she wants him!!!. and then she does the same thing in season five when he asks her to marry her and she says no so he?? moves on like anyone who got rejected would do and THAT’S WHEN SHE FLIPS HER SHIT and is like “oh well when you were eighteen-twenty you wrote a book where you promised to love me forever so you can’t get engaged to someone else even though yeah i started dating julian like a week after i said no to you” 

and tHEN when they weren’t pissing me off on screen by treating everyone (brooke) like trash they were boring!!! like how tf 

ALSO LISTEN the fact that not only does the show do a 180 and be like “oh lol l*cas always loved her even when he literally was repulsed by the mention of still having feelings for her” BUT THEY ALWAYS TRY TO PRETEND LIKE EVERYONE ELSE IN TREE HILL WAS WAITING FOR THEM TO BE TOGETHER AND NO ONE WAS haley – l*cas’ best friend!!!! – is vocally against them being together on like 3 fucking occasions minimum, nathan is 100189001 team brooke penelope davis, karen & keith – lucas’ PARENTS – actually take the time to get to know brooke and end up rooting for her and her happiness both individually and w/ their son and they never bother to do that w/ p*yton, skills literally calls l*cas out on his behavior and calls p*yton out on hers (re: them being shitty af) but then two eps later is all ~lol i was a fan~ when he clearly wasn’t, i could fucking go on but you see my point like…no one wanted them to be together including them 

the way they treat brooke formerly gets its own bullet point because oh my god even thinking about it makes my blood boil like 98% of the time i’m fucking i’m pissed 

also re: them being ~soulmates~ and they ~were meant to be together from ep 1**~ hilarie burton, who plays p*yton, literally came out in an interview this year and said that they never intended, to her knowledge, as the actress PLAYING P*YTON!!, for l*yton to end up together but that the show switched gears around season four iirc (because sophia bush wasn’t super comfortable filming endless romantic shit with her ex husband who had cheated on her which i support fully) 

ALSO i could be wrong but like….i’m pretty sure l*cas kisses brooke in every season he’s a main in (the s6 is a fakeout flash forward in which he lowkey envisions himself marrying brooke and lemme tell you that sure doesn’t seem like he’s super committed to p*yton) and you can’t say the same for him and p*yton (again i might be wrong but i don’t think they kiss in season 2) and they only kiss in season 3 because peyton thinks she’s gonna die and he’s sitting right there 

^ the above is arguably the pettiest bullet point on here but i don’t give a FUCK i hate this fictional couple with every atom i possess 

FUCK !!!! LISTEN that stupid “you’re always saving me thing” that p*yton says to him and it’s supposed to be romantic like lol he literally didn’t even go into the school for her that day!!! like sure once he’s in there he ends up saving her but that isn’t even what he wanted to do!!! he goes into the school to try and get nathan and to make sure nathan doesn’t get hurt!! when brooke is sobbing telling him she lost track of p*yton when she was getting out of the building l*cas doesn’t get all White Knight and go in to save her he literally was gonna stay with brooke!!! who he loves!!! (there’s an instance similar to this in season one where he only ~saves~ her because he is like…around when brooke is trying to get help for p*yton and probably others too but that’s the BIG one) 

ALSO OH MY GOD in season 3 when they make p*yton realize she loves l*ke again they do it in the dumbest way??? she’s literally…with j*ke and she is asleep and mumbles l*kes name and then j*ke is like “u said his name in ur sleep u don’t want to be with me” and dumps her while she’s crying and saying she flat out doesn’t love l*cas (but then she has no one else so she’s like lol what the heck i guess i will love him romantically)

and btw that^ is another instance where it wasn’t p*yton choosing to be with l*cas it was literally someone deciding NOT to be with her…which come to think of it is how they always get together? like?? they never choose to be with one another except in season one after they fucking cheat on brooke like dirtbags and then l*ke dumps brooke to be with p*yton but after that they literally..only pick each other as last resorts because they have no one else. like lmao!!! that is not my idea of grand romance otp it’s literally…sad in the pathetic, embarrassing way 

*idr season six that well but i am willing to bet he does it a little bit during this season as well (also from what i remember they literally…stopped writing scenes w/ him and brooke one on one together because they knew the audience would take one look at those scenes and KNOW he still loved her and not p*yton) 

also um brooke/lucas parallel nathan/haley so much so it’s just so fake whenever people try and say they weren’t the intended endgame for a while there like…look at the parallels. open your eyes. 

anyway y’all i could probably keep going i am the most bitter and angry about them always and there’s literally 200+ things that are just ??? about them it’s Too Easy 

oh also fandom jumo but uh piper/l*o from charmed are boring as shit they’re okay in s1-2 and after that i was like hey can we get him off my screen thanks 

5. Has fandom ever ruined a pairing for you?

I don’t think “ruined” is the right term, but there are definitely some ships that I saw overhyped imo and then when I watched the show I was…underwhelmed. (I’m referring specifically to Ch*ck/S*rah when I type this because the never ending will they-won’t they was just fucking exhausting and by season 3 – which is where i am currently on hiatus – when they actually got together i just could not bring myself to care) (also she can do better and deserves better and season 3 chuck is like the worst version of him so far but) 

6. Has fandom ever made you enjoy a pairing you previously hated?

not to my knowledge! 

12. Is there an unpopular arc that you like that the fandom doesn’t? Why?

i was just talking about this the other day with amanda!! (i would normally tag her but she loves l*yton and i respect that so i’m not gonna make her see the seven paragraphs in which i Destroy them) 

essentially we talked about how everyone needs to back up off of season three of veronica mars. like, sure, compared to seasons one and two it’s not as good, but even those seasons have stuff i don’t like such as: gross rape plots, needless and unwelcome attempts at love triangles, sidelining of POC characters for ?? reasons (it’s racism y’all, that’s the reason), sidelining of female characters for White Male Development (re: Mac not becoming a regular that season while Dick & Cassidy both did), etc. and all of those reasons are the big reasons why people shit on season three but [dennis reynolds voice] newsflash asshole! it was there the entire goddamn time 

^to continue the above, i think season three has SO MANY POSITIVES AS WELL for example: logan canonically tells veronica mars that he loves her. um. that’s Good Shit. also!!!: parker lee is there, weevil working w/ keith mars for a bit, logan and veronica making out on the stairs to fidelity by regina spektor, holy fuck does veronica mars love logan echolls so much, THAT SCENE WHEN LOGAN APOLOGIZES TO VERONICA AGAIN!!, BEATS UP GORY SORKIN BECAUSE HE’S RUDE AF TO VERONICA, SHRUGS WHEN GORY THREATENS HIS LIFE, IMMEDIATELY GOES AND APOLOGIZES TO PIZ, AND THEN VERONICA WATCHES HIM WALK AWAY BEAMING WITH HEARTS IN HER EYES LIKE THAT SCENE IS IN SEASON THREE YOU GUYS IT’S RIGHT THERE and then like!!! there’s quality eps in there that i love with my whole heart~~ wichita linebacker!!! poughkeepsie tramps and thieves!!! postgame mortem!!! charlie don’t surf!!! 

in summary: like…yeah parts of it were geuninely awful. just..like….the rest of the seasons. and the movie. which is like.. another Thing 

also fandom jump again but uh Rory’s decision to leave Yale in season six was absolutely the right one for her to make and Lorelai is the fucking worst about it. and if Lorelai hadn’t overreacted and ostracized Rory over it Rory would’ve gone back to Yale and lot sooner and that’s what you missed on Glee