#and that there would be precedent for the narrative to take that turn

[kenomacreature]

YES, IT REALLY IS JUST KRIS

No, Deltarune is not a whodunnit mystery

(The beautiful art for this banner was made by CursedMemes420 on Discord)

Okay, I didn't think I'd have to do this, but it turns out the new chapters of Deltarune are apparently an entire two months away still so we all have some time to kill. I'm going to use it to try to convince the last remaining fence-sitters that Kris is, in fact, the Knight, and hopefully maybe even convert some doubters.

The idea that Kris is the Knight has figured prominently in my other writing on Deltarune, such as my essay titled The Magic Circle, and my corollary speculation post about the metaphysics of Deltarune. To be frank, I think reading those two would be a much better use of your time, because I cover a lot of the evidence there too and utilize it to actually present an in-depth analysis of what the game's narrative is about. This post here will be purely lazer-focused on making the case for Kris being the Knight, presenting all the evidence I can think of and debunking the major counterarguments.

Let's begin.

THE POSITIVE CASE FOR KRIS BEING THE KNIGHT

Kris creates a Fountain on-screen

This is the requirement for a character being the Knight and Kris is the only one who explicitly clears it – we don’t even have a reason beyond order of elimination to suspect anyone else at the moment.

Kris does it on the Weird Route too, and in spite of Ralsei having explained the ramifications

This tells us that Kris is extremely committed to making fountains and must have some strong reason to be doing what they're doing, something which takes precedence in their mind over potentially risking the lives of other people, including close friends and relatives. On the Weird Route, the risk they're taking is obvious, but I also want to remind people that on the Normal Route - if Kris isn't the Knight - they're creating a Fountain despite another active Fountain creator still being out there, which is arguably even more dangerous and morally objectionable; Kris would be risking omnicide here.

Kris planned the Fountain ahead of time

Between Chapter 1 and 2, Kris plugs in the TV which they later make the focal point of the Fountain they create. This existing as a plot point at all very strongly points to Kris knowing how the mechanics of Dark World creation work prior to Queen’s explanation. On top of this, them eating the pie just so happens to later give them the crucial distraction needed to be able to slash the tires and have Susie stay over. Then, at the beginning of Chapter 2, the narration (which is often aligned with Kris's thoughts) says that "it is not yet time to wash your hands" when you try to do so, further implying that the chapter's ending is already planned.

Kris generally seems to know a lot of stuff that they shouldn’t

For example, they know exactly what’s going on with our control over them, enough to be able to remove or block our control when they need to, and they're confident enough in their abilities that they taunt us about it, smiling at the camera and such. This meta-awareness could potentially be explained by their numerous connections to Gaster (for example, Monster Teen anxiously mentioning that something happened with Kris in relation to the Bunker). Kris also seems to know exactly how Dark Worlds are influenced by Light World objects, as seen in the following point:

Kris’s Fountain creation method is deliberately paralleled with the Knight’s in Chapter 2

Kris plugs in the TV and leaves it on to ensure that they become the Darkner villain - as it turns out, this is exactly what the Knight does with the laptop in the computer lab. Setting aside the fact that Kris is using the Knight's exact methods, how does Kris even know to do this? Kris does it regardless of whether you inspect the laptop and find out what the Knight was doing. How are they so confident about their ability to properly set up this Dark World, if they've never done it before?

Kris uses the Knight's weapon and tool of choice

Queen says that the Knight used a blade to create their fountain, and shows an image of an identical looking knife to Kris’s. Later, we see Kris use that same knife to create the Chapter 3 Fountain. Kris is also named after a type of knife, and is heavily associated with them in general. Toby laying it on this thick would frankly just be kind of dishonest if it didn't have any meaning.

Kris does not have an alibi for the creation of Chapter 2’s fountain

Kris was established to have done something mysterious and physically taxing with a knife over the previous night. Lo and behold, the next day, someone has used a knife to create a Dark Fountain. Just a tad suspicious, maybe? This is why a number of players figure out that Kris is the Knight well ahead of the actual reveal - because the game never gives a satisfying answer to a question it established (what was Kris doing last night?), while providing clear hints (the knife, the TV flavor text) which point towards the correct solution so its reveal doesn't feel contrived or like it's coming out of nowhere. Some Deltarune fans call Kris Knight "obvious" - but they're evaluating it on blatantly unfair pretenses. Kris Knight was surprising, you just can't expect to cash out an already-revealed twist for a second surprise.

Kris’s soulless scenes seem tied to Fountain creation specifically

Chapter 2’s ending seems very much intended to be continuous with Chapter 1’s, answering mysteries which the previous ending left us with. In both instances they use their knife to do stuff, flash their red eyes, and taunt the player.

Kris actually is a knight

Kris wears knight attire in the Dark World and Toby has referred to Kris as a “sword-wielding fantasy knight”. This is not a trivial point; many of Toby’s biggest inspirations, such as Illusion of Gaia and LIVE A LIVE, figure knights and knight-like imagery very prominently, so the symbology of knights in fantasy seems like something he's specifically interested in, including the fact that they are frequently heroic protagonists. And yet most other Knight candidates have no clear or satisfying explanation for why they would be dubbed a “knight”, and why Toby would be choosing that narrative archetype for them. Certainly none of them have the advantage of being a knight protagonist, which leads us to:

Toby is clearly interested in subversions of the protagonist and antagonist roles

Discussing the SNES game LIVE A LIVE, Toby said this (and I must warn the reader of some implied spoilers):

As far as individual chapters go, I really loved the “Middle Ages” chapter. After all the scenarios with atypical game protagonists, finally revealing a standard fantasy setting with a knight hero as one of the “final chapters” was such an excellent twist for a JRPG, and a perfect lead up to the actual last chapter itself. To think that our heroic knight of justice would end up like that… It’s the kind of wonderful betrayal of expectations that influenced me when I created UNDERTALE as well. You know, the thought process of, “to think the protagonist could actually...” Anyway, I don’t think I’m supposed to say any more about that. To be honest, if anything this LIVE A LIVE influence is even stronger in my current work, DELTARUNE. Not only is the story separated into different chapters, but the player’s character is also a sword-wielding fantasy knight, who may play another role than just a simple “hero”.

To be clear, (and again, spoilers!) Toby here is referring to a knight character who goes from being a heroic protagonist to the main villain of the game (whose title is "the Lord of Dark").

OFF, another big inspiration for Toby, features a playable character who is established as firmly separate from the player. As the game progresses you are invited to question their actions and whether you should truly be siding with them.

In moon: Remix RPG Adventure, the traditional JRPG hero turns out to be the game’s antagonist.

Metal Gear Solid 2 complicates the player’s sense of morality and desires with what the “game” pressures them into doing.

And in Toby’s own Earthbound Halloween Hack, the game constantly questions whether what you’re doing is truly “heroic” or right.

It's strongly implied the Knight did not enter the Dark Worlds they created

This is clearest in Chapter 2, where Queen says she doesn't know the Knight's plans and is just guessing based on their actions (which she also recorded via the laptop's camera). Instead, the Knight is implied (in the laptop flavor text, for instance) to have simply manipulated the room and that this is mostly how they exert their will on the worlds they create. This of course sheds new light on how we are to understand Dark Worlds and alters what we thought we knew about Chapter 1 and Fountains generally. And it's all perfectly consistent with Kris’s methods at the end of Chapter 2.

The Darkner bosses are corrupted by the Fountains themselves, not an encounter with the Knight

Even though the Darkner bosses so far purport to serve the Knight, something which has been repeatedly emphasized is that this is not because the Knight sought them out and convinced them to be their servant, but because the Fountains themselves had a corrupting influence. In other words, the Darkner bosses are generated by the Fountain as villainous servants of the Knight.

This is supported both by in-game evidence:

Queen wasn't always so… harsh.

No, she WAS! She just got WORSE somehow!

It wasn't 'til that DARK FOUNTAIN showed up,

That she started going into overdrive.

"Knight" this, "Knight" that, "Fountain" that…

Like, what does that Knight have going for it that I don't!? C'mon!!

And external evidence:

Timestamped Undertale 6th Anniversary stream, where Toby says the Fountain changed King

Kris being the Knight fits well with the storytelling subtext

Deltarune is loaded with subtext about the Dark Worlds being like fictional stories or dreams, and Kris being the Knight is a great fit for this because it implies that they are creating Fountains specifically to be sealed. Their connections with Ralsei (which I'll explain later) also imply that they are guiding/directing the adventures themself. This also opens up plausible speculation about their motivations, such as wanting to get stronger by leveling up or populating Castle Town.

Kris’s CD Bagel noise is the same glissando jingle that plays at the end of the scrapped animated intro

If you don't know about the scrapped intro, here's a timestamped link to the part in the 6th anniversary stream where Toby discusses it. Basically, a jingle which played during a part where the Knight looked down at the Fun Gang from atop a staircase was repurposed in Chapter 2 as a special jingle for Kris. Below is a comparison between the two (I'm not sure who made it, so sorry for not crediting!), and an illustration I threw together of how I imagine the scene looking like.

Kris is arguably the only one who makes sense for the scrapped intro

If the Knight was seen on-screen, even just as a silhouette and even heavily armored, it would reveal too much about their body shape and size to have it be a functional mystery, and it would ruin the “red herring” that it’s Kris in Chapter 2 (the sole exception being if the Knight was the Vessel). Not to mention that Tenna, who would be featured on the staircase, is not created by the Knight if Kris isn't the Knight, so their inclusion is very questionable. Meanwhile, the appearance of "dual" or "split" selves is a common trope in anime intros, so both LW and DW Kris being featured in the same scene would be understood as metaphorical by the viewer.

Ralsei has extremely suspicious ties to Kris

For starters, Ralsei is the same height as them, looks like a typical Dreemurr, and his name is an anagram of Asriel. It seems very likely because of his horns that Ralsei is Kris’s red horn headband, which represents Kris’s desire to be closer to their family and community. From this, it's a pretty intuitive jump to assume that Kris created him, and thus the Grand Fountain as well.

Ralsei initiates cutscenes in both Chapter 1 and 2 where the player looks away from Kris and Ralsei, and upon returning back to their viewpoints finds that Ralsei has been secretly speaking with Kris alone. Ralsei also seemingly lies in Chapter 2 about having “sensed a dark presence” when explaining why he arrived in the Cyber World - what this line implies about when the fountain was created does not make logical sense with the timeline (we'll get more into this later). All in all it seems rather likely that Ralsei is working for Kris, and has been tasked with keeping the player "on track" (but still invested).

Kris is heavily tied to Chara, Undertale’s morally ambiguous player character

Chara – like Kris if they’re the Knight – had an incredibly ambitious and morally questionable plan which they were working towards, and they also have a knack for taunting or rejecting the player with scary smiles and red eyes. Kris being the Knight seems like it’s continuous with the moral ambiguity which Toby clearly seems interested in exploring with his human protagonists.

Some features of the Fountain seem to point to them springing from Kris’s “will”

For example, the consistent emergence of secret bosses located underground with a shared origin story about being contacted by Gaster, where they learn about their lack of control over fate and their subordinate position to some higher entities, has a lot of parallels with Kris’s predicament, and their ties to Gaster. Is there some subconscious reconstruction happening here? I talk about this in my Magic Circle essay.

The question of the Knight is not presented as a whodunnit mystery.

So far, there’s been exactly one major candidate, and they’ve hoarded basically all of the evidence. The remaining characters are left fighting for scraps – the most popular non-Kris candidate is a minor NPC who happens to say some thematically relevant and evocative stuff and has minor ties to the Fountain locations. But there’s no reason in the first place to suspect that there’s anyone who knows about how Dark Fountains work other than the currently established characters, and even less to suspect they’d have the motivation to create them. We barely even understood who the Knight was and what they were doing until approximately two seconds before it was revealed to be Kris (and no, that’s not a red herring just because you say so).

COMMON ARGUMENTS AGAINST KRIS BEING THE KNIGHT

“Any Lightner can create fountains!”

This is true, no doubt. The problem with this line of argumentation is that it does not suffice to dismiss the overwhelming evidence for Kris being the Knight. Kris is not suspected because they’re a Lightner, or even just because they create a Fountain. They are suspected because there are quite literally no other Lightners with any concrete positive evidence for them being the Knight except Kris. When push comes to shove, there’s just not a compelling reason to believe a more complicated alternative explanation for Kris’s actions other than the simple one that is them being the Knight. Occam’s razor says: give preferential treatment to those hypotheses of equal explanatory power which require less assumptions.

“Kris being the Knight is a red herring!”

You can feel that way, but this isn’t an argument. The idea that the Knight’s true reveal is coming sometime later is just baselessly assumed and used to cash out the red herring objection. Again, there’s nothing wrong with thinking that it’s true – it’s okay to have hunches and intuitions – but you can’t use it as an argument, because it isn’t one. 

“Kris isn’t evil!” / “I just don’t want Kris to be an antagonist.”

Again, it’s hard to argue with feelings. It bears mentioning that we really don’t know anything about the motivations of Kris if they’re the Knight. We don’t know whether they’re an “evil” bad guy. Personally, I find it very unlikely, because Toby is typically in the business of writing sympathetic characters even when they do bad stuff, and Kris is already in a fucked up situation just by virtue of us controlling them. If Toby can make Asgore (of child murdering fame) sympathetic, I’m sure he can manage with Kris, and we’ll all be happier for it because conflict and ambivalence creates interesting stories.

“The Knight wants to cause the Roaring, and Kris clearly doesn’t want that!”

We actually know neither of these supposed facts. Our information about the Knight comes from King and Queen, who both quickly prove themselves to be out of their depth and not very knowledgeable about what they’re doing. Queen herself strongly implies she has never even met the Knight. All we know for certain is what the Knight has done – create Dark Fountains. As for Kris, whether they’ve done or said things which would indicate they don’t want the Roaring to happen, the fact is that with this much evidence against them, all their other actions are called into question. That said, who’s to even say Kris as the Knight wants the Roaring in the first place? Because their name is the Roaring Knight? That could easily just be a moniker for their storytelling purposes.

“When Kris dies, the Roaring happens! How could that happen if Kris was the Knight?”

More accurately, when the SOUL shatters, “the world was covered in darkness” (an obvious double entendre for the game screen going black). But assuming that the Roaring does happen, this doesn’t seem to contradict anything. I mean, Kris’s SOUL is the only thing that can seal the Fountains, and every chapter boss so far explicitly intends to cause the Roaring. It makes sense that the Roaring would happen if they were left unopposed and their Fountains unsealed.

“How does Kris know where to make the Fountains ahead of time?”

This is one of the few objections to Kris Knight I can genuinely respect. I mean, it is quite strange that Kris and Susie always end up going to where the Fountains are through pure accident (Alphys and Noelle respectively send us to the locations where they are, and Kris can't have known Susie would stay over). To explain this, I would point to the fact that Kris almost certainly has had an encounter with Gaster, and one of the main effects of being “Gasterpilled” that we see is having precognitive powers and being able to read “FATE”. This also explains Kris’s extremely contrived action of eating the pie in anticipation of Susie coming over (which is something, to be clear, we need to be able to explain regardless of whether or not Kris is the Knight).

“Kris just plugged in the TV to watch it while they ate pie!”

Disregarding the fact that this would be legitimately horrible storytelling, this is objectively false because Susie points out that the remote is dusty and hasn’t seen use in ages.

“Kris was just preparing a sleepover by plugging in the TV!”

So was eating the pie a part of it too somehow, or just a very lucky coincidence? How can this explain Kris making the Fountain on the Weird Route, and people’s often-cited idea that they are doing this in some bid to warn Undyne? Are we just fifteen-layer deep in coincidences here? This doesn’t seem likely, to put it mildly. There is no reason for Toby to make this a plot point other than to establish Kris knowing Fountain mechanics ahead of time.

“King and/or Queen didn’t recognize Kris!”

This is almost certainly because neither one have actually met the Knight. Queen strongly implies this in her dialogue, and it already seems likely from the fact that we don’t even know of any way to exit those two Fountains except by sealing them – Ralsei says as much. It seems much more likely that the two are, as Queen says, intuiting the will of the Knight from their actions, such as creating Dark Fountains in the first place, and from things like how they arrange the rooms and the Will they imbue the Fountains with.

“But the Japanese translation–”

Yes, King says “command” instead of “will” – except this is every bit as ambiguous as the English dialogue. The substance of the dialogue remains identical: King thinks he knows the will, or command, or goal of the Knight, and thinks he’s fulfilling it. Both lines retain the Biblical overtones, and there’s still nothing proving they’ve actually met. 

“How does the Queen know to call the Knight ‘the Roaring Knight’ if they haven’t met?”

Another objection I can respect. There isn't a particularly clear answer for it, but my personal argument would be that Darkners seem to be generated with certain “inherited” knowledge, derived from a Fountain’s will. If you want to hear the in-depth case for that, you can check out my other essays mentioned at the beginning.  

"Spamton's line about communion clearly hints at Alvin Knight! Spamton has met the Knight!"

Spamton's line about communion is not referring to the Christian ritual, it's referring to Gaster (who Spamton reveres as some sort of deity, clearly). Let's look at the full context:

I USED TO BE NOTHING BUT THE E_MAIL GUY, NOW I'M THE [[It Burns! Ow! Stop! Help Me! It Burns!]] GUY!

[[Amazed at thi5 amazing transformation? You too can]] HAVE A [[Communion]] WITH [[Unintelligble Laughter]]

SOON I'LL EVEN SURPASS THAT DAMNED [[Clown Around Town!]]

BUT UNLIKE HIM I'M GONNA [[Shoot For the Sky!]] AND GET ON THE PATH TO ...

[[The Big One]]

I'LL GET SO. I'LL GET SO. I'LL GET SO. I'LL GET SO. I'LL GET SO. I'LL GET SO.

[[Hyperlink blocked.]]

SPEAKING OF [[Communion]]

KRIS, DID YOU KNOW THAT THE KNIGHT...

No, I'm sorry! I'm sorry! I didn't mean to --

TOO MANY EXCESS VACATION DAYS?? TAKE A GOD DAMN VACATION STRAIGHT TO HELL

Spamton's "communion" is clearly alluding to his contact with the "someone" who also contacted Jevil. Likewise, "unintelligible laughter" calls to mind mus_smile, Gaster's signature audio track which is actually a highly corrupted version of Muffet's laugh.

As for what this is communicating about the Knight, it seems to be alluding to them being connected with Gaster - which is true under Kris Knight.

“Kris was scared of the Fountain at the beginning of Chapter 1!”

Since Kris is easily the prime suspect when it comes to being the Knight, it would be absurd to just take their actions at face value. To be frank, we don’t even really need to know what Kris was thinking here, because when a case is resting on as firm a foundation as Kris Knight is, odd behavior becomes something you work to try to explain or reconcile with all the other evidence you have; without the foundation destroyed, the hypothesis can’t be dismissed.

Anyway, the most reasonable explanation seems to me to be that Kris was goading Susie into entering the closet first, since she was clearly reluctant to. Kris can’t risk Susie not falling into the Dark World with Kris, so she needs to go first.

“Kris warns the Kings about the Roaring in Chapter 1!”

This one is subject to the same scrutiny as I described above, but this line has also been massively decontextualized and blown out of proportion; this is a very minor piece of dialogue where the Kings are vainly worrying about their jewels and diamonds and asking Kris about them, and Kris seems to dryly respond that their world is in danger – in other words, that there are bigger things to worry about than their jewels. It’s a cute little joke, and hardly debunks Kris being the Knight. Kris is just roleplaying the hero they’re supposed to be in the Dark World narrative (just as I think they ‘roleplay’ the Knight!)

“Kris warns Undyne about the Dark Worlds and the Knight! Why would they lie?”

Could it have something to do with the Chapter 2 ending where they stage a break-in and presumably lure concerned individuals into the Dark World? Concerned individuals like... the one Toriel called shortly before? I mean, it would be really convenient for Kris if they could guarantee a way for people not to suspect them of being the Knight if that’s who they actually were…

This is not to mention that we're the ones who make Kris say that to Undyne. We have to go out of our way to meet Undyne and pick that dialogue option. But either way, it evidently fits with Kris’s plans, so it makes sense that they wouldn’t strain to say it or something like that.

“Queen says that the Knight created the Fountain that same day!”

Past midnight is still on the same day. Remember that Queen is a computer.

Also, I just want to point out that if the Fountain wasn't created the previous night (regardless of whether it was Kris who did it), the Cyber World timeline seems extremely rushed and shaky. Did a whole rebellion against Queen really form in like, 30 minutes or whatever? And there are more issues with the timeline we'll get into in a second.

“How did Kris have access to the Library?”

The same way we have access to both the School and Library after hours (no one is working at either at the end of Chapter 2) – nobody seems to bother to lock the doors. As per Alphys, there’s no crime in Hometown, so maybe we shouldn't be too surprised.

“How did Kris walk all that way in zombie mode?”

We have no reason to be putting arbitrary limiters on what Kris can or can’t do when soulless, so this is just kinda making stuff up. Kris is doing anime leaps from windowsills; I think they’re fine walking a relatively short distance. In Chapter 1 they also do the strained zombie walk before they even rip the soul out, so this seems mostly to be a presentational thing.

“Why couldn’t Ralsei sense the Library Fountain if Kris created it the previous night?”

As I hinted earlier, Ralsei’s line is nonsensical. For what he’s implying to be the case, it would have to mean that the Knight created the Fountain in the time it takes for Kris and Susie to walk from the Supply Closet to the School’s exit (because we can hear the traffic jam outside, and we know the Annoying Dog went into the Dark World before us, still in the car) – a patently absurd proposition that doesn’t even seem logically possible, even assuming optimal timing. It would also mean Berdly and Noelle were in the room when the Fountain was created, which leads us to:

“Closet Knight!”

Black Chestnut’s video on Closet Knight is definitive as far as I’m concerned, he goes into great detail in explaining how and why it makes absolutely no sense at all and is riddled with holes.

IN CONCLUSION...

Kris being the Knight is a conclusion that is surprisingly marginalized in the Deltarune theorizing community for how intuitive, well-supported and repeatedly suggested by the game it is. In many circles, you tend to get shut down or labelled a "casual" who "doesn't understand the game" if you attempt to start a discussion about Kris Knight, or put forward ideas which are premised on it. If I'm allowed to pontificate a little, I can only imagine that this is because people are simply really attached to the idea that the Knight plotline is a whodunnit which will result in some surprise external villain for the Fun Gang. People have been daydreaming about boss battles against the Knight ever since the release of Chapter 1 nearly seven years ago; to speculative headcanons like that, Kris being the Knight is a rude splash of water to the face, so it perhaps is understandable that people would reject it as "not feeling right". At the very least, though, I hope that even if I haven't convinced you that Kris is the Knight, I have at least convinced you that they can't be so easily dismissed as a candidate.

Thanks for reading! This post is pretty long and I know this topic gets some people heated very quick, so I appreciate the show of faith in sticking to the end.

[queenvhagar]

I believe Rhys Ifans’ statement “Both sides are genocidal war criminals… I think we should all enjoy seeing how they die[,]” would be wrong because the entire time the story HOTD is fundamentally about how one group, the greens, IE Alicent, Otto, and Aegon Hightower, seek to maintain the status quo of an oppressive power structure versus Rhaenyra, the blacks, whose very existence seeks to jeopardize that power structure (the patriarchal society of Westeros).

It is made explicitly clear that the chief architect of team green in the usurpation of Rhaenyra’s throne that the only reason that they cannot have Rhaenyra on the throne is explicitly because she is a woman. It’s a theme that is present throughout the entirety of HOTD’s season one as this conflict builds up.

For instance, the conversation between Alicent and Rhaenys at the end of season one where Alicent justifies why she is participating in the usurpation of Rhaenyra’s throne to Rhaenys by saying that it is not a woman’s place to rule the Seven kingdoms and instead it is a woman’s place to gently guide the hand of the men who do rule.

The story of HOTD, the civil war for the succession of the Iron Throne following the death of Viserys, the Dance of the Dragons, is fundamentally a conflict that is built on the foundation of misogyny and the writers are making that explicitly clear.

The weird false equivalency when ppl imply that both sides are equally genocidally crazy, that treads to reduce the nature of this conflict down to just simple good old fashioned greed which it really isn’t.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think Rhaenyra is perfect and of course I understand that over the course of the war, she’s going to do some pretty terrible things but it’s been made pretty clear that Rhaenyra’s done everything in her power to avoid this turning out into a war in the fist place.

I just don’t think by any stretch of the imagination regardless of what Rhaenyra does throughout this war, that you’re supposed to enjoy watching her die. I don’t think that’s how her character is written and I don’t think that’s what the narrative goal of her end is supposed to be. Her character is a character by all accounts some victim of the patriarchal society that she lives in. Even if she does go down the “mad queen route,” it will only be to explore how the patriarchal society has completely twisted her. How this war that was started because she dared to be queen of the seven kingdoms completely ruined her and ruined her family.

I would very much appreciate your thoughts on this and would like to learn more if this take of mine is confusing and blinded.

I think this take might be correct if you're solely going off of the show and its interpretation of Team Black as modern feminists attempting revolutionary societal change led by divinely ordained and pure Rhaenyra vs Team Green as conservative misogynists led by incompetent and unorganized abuser Aegon...

Fire and Blood is not this, though. Sexism and misogyny is one element of power and power imbalance in Westeros but it's not the only one, nor is it the only factor into why Rhaenyra's claim was disputed, despite what the showrunners are trying to portray on screen.

The reality is two ideologically different sides with fairly equal claims to the throne are trying to seize power, leading to a war that ruins the land and the family that started it. Team Green has Aegon, firstborn son of the last king, following Andal tradition going back thousands of years and most recently reinforced in the Council of 101 AC that made his own father king. Team Black has Rhaenyra, eldest daughter named by the previous king but not supported by precedent. Rhaenyra unfortunately also had some political scandals that went against her in having bastards, having Velaryons killed and mutilated, and marrying Daemon despite fear of him in power being the reason she was named heir in the first place. Any of these are valid reasons why some people might be against her coming into power. It's more than "she's a woman and I don't like women."

Rhaenyra did not press her claim to raise up the women of the realm, nor did she do it out of a desire to save the world. She wanted it because she wanted power that was promised to her. But the show can't let women simply want things for themselves. Rhaenyra has to be an advocate for peace and want the throne for some higher purpose instead of just wanting power for power's sake.

The Greens were motivated by power to push for Aegon's claim, and surely misogyny in the society helped to get Aegon on the throne, but they also put Aegon on the throne out of fear for the lives of all of Viserys' sons, who would have to be taken out of the picture to secure Rhaenyra's atypical claim lest war and rebellion potentially break out against her at any point in her reign, and Team Black had already shown willingness to resort to violence to help themselves (Rhea's death, Laenor's death, Vaemond's death, Velaryons' tongues getting cut out, Aemond's eye cut out without any punishment and instead Aemond threatened with torture over speaking the truth about Rhaenyra). It's not just "we hate the idea of a woman ruling, we hate women, and we're terrible, incompetent people."

Fire and Blood is a tale of two sides fighting for even more power than they already have who are willing to do horrible terrible war crimes against each other and innocents in order to obtain their end goal of the Iron Throne, and realistically you are interested in seeing all of them die and face the consequences of their actions. The story has weight, the characters are real and human and messy and tragic, the war is unjustified in its means and methods and purpose. It's the failure of Viserys' legacy and a reflection of the flaws of monarchy and specifically the ideals Targaryen supremacy. No side is right and the other wrong. Nobody's a hero.

This is where the show has failed in its adaptation. It has abandoned its themes, along with several characters, characterizations, and plot points, in order to create their own narrative that fits a story that they think will sell best to the casual modern viewer: essentially, redemption for Daenerys fans after the catastrophe of Game of Thrones' ending. By making up prophecy and dream stuff to give to Rhaenyra and also giving her some of that Dany "change the world" mentality that was absent in the source material, the writers can cut apart the character of Rhaenyra and make her into a new Daenerys, and this time they can give the fans want they wanted for Daenerys. Except Rhaenyra is not Daenerys at all, and their only similarity is dragon riding queen seeking to inherit their father's throne. Changing the narrative so Rhaenyra becomes the new Daenerys and a true hero of the story ruins the underlying themes of Fire and Blood and specifically the Dance.

Rhys Ifans likely read Fire and Blood and actually knows what he's talking about. The point of the Dance isn't "heroic woman attempting to overthrow the patriarchy is burned and destroyed by the patriarchy and agents of the patriarchy." The takeaway isn't just "misogyny and sexism are bad and hurt women" like the show hammers in so heavily every single episode. It's "the pursuit of power by the already powerful comes at the cost of innocents, war is never justified no matter what (and certainly not justified by manifest destiny, someone's dream of saving the world, or even 'misogynists stole my throne') and the violence of war destroys indiscriminately." There should be catharsis when gray characters who have done good but also horrific bad in the pursuit of power finally face the consequences and die early deaths. Like, for example, the end of Succession: none of the Roy siblings get what they want, and we understand why, and even though parts of their character are sympathetic and tragic to us, we can objectively view them as flawed and selfish people whose decisions led to this ultimate, inevitable conclusion where they don't get what they want, and it's deserved. This is what House of the Dragon should have been. Tragic, flawed characters on both sides acting selfishly but realistically to seize power from each other and ultimately failing. But the writers opted for an oversimplified morality tale of good vs evil to push their version of feminism into the story where it doesn't belong, at the detriment to the characters and the story to the point it goes against the themes and messages of the source material.

[mermazeablaze]

I thought some of my Tumblr mutuals would be interested to see this article.

Viola Ford Fletcher, aged 109, just published a memoir 'Don't Let Them Bury My Story' about her experience during the Greenwood/Tulsa Massacre. It will be available for purchase August 15th.

"Her memoir, “Don’t Let Them Bury My Story,” is a call to action for readers to pursue truth, justice and reconciliation no matter how long it takes. Written with graphic details of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre that she witnessed at age seven, Fletcher said she hoped to preserve a narrative of events that was nearly lost to a lack of acknowledgement from mainstream historians and political leaders.

The questions I had then remain to this day,” Fletcher writes in the book. “How could you just give a mob of violent, crazed, racist people a bunch of deadly weapons and allow them — no, encourage them — to go out and kill innocent Black folks and demolish a whole community?”

“As it turns out, we were victims of a lie,” she writes.

Fletcher notes in her memoir just how much history she has lived through — from several virus outbreaks preceding the coronavirus pandemic, to the Great Depression of 1929 and the Great Recession of 2008 to every war and international conflict of the last seven decades. She has watched the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. lead the national Civil Rights Movement, seen the historic election of former President Barack Obama and witnessed the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement."

[fatehbaz]

About the entanglement of "science" and Empire. About geographic imaginaries. About how Empire appeals to and encourages children to participate in these scripts.

Was checking out this recent thing, from scavengedluxury's esteemed series of posts looking at the archive of the Budapest Municipal Photography Company.

The caption reads: "Toys and board games, 1940." And I think the text on the game-box in the back says something like "the whole world is yours", maybe?

(The use of appeals to science/progress in imperial narratives probably already well-known to many, especially for those familiar with Victorian era, Edwardian era, Gilded Age, early twentieth century, etc., in US and Europe.)

And was struck, because I had also recently gone looking through nemfrog's posts about the often-strange imagery of children's material in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century US/Europe. And was disturbed/intrigued by this thing:

Caption here reads: "Game Board. Walter Mittelholzer's flight over Africa. [...] 1931. Commemorative game board map of Africa for a promotional game published for the N*stle Company, for tracking the trip of Walter Mittelholzer across Africa, the first pilot to fly a north-south route."

Hmm.

I went to learn more about this: Produced in Switzerland. 1930s-era national(ist) aspirations in Africa. "Africa is for your consumption and pleasure. Brought to you by the N#stle Company!" (See the name-dropof N#stle at the bottom of the board.) A company which, in the preceding decade, had shifted focus to expand its cacao production (which would be dependent on tropical plantations). Adventure, excitement, knowledge, science, engineering prowess, etc. For kids! In 1896, Switzerland had hosted a "human zoo" at the Swiss Second National Exhibition in Geneva, where the "Village Noir" exhibit put living people on display; they were over two hundred people from Senegal, who lived in a "mock village" in Geneva's central square.

Another, from a couple decades earlier, this time English-language.

Caption reads: "The "World's globe circler." A game board based on Nellie Bly's travels. 1890." At center, a trumpet, and a proclamation: "ALL RECORDS BROKEN".

Went to find more info: Lithographed game board produced in New York. Images on the board also show Jules Verne stuff; Bly was attempting to emulate the journey of the character Phileas Fogg in Verne's Around the World in Eighty Days (1872).

Same year that the United States "closed the frontier" and conquered "the Wild West" (the massacre at Wounded Knee happened in December 1890). A couple years later, the US annexed Hawai'i; by decade's end, the US military was in both Cuba and the Philippines. The Scramble for Africa was taking place. At the time, Britain especially already had a culture of "travel writing" or "travel fiction" or whatever we want to call it, wherein domestic residents of the metropole back home could read about travel, tourism, expeditions, adventures, etc. on the peripheries of the Empire. Concurrent with the advent of popular novels, magazines, mass-market print media, etc. Intrepid explorers rescuing Indigenous peoples from their own backwardness. Many tales of exotic allure set in South Asia. Heroic white hunters taking down scary tigers. Elegant Englishwomen sipping tea in the shade of an umbrella, giggling at the elephants, the local customs, the strange sights. Orientalism, tropicality, othering.

I'd lately been looking at a lot of work on race/racism and imperative-of-empire in British scientific and pop-sci literature, especially involving South and Southeast Asia. (From scholars like Varun Sharma, Rohan Deb Roy, Ezra Rashkow, Jonathan Saha, Pratik Chakrabarti.) But I'd also lately been looking at Mashid Mayar's work, which I think closely suits this kinda thing with the board games. Some of her publications:

"From Tools to Toys: American Dissected Maps and Geographic Knowledge at the Turn of the Twentieth Century". In: Knowledge Landscapes North America, edited by Kloeckner et al., 2016.

"What on Earth! Slated Globes, School Geography and Imperial Pedagogy". European Journal of American Studies 16, number 3, Summer 2020.

Citizens and Rulers of the World: The American Child and the Cartographic Pedagogies of Empire, 2022.

Discussing her book, Mayar was interviewed by LA Review of Books in 2022. She says:

[Quote.] Growing up at the turn of the 20th century, for many American children, also meant learning to view the world through the lens of "home geography." [...] [T]hey inevitably responded to the transnational whims of an empire that had stretched its dominion across the globe [recent forays into Panama, Cuba, Hawai'i, the Philippines] [...]. [W]hite, well-to-do, literate American children [...] learned how to identify and imagine “homes” on the map of the world. [...] [T]he cognitive maps children developed, to which we have access through the scant archival records they left behind (i.e., geographical puzzles they designed and printed in juvenile periodicals) [...] mixed nativism and the logic of colonization with playful, appropriative scalar confusion, and an intimate, often unquestioned sense of belonging to the global expanse of an empire [...]. Dissected maps - that is, maps mounted on cardboard or wood and then cut into smaller pieces that children were to put back together - are a generative example of the ways imperial pedagogy [...] found its place outside formal education, in children's lives outside the classroom. [...] [W]ell before having been adopted as playthings in the United States, dissected maps had been designed to entertain and teach the children of King George III about the global spatial affairs of the British Empire. […] [J]uvenile periodicals of the time printed child-made geographical puzzles [...]. [I]t was their assumption that "(un)charted," non-American spaces (both inside and outside the national borders) sought legibility as potential homes, [...] and that, if they did not do so, they were bound to recede into ruin/"savagery," meaning that it would become the colonizers' responsibility/burden to "restore" them [...]. [E]mpires learn from and owe to childhood in their attempts at survival and growth over generations [...]. [These] "multigenerational power constellations" [...] survived, by making accessible pedagogical scripts that children of the white and wealthy could learn from and appropriate as times changed [...]. [End quote.] Source: Words of Mashid Mayar, as transcribed in an interviewed conducted and published by M. Buna. "Children's Maps of the American Empire: A Conversation with Mashid Mayar". LA Review of Books. 11 July 2022.

Some other stuff I was recently looking at, specifically about European (especially German) geographic imaginaries of globe-as-playground:

The Play World: Toys, Texts, and the Transatlantic German Childhood (Patricia Anne Simpson, 2020) /// "19th-Century Board Game Offers a Tour of the German Colonies" (Sarah Zabrodski, 2016) /// Advertising Empire: Race and Visual Culture in Imperial Germany (David Ciarlo, 2011) /// Learning Empire: Globalization and the German Quest for World Status, 1875-1919 (Erik Grimmer-Solem, 2019) /// “Ruling Africa: Science as Sovereignty in the German Colonial Empire and Its Aftermath” (Andrew Zimmerman. In: German Colonialism in a Global Age, 2014) /// "Exotic Education: Writing Empire for German Boys and Girls, 1884-1914". (Jeffrey Bowersox. In: German Colonialism and National Identity, 2017) /// Raising Germans in the Age of Empire: Youth and Colonial Culture, 1871-1914 (Jeff Bowersox, 2013) /// "[Translation:] (Educating Modernism: A Trade-Specific Portrait of the German Toy Industry in the Developing Mass-Market Society)" (Heike Hoffmann, PhD dissertation, Tubingen, 2000) /// Home and Harem: Nature, Gender, Empire, and the Cultures of Travel (Inderpal Grewal, 1996) /// "'Le rix d'Indochine' at the French Table: Representation of Food, Race and the Vietnamese in a Colonial-Era Board Game" (Elizabeth Collins, 2021) /// "The Beast in a Box: Playing with Empire in Early Nineteenth-Century Britain" (Romita Ray, 2006) /// Playing Oppression: The Legacy of Conquest and Empire in Colonialist Board Games (Mary Flanagan and Mikael Jakobsson, 2023)

[bottombaron]

ranking the Thunderbolts characters by how likely they are Zemo in disguise

some context: a character being revealed as Zemo in disguise in a genuinely unexpected twist is somehow hilariously common for the character in the comics (if i had a nickle for each time i’d have at least four, and that's almost a whole quarter!). most notably however it’s in the very first introduction of the Thunderbolts team. the Thunderbolts are kind of synonymous with a Zemo related twist at this point. basically, with the DC not-alive-anymore-by-choice squad you can count on the team having their implanted neck-bombs and with the Thunderbolts you can count on Zemo being hidden somewhere like a murderous purple Where’s Waldo.

SO, while everyone is like “where is Zemo?” and “why isn’t Zemo in the Thunderbolts movie?”, i remain steadfast in certainty that he’s going to show up in the third act,,, despite there being literally no evidence to the contrary. also this is just for fun so don’t take it seriously unless i’m right then i told you so.

these rankings go from least to most likely

0 / 10

Ava Starr

-because Zemo knows better

——————————————————————

1 / 10

John Walker

-he would have to dress up in an American propaganda outfit

-Zemo might have to intimately deceive Walker's wife and child and that's creepy

-he has the Super Soldier Serum

-calls Bucky “Bucky”

-even Zemo wouldn't ignore Walker's crying child like that, comeon man

——————————————————————

2 / 10

Yelena Belova

+surprisingly not completely unthinkable???

+like maybe as a gag it could play?

+i think it’s because they both have that tiny stabby assassin energy

-obviously it would be super weird, confusing, and narratively unsatisfying for both characters

-Yelena and Florence deserve their spotlight and i wouldn't want anything to detract from that

——————————————————————

3 / 10

Alexei Shostakov

+only slightly above Yelena in believability simply for him being more expendable narratively (so the character not actually being himself in the movie wouldn’t be as much of a let down)

-he’s not particularly similar to Zemo in any way

-like Walker, he has the Super Soldier Serum, so it’s unlikely Zemo would disguise himself as Alexi by choice

-it seems exhausting just being Alexi for any length of time, even for Alexi

+bonus: in the trailer, Alexi b-lines for the bar the instant they exit the elevator in the former Avenger's tower. total Zemo behavior

——————————————————————

4 / 10

Taskmaster

+same height

+non-powered (if you don’t include mimicry but i think Zemo could fake it for a short amount of time)

+wears a mask and doesn’t talk much, making for easy impersonation

+scarred face is similar to Zemo’s scarred face in the comics

-their builds don't match up to a passing glance and unlike Yelena, with her more baggy clothes, Antonia is wearing a fitted outfit, making it more difficult to pass (i don't need it perfect mind you, just enough to suspend believability juuust a little)

-mostly it's just the vibes tbh

-idk man im not feeling this theory anymore and i used to be a Zemo in the Taskmaster suit truther

-maybe it's the suit redesign 🤷‍♂️

——————————————————————

5 / 10

Bob/Sentry/The Void

now we’re getting to the ones where i start to vibe with, but also would need a whole lot of exposition

basically, if you wanted to give a guy like Zemo brain scramblies, make him forget who he is, do some experiments (possibly à la Hydra on Wanda/Pietro? finally pulling on that dropped thread of Sokovians having a higher rate of manifesting powers -specifically Wanda’s reality warping powers- when exposed to the Mind Stone than the average human?) and try to corrupt him into an American branded superhero with a mild-mannered personality, you usually give him a three letter name. like Bob. or Jim.

turning to a comic that i can't believe more people dont talk about in relation to Zemo and the Thunderbolts: Welcome to Pleasant Hill

there's a lot in this comic that gives precedent to the twist of Zemo (and the audience) believing they're just a common, good-natured, all-American before finding out it's a lie in an elaborate supermax prison system. (this will definitely come up in almost all other thoughts and theories i have, including the character on this list that i'm most interested in. i'm kind of obsessed with this comic tbh) the story even involves Bucky, the Thunderbolts, the Cosmic Cube (which is the Space Stone in the MCU - related to the Mind Stone) and reality warping/memory altering similar to the Sentry’s own comic twist. and yes, it’s basically the plot of WandaVision before WandaVision except that the warden wasn't a grief stricken Wanda but a surprisingly Valentina Allegra de Fontaine-ish Maria Hill (put a pin in that similarity). there's also the fact that the MCU loves to merge characters into one, like the upcoming Doom-Stark combo.

so how does this work? hell if i know. Zemo could be forced to change his appearance with that Black Widow spy mask thing? maybe the only ones who see Bob as Bob are the ones who don't really know him + Walker who's easily deceived?? idk. it's a pretty big stretch (but not as big the next one on this list!) the most probable scenario of this one happening is Zemo somehow being tied to Bob’s alter, The Void. again, not probable at all unless the movie does some trippy stuff, but it’s fun to imagine the possibilities.

+the trailer seems to suggest said trippy identity/mind stuff, which you would need to pull this off

+Loki’s staff that once housed the Mind Stone in Sokovia could be a reference to Kobik/the Cosmic Cube that creates Pleasant Hill in the comics

+uhhh Bob and Joe are both three letter names??

+in the Pleasent Hill comics Zemo kind of looks Bob/Sentry like?

-a major thing that holds this theory waaaaaaay back is the fact that Steven Yeun was going to play the part of Sentry first and its highly unlikely they would Plot Twist him into a white man (or god i at least hope not)

-ultimately, there's just not a lot of places this reveal could go imo so /shrug

——————————————————————

8 / 10

Countess Valentina Allegra de Fontaine

look ok hold with me here bc we both know that when those heels started clacking outside the Senate hearing in TFATWS everyone was thinking that it was Zemo rocking them for a whole hot second. I KNOW. I REMEMBER. I WAS THERE.

does this make sense? no, not really. should comedy legend Julia Louis-Dreyfus unmask as Zemo in drag in the third act of a big, multi-million dollar franchise movie made by The Mouse?? absa-fucking-lutly.

i even think it would go over with audiences for the most part. they’d see Zemo, Zemoing about, and go, oh yeah ok that tracks.

+Bucky kind of looks like he’s playing the role of Val’s bodyguard/muscle and his demeanor reminds me so much of TFATWS when he was playing the same role for Zemo

+Bucky knowing this whole time that Val is Zemo and is reluctantly going along with his grift for whatever reason is so funny to me idk why

+Bucky saying “what's the plan” in the trailer just feels better if he is saying it to Zemo

+Bucky is wearing some of his old WS gear and who put him in that last? Zemo

+her line about there being bad guys and worse guys is very on par with Zemo’s pessimistic mentality, maybe justifying an Avengers team up as a necessary evil?

+there should only be one unpowered, tiny, bitchy, manipulative, mastermind serving cunt in a purple jacket in the MCU and Val is crowding Zemo’s throne. solution: Zemo uses Val as his public identity (you know, because of all the war crimes. Val has almost certainly done similar war crimes but they were for the U.S. government so she’s safe to masquerade as) and leads the Thunderbolts with nobody being the wiser

+this also means keeping Julia Louis-Dreyfus around and thats worth like, a hundred '+'s

+the purple. the royal titles. oh, it’s all coming together

+totally think that JLD and Daniel Brühl could pull this off i’m not even joking

+it would delight and entertain me

+Zemo would be leading the Thunderbolts team as he should be

-i fear a shadow of transphobia looming around this idea (with a female character being revealed to be a man in disguise) and that instantly sucks any fun out of it

-Zemo’s ideology would have to do a complete 180 hairpin turn or be a very elaborate plan to sabotage things from the inside, kind of making it difficult to buy into the whole thing in the first place

-its never going to happen

——————————————————————

8/10

Bucky Barnes

ohhhhhhh kkkk

here we go

here’s all that twitter stuff abt how there’s reason to believe that the person shooting at the limo isn’t Bucky at all or that he’s being brainwashed again:

personally, i don’t feel WS here but maybe that's because Seb is doing a little bit of his Judge Dredd scowl and there’s too much going on behind the eyes? it still feels like Bucky still imo, even if his actions are like, a bit extreme. it’s that whole “i had to go to work today” energy that Bucky perpetually puts out lol. basically i didn’t get the vibe that he’s Winter Soldiering, or even that he’s trying to kill the team, i just get the vibe he was tasked with rounding up and escorting the group back to Vale and he’s doing it his usual undelicate way. of course, this is only 3 seconds from a teaser so all those details could be right or wrong in the film, only time will tell.

BUT this reasonable talk is counterproductive to this crackpot theory, so…

The Zemo being brainwashed or otherwise manipulated/reality altered into believing (or pretending to be) he’s Bucky/WS theory:

+if i had a nickel for every time Zemo in the comics was brainwashed/tortured into believing he was Bucky/Bucky adjacent and/or the narrative obfuscating which one was which, i’d have at least two nickels

+and that is purposeful btw, in the comics Zemo and Bucky have a strange thematic connection. it’s not a coincidence that when Steve was still grieving Bucky, here came a guy with ties to his past (specifically the son of the man who ‘killed’ Bucky) that would have been roughly the same age as Bucky if he didn’t ‘die’. Steve then commits to saving Zemo time and again, dispite what a complete fuck-up he is. so, Zemo hating Bucky but also kind of having this deep inner desire to be him at least has thematic presence in the comics

this motherfucker literally keeps a shrine of Captain American memorabilia, including putting Bucky’s old costume in a lit glass display case

-on the other hand, MCU Zemo is almost nothing like his comic counterpart and certainly doesn’t hate Bucky or want to be him

+on the other-other hand, there’s far too many similarities to MCU Zemo and the MCU Winter Soldier to ignore and the text of the movies/show seem to continuously remind us of that in little ways

+so in this theory Zemo wouldn’t be impersonating Bucky Barnes per se, he’d be the Winter Soldier

+who, conveniently, has Sebastian Stan’s face so Daniel Brühl wouldn’t have to be on set as much nor have to do any stunt work. good for him

means, motive, and opportunity:

+Val most definitely has access to the raft (and by extension Zemo) as the head of the CIA

+we also know that Val must have access to some form of the Super Soldier Serum if the Sentry is involved, and the clutter of Sentry related branding in the trailer seems to indicate Val/OXE/the U.S. government has been trying to create their own superhero, Homelander style

+Val also has access to all sort of means of manipulating Zemo's sense of identity. chemical memory alteration, use of off-world artifacts, the old fashioned WS programming way, or even all that Stark tech that was confiscated by Damage Control…remember B.A.R.F.?

+the whole choice to use Zemo could even be out of convenience. he’s already had extensive military training, was a successful black ops commander, he literally has nothing left, not even citizenship to a country

+nobody would look for him or wonder where he is or if he’s even still alive

+even if they did, would they care? to most people, he's a super villian. even people who might object morally, like Sam or the Wakandans seem to be too busy with their own shit rn anyways

+Bucky is literally the only one left who might object and if they're using his identity to carry out clandestine missions then they have leverage. keep quiet and you have a job, prestige, perks, etc. without having to actually do any of the dirty work. don't, and we spin this like you went off WS style and there's nobody to keep you from being locked up anymore. plus Bucky hates Zemo right? why would he care if he's America’s Winter Soldier

+this also allows for a built-in deniability for Val/the government if Bucky!Zemo was ever caught on a mission. that can't be the Winter Soldier doing assassinations in Europe if you can see Bucky Barnes at a Congress meeting on public tv at the same exact moment

+as to motivation, other than all the reasons stated above, it's clear that Val doesn't want a Captain America. she said as much to Walker in TFATWS. while it might work to her advantage to have a controlled Avengers team for her public image, it helps her far more to have someone reliable to do her dirty work

+creating a black ops assassin à la the Winter Soldier, but for America, would be her goal

+and sure, she had Walker and Yelena under her payroll already (and we assume Ghost and Taskmaster as well) but they don’t have that living action figure, perfect soldier rizz. in various ways im going to assume they've disappointed her, questioned orders, or just generally was too human

+so why Bucky's identity? easy. he's already got a whole brand. i can hear the sardonic lines out of JLD mouth about how hard it is to create something new when you can just reboot it. Bucky has a legend as the Winter Soldier, one that still carries a lot of clout. she wouldn't even need to deploy him for assassin reasons, just use him for negotiations and fear tactics. the Winter Soldier is already a verified threat at an international level, you can't buy that kind of marketing. using Bucky's face and WS identity would be essential to her

+wouldn’t just brainwashing the real Bucky again be easier? well, other than the advantage of having Bucky and the WS be separated people as mentioned above…the last two times Bucky Barnes was brainwashed to be the Winter Soldier and otherwise held against his will, an empire fell (S.H.I.E.L.D./Hydra and The Avengers). so, while i’m sure Val has a fondness of the Rule of Three as much as i do, i also think she’s smarter than that

+i’m sure she’s even approached Bucky directly and has probably tried to manipulate him with a job that looks legit on the outside and gets him a nice private house. but Bucky isn’t going back to the WS role, it’s not going to happen. and he’s already side-eyeing Val pretty hard in that trailer so her perfect soldier he won't be

so Val has means, opportunity, and motivation to take Zemo and turn him into her very own super assassin. but lets take this a step further.

this post by magnitothemagnificent brings up a great theory that Bucky here could actually be Jack Monroe, more importantly brings up one of Jack's alter egos, Scourge.

this same guy from the comic page above

(for my theory, obviously, instead of Jack, it would be Zemo as a Scourge-like character)

+we know that there is a version of the serum going around to create the Sentry, and that the Sentry's #1 personality trait in the comics is his mental instability

+we know that, in the comics, Jack Monroe was driven mad specifically by the Super Serum he was given. it messed with his sense of reality and identity in big ways including making him believe he actually was Bucky, instead of just taking up his mantle

+possibly, this version of the serum is responsible for the mental instability of everyone who takes it, creating delusions and hallucinations and this is what affects the Sentry’s mental stability and warps this hypothetical Bucky!Zemo/Scourge's sense of reality

+this could even tie into Walker's story, as it seemed like he escalated in his instability after taking the serum (you know, there's actually a fairly large connection between Walker/US Agent and Monroe too hmm…)

in the comics, Monroe is being controlled (through nanites, so idk maybe Stark Tech?) by a very Zemo-type motivated guy who hates supers and even works for the Commission on Superhuman Activities (basically the same people who created the Sokovia Accords in the MCU, led by Ross and the UN). being controlled by this man, Monroe, as Scourge, is forced to attack and kill super powered people and targets the Thunderbolts. Comic Zemo is literally beheaded by him in a page that definitely tries to make the reader think that it is Bucky Barnes attacking Zemo (this was before the Winter Soldier Brubaker run that brought back Bucky Barnes, so at the time Bucky was still thought to be very dead for over 50 years)

and the Scourge suit would explain other parts of this theory, such as why is that literally Sebastian Stan’s face?

+the suit comes with a camouflage feature and image inducer so looking just like Bucky wouldn't be a problem (in the comics, previous versions of Scourge, one who i actually believe was Jake Monroe, just used latex masks, even disguising himself as a woman more than once -go Val=Zemo theory!- but the most important detail is that Scourge has always been a master of disguise, so that element is already built into the lore of the character)

how would Zemo be able to mimic the Super Soldier Serum?

+if he's not being dosed by Val with a version of the serum, the suit has various means of mimicking increased strength

but unless they really committed to amputating an arm and have a Wakandan prosthetic laying around, how would Zemo have the metal arm?

+from what i can tell, we don’t actually see Bucky’s metal arm in this scene? i believe it’s covered up with a jacket. and even if some of it shows, that could be a CGI misdirect. otherwise the Scourge suit would answer this too, specifically the metal-looking high-tech gauntlets that he wears could be made to at least look like Bucky’s arm and do the same things Bucky’s arm can do

but what about real Bucky?

+we have to first buy into the two Bucky’s theory, which i don’t actually hate. there’s Bucky trying his best in the trailer and then there’s an impersonator out there doing his best Winter Soldier. this way we don’t run into the same problems of a third act reveal like with the others (not actually following the real Bucky Barnes). we would be, hopefully with a confrontation between the two in the climax, getting almost an out of body visual of Bucky’s inner turmoil. him vs the winter soldier identity and everything that represents to him

even having Bucky wearing the Winter Soldier gear would have a cool call back to the Scourge suit:

+the suit in the comics has two gauntlets that can access various tools and weapons by simply voicing a code. they appear as if from thin air but in reality it is a clever use of pym particles

+these weapons aren't even just regular ‘ol things but rather he has a whole arsenal taken from other heroes and villains

+so a suit that carries the whole Winter Soldier arsenal, despite us having every reason to believe Bucky wouldn't have those things anymore, could be a fun way to reference that

speaking of the WS arsenal:

+I know its just a coincidence, but its worth noting that, as others have pointed out, Bucky is predominantly carrying the Škorpion vz. 61 (also known as the Sa vz. 61 Skorpion) in the trailer and in the poster. which was the gun that used to attach to the harness on the WS suit

+Zemo's paramilitary team from Sokovia, EKO Skorpion, was, at least partially, named after the Serbian Skorpion paramilitary force. the real life Serbian Skorpions named themselves after their favorite gun, you guessed it: the same Škorpion vz. 61 that is used by the WS

+additional fun(?) fact: the real life Serbian Skorpions had a secret relationship to the CIA and the CIA might have had a hand in the Yugoslav wars (shocker). if we follow this trajectory, it's possible that Val could have had connections to Sokovia and Zemo as early as the 90s/early 2000s, working as a CIA agent involved with the Sokovian Civil War

+if Hydra was involved with instigating the civil war in Sokovia (as they almost certainly were as it gained them a great advantage in establishing their base there) and Val truly is Madame Hydra, then that would establish pretty strong connective tissue between Val, Sokovia, Zemo, and the WS/Bucky

taking us to Pleasant Hill again:

i love this panel in relation to the Thunderbolts bc this is everything that Yelena is struggling with and seems to be the central theme of the movie, these broken people finding purpose in a world that they’ve been alienated by

+now the major twist in the comic wasn’t just that Zemo is really mild-mannered Jim, but rather the readers were manipulated through various means into believing that Jim was actually Bucky until the end reveal

+combining these things (the Pleasant Hill comic run and the Jack Monroe/ Scourge comic run) creates a story where the audience is led to believe Bucky is Winter Soldiering about, attacking and possibly trying to kill the Thunderbolts team

+but in reality it is actually Zemo, being manipulated and controlled by Val thru various sci-fi means to make Zemo just appear as Bucky

some other things:

+the last person to imitate the WS specifically? Zemo

+and he literally did it with just some prosthetics and theater kid energy

+their height difference is concealable with some heels and Zemo would know how to run in them

+this might even explain Bucky's bad hair:

+like ok hold with me here but Daniel Bruhl had this same exact hair cut for his role as Karl Lagerfeld

did he keep the hair during Thunderbolts filming? i have no idea. but its fun to imagine

and finally,

+the popular Bucky/WS left hand theory. while i’m not necessarily convinced just by this trailer (even tho i really like the theory and the visual importance of Bucky using his metal/left arm), this would gain added legitimacy if it’s actually Zemo impersonating the WS

+because, while Bucky may not be left handed,

+Zemo is

——————————————————————

10 / 10

this gerbil

+100% Zemo, he’s not even in disguise here that’s just Daniel Brühl on set

[curseofdelos]

I finished re-reading TLH recently, and I want to talk about the common fan interpretation of Piper as a pick me girl for a sec (let me preface this whole post by clarifying that while this is ultimately a defense of Piper as a character, it is also a critique of how Rick wrote her, Drew, and the rest of cabin 10)

The way cabin 10 is written in the books has never been great. Very early on in TLT, Rick makes a point to establish that Aphrodite had both sons and daughters:

Take note of how Rick explicitly genders Aphrodite kids in this paragraph, but uses the gender neutral "kids" to refer to the children of every other god. This is a very deliberate writing choice, and I can't think of any reason why he would have done this other than to (initially anyway) avoid associating womanhood with vanity/interest in personal appearances.

...And then in every book after this, cabin 10 heavily skews female, and traditional femininity becomes the butt of almost every joke about them.

Cabin 10 doesn't get any real focus until TLH with the introduction of Piper, Drew, and the rest of Cabin 10, in which Rick spends a lot of time establishing how different Piper is from the rest of her cabin because she rejects traditional femininity. Piper cuts her own hair, she doesn't wear makeup or care about fashion, she hates dresses etc. This is in direct contrast with Drew who's often described as wearing heavy makeup, having perfectly done hair, manicured nails etc.

Note that Piper's description of Drew's appearance is fairly neutral. Her problem with Drew is not in how she chooses to dress, but in her behaviour.

This would be fine if it weren't for the fact that every time Drew's appearance is described, it is directly preceded and/or followed by her doing something heinous. She insults and degrades Piper's appearance within seconds of meeting her, and we see this again in the Cabin 10 scene where she bullies and manipulates their siblings - kicking them out of the bathroom mid-shower, dumping a bin filled with used tampons on the floor and making them clean it up, etc.

Piper and Drew are in direct competition throughout the entirety of TLH. Piper strongly disapproves of the way Drew runs the cabin, they have differing opinions on Silena Beauregard (despite the fact Piper doesn't actually know her but I digress), and they're both interested in pursuing Jason romantically - Piper out of genuine attraction, and Drew out of the desire to break his heart for the Aphrodite Rite of Passage.

The narrative at every turn pits them against each other. Piper's intentions are always painted as pure and kindhearted while Drew is consistently characterised as a stereotypical mean girl who hurts others simply because she can. Drew is never given any motivation for acting the way she does, and her sole role in the story is to act as an obstacle for Piper to overcome so she could become counsellor (which is kind of pointless considering Piper never interacts with her cabin again after this). She's flat and two-dimensional, and never gets any real character development. Her sole personality trait is mean.

The result of all of this is that traditional femininity gets associated with shitty behaviour, while the rejection of traditional femininity gets associated with kindness and generosity. It should be stressed that Piper herself doesn't actually think that she's better than Drew because she doesn't wear makeup etc; Piper's issues entirely lie with Drew's behaviour. The worst Piper ever says is calling all of cabin 10 "shallow" which is no different to how the other characters talk about them (which is still a problem to be clear; it's just not a problem with Piper specifically, but how the narrative characterises cabin 10 as a whole). It's the narrative that paints femininity as lesser because of the way it positions tomboy Piper (the protagonist) as a better person than highly feminine Drew (the antagonist).

In fact, the most explicitly we ever see the book paint Piper's appearance as preferable to Drew's is in Jason's POV - not Piper's. After Piper gets claimed and Aphrodite changes her appearance, Jason spends several chapters going on and on about how much more beautiful and desirable Piper is when she's not dressed up or wearing makeup.

Because of all of this, it's not difficult to see why so many people in this fandom have interpreted Piper as a pick me 'not like other girls' type girl. The narrative constantly presents her as a better person than the more feminine Drew, and Jason (the boy they're competing over) chooses her at least partly because of how naturally beautiful she is without trying.

However, even though I do understand where this interpretation of her character came from, I do want to push back on it for a number of reasons.

Firstly, it is explicitly stated several times in TLH that the reasons Piper doesn't wear makeup and cuts her own hair is because (1) she doesn't like being the centre of attention (see the first screenshot of this post), and (2) she's rebelling against her father.

Piper's entire character arc in TLH centres around her initially being insecure at the start of the book to becoming more confident over the course of their quest. It is stated on several occasions early on that Piper doesn't like being the centre of attention, but by the end, she feels more comfortable in her own skin. She goes from being embarrassed/hurt by Drew's comments about her to laughing them off and standing up to her by the end.

The term "pick me girl" refers to girls who do things for external, mostly male validation. This is the exact opposite of why Piper doesn't wear makeup or conform to traditional femininity. She does this precisely because she does NOT want to draw attention to herself. The only male who's attention she is trying to get is her father's, and she's doing this by acting out in ways he doesn't approve of. Piper does want validation from her father, but she's not cutting her own hair to get his validation; she's so starved for affection that she wants any attention from him, even if that attention is negative.

Similarly, a major point of conflict for Piper is whether or not Jason is attracted to her, but she is not rejecting feminine things because she wants to impress him Jason does find those qualities in her attractive, but Piper held these opinions long before they even met. It was Jason/the narrative that paints those qualities in Piper attractive, not Piper herself. (Side note: there's a lot more to be said about how their relationship was written in TLH, but that isn't relevant to get into that here.)

The other reason why I want to push back on the interpretation of Piper as a pick me girl is that she's a queer woman. In a straight patriarchal society, women (women of colour especially) are often expected and pressured to perform gender in particular ways - wearing makeup, dressing femininely, being attracted to boys and exclusively boys. In much the same way that Piper's coming out now makes it possible to read her relationship with Jason as compulsory heterosexuality, it's also possible to read her discomfort with traditional femininity as discomfort with being a straight girl. It's possible to retroactively read Piper's dislike for feminine things as her feeling uncomfortable with heterosexuality but is too closeted at this point to realise it. She does, after all, cut her hair very short at the end of TBM while she is the process of exploring her sexuality.

(To be clear: I'm not arguing that this is what Rick had always intended for her - I assume he expected Jason/Piper would be endgame at the time he was writing TLH - but I do think there's a 'death of the author' interpretation available here that her hatred of dresses etc is an early sign of her being a closeted queer woman who is beginning to explore her gender presentation and sexuality.)

I feel that sometimes, in their efforts to (rightly) criticise the way femininity gets treated in this series, some people act as if makeup is in intrinsic part of womanhood and that Piper is a misogynist for not wanting to wear it. This is not true. It is not inherently misogynistic for a woman to dislike it - especially when that woman is queer, and especially in today's society where many women are pressured into wearing makeup to be taken seriously. Piper disliking makeup is not the problem.

The problem with Piper's story in TLH is that the narrative consistently presents her as a better person than the more feminine Drew, and a more desirable option for Jason because of how beautiful she is without trying really hard like Drew and the other Aphrodite girls do. Because every highly feminine character is either a villain (Drew) or a joke (Valentina in TOA), the result of Piper and Drew's rivalry is that femininity gets demonised by the narrative. Again, it's not that Piper herself thinks she's better than Drew for hating fashion; it's the way the story puts these characters in opposition to each other that results in femininity being framed as lesser.

I think a writer with a better grasp of women's issues (and queer women's issues especially) could have written a great story here on gender as a performance, and an exploration on conforming (Drew) VS rebelling (Piper) against gender norms! How there really is no winning and women get harassed for being too feminine AND for not being feminine enough (See: the jokes about Clarisse in PJO not being a girl/being manly because she's violent and rough around the edges)! What we got instead was a story that carries the deeply unfortunate implication that girls who don't care about their appearance are kinder and more desirable than girls who do.

It's not Piper that's the problem; it's the narrative. I think a lot of people have been conflating the two, and have been unfairly pinning the blame onto Piper's characterisation when the fault lies with the plot, and with Drew's characterisation as a flat two-dimensional mean girl stereotype. I think if Drew had been given a redemption arc like Clarisse, or some amount of depth that explains why she hates Silena and acts the way she does, or even if she and Piper had learned to respect each other despite their differences, then we would be having a very different conversation.

[mxjackparker]

A vulnerable story about the moment I first began to view myself as a hooker, when I was 17. This excerpt comes from Hooker Mentality, which you can read more about here.

"The day I came to view myself as a hooker, regardless of my reticence to sell sex and the denial I’d been in before that point, sticks out in my memory because of how suddenly it happened. A former friend of mine was upset with me because our group of friends had chosen to side with her ex-girlfriend rather than her when the two of them broke up (yes, very petty teenage drama) and so she chose to tell her mother all about me selling sex. I was a couple of months away from being 18 years old and had finally been given a flat within a supported housing unit run by the council. Her mother called me unexpectedly and began ranting about how I was a terrible influence who had turned all of her daughter’s friends against her. During this tirade, she revealed that she knew I’d been selling sex and intended to report me for it. Dread took over my body and I remember feeling all my blood drain out of me. My breath escaped me. I had so little control over my life that I was slowly clawing back and the idea of police intervention for selling sex only terrified me. I was horrified by the realization that her hatred of sex workers took precedent over the victim role I had expected to be cast in. At 17, I didn’t think I’d be blamed. Despite this, the words that came out of my mouth to bluff confidence that I could handle the police weren’t, “I’m underage, I wouldn’t be in trouble,” or “I’m not selling sex, I’m only selling my time.” Instead, I told her “it’s not illegal to sell sex,” and that was the first time I acknowledged what I was really doing. Unfortunately, that moment of clarity did nothing to sway the adult more than twice my age who was yelling at me down the phone. Once she was convinced I was not lying about selling sex being legal in the UK, something I had only learned for myself weeks prior, her next tactic was to suggest calling social services on me. To my friend’s mother, I was old enough to be considered immoral for being a prostitute and held accountable for that whilst simultaneously being young enough to control like a naughty child acting out. Social services were a weapon available to her because of the span of a mere couple of months, after which I’d be seen as an adult in the eyes of the law. I falsified confidence and reminded her that because she’d very briefly housed me when I first became homeless, before another friend’s mother took me in, that calling social services put her at risk too. I highly doubt the police would have cared to open an investigation or that she would have faced any consequences, but it was true that I’d sold sex while I was living under her roof. Only a threat impacting her personally seemed to get through to her, rather than the plight of the struggling teenager whose heart was beating out of their chest. She gave up on harassing me out of fear of state intervention that she was at no real risk of. Having experienced all of that, I’m never going to be able to buy into narratives that teens must be controlled and reported when it is discovered that they’re doing some form of sex work. At the same time, I vehemently condemn the adult clients seeking out these teenagers to take advantage of. The trauma I experienced during my first year selling sex is something I have never gotten over. How do we marry together these two perspectives in a way that’s cohesive? Personally, I do so by reckoning with the knowledge that carceral systems do not protect our youth from sexual predation. They certainly did not protect me, no matter how I begged. We have to empower young people to protect themselves and build communities which keep them safe. Harm reduction may not be harm eradication, but it’s a lot better than what our youth have now."

Sharing these kinds of experiences and thoughts can be hard, but so many sex workers are terrified to share our stories at all and I know it's important. If you want to help a poor hooker out by sharing or even getting a copy of the book for yourself, that's hugely appreciated.

[eriexplosion]

Tech Lives: An Ungodly Long Essay

(AKA: Turns out that my Tech Lives compilation post comment was actually a threat.)

There have been hundreds if not thousands of posts since Plan 99 aired wondering if Tech might have made it after his fall - it's probably been brought up more than any other hanging plot point, even after season 2 scooped up Omega and left us on a massive cliffhanger. Now that season 3 has started, though, Omega and Crosshair are home (for now) but we have received an almost aggressive lack of Tech info. So, I've gathered up some of the stronger Evidence for why Tech might be fashionably late but still on his way back from The Void!

THE LEAD UP

So to start, let's go back to what came before the whole Incident. This will focus mostly on season 2, seeing as that was definitely Tech's season to shine, but with bits about plotlines in season 1. Which brings us to our first bit, that's not really evidence so much as some gentle push-back on a common argument.

Doomed By Character Development?

We've all seen this particular situation before - a character is slated for a tragic death, so just before it happens the writers gives them a little extra relevance to the plot to make sure the audience really feels it when the time comes. The Clone Wars was especially good at this, giving characters like Fives an arc of his own that ended in his tragic death. Season 7 gave us a better look at Jesse, first in the Bad Batch's intro arc and then again through the Siege of Mandalore, all to bring us to the chip activation that led to his ultimate death.

When season 2 started off with one of the two intro episodes spotlighting Tech and our first breather episode of the season also spotlighting him, people started to get worried. So is it fair to say that his spotlight in season 2 was setting him up for a permadeath?

Looking at it, I don't think so, for multiple reasons. For one, Tech didn't just get a spotlight episode, his development dominated a good chunk of the whole damned season, often taking priority over the other characters that wouldn't be dropped into the mists. While giving a little bit of character development to a doomed character can be a good move, giving ALL your development to a doomed character ends up feeling like a good portion of your season was actively pointless.

The Bad Batch is not an open ended show. It seems to have been planned for the three seasons it got, and they would have gone into it knowing they had a set amount of time to work with. Dedicating so much time to developing Tech in preparation for a character death takes away all of their opportunity to develop, well, anything else.

But, along with the amount of time that was dedicated to Tech as a character through season 2, they also didn't develop him in the ways that most often get used for a doomed character. Namely...

That Sure Is A Lot Of Open Plot Lines

And not one of them got tied up. Currently, Tech has two open plot lines to himself, both started in season 2, as well as a key place in the overall show narrative arc. As the overall show narrative arc takes precedence, we'll start with that.

The Bad Batch sets up a few different narrative arcs very early. One is if clones can be more than soldiers - this is the central thing that we see them struggling against from the start, they've been created to be soldiers and don't know much else about how to function in the world. Theoretically this arc can be fulfilled with one or two of them still dying as soldiers, as long as a few of them make it to find a new life for themselves.

The arc that can't be fulfilled without everyone though is the ongoing thread of reuniting the batch. Much of the show is geared towards making the viewer want this specific end result, as soon as they talk about Crosshair, Omega says they'll just have to get him back and complete their family. The end of season 1 teases us with this only to pull it away at the last moment, then season 2 teases us with it again only to yet again pull it away, this time seemingly permanently.

Ending one of your key narrative threads you've been using to draw audiences in only 2/3rds of the way into the show and without ever resolving it... well it would be a choice. If Tech is gone for good then the last time we saw everyone together would be the end of season 1. Rewatches would lack impact because something that was made to seem so vital ended up going nowhere, and the series finale would never quite reach the height that hearing the full batch theme kick in over the team fighting droids together did. It absolutely destroys the central narrative to leave him gone without ever having reunited the family.

And then there's his personal plots.

Let's start with the obvious one. Tech got a whole potential love interest this season and they absolutely did not resolve a damn thing about it.

Again, this takes a trope that we all know - the young army man that's going to go home and finally marry his girl, who has his whole life ahead of him, but dies tragically in his final mission - and seemingly intentionally subverts the beats. Because what makes the trope work is that the plot line is resolved as soon as that young man decides how he's going to move forward. He can't die uncertain of if he's going to marry his girl, he has to make a decision, and the longer we spend on the relationship to his girl the stronger the decision has to be to consider the narrative line resolved and free him up for some tragedy.

Tech/Phee is a tentative little 'will they or won't they' romance. They're flirting, they're feeling each other out, they're seeing if they're compatible. To tie up this narrative line we would have to find out if they are or not, get a yes or a no on the question. Will they or won't they? We simply don't know because the writers didn't put a resolution in.

We do get the traditional pre-mission scene with them, which would normally be when we get the first kiss or perhaps the promise of a date, either of which would have had me digging Tech's grave for him to fall into from the second it happened. Or even a 'we can't do this right now, but maybe some day it will be the right time' which would have been a kind of lukewarm resolution but would have at least represented a decision.

Instead we get a scene that almost aggressively refuses to resolve anything. They have an awkward interaction, but not one that says they won't get together, no promises are made for the future, no decision point is reached, and the plot line is still dangling wide open when Tech falls to his supposed death. If we truly leave it off here, well, what was the Tech/Phee subplot for? Why did we spend precious time on it when it could have been spent on something else, if it was meant to make Tech's death hit harder why did it not go further?

A second subplot with Tech is that he certainly made the most progress on seeing options outside of the Empire - it starts early on in Ruins of War when he meets Romar and gets his eyes opened to the idea of cultures that existed unconnected to the war. Serenno existed before the war and before the separatists, and Romar introduces Tech to that idea of an ongoing culture. He gets a taste of racing in front of a cheering crowd, leans further into his teaching of Omega and gets new insights from her regarding their lives as soldiers, his relationship with Phee picks up right when he finds out that she is interested in the preservation of cultures. It's a quiet little subplot, but Tech was seeing the full scope of what the galaxy contained beyond being a soldier in a war.

But, like the Tech/Phee, it never resolves. He never decides to settle down, he never chooses to stop being a soldier or even openly discusses the idea of what life will look like after. Rescuing Crosshair isn't positioned as a final mission that they have to complete in order to give up their lives as soldiers. Without that decision point being reached, the plot stays open, we never find out what he Would Have Done so we don't get a sense of the future that he would lose by dying, which is what the purpose of these types of plots is for a planned permadeath.

The Kaminoans don't create without purpose and writers working on a three season timeline don't typically write without it either. So if we spent the time on Tech/Phee but Tech is dead before it ever went anywhere, if we spent time on Tech's relationship with being something other than a soldier but he never really pursues it, what is the payoff?

Too Much of a Survivor To Die?

There's also the matter of how they chose to build Tech's character this season. Namely they beefed that man's skills up incredibly high making it intensely unbelievable that he's dead without seeing some sort of concrete proof. Things we know about Tech as of the end of season 2 include:

Incredible pain tolerance - Tech fractures his femur in Ruins of War and seems shockingly unbothered by it. The femur is frequently listed as one of the most painful bones to break. This is not a broken toe the man is hobbling around on, he fractured the strongest bone in the body and kept going through the woods. He physically fought and killed a man with that busted femur.

Lightning fast mental processing - this is of course on display nowhere so much as Faster where he's put up against droids and wins by taking calculated risks that no one else is willing to try.

A cool head in stressful circumstances - this one is hilarious because he outright says it, but Tech does demonstrate time and time again that when it comes down to it, he's able to keep calm no matter the circumstances.

Essentially, we spend the entirety of season 2 setting up why Tech is the perfect person to drop out of the sky and have him survive. He has the ability to keep calm and come up with a plan in seconds and he has the grit to keep moving even if he's grievously injured once he hits the ground. When you set a character up like this, you can still kill them, but you have to work harder to do it convincingly. Leaving Tech not at the moment of death but with probably at least a minute to act in and then not showing us the body is the exact opposite.

We have a moment in The Crossing showing us Tech's precise aim, and it comes up again to brutal effect when he shoots out the connection on the rail car. If moments through the season were used to set up that particular instant of the finale, then we can't discount the numerous scenes demonstrating his survival skills as being irrelevant to his chances.

Plus, looking back at Ruins of War - one of the big moments in the episode is towards the end, where Romar tells Tech, "I'm a survivor. Remember?" The camera then lingers on Tech for a long moment. It's not the kind of action that demonstrates his capabilities as above, but it works to associate the words with Tech in the viewers mind. Romar is a survivor, and Tech is a survivor too. And when you intend to kill someone off, it's kind of an odd choice to spend that whole season setting them up as a survivor.

THE FALL

Which brings us to the scene itself. Plan 99, implied to be one of the last ditch plans that they have. It's absolutely a heartbreaking scene, and one that can be tough to analyze when it's so well done, because it's rough to watch repeatedly. But, it's worth doing, because the scene itself is FULL of questions, some structural others more based in the visual presentation.

What is Plan 99?

Well, that's just it, we don't actually know.

We know what it's implied to be, a self sacrifice plan where one of the batch gives their life for the others to get away. But in show it's never actually defined, leaving the full meaning of Plan 99 up to interpretation. It could be as simple as what it's implied to be, but that brings up questions like 'why not provide any lead up or foreshadowing for it?' and 'does killing yourself actually count as a plan?'

Removing the assumptions from it gives us room to speculate. Is the plan actually that they leave him behind, dead or alive? Hunter ordered them to do so without a plan number in season 1, but he is the sergeant, so plan 99 could easily be something that bypasses his authority - if a batcher calls a plan 99, you go and you don't question his decision. It's certainly closer to a plan if there's something they are supposed to be doing from their end rather than just an announcement of intent.

It's not strictly evidence one way or another, but it is something of note when Tech's entire sacrifice is based around a plan that we're not privy to the details of. TBB has hidden its twists in ambiguity before, so it would not be the first time that it let us assume something only to pull the rug out later. But ambiguity is not the only thing that makes this scene stand out in the raising questions department.

Pacing Goes Out The Window

Generally speaking, a self sacrifice is the climax of an episode. Think Kanan, Hardcase, Gregor, Hevy, etc - Even a minor character sacrificing their life tends to make up the most climactic portion of any given episode, let alone one of the characters from the title squad. It gets to be the big central moment, the big rush of music and feeling, the pinnacle of the viewers attention.

Tech's sacrifice is not. It happens around 5 minutes into the episode, is rapidly moved past with barely a moment to think, and then the actual climax is Omega's capture on Ord Mantell. They even repeat the music when Omega is captured, except much stronger this time, making it clear that this is the emotional crux of the episode, this is the scene that is supposed to stick with you.

The opportunity to make it the climax of an episode was certainly there. The storyline could have been adjusted to put Tech's fall at the end of The Summit, allowing more time in Plan 99 for processing his loss and making it feel final. The pacing choice is one that doesn't allow the viewer to process the loss, only giving us maybe a couple minutes of time with actual emotional reactions before we're barreling off to the next plot point. Why was Tech's death de-emphasized within the episode if it is indeed our last moment with this central character?

Tarkin, Eriadu, & Saw Gerrera

A lot goes into the set-up for Plan 99. We have Tarkin's base on Eriadu as the setting they're working within, going up against Tarkin for the first time since early season 1. This is the big leagues, and something that's come up in multiple interviews is that when going into the den of one of the franchise's big bads we have to have consequences, something to demonstrate that Tarkin is not to be trifled with.

Sounds reasonable enough. Except Tarkin doesn't actually do anything in either of these episodes. The thing that actually threw them off was Saw's planning mixing in with their own.

All Tarkin does upon finding out that the batch is stuck on the rail is order an air strike and ignore that this would kill many of his own men. This is certainly evil, but it's standard Imperial evil. Rampart would have given that order. Hemlock would have given that order. The guy in Tipping Point that we know for 5 minutes before he fried himself would have given that order.

So if the point of this finale was to demonstrate Tarkin's power, then bringing Saw in both complicates the plot and devalues what they're claiming they are trying to show. So is the point to get them to Tantiss? No, because they fail in that. They don't plant the tracker, they're no closer to finding Crosshair than they were before.

By all accounts the point of the whole endeavor is in fact just to drop Tech off a sky rail for reasons unknown and injure Omega to force them to go back to Ord Mantell. These two things could have happened anywhere in any way of course, so why choose Eriadu and why choose to complicate the plot by introducing Saw rather than letting Tarkin handle the job?

They're questions we don't have answers to yet, but they're very hard to get answers to if Tech is dead and completely out of the picture. Having a dead body on Eriadu is fairly useless to the plot, having a living Tech on Eriadu though? That has potential to move them huge leaps forward in a very short amount of time once we bring him back in. Especially given his conversation with Saw prior to everything going downhill - Tech was in favor of gathering intel from the facility rather than destroying it.

And what about Saw, anyway? If he was genuinely there to cause problems and fly away, again, that's a plot wrinkle that isn't needed and took time away from everything else. If he's there because they needed someone to pick Tech up though? There's potential there.

Did Tech's Sacrifice Mean Anything?

In universe, Tech's sacrifice means everything, of course. It's a decision made in the moment to risk everything to save his family. It's a noble deed and one he does without hesitation. But pulling away from that narrow scope of an in universe perspective, what did we accomplish narratively with his fall?

Well... not much actually! They got over the bump in the road that they encountered all of five seconds ago and promptly crashed headfirst into another, different bump in the road. Tech's dramatic sacrifice didn't allow them to escape unharmed, it didn't allow them to find Crosshair, it just allowed them to move a few steps forward, after which Omega is almost killed and then captured, which is a fairly weak reason to sacrifice a whole major character.

But not every character death is exclusively about narrative, sometimes it's about the character arc itself. So does this close out anything for Tech's character development? Again, not really. Tech has always been completely loyal to the squad and would have risked anything for his family. He never had a choice not to fall, it was either just him or the whole team, and he is an endlessly logical actor. The action would have played out the same had it happened in the series premier or the season 1 finale, or any other time in the show. If anything it's a backtrack on his character by putting him solidly back into the soldier box that the show is trying to let the clones grow out of.

Maybe it's not about Tech's character though, maybe it's about everyone else's! Does his death change anyone's trajectory? Again... no, not really. We'll get into season 3's lack of mentioning Tech later, but in the immediate aftermath of his fall, no one's course or actions is majorly changed because of his loss. Hunter wants to go back to Pabu where it's safe, the same thing he wanted to do before they ever left for this mission. Omega puts herself in danger to save her brothers, which has been one of her defining traits since season one. Wrecker is following Hunter's lead, same as he always did. (We get very little of what Echo hopes to do, but the opening of season 3 reveals that they went back to work with Rex, exactly like they were doing before.)

So narratively nothing required him to die, the character's arc isn't completed, and the other characters aren't motivated to change. If Tech dies here, it's the picture of a shock value death. It doesn't complete or inform his character, it doesn't need to narratively happen in order to put Omega on the path to being captured, and thematically it exists just to give the viewer an unnecessary gut-punch when just the failure to rescue Crosshair and the loss of Omega would have been enough.

Framing is Everything

In a death scene there's nothing more powerful than our final shot of a character. The very last we'll ever see of them, the image that will linger in our minds when we think of that character from then on. This is especially important in animation where everything has to go through several iterations before deciding on what that final look will be. You want it to be impactful, you want the audience to have one final connection to the character before they're gone for good.

So why does Tech die with his helmet on?

If there's one thing TBB is good at, it's their expression work, and a death scene is a perfect place to show off their full range, which is why most deaths meant to have a heavy impact occur with faces unobscured. Crosshair loses his helmet and takes Mayday's off so we can see both of their faces as Mayday dies, Slip, Cade, even Clone X and Wilco, all die helmetless. Looking into older series you have Kanan dying without his mask, Fives, Hardcase, Waxer all dying helmetless with one last good look at their faces and expressions.

And while Tech's helmet gives us a good look at his eyes, the rest of his face goes unseen, and Wrecker's face as he watches this happen is completely obscured. We're denied a look at a lot of their expressions as the decision is made and Plan 99 is executed, rendering it less personal than it otherwise could have been. Tech could have lost his helmet in the blast that knocked him from the rail, Wrecker could have had his helmet knocked off at some point to give us a good look at his expression. TBB isn't known for pulling its punches, so why leave our final look at Tech's face back in The Summit and not here?

Then there's the framing choices. We get some absolutely amazing shots of Tech during the fall, from taking the shot to falling backwards towards the cloudy cover - but here's where some interesting choices are made. Rather than letting our last shot of him be a face up shot that keeps eye contact with the camera as he falls, they make the choice to have him flip over, and we hold the shot as the rail car goes down after him, partially obscuring him.

Which means instead of our last glimpse of Tech being something like this.

We end up with something closer to this.

Which, while we all love those Tech crotch shots is somewhat less impactful emotionally. These frames go through multiple departments and get multiple eyes on them before going through final animation, and no one thought that leaving him face up and unobscured until he disappears into the fog would stick more firmly in the viewer's memory?

The Flip Might be Intentional

And I don't just mean out of universe, as every detail of animation is often intentional, but in universe as well. If you look closely at Tech as he falls, he seems to roll his shoulders back in order to begin flipping over. It was a specific enough detail to send me searching for a reason and I found it in instructions on how to survive a long fall - the first thing that you're supposed to do? Get into the arch position like a skydiver to slow and control your fall.

The flip was important enough to not only include but to include the small detail of Tech intentionally flipping himself over into said position. It's not a confirmation but it's an interesting detail, and one that has very few other reasons to exist.

THE AFTERMATH

Image chosen because even thinking he's alive I didn't want to pull from Omega reacting to the fall on Ord Mantell. Looking at her makes me Sad. So the fall has happened, the rail car has rushed forward and crashed, and Omega fades in and out of consciousness until finally waking up on Ord Mantell to the bad news.

"What if he's hurt?"

Omega is our POV character for the show. We may sometimes see things she doesn't, but emotionally she remains the center of the narrative, the character that the target audience will see themselves in. Her ultimate thoughts on a situation are the closest we have to a clear indicator of our intended takeaway.

So it's interesting that the first thing we hear out of her, having heard that Tech 'didn't make it,' is a firm denial. He can't be gone, he might be hurt, he needs them and they need to go back for him. And, despite Hunter continuing to talk with her about it for a bit, we never actually hear Omega explicitly take it back or verbally acknowledge Tech as dead. The closest we get is 'lost' which she also uses for Echo in The Crossing.

Now, here's where the interpretation between the adult and child audience will likely differ. From an adult perspective, this is a reasonable reaction for a child her age. It comes off as very natural that she doesn't want to accept it and that she doesn't have time to really process that it's true before the scene moves on. It makes sense from an in universe perspective.

However, the main audience is still children who actually are Omega's age and who are being presented with her as their window into this world. And their takeaway, seeing that same scene, is likely to be that Omega is correct. They don't know that Tech's dead, just because an adult says it doesn't make it true and just because Hemlock says it DEFINITELY doesn't mean it's true, they have to go back and check.

If they wanted the main audience to think that Tech is dead for sure, they could have had Omega be the one to say that he's gone, with Hunter simply confirming it for her. Alternatively, Omega accepting it when Hunter tells her would also function in the same way - ultimately, as the POV character, if Omega doesn't accept it there's a strong possibility much of the audience won't accept it either, especially without other evidence.

No Body?

And, as we all know, we simply don't have other concrete evidence. Not only are the batch given no time to look for Tech's body or any confirmation that he died, but we get a whole scene with Hemlock and the goggles where he also confirms verbally that he doesn't have a body either. There's very little reason to have him say this outside of putting a bug in the viewer's ear that he might not be gone for good.

Not only do we have that verbal confirmation, but we have multiple places where a body could have been included or implied without adding much to the runtime.

Easiest place would probably be when Omega passes out - there's a trooper's corpse right there in front of her, and it would have been very easy to make that identifiable as Tech. Have one of the boys check his pulse like Crosshair did with Mayday and then be forced to leave after confirming he's dead. Would it require a little bit of fudging the details of how he landed so close to them, sure, but it would have been narratively streamlined and easy.

Have Hemlock bring his helmet rather than his goggles (and damage it in a way clearly incompatible with survival) or confirm that he did find a body but has no use for the goggles.

Put the body in Hemlock's lab when Omega is brought there at the end of the episode. Have a sheet covering him even if you want and just one of his hands hanging out, especially the one with the distinctive light on the back of it. Give us her reaction to that.

These are just the ones that don't involve adding scenes or making major changes - instead, in a franchise known for bringing back everyone and their grandmother especially if there's no body, they chose to leave it extremely vague.

Reused Score

The soundtrack for Tech's sacrifice is fantastic, I don't think anyone can argue that. In fact it's so good that it's used occasionally used as a reason for why he's dead for real. If it's a fakeout, why go so hard on the music?

It almost sounds like a reasonable argument, except that the music isn't even unique to Tech's fall. We get the same motif later in the episode with Omega's capture, and it actually comes in even harder and more impactful there than it did with Tech falling.

Reusing bits of the music has two results. It lessens the impact of hearing it with Tech if it is in fact his Death music, because it makes it clear that he is not the central feeling of the episode but rather, Omega's capture is. As mentioned before, deaths are usually the climax of their own episodes partially to avoid them being upstaged by any other plot points, but here Omega's capture is fully prioritized over the loss of one of our central characters.

The second result is that it changes the meaning of the music. It's no longer meant specifically to underscore a tragic death, but rather a more general one of loss and separation. And if it's simply about that separation, then it no longer requires Tech to be dead to have that same impact. They're apart from each other, and that's painful enough.

SEASON 3 SO FAR

Which of course finally brings us to season 3! We're five episodes in as of the posting of this, so a full 1/3rd of the season down, which gives us a good idea of how they're handling the whole grief aspect of this scenario.

They Aren't!

That's right, we simply have not directly acknowledged or dealt with the whole 'watching your squadmate fall to a presumed horrible death' thing even once in five episodes. Tech has been mentioned by name twice, we've seen his goggles once, and Wrecker makes one sideways reference to him having not made it back.

In universe, there is a several month timeskip and it seems to be implied that the majority of the grief milestones happened in that gap. For example, we don't see Crosshair finding out from Omega, we don't see Omega grieving her brother, we don't see Phee finding out (more on her in a bit) despite her fledgling romance. Months of grieving and processing skipped over and what comes out the other side is single line mentions that go by in seconds.

This is especially apparent after episode 5, where we got something to compare it to. Crosshair has a long, painful moment of grieving with Mayday's helmet when they return to Barton IV. It's deep, personal, and intimate and we take a minute with him gathering up the helmets of Mayday and his men to set them up on the crates the same way that Mayday had honored them.

Mayday is a one episode character that was important to only a single character, Crosshair - Tech is a core member of the team present through two full seasons and shown as close to every member of the squad. Yet the single scene grieving Mayday is longer and more emotionally gripping than every short mention of Tech so far in season 3.

Narrative Grief

Seeing characters grieve their loved ones onscreen is about more than just the characters themselves. It's also part of the viewer experience - through the characters' grief, we're able to process our own grief at the loss. It makes it feel real, it makes it feel personal, and the amount of grieving needs to be proportionate to the character's importance in the story.

This is especially true in a show written for children like The Bad Batch. Kids don't typically have the same experience with death as adults, and a well written main character death within a children's show will need more time and energy spent towards making the loss feel real. We see this with deaths like Kanan's; it wasn't Jedi Night that told the viewer that Kanan was really, truly dead, it was Dume, where the characters mourned him and dealt with the aftermath.

Currently, with Tech, we do see holes in the team that make us miss Tech but they remain completely unaddressed by the characters. We see Tech's goggles, but Hunter isn't looking at them, he's looking at Lula. Omega mentions Tech having taught her all the plans, but without any real sadness on her or Crosshair's part. The closest we get to actually bringing it up are Wrecker saying 'not everyone came back' and Echo mentioning the datapad would be difficult without Tech, and both of those are only seconds long before moving on. They don't serve as any kind of catharsis for the viewer, relying more on gut punch impact and keeping the wound open rather than allowing it to heal. The difference between the treatment of Tech's death and Mayday's just makes it more stark.

How Do You Like Yearning?

Interestingly, though, it strongly resembles the writing team's handling of another situation: Crosshair's departure from the team in season 1 vs Echo's in season 2. The show even drew a lot of flack for the lack of discussion on Crosshair's betrayal, as outside of a couple conversations the matter often went unremarked on. Echo leaving, on the other hand, got a whole episode dedicated to processing the loss immediately after it happened.

So what was the difference? Crosshair's departure is part of a long term plot point. We're supposed to want him back, we're supposed to want the team to talk about him, anything that would ease the tension. The writers on the other hand want that tension to remain until it's time to actually resolve the plot. So we get those slow drips in between bigger encounters, we get opportunities for Crosshair to come home that he doesn't take, and we don't get the catharsis of the team actually talking about any of it. We're left to want and imagine it, using the yearning to keep it on people's minds more than anything.

If Crosshair had been discussed on screen long enough for the characters to actually come to terms with his absence, though, that would have made the plot feel more settled and resolved early on. It might be conversations we want to see, but it doesn't keep the viewer on edge and craving a resolution. Best case scenario we're just not as desperate for Crosshair to come home - worst case scenario we accept that he won't be returning and find the fact that he eventually does to be unrealistic.

Echo on the other hand gets their absence processed immediately, because their absence from the team is not meant to be a huge plot point. It's something the team has to deal with, yes, and the viewer wants to see them again just like Omega does, but Echo returning isn't meant to be a maybe, and it's not supposed to keep the viewer wondering and worrying. It's a when, not an if.

Similarly to Crosshair, Tech has never felt like a resolved plot point. We don't get confirmation on his death, we don't get any long term grieving, and we get drip fed acknowledgements that pry the wound back open. If we actually see the team discuss and come to terms with their grief and loss, the plot point closes, the wound closes and we begin to fully accept a team without Tech in it, which makes it harder to reinsert him into the storyline if he is in fact alive.

If he's truly gone for good, what is the point of denying closure to the audience? We know that they are capable of writing an intense mourning moment that feels completely in character for otherwise emotionally repressed men such as Crosshair, so why not give us that with the team mourning for Tech? A memorial, an intimate moment with the goggles, a short scene of Crosshair finding out about the loss, or anything at all really? Once again it's something that makes sense if he's alive and we're simply not being shown yet, but makes very little sense to not capitalize on if he's dead.

What's to Come

We have ten episodes of season 3 to go, and a lot to cover. Reviews have indicated that Tech is not explicitly brought up in the first eight, so the earliest we could possibly have a survival reveal is in episode 9. Will it actually happen? Maybe, maybe not. Though interestingly episode 9, The Harbinger, is almost exactly one year after Plan 99, just like The Return aired almost one year after The Outpost. Could mean nothing, but they do enjoy their anniversary dates.

One thing we do know for sure is coming up is Phee's inclusion - she's seen in the official trailer, as well as briefly in a recent twitter spot. This is interesting as Phee is, of course, Tech's teased love interest, and her connection to Tech has been emphasized multiple times, including on her Databank entry and the official 'what you need to know about season 3' guide. When she comes onto the scene, it's very likely that more information about Tech will too.

MARKETING, INTERVIEWS, & SOCIAL MEDIA

I wanted to keep this mostly focused on what can be seen within the show itself, but it's impossible to talk about whether or not Tech is alive without pointing to the absolutely bizarre messaging from the cast and crew, as well as the marketing choices surrounding his sacrifice. (Example: the Instagram Mourning Filter they layered over him in the official trailer, as seen above) I won't get quite as detailed here as in the above, but it does have to be mentioned.

Constant Focus

In between the end of season 2 and the posting of the season 3 trailer in late January, there were several posts on various official Star Wars media. The majority of them were about Tech and Plan 99. In fact, I don't think I ever saw anything mentioning the giant 'Omega's been captured' cliffhanger, just Tech. Over and over again.

Once a character is dead, marketing generally stops caring about them. They're forward focused after all, they want you coming back for what's to come not lingering on what won't be relevant again. So why the constant focus on Tech?

And it wasn't just the social media either - a huge portion of the trailers and reels included old footage of him too. For the most part this was from Plan 99 and bringing up his fall again to rip open those old wounds, but in one case they included action footage from The Summit. This was an interesting case, because the majority of people watching wouldn't have recognized it immediately. Fittingly, the entire comment section was full of nothing but 'Was that Tech?' style comments, which they would have known was going to be the case to start with.

So why are we so focused on a man that's supposedly dead? If he's genuinely never going to show up again why keep putting him in? Everything? While not even bringing him up all that often in the show? If he's dead, this is a truly bizarre marketing decision.

Never Say Die

In interviews or in official material. For several months the word 'dead' was never used for Tech anywhere, not in interviews, not in official material, nowhere. It took until January 23rd for all of the databank entries to be updated, and among all of the main cast he's only referred to as 'killed' once, and it's on Hunter's page not even his own. Then, the Friday before the premier, an interview came out referring to him as dead - on the part of the interviewer, not the creators themselves.

Everything else seems to use a variety of euphemisms. His sacrifice, his absence, his loss, he 'plummeted out of sight', he 'fell from a tram car', he did absolutely anything it's possible to do except outright die apparently.

It's an odd choice when there's known controversy over if he's dead or not. The standard operating protocol of course, in a planned comeback, is to refer to them as dead anyway and allow fandom to fuel its own speculation, but with a fandom as devastated as TBB's was, it's quite possible that the odd behavior had to be introduced just to keep speculation going. The only interviews that sound remotely final came out right before the episodes started coming out - if they had done that from the beginning, the chances of people outright refusing to come back to the show likely would have been higher.

Much like the marketing, this is not necessarily proof of anything - but in combination with the multiple odd things in the show itself, it's certainly suspicious. Speaking of suspicious...

What an Odd Thing to Say

The cast and crew themselves have not been skimping on making strange comments when it comes to the Tech situation.

There is of course the well known Joel Aron (lighting director for the series) tweet that came out the day of the Celebrations panel (AKA when the Tech trauma was at an all time high) and in direct reply to a fan that was having a hard time with Tech's death. It's hard to take it as anything but a reference to Tech given the timing, and it was certainly taken as being about Tech in the quote tweets. If it's not about Tech, why tease the fandom with it? And the specification for it being a mid s3 episode as well...

Also from the day of Celebrations, and from the panel itself, we have Michelle Ang saying in front of God and everybody, that Tech "doesn't come back... in this episode, at least." At the time there was a possibility she didn't know and was just leaving it open, but with that only being ten months ago and the extremely long timeframe of animation, it's almost certain that she would have been done with all primary recording by that point. If you know he's not coming back, how do you accidentally imply that he is with no one correcting it?

Dee Bradley Baker, when asked for a farewell message from Tech at a con, came out with "the life of a soldier is fulfilled by fulfilling his mission and supporting his brothers. And this was the end of mine. And that's a good thing." Which was a perfectly serviceable goodbye right up until he said that the end of Tech's (life? soldier's life? mission?) was a good thing.

During an instagram interview we have Deana Kiner, one of the composers, in response to the interviewer talking about the final episode containing a major loss, saying, "It's kind of a loss... It's complicated." The claim on twitter was that this was about Omega, because everyone knows that when someone mentions the major loss in Plan 99 they're definitely talking about Omega.

So is Tech alive? Is Tech dead? We still don't know. But while one or two of the above might be a coincidence, having all of them at once coalesce around this single character death is a lot to chew over. The Bad Batch team has shown willingness to address grief and loss prior, as well as a willingness to show us death onscreen and front and center. So why, with such an important character, sidestep it all in order to keep it vague? Why keep it from sounding final for so long, if the intent the entire time was for him to be dead for good?

We won't know until he either shows back up or the show ends. If Tech's alive, all of the above starts to make sense. If he's dead... well a lot of things will just never quite add up. I feel that this team has shown enough willingness to follow up on their trailing plotlines that they've earned my trust. Fingers crossed for a satisfying resolution for all of us, and for our boy Tech, whatever that resolution may be.

[vic-does-battlecats]

Bluestar’s bloodline and the constant pull of ambition … the way it takes them away from what ought to matter more.. technically a whole lot of this is fanon / personal read for Funsies (relies on Curlfeather and Podlight being Reedwhisker and Duskfur kits) but.

Bluefur giving up her kits to become leader, for the Greater Good, so she can lead the clan. Sure, she was basically forced into it by Starclan and her uncle’s urging, but then.. she could have told Sunstar. By his own words, he shared her doubts about Thistleclaw. And even if it WAS wholly out of her control, she still sets a Precedent .

Stonefur made deputy of Riverclan, yet replaced easily by his sister when he died. Completely interchangeable parts; one gone doesn’t matter, now does it?

Mistystar, desperate to keep a hold on her clan, to lead it toward Starclan again, because how Ever could the clan prosper without them? Mistystar, standing over the body of her son as he bleeds out, forbidding Mothwing to care for him. Because Starclan would Never want her to allow her son to be healed by someone who didn’t believe in them. He needed A Real medicine cat. This was for the good of him And their clan. Begging her ancestors to save him, her son, the only one left, and yet treating him as almost a bargaining chip, a necessary sacrifice. Starclan before him.

Reedwhisker… Mistystar’s son and deputy. A choice the narrative of her novella suggests might not have been entirely without bias. She ‘wanted to believe’ rather than ‘knew’ in any certain measure he was the right choice. Especially as she earlier in the book is described as not having considered a deputy prior… it seems he was the simplest option. Not too much unlike Leopardstar’s naming of Mistyfoot as deputy after Stonefur.

It doesn’t take long after he’s named deputy for his own mother to put his life on the line to prove a point. How would that feel?? Would his own life even have individual value anymore? Mother and son, the last of their Original family left. Tight knit enough for Mistystar to defy any stigma of naming her son as deputy. Duskfur’s kits are young at this time… and if you subscribe to the idea of his being their father, he follows in the pawsteps of his grandmother, giving up being their father to serve his clan, leader and mother. They and Duskfur didn’t matter anymore. Do you think he ever would look Down again, when he could look up at the stars?

Curlfeather.. slighted by Riverclan’s weakness time and time again. Watching her father and grandmother hold all the power over her clan, and continue to do nothing to protect them, turning instead to the stony gazes of their ancestors for guidance. What good did that ever bring her? Their pull took away her father, and it took away her husband. But she could fix it, can’t she? She could save their clan Herself. And all it would take is guiding the paws of her own daughter, telling her to keep her eyes forward and focus on nothing else, doing something Wrong for the sake of the greater good..

[ardentpoop]

@lycanpunk666 inbox glitched so screenshotting

wife sam is actually everything to me even though the mere mention of her sends certain dean-biased viewers into a blind rage lol <3 and even though I’m generally not a fan of what shippers with either character preference reduce her to. extremely easy to read her into the text given sam’s role as cursed partner, her proximity to the Corruptible Innocents samndean “protect” given her place in the family (her permanently ranking below dean in terms of their Business), the anger that gets pruned out of her just like it gets pruned out of the show’s Bad Girls Turned Good because of all this, her often getting benched by dean For Her Own Good while he goes off on save-the-day missions and she hangs back to like get threatened with bodily harm by her implied-rapist/torturer because threats of bodily harm to sam are the number 1 way for our villains to take a chunk out of dean’s armor, her role shrinking to exclude everything that isn’t emotionally supporting dean and the other members of their Family, her interiority time and time again being neglected by the narrative in favor of dean’s feelings which take precedence even in situations where sam is being directly harmed by his actions or inactions, because he has a level of power over her that is largely unquestioned and even consistently held up as the way things have to be.

she’s “the girl who turned [Lucifer] down at the prom.” she’s “travis bickle in a skirt.” (think about this one - why travis bickle as opposed to a male hero? why “in a skirt”?) “it would take a lot more than [Dean] trying to kill sam with a hammer to make [her] want to walk away,” because, of course, they’ve “been through so much together.” she is a soldier with a Duty To The Country that dean must keep her fulfilling like he does, but the boundaries of her role simultaneously overlap with those of military wife amelia; she is the women insisting on their war-corrupted soldier husbands’ Ultimate Goodness in “the things they carried” and throughout s10. she keeps dean human (how?) like he keeps her human (how?), and this is more important than anything else in her life, and she cannot decide that it is not. she was lost when she tried to leave her family the first time, and she finds her way back. and then again in s4, and then again in s8. she finally understands that “this is [her] life,” and she loves it, seriously, don’t mind how tired she gets. there is no life outside of hunting/the family/dean waiting for her as long as dean is alive. she would never do this without her brother.

lucifer comes back (again) and she can barely look at him and he needs to get her away from jack to be able to mold the kid in his image. the three of them are in a church together and lucifer says one of you has to kill the other for my entertainment and sam tells jack “kill me” and jack turns the blade on himself. sam and dean were in a different church together and it was “you and me, come whatever” even after a whole season of dean salting her wounds, because sure sam is often Broken and Wrong and Selfish and a Buzzkill but who is dean if she doesn’t stay? she cannot be “normal” and she cannot die, because she is his. according to dean, “with [Sam], up is down and down is sideways” - he supposedly doesn’t know what she wants when she’s upset with him, whether she’s tried explaining it or not. “whatever happened,” (harm to sam as a direct consequence of dean’s actions) they are family. “[Dean says] that like it's some sort of cure-all, like it can change the fact that everything that has ever gone wrong between [them] has been because [they’re] family.” sam insists on space from dean after a particular betrayal of her trust, and it’s “quit being a bitch” and it’s “don’t flatter yourself, I don’t break that easy,” and he is incapable of respecting the boundaries she sets, because she doesn’t get to decide that they’re “not brothers” (not what she said. why does he interpret it this way?) “he’s a good kid,” sam insists of jack, to dean. “give him a chance, please. for me.” “I’m not gonna be his mother, and neither are you,” says dean. and yet.

anyway TL;DR……. yes 🥰 you can append any bride horror motif to sam and I am smiling and nodding at how well it fits.

[nogoodsheepstealing-greatgrandma]

Fixing Laena Velaryon

First off, my preference with HOTD would have been to have a book-accurate adaption of Fire & Blood, and of Laena's role within the story. The typical response to that sentiment is of course "why can't you just accept the show on its own merits?" (those merits being increasingly dubious as of S2). In the spirit of doing so, I'd like to demonstrate how the bare minimum of effort could have been made to keep Laena an actual character in this high-budget fanfiction. And in doing so, hammer in how the failure to do even the bare minimum demonstrates the show's misogynoir.

For the sake of this post I am accepting the age changes, and I am accepting Alicent taking Laena's place as Rhaenyra's friend. I'll even accept the structure of the season, keeping events broadly the same even though this unfortunately continues to place Laena in the margins (again, we are talking about the bare minimum here). But within this limited framework there was still plenty of space to focus on Laena - and a narrative need to do so. For one, how the audience feels about Laena carries into how we feel about her daughters (assuming an alternate reality of course where the intention was to make Baela and Rhaena actual main characters - I will eventually do a follow up post for them).

For another, her story impacts how we feel about the succession of both Driftmark and the Iron Throne. She is the daughter of The Queen Who Never Was; by all the laws of Westeros, her mother is the rightful Queen (a daughter comes before a male cousin). Laena herself is a would-be queen consort, and her daughters are technically the rightful heirs to both Driftmark and the Iron Throne as Rhaenys' only biological grandchildren (so suck it Vaemond). When Vaemond put himself forward as heir over Laena's daughters, he was actually using the same precedent that was used to pass over Laena's mother.

Laena therefore plays a vital role beyond just being Rhaenyra's friend and Daemon's wife. Her wishes and agency with regards to the succession matters. She is the spurned queen consort and mother of two rightful heirs - who rides the largest dragon in the world. She is the one who solidifies the Targaryen-Velaryon alliance with Rhaenyra. Her loss really should have felt like a dramatic turning of the tides. And her legacy should have been felt after her death.

Episode 1

First off, I would like to make a point about how Laena is introduced (speaking as someone who knows fuck all about cinematography so... apologies in advance!). To preface, not every main character needs to have a big introduction in a pilot episode - the pilot has enough on its plate without having to introduce every single member of its large ensemble cast. It is fair enough to simply have a character appear and then get to know them later. But for the purposes of this post I want to explore where there was space for Laena, and how it could have been used.

In the show we first see Laena sitting next to her brother at the tourney. The camera doesn’t single them out or give us any reason to identify them as crucial characters yet. They are to the side and in the background of the shot. The audience can guess that these kids must be Rhaenys and Corlys’ children based on where they are sitting, but their focus is primarily drawn to Viserys addressing the crowd, and Alicent waiting for Rhaenyra in the front.

Later on in the tourney, we finally get brief cuts to close up shots of Laena and Laenor reacting to the violence, and of Laena grabbing her brother’s arm for support. This is a nice quick way to establish their sibling dynamic (little sister seeking comfort). But that’s all for this episode, and considering how the audience's attention is directed in their first appearance this brief cut is probably the first time many viewers noticed them. While watching this episode with my sister - who is a show-only viewer - she did ask me "wait who are these kids?" (she also missed that Rhaenys and Boremund Baratheon were cousins - a reason it would have been helpful for show-only viewers if Eve Best had her book-canon Baratheon hair).

Since we don't see Laena and Laenor again in this episode, it's fair to ask whether their first appearance could have been a bit more notable, signalling to the audience - especially show-only viewers - to remember them for later.

Compare to how we are introduced to other characters in this series opener - both key characters and minor.

As a main character, we get a clear view of Alicent coming down from the carriage to greet Rhaenyra, and the camera stays on and keeps Alicent in centre frame as we are introduced to her properly.

Harrold Westerling is a minor character - who we get to know more in this episode than we do Rhaenyra's cousins. We get a clear view of him waiting for Rhaenyra on his horse, and it doesn't take long for him to get a close up. We take the time to efficiently meet him and establish his dynamic with Rhaenyra as a protective kingsguard. From his prominence here I actually expected him to be a bigger character going forward.

We even get a fair bit of time to meet this anxious dragonkeeper, as he nervously takes his cue from his older, more experienced colleague. A good example about how a mere couple of seconds can be efficiently used to communicate a character and a relationship when the show chooses to take the time.

Again we don't need to establish every key character in this opening episode - it can be enough to quickly identify them and then meet them again properly in the next episode, as we do with Laena. There are a lot of characters who need introducing after all.

But considering the way we are introduced to other minor characters - from characters who will come back like Harrold Westerling, to characters we probably won't watch out for again like the anxious dragonkeeper - and again its fair to consider whether Laena and Laenor's introduction could have been a little more notable. Especially since Rhaenyra's relationship with the Velaryon family is important to establish. As the dragonkeeper demonstrates, a few seconds here and there is even enough - if you can devote that time to an extra, you can devote it to Laena.

At the very least, the episode could have found the spare seconds (if not whole ass minutes please - this is the barest of bare minimums) to establish a more frequent presence for Laena and Laenor. To signal to the audience that we should remember who these characters are, that they will be important going forward.

One opportunity to provide a more notable introduction is the scene where Rhaenyra and Alicent walk arm in arm through the castle. The atmosphere of this scene sets a 'happier more innocent times' tone ahead of the upcoming loss and tragedy. To add to this tone, the show could have had Rhaenyra and Alicent pass Laena and Laenor along the way, running and playing through the castle.

Maybe Rhaenyra could quickly sidestep her cousins to stop them running into her on her way up the stairs, maybe lift up her and Alicent's arms to let them run through while she and Alicent continue to be engrossed in their conversation. This would establish both a familiar and playful dynamic between Rhaenyra and her cousins, while not interrupting her moment with Alicent.

Alternatively, if we wanted to introduce Laena as a character in the pilot, we could add another scene of Rhaenyra and Alicent walking down the hallway before they arrive at Aemma's rooms. Laena and Laenor could be again running and playing in the hallway, only this time they could stop to quickly interact with their cousin, maybe pass on that her mother's looking for her. Laena could even stop to excitedly ask after Syrax before her brother pulls her away to keep playing.

Not only would this give us a clearer and endearing introduction to the characters - both characterising the siblings and establishing their dynamic - but it would more directly let the audience know 'remember these two, they are important'. Of course this new scene would add more to the episode runtime - so a more efficient option is to just have them playing in the existing scene without stopping for a hello.

Another efficient option is to have Rhaenyra quickly interact with her cousins as she hurries in late to the tourney.

It can be as quick as a grin between the cousins as Rhaenyra ducks her way to her seat, or Laena could giggle as her older cousin pulls an 'oops, I'm late' face. A deleted line from episode 5 informs us that Laena used to follow Rhaenyra around like a shadow, so showing Laena light up to see Rhaenyra here could be a sweet way to depict this side of their relationship.

Above all, it would be a chance to give a clearer and longer shot of the two siblings rather than just a brief cut to them, letting them be in the centre of the frame and bringing them more firmly to our attention. Then by the time we cut to them reacting to the violence of the tourney, we already know who they are.

The interaction could meanwhile take advantage of the staging to visually emphasise Alicent's isolation among the Valyrians, with Alicent waiting in her seat on her side of the stage while Rhaenyra is on the other side with her family. Again I would rather a book-accurate telling of the Dance, and as such I have little regard for Rhaenycent or the Saga of Alicent the Eternal Victim. But in the spirit of this post, I will pepper in examples of how expanding Laena's role could have mutually benefitted the story this fanfiction wanted to tell... while slipping in a core trait of Book Alicent - jealousy towards children ;)

Finally, we could simply have the cousins be present at Aemma's funeral - we get a clear shot of their parents among the mourners after all.

To go further, there is an opportunity to add in another moment between Rhaenyra and her cousins.

On the one hand, I do like how the funeral scene ends, with this shot here of Rhaenyra turning away from her mother's cremation as the smoke fills the screen. It's a shot that makes Rhaenyra feel very alone, which emotionally is important to prioritise for this episode. The scene is after all partly about Rhaenyra's relationship with her father, specifically her grief at not being the son he wanted, and so ending the scene on Rhaenyra alone arguably makes it more impactful later in the episode when her father makes her his heir.

However it could have also been impactful to set up a parallel with the funeral in episode 7, where Rhaenyra nudges Jacaerys to offer his condolences to Baela and Rhaena. Rhaenys could likewise nudge her children to go and offer comfort to Rhaenyra, and Laena could comfortingly take her hand. Then when Baela and Jace take hands, we'd have a sense of a bond getting passed down through the generations.

Taking time to depict this bond would make the viewer less inclined to ask for receipts when Rhaenys claims in episode 5 that Rhaenyra and her cousins grew up together. Meanwhile Laena's death is of course sadder the more we see of her, and the more we see her relationships with the characters we spend more time getting to know (like Rhaenyra).

It would also provide a foundation for Rhaenyra's relationship with her stepdaughters - the more we see that their mother was important to Rhaenyra the more layers are automatically added to her interactions with them.

I think at least some of these moments could have been easily slotted into existing scenes, and that any added screentime would have been worth it. The legwork provided by these moments importantly give the writers an easier task writing these characters in later episodes. You don't need potentially clunky exposition like 'they grew up together' or 'Laena used to follow you around like a shadow'.

Besides, as a viewer we are always going to be more emotionally moved and invested in what we see, rather than what we hear exposited to us.

Episode 2

A running theme throughout the first half of the season is the systemic sexual abuse of girls within the feudal patriarchy that is Childbrideros, and this episode sees both Laena and Alicent served up as child brides by their parents. First off, I already really like the scene of Laena and Viserys walking through the gardens. It does a good job first establishing her obsession with Vhagar, and above all emphasising how young Laena is. It's extremely disturbing, and props to the actress here because you can see actual terror in Laena's eyes as she repeats what she's been taught to say.

Honestly I think Nova Foueillis-Mosé was criminally underused.

Again, this scene is already incredibly effective on its own. But consider how the additions to the previous episode could have done some extra legwork for this scene. How much more disturbing is this already disturbing scene if we’d just watched Laena running innocently around the Red Keep, playing with her brother? If we'd just seen her being a sweet little sister with Rhaenyra? It’s the difference between getting to know a character from a disturbing scene, and witnessing a disturbing scene with a character we’ve already gotten to know.

Now this is a bit of a tangent, but relevant to setting up Laena's role in the story while adding to the themes of the episode. I would have made some changes to Rhaenyra’s interaction with Rhaenys*, as they watch Laena and Viserys from above. When Rhaenyra asks Rhaenys if she is ok with this, Rhaenys could inform the audience that Rhaenyra’s own mother Aemma was the same age as Laena when the Old King arranged her marriage to Viserys. And before her Rhaenyra’s grandmother Daella was such a delicate young girl when she was married to Lord Rodrik Arryn - seven-and-ten yet, by all accounts, barely out of childhood.

*again, for the sake of this post I am broadly accepting the show's depiction of Rhaenys and her hostile relationship with Rhaenrya.

This would emphasize the systemic generational abuse and trauma of Targaryen girls that Rhaenyra fears, and give the audience a clearer idea of Old King Jaehaerys. I hated the little joke Lyonel makes about the trouble Jaehaerys had with his daughters – not because this isn’t the kind of joke people would have made, but because this is all the audience gets to learn about Jaehaerys and his daughters.

I would also take this opportunity to make clear to the audience what exactly happened in the Great Council at Harrenhall. As the show depicts it, the audience would think Rhaenys had put her name forward against tradition. As I said above, tradition actually dictated that a daughter comes before an uncle, and certainly before a male cousin. The Lords weren’t voting in favour of tradition – they were given the chance by Jaehaerys (who sought to retroactively legitimise his own claim to the throne - his older brother's daughters rightfully came before him) to ignore tradition and let their misogyny pick.

Some of this information could have been delivered during the opening prologue at the Great Council. But there is also space to inform the audience here, by having Rhaenys bitterly recount how she was passed over. Her father was the Old King’s firstborn, by all laws and customs of the Andals and the First Men she was the heir. A daughter comes before an uncle, and certainly before a cousin.

This addition would achieve three things.

Clarify the injustice done to Rhaenys, and the hypocrisy of the Greens’ appeals to custom and tradition.

Emphasise the stakes against Rhaenyra – all law and precedent was on Rhaenys’ side and it still wasn’t enough. Meanwhile her own situation is an entirely radical one.

Make it clear that Vaemond is absolutely not the heir to Driftmark when Laena's daughters come before him, therefore laying the groundwork for later episodes.

In terms of adding screentime to Laena (and Laenor), there is in opportunity in the scene where Rhaenyra picks out the new Kingsguard

Since Rhaenys is watching from the gallery anyway (she sure does like lurking in galleries), her children can also be present. They could be watching excitedly at the knights assorted below, perhaps even interact with Rhaenyra as she playfully asks for their advice. There could be a horrible moment of dramatic irony in which Laenor voices his approval of Rhaenyra picking Ser Criston Cole on the basis of combat experience.

I would end the scene with a moment of Laena lingering on the balcony, and noticing Otto Hightower watching her. This little girl is his daughter’s competition. The uneasy moment passes and she runs off to join her brother.

This would also be fitting as the following scene is of Alicent visiting Viserys and pretending to be interested in his models (directly followed by a scene of her listening to Rhaenyra's fears of getting displaced as heir and telling her not to worry... but sure Rhaenyra owed Alicent her sexual history! 😂). It would add a disturbing thematic throughline in the scene transition - from one potential child bride to another.

Episode 3

We meet teenage Laenor in this episode, so let us also meet teenage Laena and include the cut scene of her claiming Vhagar to end the episode. There is an opportunity to visually parallel Laena and Aemond’s claiming of Vhagar – but for the purposes of this post I’m going to assume budget is an issue.

With this in mind, there are ways around the budget. We could have a scene of Laena walking uphill, and looking down to see Vhagar asleep on the beach below. The camera closes in on a look of determination on her face as the scene cuts to black and the credits roll. Alternatively, assuming an even tighter budget, Laena could be hiking and searching for Vhagar and simply hear a roar in the distance. Maybe she could smile as a shadow flies overhead.

One impact of including this moment would be to make the audience partially associate Vhagar with Laena, therefore making them more sympathetic to Rhaena’s emotional claim. I don’t have patience for the whole “this entitled little black girl thinks she’s entitled to a dragon – dragons aren’t inherited they choose their rider – someone tell this idiot little black girl that a dragon ain’t no slave”. I don’t give a shit who is correct about the fictional science of dragon-taming – I care about a little girl feeling an emotional connection to her dead mother’s dragon.

Moreover, in cutting the scene of Laena claiming Vhagar I think the writers have misunderstood the importance of both this moment and the character. I think they assumed that since Laena dies early we don’t need to spend time with her (even though, again, how we feel about Laena carries into how we feel about her daughters and the succession of Driftmark).

But remember that before Laena claims Vhagar in the show, the ancient dragon is living wild and unclaimed. Rather than leaving Vhagar in the wild, in claiming her Laena brings her into the dance. In the context of the show, Laena's connection to Vhagar is what makes the act of Aemond then claiming her become a cause for conflict between the kids (the conflict between the kids in the book meanwhile was not about Vhagar, but Aemond just being a bully).

There is also another consequence of Laena claiming Vhagar…

Episode 4

Unfortunately there are no Velaryons in episode 4 and few chances to insert them, but there is a way to make their offscreen presence felt and felt hard. Namely, have the Small Council react to the fact that Laena has just claimed fucking Vhagar. Set up just how terrifying it is to not have Vhagar on your side (especially for the benefit of show-only fans). The largest dragon alive, the last of the conqueror’s dragons...

...Claimed by Laena, who just got passed over as Queen Consort. Laena, whose children have a claim to the Iron Throne. The Velaryons, who have been insulted twice over, now have Vhagar.

That is a political headache indeed. All the more important now that Rhaenyra marries Laenor. House Velaryon needs to be brought into the fold. If you're struggling for space in Episode 3 then Laena claiming Vhagar could even be the opening of Episode 4 - the event that sets into motion Viserys' political headache and Rhaenyra's marriage.

I mean, we already have the scene of the small council reacting to Corlys replacing the Crabfeeder as the power in the Stepstones, and Otto delivering the news that Corlys is in negotiations with the sealord of Braavos to marry Laena to the sealords' son. Since we're discussing the implications of House Velaryon entering an alliance with the Free Cities, is it just possibly a teensy weensy bit relevant to mention that Laena rides Vhagar?

Episode 5

First change to this episode isn’t strictly about Laena, but it is about Daemon as a husband, which informs our understanding of his relationship with both Laena and Rhaenyra.

Basically - divorce rock is fucking dumb. Book purism aside (sorry Conman, but Book Daemon had a solid alibi), it demonises an already dark character, who already has plenty of flaws without adding bashing his wife’s head in with a rock. The show doesn’t even fully commit to it, since it doesn’t tell us what exactly Daemon was planning to do before the horse threw Rhea off its back – ask for an annulment? Kill her a different way? Yes it gives us the chance to meet Rhea Royce – and she is iconic – but the cost is stupid and avoidable and damaging to Daemon’s character.

This isn’t to whitewash Daemon – but to stress that just because he is a dark character it doesn’t mean that every possible evil act is on the writer’s table. Yes, I know, this is the guy who sent two assassins to kill a child (unless you subscribe to the theory that Book Mysaria - bitter at losing her own child - had her own interpretation of 'son for a son') – however, he's not the guy who killed the child himself.

Is there a moral difference? I ultimately don't think so, but there is a fascinating psychological difference. Compare to Aemond, who personally beheads the children of House Strong, who murders a fleeing Lucerys in cold blood. Assuming an interpretation of Daemon in which it is him and not Mysaria who orders Blood and Cheese - how much is this Daemon actually willing to get his hands dirty with cowardly tasks? To whom is he willing to commit what evil acts, and how? Does he reconcile his self-image this way, “I’m not the one who killed the kid, it was an assassin”? “I’m not the one who killed Laenor, it was an assassin?”

Because that’s Daemon’s MO*, from Qarl Correy to Blood and Cheese. If he had anything to do with Rhea’s death in the book, it was through an assassin (and again, I think Daemon was a bit preoccupied with, you know, fighting in the stepstones - sometimes people just fall off their horse).

*again, for the sake of argument, assuming it was him

But that wouldn’t have given us the opportunity to see him and Rhea Royce interacting. So between that, and in the spirit of keeping the events of the episode broadly intact, I would have Daemon simply walk away after Rhea hits her head on the ground, the word ‘coward’ ringing in his ears. We don’t know what he planned to do, if he would have gone through with it – what we do know is that in this moment he wants the outcome but doesn’t want to actually be the one to do it. Rhea Royce isn’t a worthy opponent. Jaehaerys isn’t a worthy opponent.

This sets us up better for his relationship with his next wives. Daemon is capable of dark and violent acts, but he isn't the sort of person to bash his wife's head in with a rock. We can see his tenderness and genuine love for Laena without thinking 'does he merely see her as an obstacle between him and Rhaenyra?'

Getting past the Daemon tangent

In this episode we have a nice scene of Rhaenyra and Laenor negotiating the terms of their marriage. But when it comes to Laena we only get a brief snatch of her friendship with Rhaenyra. And there were plenty of opportunities to see more of that friendship, and of Laena.

Upon their arrival at Driftmark, we could firstly establish more of a presence for teenage Laena as she greets them. Let the camera give her a close up, making eye contact first with Viserys, then with Rhaenyra. In that close up, let the audience see that Laena knows her claiming Vhagar is part of the reason they are here, and she is enjoying it a bit. Aside from giving Laena the respect she deserves, this would establish to the audience just how powerful it is politically to be the rider of Vhagar - adding to the stakes when Aemond later claims her.

Next, I found the bit where both girls are unceremoniously barred from the throne room... very odd and thematically on the nose. We get it, women are barred from making decisions about their own lives etc etc... but we are talking about the crown princess and the rider of Vhagar... and Rhaenys is going to be in the room anyway. Also it's a tad insulting on Viserys' part to order his Kingsguard to bar Corlys' Velaryon's daughter from a room in her own home. Kind of a diplomatic whoopsie.

It would have made more sense if the crown princess and the rider of Vhagar were at least initially both in the room, then perhaps sent away while the adults talk business. We could have even had a little power play by the Velaryons - Laena can offer to escort them to meet her father and take the lead, positioning herself to be walking by the King's side instead of Lyonel. A subtle dig by the Velaryons, to remind Viserys that he passed over Laena as his consort and now he owes them. Bonus points if Laena smiles back at Rhaenyra and Rhaenyra looks amused by the situation (and slowly realising that she might be a little bit attracted to Laena...).

Next up... Rhaenyra and Laenor having an unsupervised walk on the beach? In a world obsessed with premarital virginity? After last episode? It just makes sense to have Laena and Ser Joffrey walking a bit behind them as chaperones. Then while Laenor has his moment with Joffrey in the dunes, Laena and Rhaenyra can continue walking along the beach together. Again, in showing their bond we build a foundation for their alliance over Driftmark and for Rhaenyra’s relationship with her stepdaughters.

The two of them can talk about how they’ll be good-sisters soon, and how now they can finally go flying together, something Laena wanted to do since she was a dragon-obsessed little girl following her older cousin around like a shadow. Before they moved back to Driftmark she used to hope that once Syrax was big enough Rhaenyra would take her for a ride.

We can use this moment to explore the more positive side of the Targaryen’s relationship to the dragons. Yes they can be death and destruction and hubris and arrogance and untameable nature. But they are also a wonder, they are liberty, they are seeing the world as no one else can see. To women in particular, they can be a means of power and agency that they otherwise wouldn't have.

Laena could even note this - she could make a reference to how her claiming of Vhagar has brought about Rhaenyra's betrothal to her brother. Laena has made it so she and her family can't be ignored.

Showing this political awareness by Laena, and at least some kinship between her and Rhaenyra, is important. Because Laena sees the influence she currently holds, and she recognises the implications of how she uses it. They could discuss the sudden flood of suitors flocking Laena's way, and Rhaenyra can admit that Laena's marriage is a source of anxiety to the royal council. They could even joke that Otto must be scratching his head in Oldtown, trying to calculate whether he could successfully offer Gwayne as a suitor, get himself another grandchild with a claim to the Iron Throne.

The implications are clear - you want Laena (and her future children) on your side. And Laena, recognising the impact of the Great Council for female succession, both feels a kinship with Rhaenyra and recognises the long game in supporting her sister-in-law. This will nicely contrast her with Alicent's actions in this episode - where she makes a bold stand in favour of the patriarchy to lash out at Rhaenyra for having premarital sex.

Now, I have mixed feelings about stopping short of having Laena and Rhaenyra discuss (or hint at) betrothals between their future children.

On the one hand, it is critical that this was Laena's wish. Her agency in solidifying the Targaryen-Velaryon alliance, in choosing to help her brother and her friend, in finding a way to one-up her greedy uncle Vaemond and secure Driftmark and the Iron Throne for her daughters - this is non-negotiable to me.

But the purpose of this exercise was to outline how the show's version of events could have still made space for Laena. And the show's version of events places the betrothal of Rhaenyra and Laena's children as the resolution to the conflict of Episode 8 - after Laena is dead. Plus for these versions of the characters, it is important that Rhaenyra offers a betrothal to Alicent. At this point, where they are, to Rhaenyra's knowledge, still friends, she is likely thinking about doing so already. Plus it's not as though Rhaenyra planned from the outset to not have Laenor's children, which increases the strategic necessity of a betrothal with Laena's children.

As a compromise, it is therefore important to at least make clear that Laena would have backed the betrothal. That aside from loving and accepting her brother and the fact that he loved his adopted kids, Laena did support Rhaenyra as queen, and was politically-minded enough to calculate that this alliance was both in their mutual interests and a great big Fuck You to the Grand Council.

Her 'girlbossery' is in politics, not self-immolation.

Now onto the Wedding

First off, give Laena some damn close-ups - remind the audience again of her influence in the marriage. Put her in pride of place even, another subtle dig by the Velaryons. Why stick her in the corner when her brother could be escorting her on his arm? Here is the dragon-riding woman who would have been Queen... look how stunningly gorgeous she is.

On that note, Laena Velaryon Rider of Vhagar certainly should have suitors flocking to dance with her, there's no need for her to be stuck at the table with uncle Vaemond for as long as she is in the episode. Yes she makes eyes at Daemon across the table... but she can just as easily do that from the dance floor. Again, surrounded by suitors, maybe a certain Braavosi guest could try his luck... before Daemon swoops in.

There are also plenty of moments for Laena and Rhaenyra to interact. The camera could show them smiling in greeting at each other, maybe passing each other during the dancing, maybe throw in a bit of sapphic subtext ;)

The camera could also cut to Alicent watching them from the table – she is replaced by the girl who escaped her fate, and who shares dragonriding with Rhaenyra. There are part of a world that Alicent can never join (or rather would never, Rhaenyra did offer her the chance to fly together), and have a means of freedom within the patriarchy that she will never know (that she turned down – her friend was right there, she could have asked her for help...)

Finally, in the episode we get a brief shot of Laena looking anxiously for her brother in the crowd during the chaos. It would take a mere couple of seconds to add Laena rushing to her brother’s side as he sobs over Joffrey’s mutilated body, to show her holding her brother close. This will build on the bond we saw in episode 1 – where Laena seeks her brother’s comfort during the tourney – and make Laenor's grief at losing his sister hit harder later.

Like, here we have Laena trying to push through a crowd to get to her brother... followed by a dispersed crowd with no Laena in sight. What gives?

We could also, you know, have Laena present during the actual wedding ceremony perhaps? Where is she??? That's her grieving brother getting married. Even Alicent is there (presumably just before running off to recruit Crispy and get him off for murder).

Episode 6

Unfortunately, in order to stick to the confines of the way this season is structured, we have to stay in Pentos on Daemon and Laena's inexplicably long honeymoon. Episode 6 needs to have Rhaenyra without the support of having Daemon and Laena nearby, so they can't be back at Driftmark as they are in the book.

In the book, this is the pre-Red Spring period where Rhaenyra has come into her own and is relatively thriving - Otto is in Oldtown, Lyonel is Hand, she has Harwin, she has Laenor happily claiming their children as his heirs, she has Laena (and with her, Vhagar), and yes she has Daemon. Until the Red Spring kicks into gear and she starts losing everything but Daemon - she loses Laenor, Laena, Harwin, she is ordered away from court, and Otto is back as Hand.

Since we've lost Rhaenyra's childhood of being bullied by her stepmother, this episode can no longer be the high-point before the Red Spring - it has to compensate by reversing things to make adult Rhaenyra isolated and humiliated in her own home (again, as book Rhaenyra was in childhood). Episode 7 then concerns Rhaenyra's reunion with Daemon, which necessitates placing him on a different continent in Episode 6 (butterfly effects include Laenor having to 'die' after his own funeral, while Harwin now dies before the funeral - Daemon can't be a suspect in Laenor's murder if he's on a separate continent, so the deaths must be swapped around).

Which is a bit of a mess, because Episode 5 implies Daemon starts courting Laena at least partly out of ambition - she rides Vhagar, their children have a claim to both Driftmark and the Iron Throne etc. The show goes as far as to open Episode 5 with Daemon murdering his first wife with a rock- why is he now wasting a powerful marriage by hiding in Pentos? Where did this come from? The episode does admittedly have Laena say this isn't the Daemon she married... but it doesn't properly explain how or why this came to be.

One suggestion is that he is moping over not being married to Rhaenyra and dissatisfied with Laena as a replacement. And er... he was literally courting Laena at the wedding? Yes I know he and Rhaenyra were flirting with each other, but they were both fully aware it was not happening. Again, he was literally courting Laena - signalling he wasn't about to petition Viserys to cancel Rhaenyra's wedding having now freed himself from his first wife.

Even if you want to insult Laena like this, how is it in character for him to mope on Pentos when they can do that from Driftmark? Is he trying to go cold turkey from Rhaenyra? Does that really override his ambition, his love for his brother, his hatred of the greens etc? Book purism aside, is it really consistent with his actions in episode 5 - which include murdering his first wife and courting Laena the Rider of Vhagar.

The other suggestion is that he is upset that his brother doesn't want him around. Which again isn't really consistent with his actions in episode 5 - which include him immediately ignoring the fact that Viserys had banished him, swaggering into the wedding, and easily getting away with it, even flirting with Rhaenyra in front of his brother.

So we have to reconcile the Doylist need to separate Daemon and Laena from Rhaenyra, while maintaining character consistency.

If we have to keep them in Pentos, we could tie it in with the Triarchy somehow? Have Daemon and Laena securing diplomatic relations with Pentos, to ensure an alliance against the Three Daughters possibly rising again, perhaps even at Viserys' behest? And maybe Daemon read this as getting banished by his brother one time too many, so he's prolonging their trip because he's upset his brother doesn't want him around? After all the last time Daemon was dealing with his brother's rejection he threw himself into fighting the Triarchy - so it would be consistent.

It would also be a further mention of the Triarchy in this episode, connecting to Rhaenyra's suggestion of military installations in the stepstones, and better set up their return during the Battle of the Gullet. Then instead of performing for the Prince of Pentos, Laena and Daemon could be intimidating a representative from Tyrosh, Lys or Myr.

Daemon aside, we could at least have Laena explicitly bristle at being taken away from the political action at home.

I mean, couldn't the writers have had Laena talk about literally anything other than wanting to die a dragonrider’s death? The entire self-immolation shtick is such a gross and stupid attempt at girlbossifying her death, and puts Laena into the position of selfishly traumatizing her daughters (not that the show does much with this trauma).

The biggest and most obvious change is of course to stick to Laena’s death in the books, as it is so much more tender and emotionally moving. After half a season of establishing her love of dragons and flying, Laena tries to fly Vhagar one last time but collapses. Daemon gently carries a sobbing Laena back to bed.

Her last moments can therefore be spent with her daughters. Maybe she passes on a legacy to them, some final words that they take with them into the dance. Or maybe her final moments are a lot less comforting, maybe she continues to cry for Daemon to carry her back to Vhagar. Maybe her daughters get to say goodbye, maybe one of them runs away, unable to face her mother’s final moments. Anything to say goodbye to the character, and to begin Rhaena and Baela’s journey, that isn’t just the shock value of a ‘girlboss’ burning herself alive.

Back to Laena talking about literally anything else.

In her conversations with Daemon, I would again establish Laena’s position on the succession of Driftmark, and her support of Rhaenyra. As she’s telling Daemon that she wants to go home, she could perhaps say that Laenor’s letters worry her. He doesn't say it outright, but she can tell he is scared for his sons. Maybe she can say that she knows her uncle Vaemond. His eye is on Driftmark*. Which puts those boys in danger. She can then tell Daemon that her brother needs them, that Rhaenyra needs them. That they need to go home. That she wants to go home. That she doesn't want to be hiding away in Pentos while the future of female succession in Westeros is being decided. She is the rider of Vhagar with a claim to the throne - she has power and she wants to use it.

She could even give Daemon an ultimatum: once the baby is born I'm hopping on Vhagar and bringing my children back to Westeros with or without you. Give us a sense of what could have been if she had only lived.

*if we could only have the action take place on Driftmark, we could replace the scenes of the Prince of Pentos or Laena's dreams of self-immolation with... Laena interacting with Vaemond. He could be making snarky comments about her brother and his children, with Laena coolly daring him to tell her what he's implying. He could even try to hint at a betrothal with Baela, seeking a way to claim Driftmark through her. Laena, seeing through his bullshit and reminded of her own near brush with child marriage, tries to conceal her anger as she smoothly refuses his proposal. She could even hint she already has someone in mind for Baela. (I actually want this so badly I would contrive to have an unwelcome Vaemond turn up in Pentos for this exact purpose).

Unfortunately if we accept the changes to the show then, again, Laena can’t be the one to actually arrange the betrothal between her daughters and Rhaenyra's sons like she does in the book. The show has structured things so the betrothal does not happen until the end of episode 8, long after Laena is dead. The tension of episode 8 revolves around the question of salvaging the Targaryen-Velaryon alliance.

But, again, to compensate we can make Laena’s wishes clear. We can establish beyond a doubt that she would have approved of the betrothal. We can, you know, not erase the voice of a black woman while whitewashing the man who tried to usurp her daughters. We can do the bare minimum to not sideline one of the few black women in fantasy we have.

We can say goodbye to Laena not as a self-immolating girlboss, but as a politically-astute woman who loved the freedom of flying, who fought for her family, who left a legacy for her daughters. A woman who would have changed the entire history of Westeros if childbirth hadn't taken her away.

[yearofthesnape]

Severus Snape and Nettle Wine

Two among our number hold only nettle wine...

I've often wondered why Snape's famous logic puzzle uses nettle wine, rather than (say) currant wine, cherry wine, parsnip wine, or any other kind of wine that would fit the metric requirements of his poem. The light color of nettle wine should not matter, as color is never referenced in the entire puzzle sequence. As far as I know, nettle wine is not more common than the preceding varieties I've listed (though other voices may want to weigh in, as I'm hardly a wine expert). There must be some deeper significance, then, to using nettle. Here are some thoughts I had:

It's a sideways reference to John Nettleship, on whom Snape's character is known to be based.

In Victorian flower language (yes I'm bringing that up again), nettles mean slander. Snape knows people talk about him - how can he not? - and this is his subtle way of saying he has been maligned. In the bigger story, it's a sort of narrative hint, right before we get the proof that all that suspicion of Snape really was slander after all.

The stinging nettle, out of which nettle wine is made, is a weed whose contact is unpleasant to other people (in wild form) but also refreshes them, stinging in a different format (as wine). Snape is also initially and obviously unpleasant and has been treated as unwanted and overlooked, but as time goes on, we see that while he still stings, he also displays unexpected finer qualities.

It seems likely that Snape made the wine as well as the other potions; he can take the unpleasantness in his life, figured by nettles, and turn it into something better.

The irritating weed-like quality of nettles also poetically echoes the nature of these flasks in the riddle; they are nonlethal hindrances to a goal (in this case, getting through the flames). Snape has been observed to deal in imagery, metaphor, and the layers of things, and this is one more example.

As a side note, all the possible configurations listed on the Harry Potter Wiki involve the "second left and the second on the right" being nettle wine. Thus, nettle wine - a possible metonym for Snape himself - is the consistent substance under two different guises, just as Snape plays double agent.

[jesterkoops]

Omg WHAT IF! Potential spoilers for the final scene (and speculation about S3) under the cut.

So, I’ve been thinking Helly is practically doomed. If they finish Cold Harbor, she won’t be needed on the severed floor any longer. If they don’t finish it, it’s because they got Gemma out and the whole project goes to hell once and for all, so she won’t be needed on the severed floor any longer. The only way she survives is if she refuses to leave the severed floor.

So… what if the final scene is a reverse of the scene in 1x08 where Helly is about to go up the elevator, only this time it’s Mark inside the elevator with Gemma/Ms Casey. And Helly is not going with because that would mean her death. So she goes “good luck out there boss” as the doors are about to close and this time it’s Mark that just jumps out of the elevator to grab her (hand) and stay with her. Doors close, Gemma goes up, where maybe Cobel/Devon are waiting to get her out for good. Maybe the alarms go off because Ms Casey isn’t supposed to be in that elevator.

Or maybe, MORE LIKELY, this happens by the severed threshold stairwell instead of the elevator. We have the precedent of the alarms going off when Helly tries to break through it, which is what nico used as a hint for the final shot of the season. And it might work better than the elevator from a narrative standpoint because that would mean Ms Casey would switch to Gemma on the outside of the glass door and witness Mark jumping back across to be with Helly, which would pack more of a dramatic punch. Otherwise there would be no emotional relevance in Gemma seeing Mark jump out of the elevator to be with Helly when she's Ms Casey (plus, it might be easier for Cobel/Devon to get to the stairwell than in the security area where the elevator stops). I noticed the light in the handhold scene from the trailer is red as they begin to hold hands and then seems to switch to normal light, which might signal the door closing again.

And so the season ends with Mark and Helly stuck on the severed floor. I don’t think she/they will be able to “hide” inside Lumon for long, but it might be good enough of a cliffhanger to get us into next season. How would they get out of this next season? Well, maybe this is where the hanging attempt that caused Helly to wake up as Helena on the severed floor comes into play. If they find out that blocking blood supply to the brain stops the chip from switching, all they need to do is block the blood supply just BEFORE Helly goes over the threshold, so that it stops while she’s Helly, and then restart it on the other side.

This likely won't be a long-term solution, either, though. It might very well be that, being free on the outside, Helly might be able to do what she did at the gala just 100 times worse and bring down Lumon, but that seems way too easy and I doubt Lumon won't have/find the means to eventually turn off her chip.

So I think Helly's ultimate survival still hinges on Helena and whether she reintegrates or not. I wrote some spec about this a while back, but if we add what I described above to the mix there's also the option of them getting Helly out and then performing reintegration on Helly rather than Helena so that they can't "kill her" by simply turning off the chip.

Of course, I also think this won't be easy because Helly will absolutely not want to be reintegrated with Helena, but if it's her only chance of survival she might have to take it.

Bottom line, Helena is key to it all at this point.

[greyborn2]

Elisif headcanons now! (friendly tone ofc <3) Why do you think she would be a good marriage candidate? I'm curious :)

Yesssss!!! Okay - so this boils down to two categories. Personal interest in it, and underrated narrative JUICE. Starting with the former because its easier to begin with. So Elisif is just... she's neat. She's simultaneously one of the most politically important people in skyrim while also being COMPLETELY overshadowed by the men around her (Nobody talks about her, really, they talk of Torygg. The civil war isnt her vs ulfric, its TULLIUS vs ulfric. Her own decisions in court the first time we even see her are seemingly overruled on a dime by her own court, by Falk.). Its like she's this big thing of incredible importance and is constantly hidden away both in narrative and in game. But despite that, if you actually sneak in a bit, ignore all the big figures standing in front of her and propping themselves up on top of her, she has a surprising amount of meat to her.

Most of the Jarls are like... a few word summary at best. Greedy idiot boy, honourable honorman, paranoid bigot, old seer, etc etc etc. You get an initial impression of them and thats kinda it. Ulfric has a lot more, obviously, because he's a major character but it would *SEEM* that Elisif should be on the lower end of content. It takes so much to seek her out in her overshadowed little corner after all, but she has so so so much surprising stuff around her. The necromancer potema plot revolves around her, a whole big dialogue tree that isnt super common to see for a jarl, some touching personal quests that go into detail about how she saw her late husband. Its just all super compelling to me to have a character that, despite being so important, is *soooo* hidden away actually have some meat to her. Plus she's just a nice person!!! ANYWAYS!! PART 2!! The JUICE!!

For starters, I think, there should just be more opportunities for the dragonborn to play the political game if they want. Beyond just choosing a side in a war or ticking off their 'thane of everywhere' list, actually getting in on climbing the ladder and enmeshing oneself with the politics of the land they're in. BUT BUT... same can be said for Ulfric. Absolutely true. I do think he should also be a marriage candidate. BUT...

I think Elisif PARTICULARLY makes sense as a marriage opportunity that isn't one you seek out, but one that is put forward to the player. Specifically with an Imperial victory in the civil war.

The war is won. Alduin MAY or MAY NOT be slain. But either way, no matter what, at this point the dragonborn is a war hero, a champion of the people, and decorated imperial legate. And this would be fucking FRIGHTNING, I think, to the politicians back in Cyrodiil. There's a *history* of war hero dragonborns, popular with the people, turning on their commanders and declaring themselves emperor afterall. Oh boy is there a precedent. Suddenly they're the big figure in a war that was supposed to be Tullius' duty and they might start sweating in their boots a little.

SO... after the war is won... the legion starts... pushing. Just a little. A few letters, a few comments, that the dragonborn should maybe marry Elisif. Become High King by marriage. Lock them in and satisfy the war hero with a political title off in the ass end of the empire before they turn their gaze toward a ruby throne. Don't give them time to think on it. Ooooh look tasty treat right here shhhh dont think yes you did very good dragonborn yes yes be high king.

I think from there it could go one of three ways;

1) Last Dragonborn marries Elisif but with her actually agreeing to the union (after completing her personal quests) and she FINALLY steps out of the shadows. Rather than the expected you using her for power, she uses YOU for power. You allow yourself to be the thing she props herself up on and finally really starts coming into public view. Maybe to the nervousness of the Empire as she's a less eager puppet then they might have thought, now.

2) Last Dragonborn falls right into the trap the empire placed. You didnt do the quests for Elisif, she remains in the shadows, there's a loveless marriage and you get to be satisfied with a big title that hopefully keeps you occupied.

3) Last Dragonborn refuses all of this. Things seem to proceed as they do in canon but... well... maybe you notice a few more non-DB assassins using imperial weapons attacking you on the road then you did before. Curious.

[leletha-jann]

Le'letha's Grand Unified* Theory of Timestop Creatures

*sorry, neither

Before canon catches up to us, let's fill in the blank:

This creature 

is ​​​​​​​​​​_____________...

1) ​an aspect of Lucrezia

Narratively this makes sense. Lucrezia's the main villain and we really only know the edges of her story yet. But what we do know does not even slightly rule out her being an angry interdimensional timestop creature at some point. We know that the entity originally known as Lucrezia is time-lost and stranded - and I'll take as another data point that she's somewhere without cake! (Does that creature look like it hails from a dimension with cake?) 

We know that a lot of time has elapsed for her and, while I can't find the quote at this exact moment, possibly at different angles - something the Castle describes this creature as traversing. We know that she has been changed by this, and appears throughout the known timeline in different aspects, appearances, and identities. 

And today's page has the Dreen telling us that "a monster must grow! Develop! Mature! ...to achieve its full fearsome potential...worthy of attention."

That sounds an awful lot like whatever Lucrezia has become. 

In fact, one of the very first things Lucrezia told us was "it's been so long since I was really human" (and even at the time, Tarvek went "um wait what", and then sensibly decided not to push.)

It's also distinctly ambiguous if the creature is reaching for the device as the source of the time distortion, or for Klaus. And while it doesn't mean much that I think it's going for Klaus, Gil thought it was. Gil's talent for intuitive leaps is the subject of a different post (I really must write it...), but he's very good at them. When Gil first saw the timestop creature, he didn't say "it's going for the device" or even for "it's going for the device my father used" (which would have moved the dialogue along as needed), he specifically said "it's heading for my father​." I trust Gil's intuition. Here, and in general.

I think the timestop creature is an aspect of Lucrezia. And she is, as far as we know (see option 5), the Big Bad of the series, so "This is probably Lucrezia's fault somehow" is a solid guess.

2) an aspect of Vapnoople

This has been clearly foreshadowed and it's definitely something that's going to come back to bite at some point. This could be that point, absolutely! Not that I didn't enjoy the storylines in the Society dome (I enjoy that phase of the story a lot!), but every storyline is here to do something and it could 100% be the origin story of the timestop creature we'd already seen, because time is not, and has never been, linear in this story! Right from the very beginning! (Yes, this is the infamous Page Four, of course.)

Vapnoople said he'd be back, and once we could talk to Kjarl, we learned that Vapnoople would probably appear very differently and be quite insane. 

Continuing with the idea that the creature is going for Klaus specifically, and not the device, it's possible Klaus cooperatively pinned himself to a board like a specimen and Vapnoople's taking the opportunity to get payback for, y'know, being lobotomized and turned into an object of scorn and pity. That being said, does a warped-by-the-monster-dimension Vapnoople care about that? And is Vapnoople a big enough presence to be the endpoint of the Second Journey? Is this his time to reappear in the story? Besides, he seemed quite happy to be heading off into the monster dimension. I don't think he'd be in a hurry to come back. 

But time is not linear between here and there (or any number of "there"s). So this is a workable second option, and I know it's one in favor with many readers.

3) a totally unconnected genuine interdimensional creature

A pleasingly random option, but one with precedent - we saw the Queen's Society do this earlier and Agatha clearly thought it was relevant to Mechanicsburg. 

One of the fantastic things about Girl Genius is that the world keeps happening. Not everything around us is about us. When you leave food on the floor, the ants that show up are probably not plotting against you. They're just doing ant things. 

(...probably. Although in a world of mad science, who knows?)

4) an aspect of Euphrosnia Heterodyne

An out-there option and the one most likely to elicit screaming from the fandom. (An argument in its favor, I'm sure.)

The mystery surrounding Euphrosnia has been building up in the background for years, a little bit at a time. She was the last female Heterodyne before Agatha. Her story parallels Agatha's, has shaped Agatha's, and keeps being mentioned. She vanished in strange circumstances. How did that happen? Where did she go? Is she coming back? She has too much of a narrative presence not to - there's something going on there. Agatha is returning to Mechanicsburg. Is Euphrosnia? Carson von Mekkhan did say that the Heterodynes always come home in the end...

(See, I'm looking for the ramp-up, the twist I can't see coming, like the two-and-a-half-year time skip was in the first place. I keep thinking recently, we've all been thinking recently, everything's going so well...and I had that feeling before, at the end of the siege...right before everything changed... What's coming for us this time? What evil, evil twist do the Foglios have planned?)

And it would be a heck of a ramp-up to have one of the old Heterodynes, and the legendary princess no less, take the field and change everything.

5) something else

Look. It's not my job to outguess the Foglios. (And if you think it's yours, you're wrong.) I look forward to being surprised!

And probably screaming. A lot.

[incorrectsmashbrosquotes]

Arcane Season 2's One Big Problem

Arcane should have been three seasons.

That, I think, lies at the core of the show's problems in season 2. While Season 1 was fast-paced, it felt right for what was happening. Season 2 is much like most of its characters, trying too hard to do too much all at once. If they had had a third season they could have tied up their plotlines in a more satisfying way.

Don't get me wrong, I love Season 2, but I can't ignore how much this pacing affects things. I can't ignore how the political drama is shunted aside in favor of introducing and resolving these wider fantastical elements which are just too much for a single season of television.

I understand why they did it this way. At the end of the day, Arcane is a fantasy action series first, a familial tragedy second, and a fantastical geo-political war drama last. That's why those first two elements are given narrative precedence over the last one, but it's hard to ignore how the broader problems with the world of Arcane go unresolved, especially when they are such a huge part of the story beforehand.

Arcane should have had three seasons. Season 2 should have been focused on the escalating war between Piltover and Zaun while the wider fantastical elements brew in the background. Season 2 should have focused on Piltover's gradual descent into wartime fascism and Zaun's more and more desperate and inhumane measures to fight back. With another season to breathe and give this focus, it could also mirror in the escalating conflict between Vi and Jinx.

And then, when those massive fantastical elements do explode into focus with Victor's cult becoming wildly known, it's could be all the more impressive and frightening, with these elements properly built up over an entire season.

The third season would then, of course, see the forces of Piltover and Zaun be forced to unite against Viktor and his glorious evolution. Maybe he has been taking the dead killed in the war and making them into his soldiers, and know the cast must face slain friends turned into living nightmares. Forcing a total breakdown of societal barriers in the name of survival as Viktor makes a play for Divinity.

I dunno. I think it might have been better