#but i don't wanna veer too hard in the other direction either

[madeimpact]

Y'know I think it could be interesting to write a thread where my little man just gets to go completely apeshit. The problem is it takes a LOT to get him to that point. But it can be done

[variousqueerthings]

[ @syrupmap said: variousqueerthings I thought "he's going to be SO surprised!" You have a gift. Please predict the ending. Ooh! How is everyone going to end up? That might be fun to reread after your first watch]

okokok i wanna try this, i think it'd be so fun!

im gonna repeat a bit some of the private messaging to you, with some new Stuff:

learning that this is the Halfway Point got everything together in my head in terms of season three/season three part 1 (is there an official way of talking about the structure?) so definitely this idea of halfway-through is informing how I'm coming at season four/season three part 2, but it's also making it harder to predict because should i think of this as the second half of one season or as two seasons? we won't know until we watch! but certainly that makes a difference in terms of structure

SO. ive watched episode one, which was a relatively light-hearted return to the story. im awaiting some slightly heavier episodes, which idk. finale will be i assume Plot Heavy (safe bets). which leaves 10 episodes in the middle. of those, i'll give PG at least two zanier more surreal plots perhaps. one (slightly spoiled) physical!whump for fraser plot. i'll guess that one may be in the latter half, but it's hard to say, because it depends on whether im looking this as 13 episodes (self-contained) or 26 episodes (in which case we're in the latter half already). it all comes down to how the show is broken up, which i can't predict. also at least two, maybe more like three more light-hearted episodes. and something heavier for ray kowalski as well. which leaves us with three open spots that could go in any direction. i WANT them to be heavier/more emotionally damaging for me, because im that sort of person, but this show goes in many directions, so we shall see 🤪

also... stella and meg coming back into play in some way. i wonder whether stella is going to be more of a background-ish character as she has been outside of her Big Episode or if there will be another focus on her before the pilot. meg, im assuming they're going to continue with the adoption plot, but it'd be cool to involve her more in the way they did in seeing is believing and mountie on the bounty

also, will these women continue to be love interests in some capacity? im assuming yes, but i think not in the most uncomplicated/obvious way (see my finale predictions below), because that's been the structure of the show thus far

things I know are: - fraser and rayk have made a commitment (as of mountie on the bounty) and i presume this will be more and more evidenced throughout these next 10 episodes -- the main focus will be following these two (although, i was surprised that episode 1 didn't do that so much, it was more about fraser and welsh, which, listen, definitely not complaining about!!!) - welsh being dad!vibes continues, but he's had his big focus episode now, so assuming he's mostly back to being police chief (commissioner? i never know what police roles are) - ray vecchio returns in the finale in some capacity

so early days prediction for the finale with the caveat that currently things are wide open:

meg will adopt a kid. idk if this will happen before the finale or during. my gut feeling is before, because then the kid is already there and the plot doesn't need to spend too much time on that part of it. will the kid be massively important to the finale, plotwise? mmmmmmmi don't think so, other than i wonder if it'll readjust meg's priorities

meg and fraser.......... will be ambiguous. i feel like it may veer towards fraser and her not getting together, but with an acknowledgement of feelings of some kind

fraser will hm. not stay in chicago. fraser has been offered the chance to leave chicago twice now and both times he's decided to stay after a great deal of deliberation for someone else's sake (either to protect, as with rayv, or to help grow, as with rayk). there's been elements of doing it for himself too, that he wants to help this community, that he has some roots now, and that he could grow himself if he commits, but ultimately i don't know if chicago is the place where he Belongs. to naysay myself, maybe it ultimately does become that place.... maybe he stays for himself at the end (wow, well done with predicting the two most opposite possibilities). it depends, i think, on how that settling into himself happens here in the tailend of the story. does he find a new place to live? does he get another community? does he feel connected? currently he's still very much fighting against real-boy-ification/domestication, and the question is whther the story leans more towards some of the warnings of s2 (like mask or the edge) or if something will change. so i lean the first, but the second if these stipulations are in place

diefenbaker. i Do Not Know. i hope that wherever fraser is, diefenbaker remains. but it depends on where the story goes vis a vis diefenbaker as a manifestation of fraser's soul + fraser's brother + manifestation of the wild being domesticated... (the wild bunch really lives rentfree with me forever)

ray vecchio and/or ray kowalski get love interests. i don't want'em to. but it's the 90s. i just realised with the current women on the show this would be rayv with stella and rayk with frannie. hm. i don't want it. but it wouldn't be the worst comphet in the world. but i don't want it generally

rayv and rayk will not like each other at first. but i hope they become friends. maybe, if fraser leaves, even partners. dunno. there's something about both of them and partners in their respective stories...

mmmmmmm i want rayv and rayk to work together to save fraser's life in some way. don't care what way. but i want it. work through your differences and help The Boy! and maybe have a good natter about how difficult it can be to keep him alive sometimes

oh sooome kind of full-circle with the pilot. possibly returning to canada for a bit? some kind of catharsis with his ghost!dad? some sense that this story began at that point and now it has ended in a similar place (emotionally, geographically, stakes-wise, narrative callbacks, etc) -- maybe ghost!bob finally finds peace and leaves... that would do it for sure.....

this is maybe not useful, but i doooo think it will be a very good finale that won't give me everything i would want to see. i think it'll probably have some frustrating 90s stuff (like love interests) but it'll have a lot of really good stuff, and it'll be open enough to imagine a "and what comes next is for you to decide, dear viewer..." post-narrative. i want it to not be too neatly wrapped up

things i don't predict but youknow. in my heart and soul:

fraser leaves the mounties (because man has he been screwed over by law-enforcement a lot, but it won't happen and also that would be a whole Other story of having to become a whole new person, his essence is wrapped up in Being A Mountie. it's everything he's got. but. youknow)

rayk and rayv leave the police department. im making everyone leave law enforcement. i want them to be private detectives!!!!!!

elaine returns (she won't, but she does to me) (she also becomes a private detective with them)

we get to explore what happened to rayv in las vegas (cue my brutal noir spinoff show)

stella gets a girlfriend

(lol the girlfriend is frannie, IVE SOLVED IT!!!!)

meg and fraser start a casual D/s thing, super chill, good for them both (im getting silly now) (technically they had that in s2) (but in my version meg also puts fraser in a corset) (ok done now)

I THINK that's about it, pieces-wise. we're at a crossroads about to embark on the final part of the story. both very exciting and ngl preemptively sad about that

[cerosin-bis]

might I ask for a handful of just random cod trivia ..

and/or ! just your thoughts on the games and reboots, if you’re comfy w that?

I feel like you always have some random notes or tags about weird trivia in the game but obviously this isn’t specific At All so feel free to just ignore this if it’s weird sjdndjhd

Hi! no this isn't weird 🥺 I think what gives this impression is "just" that I played most of said games a lot and got interested in the lore that's not necessarily accessible to people who, big quotation marks, are superficially in the fandom. as in people who aren't interested in multiplayer or secondary gamemodes, let alone lore and are more focused on the main cast or one particular mp character (such as könig)

This got VERY long so, my rambles and opinions about the Modern Warfare games and their reboots below.

I played mw2 and mw3's campaigns in 2010-2013. I wasn't playing multiplayer at the time, I started it with BO4 in 2018. But I fell hard into MW's multiplayer with the first reboot, mw19, in early 2020.

Just so that my words have a bit of "the player's weight": I have around 900 hours on mw19, 400 on MWII and I believe 200-300 on MWIII.

Regarding campaigns: Call of duty is Call of duty. It's literally funded by the US army. it's blatant propaganda, and I expect no less when I run a campaign. With that being said, what I expect from a CoD campaign is either being over-the-top and extra (like the original trilogy and in some ways MWIII specifically), or rooted in reality and wanna be serious like mw19. This is minding the blatant history 'rewriting' it's doing (eg. chemical attacks in syria, highway of death mission). My honest opinion on it is that the reboots don't know what they want and it's especially visible in MWII. In my opinion, the original games nailed that "american action movie" feel that the reboots kinda lost by instead veering towards something overlapping with real-life maybe a bit too much while still wanting to include crazy shit. Like, I don't think it's a balance that can work. I do like that we had more character development with MWII and it felt fun to play (in that regard I have no complaints, and I even liked the semi-open missions that a lot of ppl disliked), but it feels a bit less like call of duty. I'll be curious to see what direction they take for the next MW game, but I sure hope IW get their shit together and have a clear direction.

Transitioning to multiplayer with that. This feeling that the MW games are now an amalgamation of things sewn together hastily started with the Warzone fusion and the BOCW implementation. It became especially visible in multiplayer with the addition of crossover bundles, providing less and less "mil-sim" skins, and it was obvious that by MWIII IW would step away and let other developers (treyarch, SHG, which are both turned more towards arcade gameplay) take over the multiplayer development. Which is kinda insane: MW was always Infinity Ward's flasgship initially.

In my opinion the MW multiplayer started feeling different (in my eyes, falling off) for 3 reasons:

Catering to a younger playerbase, notably the "tiktok crowd": younger gamers want games that are incredibly fast-paced (mirroring their use of social media and those yknow "adhd videos") and like extremely flashy skins. Therefore, they'll spend money to get them. I'm not saying this to say "it's bad!" it's just an observation

The absolute success of mobile games and fortnite-like collaborations. This is mostly due to the current way people "consume" social media and games, with everything being quick and instant and fleeting. The sheer impact that these two things have had on video games as a whole is absolutely insane: they started adding microtransactions in games because it started on mobile & they realised that if you let people buy skins with real money w the press of a button, spendings increase tenfold. Same goes with the battle pass model: it's incredibly lucrative.

Crunch, changes of leadership, writers and artists probably being allowed less communication and therefore focus; and, in MWIII's case, the arrival of AI giving us some tasteless slop in cosmetics. That they sell. For real money.

I've said it countless time but I really regret mw19 multiplayer's artistic and narrative direction. It had a story that's completely absent from MWII where characters are just empty shells with a few lines of marvel-like, mary-sue grade bios. Where's the cohesive story? Where are the outwardly morally grey or flawed characters, the sub-squads, the interaction lines, the bundles that made sense with the characters' backstories?...

Long story short, I don't know if the MW series will ever go back to what made it MW. I hope so, but seeing how between 2020 and 2024 the multiplayer entirely lost its soul & the campaigns don't know what they want to show, I'm afraid it might either never come back or take a dozen years so that a reboot of reboots gets out or a new series takes over.

'til capitalism and cashgrab leadership ruins it again and the cycle begins anew.