#and yes that's what i mean when i say s2 has a neutral narrative

[lucianalight]

#the loki show#loki series#like I’m sorry but this scene is so fascinating to me#Like i could totally write it off as inconsistent and bad writing (which is probably the most logical assumption)#but where’s the fun in that?#there’s so much going on here#if we acknowledge Loki was 1. tortured by Thanos or his minions 2. Has been killed so many times he’s lost count#3. Was emotionally influenced by the Mind Stone but has no knowledge of that#4. Grew up on Asgard with Thor. Warrior race. (Potentially with knowledge of if not experience with berserkers)#5. That he doesn’t like hurting people and told the man across from him as much#6. That he’s demonstrated a disinclination to hurt people if there’s another way to solve a problem#7. That he’s shown concern for people who have given him no reason to care about them#8. That we can assume he’s typically more logical and self controlled than those he usually hangs out with#We have him here trying to comfort Mobius over slapping a guy for something that made Mobius upset#and what he brings up so casually as an example is a time where he was so mad that he did all the aforementioned silly stuff#He knows he killed at least Coulson. He’s probably aware other people died.#but that’s his closest example of getting so emotional that you just lose your sense and do something like slap a guy.#Then next in the conversation is him assuming that Mobius wouldn’t want to look at his life because it could be bad#It’s like the epitome of Loki saying “we don’t have time to unpack all that”#Like just this snippet could fuel a 10k Loki angsting and feeling guilty about the destruction he caused fanfic#Oh 9. Unaddressed baggage regarding being a jotunn and not wanting to be a monster and yet attacking earth#it’s like the sort of casualness where Luis in Antman listed off all this terrible stuff that happened but “I got the van!” 😃#like Ok… do you wanna talk about how you feel about that? No? Ok. tags via @the-stars-descend

LOKI "Breaking Brad"

[dalasteller]

shadow and bone spoilers! malina/mal fans this is not for you but it’s not pro-darklina either. i’m an alina x alina supremacist

so, somehow, the show made me like book!malina more than show!malina after weeks of thinking the opposite would be true. i don’t even like book!mal/malina, but my neutrality towards them is nothing compared to how much i detested show!malina.

I WANTED THE TV SHOW TO MAKE ME LOVE THEM. the trailers made me think i would!!! i'd heard screeners and reviewers talk about this epic love story that transcends everything—these two people who would do anything for each other—and i don't disagree, they definitely would. i just wish they would shut the fuck up about it.

sorry.

looking back, i'd rather the show gave us mal with flaws, who wasn't perfect to alina, who would die for her, but still said the wrong thing and flirted with other girls and was afraid of her power at first. archie did a great job. he just couldn't make me love mal, and neither could the writers opting to make him main character no. 2 and alina’s prince in shining armour who supports her endlessly and has never done anything wrong in his life ever. writers, please, why did you think that was a good idea? when i said i wanted a more likeable mal, i meant i wanted his flaws accompanied by positive traits, by compelling backstory, by personality outside of being alina's hot best friend who never noticed her. i didn't mean i wanted a guy who could be wrapped in a gift box and sold as a robo-boyfriend designed for romance.

no, i mean, they really did write him that way.

what i definitely didn't mean i wanted was over an hour of the show dedicated to watching mal’s perspective of hunting the stag and making besties with his military bros and writing letters to alina and getting shot at a bunch of times instead of letting the book characters who were already beloved by fans get the screentime they deserved. what i wouldn't do to have gotten more genyalina and well-written zoya instead of mal dissecting deer shit...

you would think with how much talk about malina basically being soulmates, childhood flashbacks, fighting and nearly dying for each other at least four times (and did i mention more narration about being soulmates?) that i would take the bait and just let malina set sail. but this show held me at gunpoint for eight hours straight and told me that these two are going to have the same cultural influence as new romeo and juliet and that if i disagree i am going to be killed on the spot. because of this, i have now died.

don't tell me what to do, narrative, because i'm not going to do it!

i am also annoyed that they took the time to redesign mal in perfect childhood-friends-to-lovers dreamboat fashion but refused to retcon zoya's stupid misogyny-fueled bitchy YA girl arc and instead made it even worse by having her be racist to alina? what was the thought process there? they seriously fucked her over. i tried to pretend it didn't happen moving forward but why do they want to use racism as a tool for developing a "bully" character anyway, especially a woc? am i meant to forget about it? they lost me there. i feel like the female characters, with the exception of inej, generally weren't given the same care the male characters were. there was a lot of sidelining in favour of mal's redemptive rewrite and the darkling's 15 minutes of half-assed backstory and crying in every scene for some reason. “make me your villain” .... okay, simpboy, i’ll try my best.

i've already talked about why i hated mal's role (i clarify his role, not his character, because there was literally nothing wrong with him and that’s why i hated him so much) but i'm going to address it from the perspective of my love for alina and why i think this decision was so disrespectful to her. alina in the books was already in need of more characterization, time for herself and her internal development as opposed to her relationship with the three male love interests she acquires through the series. somehow this show took a main character already underused in her own story (though at least the books are told from her pov) and neglected her even further. alina is tied almost entirely to her male counterparts, mal especially, but i'd say the darkling is used as a narrative rebound. i think they both have chemistry and can serve a purpose in the story but the emphasis on codependency is impossible to ignore.

in the first four episodes, every scene that could have been alina struggling to settle into a new life and dealing with the emotional weight of her pressure as a saint was instead about mal. she writes him letters, and cries over him, and slips him into conversations that have nothing to do with him, and gets sad after slipping him into conversations that have nothing to do with him, and can't use her power because she's thinking of him, and then only decides to fully accept her power because of his absence.

alina's feelings are lended to nothing but her missing mal. he isn't just her best friend and love, he's this colossal piece of her identity that she doesn't get to exist without, even when he's gone. the show's exhaustive attempt to make mal loveable and make malina an epic love story turns our female protagonist into a sulking, miserable shell of a character everytime he's mentioned, which, by the way, is like, every two minutes. and apparently it's necessary to draw parallels to the same three flashbacks in all of them. i knoowwwwwwww, they held hands and now they can't anymore, i knowwww. they ran through a meadow, i knowwwwwwwwwwwwww.

watching her scenes almost drove me to printing out a bechdel test and ticking off as many boxes as possible.

i hated it. it made me sad.

i wanted more alina. i want her power to be her own. i wanted that tension between her and mal in the books because his flaws gave her a chance to stand up for herself and say that she liked being powerful. that summoning is a part of her and she would never give it up. that there was a tinge of corruption, of greed, of wanting to be the sun summoner, and it was intriguing! mal's issue of not accepting alina's power allowed her to express how much it meant to her. i wanted the alina who said "the night was velvety black and strewn with jewels. the hunger struck me suddenly. i want them, i thought." i wanted a hint of the sun summoner who decided when it got dark and relished in it (yes i know this can be expanded upon in s2). alina has a cocky side, her insecurities are explored and she finds strength in her new gift and eventually has to find strength outside of it, but in the show the catalyst to her powers is mal. always. is it romantic? sure. but it's hard to enjoy the romance when all we see of alina is her romantic connection to mal. can't she be more than that?

[gurguliare]

Ok, ok, Hieron wrapup notes, pending epilogue

Hadrian: Strengths and problems of Hadrian’s arc are for me aptly summarized in the jump from 1) Hadrian eking out a moral victory of sorts over Samot and the gods at the not inconsiderable cost of taking judgment into his own hands one last time---it’s all well and good to talk about Hadrian being in no position to pass judgment, but then, he wasn’t with Jericho, either, and sending Samot to Aubade is not a neutral choice. Of course no neutral choice exists! and the important thing is he no longer considers himself a mere weapon in the hands of a higher justice, but a person making a decision, which (as it turns out) simplifies the decision exactly as much as being a weapon did back in the day.---to 2) Hadrian cracking a joke about how, if his wife and child were hurt, of course he would pursue Samot to hell and back. Hadrian the family man exists, conflict-free, on a planet of eyewatering sentimentalism. I don’t really understand why. It has something to do with how they chose to handle Hadrian’s “redemption” or anyway recuperation as a character capable of normal communal life, after what I guess we’re now supposed to understand as his antisocial spiral in s1---laugh with me, it’s good to laugh---with his somber diagnosis of Samot as having spent Too Long Away From His Family also applying to his past self. Um. 

Of course Hadrian was never intended as a reliable narrator, but it’s hard for me to do much with that when his narrative isn’t countered by anything else in the text; we meet Benjamin and (less often) Rosana in other contexts, but we don’t get their view of Hadrian, much, and when we do it hews to a narrow pattern of concern and exasperation, as if Hadrian were only an aging action hero this close to claiming his retirement benefits. They lament his recklessness but seem not to notice the dogmatism or the listless doubts that replace it. (That’s with the fact that doubt, if anything, makes him a worse husband and father.) Despite her often-stressed importance to the surviving followers of the church, Rosana’s religious feelings are largely a cipher, and she’s almost never in a position to witness or comment on Hadrian’s most dramatic struggles with faith. So “family” and “faith” remain separate, unable to complicate or inform each other. It’s a shame, because I theoretically am really charmed by the story where a man’s incrementally degraded---not even broken!---faith is the mechanism of his salvation, and by the end he and Samot have swapped places, Samot incapable of not pursuing bitter, futile, barbarous justice and Hadrian very relaxed. The problem for me is that Hadrian ironically restored to his devout family through heresy is never treated as the strange accomplishment it is, and it’s not something he has to work for; I know we get Benjamin scenes this season, I understand the narrative function is to gesture to the very thing I’m describing, but I don’t mean “work for” in the sense of “carving out more time for family dinners.” I mean “acknowledging and accounting for Hadrian’s failings,” rather than glossing his escape almost as a matter of removing the temptation of belief, problem solved.  

Hella: I’m in a similar place with Hella; I like the skeleton of her complete arc, I don’t think it ever got the development it needed and it’s missing some key connections. I got a lot of joy from Ali affirming the thread of Hella’s relationship to Ordenna, from s1 avoidance to s2 voluntary exile to s3 final, reluctant return and assumption of responsibility. For me, it’s compelling to look back and realize that Hella essentially begins in a place that Hadrian only reaches circa Winter: having not rejected, but unobtrusively fled, a culture which failed to inculcate her completely with its horrible values---in part because she was too cowardly to adopt them---but that left her with a tangle of blind prejudice and bravado, the relief of freedom making her that much happier to perform “big tough Ordennan,” as long as she stayed far away from Ordenna. I love... of course I love Velas, in concept, I love and will always love FATT’s shitty compromise cities, cosmopolitan and democratic of necessity rather than out of any high ideal. Yes! We get it! I imprinted on Terry Pratchett, I don’t need to say it every time! But the fact that Hella identifies with Velas and befriends Calhoun in Velas and that they have this common experience of “shit, maybe the world is a bigger place than I realized, maybe it’s not actually a choice between tyranny and anarchy every time” ... makes me really verklempt. And in Nacre they both fall back on old habits and Velas barely seems real; for both of them, Nacre has an unpleasant tinge of “reality” asserting itself over a dream---for Calhoun, returning there is obviously something he’s always feared, but for Hella it’s the discovery that the Ordennan state was more right than she knew, that gods and magic exist, and aren’t just bogeymen used to keep Ordennans off the mainland; and, on a deeper level, that Ordenna’s narrow pride is a reaction to a far older and more arbitrary authority.

So she kills Calhoun---“If she’s going to, then why don’t I?” Escape is so unlikely, caught between Ordenna and Nacre, that helping others find it would be a frivolous proposition: the only person Hella hopes to save is Hella. Then she goes home to learn that Velas is also in mortal danger, that the whole world will soon be Ordenna (and Nacre.) She’s ensured it. No wonder her nihilism at the start of Winter is much more marked, and she finally starts to accept that escape isn’t there for the seizing, that there isn’t an outside.

And then she... goes to Aubade?

This is where it starts to break down for me, as with Hadrian and his family. In theory, I get why actually showing Hella what it means to live away from savage god-eat-god imperialism gives her the courage and vision to face Hieron head-on. I think the line about “surrounding herself with clever people” is great and gets at the point that her education, her personal growth, are not meaningless just because they’re the product of artificial intervention, fantastical prosthesis. But, I dunno, in execution it’s so spotty. Part of it is that Adelaide has to come to her senses at the same time, but that process happens very quietly and never gets free of Hella’s orbit---the scene where she asks Hella for a reason to leave Aubade is good, but comes at the price of other scenes in which we see them, for example, negotiate the terms of Adularia’s existence together. Hella as Death’s Servant reads too much as "running Adelaide’s errands,” not enough as her ardent champion, and I’m not saying that every Ali character has to become a zealot before they’re done for me to be satisfied, but hey! If this is you redeeming Nacre and its ideals from the start of the show, then redeem those things! And give Hella the space for her return to Ordenna to feel like atonement, rather than “one last job”... it’s such a good atonement, is the thing, the only possible one, because for all that she’s changed, Ordenna is still the one place where you can imagine Hella Varal having something to teach people. 

Probably the solution to this would involve triangulating with the sentience of the Anchor; since Ordenna got the plans from Nacre, Adelaide should take partial responsibility in the cleanup there, as well, and not only in releasing Hieron from the curse. Keep the two plots in conversation to the end. But I’m not sure what exactly that would have looked like; something with Hella’s new body, maybe. 

Fantasmo: I love Nick. Thanks to Nick for half-assedly speedrunning Fantasmo through Fourteen’s bit of “in lieu of character development, what if: uplifting character regression?” I cracked the fuck up at him using “Dominate” solely to make Samot captive audience. Audience... to the world’s most insipid power-of-heart lecture, which was honestly very sweet as an obvious truth Fantasmo once knew, or knew well enough to mouth. I did love all the grace notes about the Last University in the finale, still nameless, still a refuge.  

[amisbro]

Vent time

Alright so I kind of went off about this on twitter but I’m going to do it here too because...I spent my supply of craps to give and to be honest I just need to get this out in the open because we might have people that don’t know some fun facts about ME in the UtaPri fandom Shall we? First off I started in the UtaPri fandom back in January of 2014 so for those of us that need to know that is right smack bang between S2 and 3.  It was around this time that I had done my research (and by that I mean “Read Wikipedia”) to kind of get some ideas on the characters.  Of the ones that might have stuck out it was members of QUARTET NIGHT and specifically Ai Mikaze that grabbed my interest at first.  BTW yes I am bolding relevant parts of this story because I feel some of us FORGET these things to spin narratives and I’m not about that so let’s continue. So during 2014 I watched S1 first from the DVD I bought off of Amazon and then Season 2 I watched on Crunchyroll.  One thing I remember is that before I watched that (using the old school “fan mail” system that @staff needs to give us back) I had been talking with someone about one of the members of QN and that was THIS GUY

(By the end of this post I might level of Boss Man) ANYWAYS I had been warned (Because I said Ren at the time was my least fave for being “playboyish”) that Myu would be worse...well for some jacked up reason He turned into my favorite character in QN (or at least 1a with Ai).  He still remained a favorite even after S3 and the reason...I can’t explain...it was one of those weird things that there was something about HIM that I liked but recently its been figured out that characters whom are “royals” or “meganes” (Hi @kaiser-author-san-iii) are faves of mine and Myu can fit into both categories Now...we need to get to the point of this cos I go around the block so many times its not funny During Season 2 we met “A Trio of Amateurs” whom are later called HEAVENS and I was like many people and wanted to see them get thrashed and they DID lose and we know their history.  I had watched that season (and season 1) twice because one was for this blog and the other was more for YT when I did Anime Reviews on there (And I might get back into that soon...stay tuned) and I remember that the first time I was happy that HEAVENS lost and the second time I think I was still “kind of” happy but I wished for somewhat of a different outcome...sadly there are no different endings in this Anime! Season 3 gets interesting because it was a season basically that was going to feature “MY BOYS” (Sorry Reiji K.) in QN so I could get a primer on them.  Now at some point (I forget when so don’t ask that) either during this season or after) I had seen post that had ALL OF THE ROUTES FOR ALL OF THE CHARACTERS...I read ONE OF THEM!  I wanna say it was...All-Star and Ai specifically but if you ask me to remember ANYTHING about it I don’t...memory is gone about it. The thing is as we know this was the season that people on here THOUGHT would be the end of UtaPri (despite in Episode 2 of said season one of the STARISH boys mentioned HEAVENS) so there was that.  This became a thing also when during an ask someone got someone mentioned there had been a visual for a 4th season.  Now this was confirmed somehow BEFORE THIS because someone on the wikipedia page stated that Seasons 3 and 4 would be in 2015 and 2016!  If you go look on my blog there is a post from 2014 I did where apparently someone mentioned this so...that was a thing! Season 3 ends with them getting ready to announce the winner of the Triple S election between STARISH and QUARTET NIGHT when who shows up?  HEAVENS AS A 7 MEMBER GROUP! Now here is where things get interesting for me in the fandom At this point I am not a BIG FAN of HEAVENS like I am now but I was definitely curious.  In my head I knew they couldn’t just have them show up for one episode and then be done...that didn’t make sense from a story perspective because even if they are “Antags” them losing in the first episode and then leaving doesn’t make a whole hell of a lot of sense!  Maybe in SOMEONE ELSE’S weird “STARISH/QN-centered fanfic” but for the purposes of THIS STORY...nah fam! (BTW I say that and you can argue this whole series was going to be some weird STARISH fan fic with acid trips galore so...eh!) Now here is where the turbulence with me and the fandom really comes in For the course of Season 4 (when we realized it was STARISH/HEAVENS) there was a part of me that wanted to play neutral but there was a BIGGER part of me that wanted to root for HEAVENS and part of that is because all my life I had been an underdog...I’m 37 years old and have had so many health issues its not funny so I root for the underdogs that might have no prayer but I root for them because I WANT them to be happy and to see them get their happy ending.  Its boring rooting for the favorites you know? So during the season I would watch the episodes through a website that livestreamed Tokyo MX and I think I only missed two episodes on there...the first one and I forget the other one but I know there was one I had to watch subbed which I HATED!  The reason is because for me its better to try and learn a language through hearing it and not reading subtitles...why do you think I now own a copy of the KnB movie unsubbed! With the way Season 4 was going to me there were two possible endings 1.  STARISH wins (which they did) 2.  HEAVENS wins and something ELSE happens Lemme explain that bit So during the season it was the “Duet Project” and it was the first one that Raging was basically in charge of which was kind of cool because you go through three seasons of Shining and he grates on you something fierce.  Well during the season we learned that RAGING has a bit of a problem with putting his hands on people and that some of the members of HEAVENS aren’t exactly in the best of states mentally.  Poor Shion had a breakdown during “Visible ELF” (I capped that because I called it “Visible EVIL” when I saw it on Tokyo MX...OOPS) and then of course we found out that The Otori’s father is an abusive piece of crap that needed CPS on his backside!  Now that was a fun “3 weeks of hell” to relive because you see EVERYONE got mad at Eiichi for what happened to Otoya and I get it...I really do but what was angering me A LOT was that this was a very jacked up pattern where the rest of the fanbase was ignoring anything “bad” that happened to HEAVENS members just because they didn’t like them.  Okay factually if we took this to another series I couldn’t stand TRIGGER at the time (things are changing slowly) so when they lost or had bad things happened...yeah I was happy as a pig in slop.  The thing to remember though is that was me watching 1 season of i7 and now we have s2 coming at some point so HEY it might work out but the point is that is gonna take a little time...1 season with them vs. how long with HEAVENS?  Yeah you see how this goes right? When HEAVENS lost I was mad not so much because they lost (Okay I WAS mad that they lost but here is the reason) but because it felt like their story deserved a happy ending.  We learned that ,for HEAVENS, the time in Raging Entertainment was more like a prison than a workplace so I was hoping AT THE VERY LEAST to have an ending where HEAVENS lost the Triple S but at the same time he would lose HEAVENS because Shining heard about what happened with them at his hands and would reveal that he discussed with Eiichi that HEAVENS would leave that agency after the SSS and go work for him...and I STILL think it could happen but anyways So all of this happens and this is...3 years ago right If you want to call me a “HEAVENS fanboy” 3 years later fine and I’ll take it but here is the thing When you are a fan of a group now since...a little before Season 4 and you want to see them do well and the fandom as a whole be pissed off when HEAVENS don’t start getting the merch like STARISH or QN (even when you yourself are a QN fan) and that doesn’t happen with the excuse in 2019 that “We need more time” I’m sorry...that excuse doesn’t work with me!  You got HEAVEN SKY now and the Shuffle Dramas...get to listening and stop being a biased fanboy/girl of the main two and start pushing for HEAVENS a little more!  You will not make me change that statement either because here is the thing:  I know people have been bullied off of here or even had to change accounts on discord because of the acidity of the fandom at times. I will flat out tell you this too When I saw the trailer for the movie that dropped today that was cool (even if the HEAVENS entrance reminded me of “puppets on a string” more than “Angels”) but when I saw the visual my joy became ANGER because ,when they did it, they shoved HEAVENS all the way in the back but few people in the IN fandom got mad about that on twitter...now we know why because even though on twitter the HEAVENS rep is better than on here (by a lot too which is disgusting) there is still a very vast majority that are STARISH fans and I get it...I really do!  HEAVENS as a 7 person has only been around for 4 years and STARISH has been around longer but why in the holy hell don’t STARISH fans internationally start sticking up for HEAVENS fans and be also trying to understand why we love them?  I thought the UtaPri FANDOM was supposed to be a FAMILY but I swear talking to people sometimes I’d rather turn to my immediate left and talk to a wall because despite me explaining it once in a YT video I don’t think people get why I am so passionate about HEAVENS getting the support of the fandom.  I’m sorry for loving a group that it seems a lot of people just want to see go away but I’m NOT SORRY for running my mouth about this because let’s understand this I NEVER wanted to have arguments in the fandom but all I wanted people to do is FUCKING LISTEN!  GO LOOK AT THAT VISUAL AND TELL ME THAT HEAVENS DESERVES TO BE SHOVED IN THE BACK BECAUSE OF WHATEVER REASON YOU WANT TO GIVE! Anyways I’m done and good night

[angst-in-space]

Do you think klance could actually become canon??

in a word: yes. 

if you want my very long-winded explanation:

obviously i’m not psychic, nor do i write the show. i’m also a big advocate for lgbt+ representation being a bi person myself, so part of it is just me being hopeful.

but! there are also a lot of things both in canon and hints dropped by the cast/crew that make me think it’s entirely possible. 

first things first is of course their development on the show. they’ve been presented as a duo from the very beginning (you know, lance and keith, keith and lance...neck and neck). there’s obviously some kind of significance in their dynamic and they’ve had some of the most emotionally charged (and, i would argue, romantically-coded) moments onscreen––i.e. the iconic bonding moment, that scene where keith floats the black lion up towards lance in the red lion, the Bedroom Scene, etc. and also a lot of just very tropey/rom-com moments; for example, they have the dictionary definition of a meet cute, “oh no we’re trapped in an elevator together,” always swooping in to save each other at the last second, and so on. just from like a writing/narrative standpoint, a relationship between them makes sense, and they parallel a lot of canon endgame couples.

that, and they’ve been shown from pretty early on to work well together and to care about each other despite the “rivalry.” the show has made a point of showing time and time again that lance is often the only one who can get through to keith. lauren herself even said lance was keith’s stability so like?? yeah.

also generally, i’ve always felt that if their entire arc was just enemies-to-friends that it would’ve taken longer. the fact that they went from rivals to friends in the span of like 3 seasons makes me suspect that there’s some Next Step in their relationship. it may not be the main focus of the story, but it’s been there in the background since the first season. 

in addition to that, i’m fairly confident there will be lgbt+ rep in the show and i will be really shocked if there isn’t. the cast/crew tend to kind of dodge questions about it––which is shitty, i know, but it also makes me highly suspicious that they wouldn’t be so weird about it unless there is some kind of major rep. if there wasn’t going to be anything they could’ve just shot it down by now, but them always giving kind of “we’ll see ;)))” sort of answers is....hmm. 

tbh like 99% of my hope for rep comes from jeremy i.e. telling a fan who asked about lgbt+ rep “i can’t say but don’t worry, you’ll be happy,” as well as telling several fans who also asked about it that it was “spoiler territory” (and i believe saying something about it spoiling “plotlines” which to me suggests something major rather than just background rep), and also telling someone “keep watching, something might happen between two characters” in regards to lgbt+ rep. SO!! 

if that wasn’t enough, there’s been some hinting that lance is bi. for instance, lauren’s official art in which lance is holding an lgbt sign (while all the characters seem to be holding signs that are significant to their identities somehow so...HM), jeremy’s comment that “lance’s milkshake brings everybody to the yard, i can say that much” sldkfjs, also jeremy’s iconic “flirting with every.......person with two legs.” 

it’s also been more or less confirmed that lance has an endgame love interest (and that it’s something slowburn and someone he’s already met). sorry to quote jeremy for the one billionth time (i can’t help it, the boy runs his mouth a lot), but when asked about lance ever settling down he famously said “... I think there is, to some extent, at some point you’ll find that one person that above all you kind of fall in love with a little bit and realize that it’s nice to have that one person than kind of just going all over the place. Not spoiling too much, but yeah. He’ll mature in all ways.” (coughs, also note that he said “person” twice which is gender neutral, just sayin’). and when asked a similar question, lauren said that in regards to romance “what lance wants isn’t what he needs” and joaquim added something about how lance will “end up in a very different place than where he started” romance-wise so like...yeah. all this stuff about lance falling in love with someone, that there’s a strong indication it’s someone “”unexpected””, the likelihood of lance being confirmed bi, plus knowing there will be lgbt+ rep that involves a relationship between two characters......interesting!

and before a bunch of gremlins descend on my inbox with “but the producers/writers/whoever have used she/her pronouns for lance’s love interest!!!1!” i mean...yeah sure, but they’ve kinda flip-flopped between using she/her pronouns and they/them or avoiding pronouns so *shrugs* and also they’ve lied about a lot of stuff in the past to avoid spoilers (i.e. using he/him pronouns for pidge before the show came out, trying to mislead people into thinking shiro was dead after s2, saying allura’s role was piloting the castle so she didn’t need to be a paladin, acting like lotor wasn’t going to be in vld... i could go on but yeah) and they’ve like openly admitted to lying and skirting around the truth so as not to spoil things so....i take it all with a grain of salt.

anyway i’ve gotten really carried away with this so i’ll shut up now, but tl;dr klance is cannon king

[kinetic-elaboration]

April 19: i.Zombie Ranting

I wrote this long rant-y thing partially before I watched iZ.ombie 3x03 and partially after—which is to say it started out with a coherent over-arching idea and then just devolved into a straight up spew of barely-coherent anger.

Total honesty here: this is literally 1.6k of me hating on Ravi / Peyton. I don’t want to offend anyone and I also don’t want to clutter anyone’s dash so it’s all below the cut. You’re welcome.

I’m sorry but I’m actually not sorry at all: Ravi/Peyton is the WORST. Why am I supposed to like them? When I was supposed to board this ship?

Was it in S1, when they dated for like 3 days entirely off-screen, so we never got any sense of their dynamic, how they got on, how their personalities meshed?

Was it when Peyton left Seattle, suddenly, for months, without giving Ravi the slightest heads up, on the eve of their big going-away-together date?

Or how about when we did get some actual scenes of them in S2, during which we see them drinking heavily and Ravi regretting it the next day? Because that showed me, first, that they’re pretty incompatible in the one shared activity we’ve actually observed, and second, that they can’t even TALK about their incompatibility. Either Ravi doesn’t let on to Peyton that their drinking together is bad for him, or they’re just not around each other enough for her to have any chance to see its effects, or she does notice and doesn’t care (I assume it’s the second but IDK). In all cases, wow, I’m blown away by the chemistry, real OTP material.

Then of course we get into late S2/S3 territory where the great couple moments just pile on. There’s the time when Ravi is a total pissbaby about a sexual relationship she had when they weren’t even together. Wait, did I say “time”? I meant “times” as in pretty much constantly through the first two episodes and into the third. He acts like an immature little brat during a group conversation, embarrassing both himself and her by association. He’s so up his own ass he doesn’t even answer her call when she needs him—doesn’t even listen to her voicemail! When she was scared and needed a friend. I know, he was distracted by Major before he could listen to the message, but my point is that if he REALLY cared about her, if she really was so “”precious”” to him, he would have just answered the phone in the first place. Because talking to her would be more important than his issues with his own fragile sense of masculinity.

But of course Ravi doesn’t care about Peyton because he doesn’t know who she is. She’s Lawyer Barbie. She’s “precious” Peyton. She’s a series of benign, generic adjectives. She’s not the tough ADA who took on a crime boss pretty much by herself at great personal risk—she’s his sweet fragile Peyton, irredeemably sullied by murderer cock.

Oh and even into episode 3: negative bonus points here for using his “love” declaration—ridiculous because as already established he “loves” the idea of Peyton, not her as a person—as a way of getting his way in an argument he was losing. Way to manipulate the room, Ravi. Not selfish or dickish at all.

I really really hopped on the Ravi/Peyton train when he went to (allegedly) apologize her, started out by telling her that his time was more important than hers—she was literally on her way to a prior commitment, this is during the day, she’s at fucking work—then let his “I’m sorry” slide into “I’m sorry BUT” as if “I can’t stop creepily thinking about you and some other man” was a legitimate excuse for being a massive jerk to her for days, maybe weeks. Yes, he acknowledged some of the ways he was wrong, but as Peyton pointed out, he hasn’t really learned his lesson; there’s obviously still a part of him that thinks this is a two-way apology street, that they both were a little wrong.

I’ll be honest: I’ve never liked Ravi/Peyton. I never thought they had chemistry, and I never got why I was supposed to think they should be a thing (I still kinda think the viewer was supposed to like this couple in S1-S2).

And I’ll be further honest: I was neutral on Blaine/Peyton in S2 but now I’m 100% I-will-go-down-with-this-ship about them and I’m going to be bitter on a deeply personal level if this whole B/R/P love triangle shit ultimately comes down to using Blaine as an obstacle to Ravi/Petyon’s twoo wuv.

I don’t say any of this because I hate Ravi, even though it probably sounds like I hate Ravi a lot. I hate S3 Ravi. But this is all the more painful for me because S1 and S2 Ravi was my favorite character. He’s the nerdy eccentric best friend/side kick figure and that’s pretty much always my favorite character, plus he’s super hot, which is always nice. And I wouldn’t be opposed to a Ravi love interest—like the Ravi version of Clive/Dale, perhaps. (Or at least I wouldn’t have been opposed as of the end of S2, now I’m less sure.) But this side of Ravi we’re seeing in the Peyton story line is pretty much the ugliest thing I’ve ever seen. He’s like one big walking Entitled Nice Guy stereotype: he thinks he deserves Peyton because, hey, he’s a good person! Good people get good things! He literally says as much before their make out at the end of S2, which pissed me off because I didn’t think the narrative should have rewarded him for that nonsense.

As far as what the narrative is doing now... I’m confused, honestly. At first, with the first “apology” scene, I was optimistic, because I felt like the narrative-through-Peyton was calling Ravi out on some first class shitty behavior.

But then…at the end… First, I felt like his love confession, as I said above, was super manipulative and I can’t tell if I was supposed to see it that way, or if I was supposed to see it as genuine and, like, relevant. Because even if it were true, it’s not relevant. Does loving someone excuse asshole behavior? Entitlement? Being a bad friend? NO! But the way it was framed, the big ‘surprise’ reaction everyone had, and then when she showed up later at his house all on edge about the state of their relationship…all of this made me think that the reaction of the audience was supposed to be “oh well it all makes sense NOW—he was acting so unconscionably because he was in LOVE and it made him all ~ crazy and shit lol silly man in love how romantic.”

I also severely disliked Petyon’s line in their last scene that the only thing stopping them from being together is him/how he’s acting. First of all, that’s not the only thing keeping them apart imo because they had no chemistry even before Blaine. But let’s just say that’s my personal opinion and set it aside. It’s just a nonsense sentence even if they did used to have a special connection. As if there were only two options in the world, nothing and Ravi, and as soon as Ravi lightens up she’ll just shoot toward him like a magnet because there’s no other possible mate out there for her (I’m not even talking about Blaine, I’m talking about, like, literally any single man in Seattle). As if the measure of someone’s character ISN’T their behavior but like some weird intangible Other Thing, like Ravi’s decidedly a Good Person and a Good Boyfriend except, you know, he acts like a shitty person all the time to her and has been nothing but an immature brat for the space of three episodes but if he just changes what seem to be his new main personality traits and becomes like a totally different person THEN it will be true love forever. As if she were the prize in his personal quest and as soon as he learns to be a Better Man, he’ll get the Pretty Girl because women aren’t people we’re objects to be won.

(I know she meant “it’s you that’s the problem” with an implied “it’s not Blaine who’s the problem” but like I stand by all of this because the line implies that she wants to be with him except for him being a Dick to her All the Time now and I just don’t get that--WHY?? WHY Peyton??)

Like look it’s not that hard: if a guy is consistently a jerk to you like Ravi has been to Peyton, you find a new guy.

(Also not to get tmi about this but my ex-bf was definitely the “omigod I’m obsessed with your prior hookups” kind of person and in my personal experience, this isn’t something someone just declares to be over and drops; it’s the kind of thing that sticks around and casts a dark shadow over an entire relationship.)

Finally, what to make of Ravi fucking Dr. Kupps or whoever? Because first of all I saw that coming. To me, with my reading of this entire situation, this is just another example of Ravi being Bad for Peyton, someone she should drop like so much dead weight. But the way he looked so ~sad after Peyton stormed out, like “oh poor me, woe is me, how could this decision I made myself as an autonomous agent have happened to poor innocent me?”, and the way the camera focused on him for such a long time, made me think I was supposed to see this little hiccup as just another obstacle between Ravi and the Attainment of his Goal—whoops I mean his happily ever after with the love of his life.

I’m not saying Ravi can’t learn and be better. But I’m going to need to see some ACTUAL learning and ACTUAL getting better, not just declarations that he’s cured of his Douchebaggery and some overly dramatic love declarations.

Again, like I said, Ravi was my favorite character for two seasons, so my perhaps excessive anger can partially be explained by feeling betrayed by a fictional person I used to love so much. (Not that there weren’t signs of this before: not just in his prior dealings with Peyton, but in, for example, how he dumped Stephanie the morning after—so uncool man.)

Upside: my favorite character is now Clive, and I don’t think he’ll ever betray me like this.