#bonus points if one of them has a weird evil dad that has ties to shadows/the occult and is/was presumed dead

[slushiebonez]

Shoutout to the genre of character relationship that is Silly Little Guys Who Are Good Friends (And End Up In Dangerous Situations Together)

[jasontoddiefor]

Okay you're my go to person for weird thoughts. So you know how luke tried to revive the jedi order? Was he just allowed to collect force sensitive kids and teach them the five days of training he got or did someone force him to like. Get a teaching degree. Did ahsoka help in any way? Did she force him to go to teacher school to get a degree in teaching? Seriously is luke qualified to teach a bunch of kids a religion and a sword club.

Anon you’re my absolute fave person bc your “weird” thoughts give me an excuse to ramble about my thoughts without feeling like I’m just throwing them in the void so please keep those thoughts coming.

And this house knows parts of canon, but acknowledges even less so say goodbye to the sequels and legends because I Have Opinions.

First of, I think that Luke gets Ahsoka, Ezra & Cal on board with his Skywalker-Amidala charm and stubbornness. Canon, give me the forbidden Luke meeting other Jedi content. He’s not gonna revive the Order on his own, he needs people (and Leia is getting training too ofc bc she deserves a lightsaber but she’s also a little more busy with politics). So, yes, he has help.

Next - and I apologize in advance bc I’m going super off tangent here but it’s kinda necessary and also nobody can stop me - Luke got them all assembled and he kind of assumes they’re really organizing it all as equals while the others are quite happy to have him be the official representative/head of the Order. It takes a while for that particular realization to settle in - I picture something like a person calling him the leader and he wants to protest but everybody else just goes along with it. (He does protest in the aftermath of the talk because all of them have more real training than he, but Ezra doesn’t want to be in charge, Cal doesn’t think he’s up for the job and Ahsoka thinks that if they are starting anew, somebody from the old generation shouldn’t lead. And Luke already Has A Reputation.) So, Luke gets put in charge.

Now to get to the kids rebuilding the Jedi Order!

Okay, so. How do you even go about starting up your new Order? I imagine they start with the people that are already there and are Force-sensitive. So you have Rebels there, people their age or even older and teenagers, whoever has the ability and wants to learn. (I just really want Luke to take a look at a pilot he’s been flying with and go “okay your reflexes are way too good for you to not have the Force” and that’s how he gets his first student.)

They settle on Yavin IV bc it has canon ties and I freaking love that place it looks so cool. Also there is no evil Sith Spirit because I Have Spoken. And like, they might be rebuilding the Order, but they still need people to keep that place running and those that come to train, don’t come on their own. Luke was saved because of his ties to his father, he wouldn’t separate families. So you probably start out with a Rebel base that’s not an active combat base, but hmm maybe they put a hospital here? A refugee camp as well? Anyway, there are people and that means jobs and point is - this new Order isn’t isolating itself and there is a growing community.

So any kids that become Jedi, are likely being raised by their parents and the community as well! And it’s not like any of the Jedi here can teach basic biology. Therefore they might just drop “the Jedi subjects” in-between normal school lessons and work. You can’t rebuild from nothing, you need a community. And if you work in that community, you pick up on things. So The Squad might not get teaching degrees but you learn while interacting with children. I’m studying to become a teacher rn and I haven’t had many didactic classes so far, but I’m also doing afternoon classes for primary school kids and the more you interact with children, the more you figure out how to teach them.

And in the panic that is bound to hit at least Ezra and Luke, they might download teaching manuals from the holonet.

(”’Teaching with games’? Think we can have them throw balls at each other with the Force?”

“Idk, Yoda’s training was kind of more focused on how to not die when you meet Vader and I was more concerned with surviving. Hey, Ahsoka, Cal is that how you did it-”)

But that is also more about how you teach and less what you teach. I mean, nobody thought you could come back from the darkside but guess what! Luke and his compassion proved the opposite! And none of them ever got the full Jedi training. Imagine Cal coming home one day like “Hey so I found this holocron, did you know about *starts going off about obscure knowledge none of them have ever heard about*”. And Force ghosts! How that worked and that they existed also wasn’t common knowledge while Luke probably assumes that is just a thing Jedi know. So, really, they are figuring their new tenets out themselves as well. And there is no 1-on-1 teaching because there aren’t enough even semi-trained Jedi for that.

Would anybody ask them for their Credentials? Maybe. But also, like, this community starts with people they already know. Word gets around. Cal helps set up a garden by decimating the offending trees with his lightsaber. These don’t stay mysterious magical Jedi for long, they get humanized. And if the Mandalorian has taught us one thing, it’s that untrained strong Force-sensitive kids are dangerous. So people might just be happy there is someone who knows what to do when your kid starts levitating their toys.

TLDR Step 1 is setting up a base and trial-and-error based communal teaching without actually going out into the galaxy to find Force-sensitive people.

Now imagine you got that down. They go out to find Force-sensitive people/children or they might also, with their growing reputation, get children dropped on their doorstep. So they are now directly responsible for children that do not have any other guardians. Some might get adopted into the community but otherwise? Congrats, you’re a parent Jedi Master. And because screw the First Order - my OT people get a happy ending, Yavin is not only the home of the budding Jedi Order but also a place to recover, heck they might have a city starting to really take off, so imagine when the Alliance finds a bunch of kids to be indoctrinated into Stormtroopers, they might just... drop them there. And if one or two are Force-sensitive, that means they are exactly where they belong! (Yes, you caught me, I just want Jedi Finn.) Bonus points if the kids pick their own last names or like, just take the name of the moon or, even better, the last names of the Jedi already running around.

So this is a very long-winded way of saying that I think the first years of this new Order are less schooling in a typical institutional setting and a lot more communal and family-orientated raising children in general with the result that Luke has a mug that says Galaxy’s Greatest Dad Jedi Master, a birthday gift given to him by one of the kids that never fails to make Han laugh at him.

TLDR Neither Luke, nor Ezra or Cal or Ahsoka have teaching degrees but nobody asks for parenting degrees either. Are they qualified? Depends on whether you’re expecting them to be people who give you grades for essays, or people trying to support you first.

[delicatebluebirdruins]

Shadow and Bone

This will contain spoilers (duh) some names being forgotten and its going to get long and some context less chaos

I hope i got the image ids right

Episode one (23rd April)

- ahh so the Fold= Dark Island form VoDT but with less summoning of monsters?

ID: Ben Barnes holding onto the wheel of a boat

- Many smol beans

Brief interlude with Nausicaa Valley of the Wind

Episode 1 cont. up to midway episode 7 (24th)

- magical brown trouser time my good sir

- buddies!!

- they’re not going to leave Alina alone to her existential crisis are they?

That tent looks like a circus tent to me and I have no idea why

- hmm hello completely innocent fallen branch

me: turns to sis and asks if we can we take brief intermission for this headbanger (which we did)

Turns out our brief intermission for the song was useless because after pressing play again it started buffering

we were talking about it and Dad misheard it as shaggy bone

Imagine the darkling but in pastels and black lace

- how the flipping heck can you fake bleeding light

- do you want to get lost Alina?

On Ben Barnes beard: 50% hot damn and 50% fight me (the way he tilts his head in this makes us want to hit him in the jugular)

Episode 3

- ooh look at the stag

- i love the bathroom

- damn Nina

- I wish Alina had time to get some magic tips but oh well

- replays Ben Barnes saying Moya Tsarieta twice

- how?! (Look I told you there was going to be bits where the context is tricky to pin point)

- i love the goat

- oh Jesper

- blue and gold is a great colour combination

- about the dinner scene: if this were me it would be the very rare time I stand up for myself

+ I want to add a small thing about the food taster... one is dream job/ i like him/ and imagine a taster eating something and it goes down the wrong way

- yes Jesper hug the goat- and

ID: a man with his thumb up gif from The Hunger Games; with him saying “nice shooting sweetheart” but I couldn’t find a gif of him saying it

- true north? I am never going to be free of bellarke am I?

- oh that hurts

Episode 4

- “our saint has arrived to late” 🤧

- ohh the stag is so pretty

- horses!!!

- time for a heist- i love this goat

- aww wishing fountain bonding

- the darking is growing on me

- i love Mikhail and Dubrov

- I love what we get to see of Nadia and Marie and Kaz and Inej and Jesper and basically everyone

- i love a heist (this isnwhat the hobbit should of been but you know with more dragons

- Mal is baby

- poor Nina

- ah ha a vicious cycle against the Grisha and Fjerdan

- I thought Arkens reaction was a bit odd

- oh Alina sweet heart- flashback time

- the map room is a aesthetic- using Aleksanders own words against him

That shot of the two of them is great

- poor Alina

- yas queen

- oh the stag!

- oh the machine gun; Mal poor buddy and of course flashback time

- i knew she was going to get the scar removed

Episode 5

- poor Mal

- Nadia is me

- Genya is amazing

- hi David and great minds think alike Alina (i had the same expression on my face when they were flirting)

- oh the creepy masks had a purpose

- “you’re not Ivan” you don’t say

- aand height difference... this first kiss is kind of weird to me

- oh Jesper you flirt

- I’m sorry firey people you’re going to be outshined

- Inej is so beautiful

- Dima?!?!

ID: two people from a scene in the Anastasia Musical the song My Petersburg

- what is the librarians dudes problem?

- Genya you badass... poor Marie (does Alina learn about this?? It would probably be forgotten just like her causing the death of her fellow mapmakers)

- I love the costumes

- Tofin (Idk his name) we don’t know you sorry you’re dead

- oh the kissing

ID: a gif showing two people kissing

- and him giving her the flowers is kind of cute but where did they come from?

- *pinched nose* I hate cryptic messages Baghra... holy shit... i mean I kinda knew he was immortal but still holy shit

- oh Kaz... Inej! Collect your bloody knives

- *snorting* The crows being sent to kidnap Alina and Jesper just watching her climb into the getaway carriage will always be hysterical (i personally would be laughing and thats why anything involving stealth is off the cards for me)

Episode 6

- rest in pieces Arken

- Alina broke Inej

- I love Ivan (remember the thing i said about forgetting names/ getting them mixed up? This is it.. I love Feydor a lot more than Ivan but they are both so cute together)

- my heart will go on starts playing?

- i like that horse statue in the background

- i love the beach... look at those waves... the wet look is great

- you done mess up Alina but also cool

- Mal is burly squid

- “burly squid” wheezing nosies

- now hug

- Kaz I love the cane

- “I see you now” aww

- I knew they were going to snuggle... those cute laughs

- the alarm clock though... i knew Inej should have taken the knife... i love Jesper... poor Inej... clever boy Kaz

- does it hurt? Mal? Does it hurt?

I have a habit at picking at things that hurt and well fictional characters aren’t safe from me wanting to poke something painful

- ride OR die bitches

- aand more height differences... getting very close there guys... Matthias please don’t let her fall.... they are kind of cute

- David through a book... 😂 they carriage jacked the Darkling

- David raising his hand is me... but damn it

- Alina is amazing... please remember you’re wearing the ring... Mal is best boy

- “adorable” snorting noises

Episode 7

- horsey!!!

- ahh the return of the VoDT hair (see first gif)

- Luda is familiar...

- yikes

- poor Aleksander being turned into a pincushion is not a great time

- poor Luda

- holy shit

- rock and hard place

- fuck off Baghra

- he wanted to help 😔

- ah so its like the hollow from Charmed

Image ID: gif from the og Charmed with text saying “ohhh she’s a demon!”

- this shot is beautiful... ah so I guess this could have been what happened if Caspian resurrected the White Witch... i guess

- hi stag.... oh okay 😔 poor Stag poor Mal

Flashbacks to Cinderella and Snow White (the one with Krisien Sterwart) natually it follows along with Snow White

- *squishie noises* poor Jesper... we love you Jesper but please stop talking to Inej just in case she sews her finger to the wound

- i love the crows and i love the chat about the crows

Buffers

The next day (25th) episode continued

- David looks so sad

- personally I would downsize the fold just as reminder of it

- that looks like that hurt

- I love Milo and Jesper 💖

- don’t look at it Alina... Genya is right that colour is horrible... tell her off Alina... poor Genya

- I think Jesper had fun playing a guard

- I knew the Darkling read the letters

Sister: why does he look like Tom Ellis right now?

- oh Mal

- blow dart... lol Kaz

- Milo!?! Oh the bullet you clever boy Mal

- i like the tent... he’s not wrong... we want to play with that dangly bit... oh the angst

- I thought you looked older (idk context)

- I love the outfit but couldn’t the necklace be anywhere else?

- “no mourners no funerals”

- I love the music

Episode 8

- I don’t trust that opening

- me too Crows, me to... how could you not know who Milo is

- I love Nina and Matthias so much... they are so pretty... I am not a fan of taxidermy... oh his name is Feydor sorry we kept getting you mixed up

- God damnit Kirigan.. a not so sneaky Mal... the honorary Crow... pick a side already darkling... Sun Queen?... did anybody notice her being tied down?... Good Mal and good Inej

- Jesper is amazing... so much death... bad bitch Zoya... I love Inej kissing the knife and nailing the Darkling with it... head shot... hello buddy??... this music though... badass Alina... fucking Ivan... holy shit and of course music is amazing

+ brave Kaz

- Inej and Alina bonding time... hugs? No hugs ☹️

- he offered her his hand 😞... Inej wants to hug... finally some hugs... Zoya has grown on me... i love Kanej (is that the ship name)

- Matthias oh no buddy... hill house flashbacks

- i love Jesper so much... Nina going “someone say heartrender??”

Image ID: someone turning around and raising eyebrows at camera

- Kaz saying “she’s a saint” made my heart happy

- I doubt the Darkling is dead...... i was right

- well shit/ coolness of making shadow monsters follow you (please let there be a flashback for this)

Bonus

+ imagine of Matthias and Nina decide to sleep rather than get food and were caught cuddling by the Grisha... I thought of this as I was getting into bed that night and i got up ran to my sister told her my thought she found the idea funny then went back to bed

+ people who own trains are evil?? Looks at snowpiercer

Bonus: the soundtrack is on spotify and itunes

Image id: someone bobbing along with headphones on

[myevilmouse]

For the Star Wars Ask: 4,15, 16!

Apologies for the uber late reply to your asks, but I wrote the answers and then hit backspace and my tumblr browser KILLED my reply and well, I almost lost the will to go on. 😊 So here is Take Two.

4. which character is the most misunderstood?

The most misunderstood character…I am gonna say Luke Skywalker. 

Hear me out—we are all in our Luke stan bubbles here and we know he’s the most brilliant character to ever be dreamt up, plus he’s gorgeous, but I digress.

The sad truth is while in 1977 he was the undisputed hero and popular dude from the films, when Empire and Jedi came out (when he was really evolving and struggling, etc.), Luke took a backseat to Han and Boba Fett and Darth, etc. and the ensuing years have not been kind to him in pop culture.   But merchandising didn’t feature him as much, even Leia, I remember when Jedi came out, it was HARD to find Luke stuff.  But Leia, Han, Boba, Jabba, Darth, even Chewie, seemed ubiquitous. WHY?!  IT���S HIS STORY!

I think the average casual SW fan tends to think of Luke as whiny or boring or uninteresting and are more drawn to the rogue that is Han or the bad guys.  (Not even talking about ST fans who mostly think of Luke/Jake as a grandpa.)  They mock the whole kissing his sister thing, they quote the power converters line, they DON’T UNDERSTAND his amazing.

So there is a movie, As Good As It Gets, and there is a great scene, the gist of which is Jack Nicholson’s character tells Helen Hunt’s waitress character that all the people in her restaurant, they go about their day not realizing that the most amazing woman in the world waited on their table.  But he gets that, he knows that about her, he SEES it, and that makes him feel good about himself, makes him happy that he understands her awesomeness. And that is sort of how I feel about Luke.  Disney may have betrayed his character, but I never will.  And that makes me feel good about me!

16. what’s the saddest moment in star wars?

For the saddest moment in Star Wars, that is hard.  I discussed this with my mom, a big SW fan, last night.  She picks Vader’s daddy reveal, but while I think that is the most dramatic/traumatic moment, I think for saddest moment I would probably choose Vader’s death, when Luke is all “I’ve got to save you” and his hand, his prosthetic hand that Vader chopped off, is on his dad’s shoulder…

*reaches for tissue*

Luke never knew his daddy, then he found out his daddy is evil and mean, and then he gets back the daddy he always wanted and loses him again.  It’s just…so sad.  So so sad. And I really give props to those actors in that scene because it makes me sad every time I watch it.

And Mark Hamill probably never looked as good in his life as he did in this scene and the one immediately after (in the Lambda shuttle) and I DON’T KNOW WHY because he just had this horrible trauma and loss but he looks incredible. So that’s an added bonus to the saddest scene in Star Wars.  Honestly ridiculously hot.  Excuse me while I go swoon a moment.

There are a lot of sad moments in Star Wars, the OT.  But that is the scene where I think Luke MOST needs some hot chocolate, a hug, and maybe some sexual healing.  I can assist, Luke, I can assist.

OK and your substitute ask since I already answered #15 was #6…

6. which canon event do you most disagree with/dislike?

At the risk of beating a dead tauntaun, I will just say the Sequel Trilogy as a whole (yes I’m including the new one I haven’t seen yet because I fear I know where they are going and *cringe*) for how it robs the victory of the OT without explaining how our heroes turned into such failures, and in particular the betrayal of Luke’s character.  I blame the role of money in the making of the films, something that is blatantly obvious if you watch the Blu-Ray documentary The Director and the Jedi, but for the purposes of this ask, lemme just summarize from a previous rant or else we’d be here all day:

1)  The most optimistic guys in the galaxy who believed he could redeem the most evil guy in the galaxy or die trying would not give up on/try to kill a child riddled with Darkness (never mind that it’s his own nephew).  The End.  Would. Not.

One of the scenes that pisses me off so much is when Luke force-appears to Leia at the end of TLJ and says basically "your son is gone" and she's like "i know" and i'm like WHERE ARE LUKE AND LEIA AND WHO ARE YOU HORRIBLE PEOPLE. Anyway, I digress....2) Luke is all about helping people who need him, rushing to save them even when totally unprepared/warned against it, etc. This idea that having failed his Jedi students that Luke would decide to retreat, abandon his family, his friends, his Rebellion, and become a hermit is counter to everything we know about him. If he decides the Jedi are evil, just STOP BEING A FUCKIN JEDI.  It’s not like a disease you can’t get rid of, just stop using the Force etc.

3) Death. I know some people think this ties in to the whole "balance in the force" thing. This concept is a whole other issue, because it implies there is no good and evil, as far as the Light and Dark, they have to both exist in equal strength/parts and the good becoming powerful will give rise to the evil becoming equally powerful, which makes EVERYTHING sort of pointless. (Like, why even try to save the galaxy if it's impossible for good to triumph? you will win for a couple years and then the baddies come back--if that is the true nature of the Force, the idea of morality just goes out the window, but that's a whole other tangent).

So why does Luke die? He's not sick, he's not old, the idea that using the Force in the way he has took so much out of him that he's weakened to the point of death is counter to canon (size matters not etc), and the galaxy still needs him. He just proved that. Yet we are expected to believe in a sense that Luke thinks the galaxy would be better off with him as a mythic, martyred hero rather than a flesh and blood leader. This also makes no sense to me.

Luke Skywalker rises to the occasion in the OT, even when it's hard, he has a strong sense of responsibility and personal morality. Jake…Jake is different.

 I think a lot of work would be required to turn OT Luke into TLJ Luke...It's not impossible, nothing is, with smart writing and character development, but that's not what we were given. Too many off-notes for me to find it remotely believable, and there are so many little snarky additions to his character that also are so weird that I just can't...

The new trilogy just sort of robs the victory/finale of the OT without enough explanation for why it was a failure....in a perfect world they would have just turned The Thrawn Trilogy into films. I thought the EU gave us a rich explanation and continuation of that world in a way that was far truer to the characters. I wouldn't even have minded them recasting our heroes, cause time/age. looks for time machine

 Thank you for getting me all worked up.  *hugs*

[techpriestanon-blog]

Okay so I don’t know why I was suddenly thinking about this in the shower today, but you know what grinds my gears? Peripheral mystery plots in non-mystery shows. Handled right, they’re a neat exploration into an unknown element. Handled incorrectly, they’re a pulsating tumor hanging off the plot and making you wonder why the hell they bothered introducing it in the first place.

I enjoyed shows like Hyouka and Ghost Story because, honestly, I enjoy mysteries. Never been much good at solving them, but watching someone else do it has always been really fun for me. (Side note: I think I’m bad at them because I lack the lateral thinking ability required to make the evidence jumps. Or maybe people are just bad at writing them sometimes, because I can more or less first-try most Phoenix Wright cases).

I’m going to pick on Attack on Titan even though I’m not a fan of the show, haven’t read the manga, and only watched like six episodes of season 1, because I still think the way they handled the mystery of what Titans are and how they work really poorly. Feel free to blow up my inbox and inform me of what an idiotic plebian I am for not worshiping at the feet of our giant naked cannibal overlords.

See, they establish really quickly that Eren’s dad did . . . something to him involving a needle, and one of the driving motivations in the early arc (beyond Eren’s near-suicidal need to kill every single Titan he lays eyes on) is getting back to his hometown to find out what dad was keeping in his creepy medical basement. Then we get sidetracked by a million years of basic training and character development. Okay, sure. Then we get sidetracked by ten million years of retaking Trost. Alright, sure, Girl Genius took five years to recount the events of about two in-universe days. Then Eren turns into a Titan.

What.

Honestly, if they’d just said “oh, yeah, sometimes people do that” I probably would have accepted it. Special powers in anime is nothing new, and the main character having special powers in anime is about as old as the art form itself. But no, they tied it to Daddy Yeager’s creepy needle thing, so now that secret is probably locked in a basement accidentally buried by giant naked cannibals, too.

Then other people start doing it, too, but they’re evil and work for a doomsday cult. Because apparently every near- and post-apocalyptic setting has a bunch of people crazy/stupid enough to consider suicide on a racial scale to be a good idea. So maybe the whole “I can turn into a giant, intelligent naked man” power isn’t locked up in Daddy Yeager’s murder basement?

Who knows. I don’t think they ever explained why, and I think the little explanation they’ve given literally was “yeah, sometimes people do that,” but still seemed like it was implying that there was something deeper and darker to it than that.

I guess between this and the fact that it’s just too grim kinda turned me off of the series.

Infinite Stratos can also get raked over the coals for this (and many other things). I’ll admit that, years ago, I was actually something of a fan. Dug up the light novel translations and read as far as they had (which was right when things got irritating, oddly enough), watched the anime, whole nine yards. Never read the manga, though, so I guess you can still crucify me for that.

But after spending most of the series as your average “harem comedy with a certain schtick to flavor the extra non-harem-related bits” they abruptly introduce this whole huge evil organization with nebulous goals fielding some kind of opposite-sex clone of the main character. Or possibly just a younger clone of his older sister, established to be the baddest ass of all the badasses in the world. What are their goals? Who knows! What do they do? Steal ISs to advance their goals! Lose their experimental ISs in largely pointless attacks against the main characters. Vanish into thin air to do it all again next week on another continent.

The biggest mystery in the first season of the anime was “what the hell was like, half of episode 12 supposed to be?” Because NGE did the whole “self-reflection with the soul of the robot” thing, but at least had the excuse of the robot being a biomechanical alien cyborg powered by the soul of Shinji’s dead mother. But the ISs haven’t been established to be alive, or even self-aware. Self-modifying, sure, but that was shown to be a chunk of adaptive coding and some very complicated hardware. Then it never comes up again.

The biggest mystery of season 2 is “who are these people and what do they want?” This is not answered, or even really addressed. They just show up, wreck shit, get their shit wrecked, and vanish. I guess the other mystery is “who the hell let the guys who made the Rosario+Vampire anime in here?” but that’s a different bag of fleas altogether.

As much as I enjoy Neon Genesis Evangelion, it can get lumped in here, too. So many questions are raised about the nature of the Evas, the nature of the Angels, the nature of the Human Instrumentality Project that it begins to feel like A Series of Unfortunate Events, or a poorly-knit sweater of dangling plot threads. And the worst part is that I’ve been part of the fandom for years. I’ve watched the show, I’ve watched the Rebuild movies. Never got around to digging up End of Eva, but I’ve read enough about it that I don’t really think I have to at this point. But the worst part of it is that, even with all of the published material, all of the bonus content, all of that -- we still don’t have a concrete idea of wtf any of it actually means. Fans have assembled good enough guesses to write internally-consistent fanfiction of it, but interpretations differ between authors and any attempts to get the Anno to actually explain this shit mostly results in him waving Death of the Author in the interviewer’s face.

Which is, y’know, kind of irritating. Postmodernism has never really been my thing, and so the idea that the intentions of the author are irrelevant compared to what interpretations can be deciphered from the text can lead to some really weird shit. Like the theory that Dracula knew how blood types worked years before medical science did, and so his repeated draining of Mina Harker was actually him saving her life. Or that . . . fuck, what are their names? Two characters in The Outsiders are gay for each other (which led to a hilarious shitstorm on Twitter when somebody asked S.E. Hinton about it and she said no, that’s not how she wrote them). 

I guess, what I was getting at when I started this whole thing, is that if you’re not a mystery show, where answering the plot-driving question isn’t the point of the plot, you need to progress your mystery on a time scale that isn’t best expressed in geologic eras. I don’t care how kickass your fight scenes are, or how involuted your political intrigue plot is; if you’re going to introduce a mystery element, do something with it in a timely manner, and for the love of all things holy, give us some concrete answers when you do.