#but the show went to great pains to make Abby her own person

[vitos-ordination-song]

There’s so many fans of The Deuce who hate Abby for 1) being an activist and feminist 2) not sacrificing her life goals for poor Vincent 🙄 Sorry I didn’t care that his whiny ass wanted a family with her, move on or shut up. Seriously.

[hypermania]

transcript of the full thread:

"A very long thread: To the League fans, We found out this news along with you on Friday. I see the pain and anger and worry out there, which for the LGBTQIA+ fans of the show is of course compounded by what’s happening across the country right now. #ALeagueOfTheirOwn

So the first and most important thing to say is: Before anything, before you fight for the show or each other, please take care of yourselves. Reach out to your community and ask for help if you need it. You aren’t alone. Please be kind to yourselves.

As I’ve been thinking about what’s happened, I come back to a quote from Penny Marshall’s film: “The hard is what makes it great.” Making this show is so hard and so great. There’s quite a bit to say about what’s been hard, but at this point that’s in the past.

Of course, if we have an avenue to do it well, we will continue the show, and I love seeing the noise you’re making in support of that. The noise matters!

And it’s hard for me to imagine there wouldn’t be a home for a show that thanks to you was in the Nielsen Top 10 for three weeks, was the top show on Amazon for a month and in the top five for six, that was recognized by critics as something special, that’s been recognized…

…with awards from GLAAD, HRC and a million other organizations, that was on a million year-end top ten lists, and that has a built in and deeply passionate audience.

Amazon is pursuing different kinds of programming, but to the rest of the world this show is a hit and has huge value and even greater potential. But first things first, we have to win this strike and get a fair deal before we can explore what comes next.

But for a moment, I want to talk about what happens if the world didn’t quite change quickly enough for you to have all the seasons of this show that we want to give you.

If we don’t find a good path forward, I will still know that League did what it came here to do and, in its own small way, changed the world.

And that’s because of all of you, and the light you continue to shine on the show — How you let it matter to you, how you let it become a mirror, how you let it change you.

I’ve never experienced a response to a show that’s as deep, personal, creative and meaningful as what the fans have done with League. When we were making the season 1, we all wondered and worried about whether people would accept it on its own terms next to the film.

They have, and you did that, and so much more. You lit up the internet on your first watch throughs of the show, when you realized where it was going (and made all of us laugh in the process).

You wrote enough fan fiction for 100 novels and created an outpouring of art and creativity that could fill its own museum — I’ve truly never seen anything like it.

You lifted up a 95 year old who had just come out of the closet and made her into a celebrity who gets recognized wherever she goes. Every time any member of the cast appears at anything, you turn it into a convention.

You stop Abbi wherever she goes, and though I’m a happily inconspicuous person, and you constantly find me and stop me and give me gifts that now have a shelf in my house.

When thousands of you appeared to see D’Arcy at the stage door of The Thanksgiving Play over its run, you turned it into the hottest queer bar in New York. You made Max’s suit and Chante’s beautiful performance into a movement.

A mob of you went to Pittsburgh and saw all of our locations. You dressed as the characters and made our characters into one of the biggest halloween costumes of last year.

You came out, you changed pronouns, you started living more openly, you gave sermons in church about the show, you opened bars, and you got a truly mind boggling number of tattoos that say “to the five” and “rob the bank.” What else am I forgetting? I'm sure you'll remind me.

But most importantly, you made a community, you found each other and found joy, which of course is what the show is about. In many more ways than I would ever have let myself imagine while we were making it, you literally bring the show to life every day.

Thank you for making our work mean something bigger. We’ve heard from so many different kinds of people around the world who are watching League.

But, in a time when all queer people are personally and politically under attack across the country and HRC has declared a “state of emergency,” my biggest fear is that the many queer fans of League will take this reversal as one more invalidation, one more blow, one more…

…effect of the general politicization of our identities. Most of us grew up feeling invisible, and as we gain strength, the predictable backlash forces are trying their hardest to get us to go back underground.

In case anyone needs to hear it: You are not small, niche, modest, off-putting or marginal, and neither are your stories. You are multitudes, you are building, and your stories are universal. You are the most rapidly growing audience and consumer group in this country.

You are powerful. You are the future, and the people who don’t recognize your importance now will feel be clamoring to catch up in a few years. As Chante said so beautifully when we received the Human Right Campaign Visionary award, you are the main characters. Be proud.

Be angry if you that’s how you feel, but know that we are going to win, and don’t ever let this moment or any other make you small. The biggest lesson of the characters in this show is that, in a world that had no space for them at all, they LIVED. (Continued)

They found love, they did the things they loved, they won. You’re doing the same thing, and just like them, you are heroes. We are still fighting for League. But whether we win or lose this one, I’m so proud.

From the time when we began working on the season, Abbi, Deta and I said to each other — Let’s not hold anything back, for as long as we get to be here, let’s do this the right way.

We got so many notes wondering if the exploration of the queer world of the 1940s or Max’s world would be better saved for season 2, if people needed to start somewhere a little more familiar. I’m so glad we didn’t listen, cause now I’m sitting here without any regrets.

And no matter what happens, the people behind League aren’t going anywhere. Give us a minute, we will be back with more for you to watch and read and feel. We’re going to win.

And you’re not going anywhere either, because what you’ve built and what you are is bigger than this show. It’s the story of our community, that comes to us through the hidden history that League shows just one small part of: The bars got raided and shut down.

But the people didn’t go anywhere, and they opened a new bar, and out of those spaces came music, cinema, dance, culture — What we now see as mainstream was birthed from the spaces our predecessors were forced to hide in. They made joy there."

[pullofbrokenshadows]

If you insist on making Buck and Eddie heterosexual, at least put some effort into it

Look, I want Buddie to be canon. I think they’re missing a huge opportunity to do something no other primetime network show has ever done. But if they’re intent on not making Buddie canon or waiting until the final episode of the series as a cop-out or setting it up even more, then the least they can do is actually put some effort into Buck and Eddie’s relationships with women. They’ve fumbled every single one of them and at this point it’s just coming across as homophobic. Like these empty, lazy romantic storylines with women are better than just letting them be in a homosexual relationship. If the writers insist on keeping them heterosexual, at least put some real effort into it. Yes, it is easier to do this when both of the characters are series regulars. You have more screen time, more runway. The beginning of Buck and Abby’s relationship was GREAT. They truly earned that. They had a lot more room to build that. But it’s not impossible to do this with guest stars.

And to prove it, here are my pitches (as painful as it is to pitch Buddie with anyone else) that wouldn’t take up any (or very much) additional screen time.

EDDIE

606-616: The 118 teasing Eddie about how he got Marisol’s phone number when they went to help her fix up the house, but he won’t use it. “I barely know her.” “That’s what the date is for.” “We only exchanged numbers in case she had more issues with the house.” “That’s pretense. She wants you to call her and ask her out.” Can even bring this up when Eddie starts complaining about Pepa setting him up. “To be fair, you refuse to set up your own dates.”

OPTIONAL: Therapy with Frank where they discuss his reticence to date. It’s not just Shannon. It’s not just his PTSD. Eddie realizes he’s demi. Frank tells him it’s fine for him to wait until he knows someone well to commit or be physical, but he can’t spend his life never pursuing anything further with anyone just because he didn’t immediately fall in love with them during their first meeting. If he truly doesn’t want to spend life alone, he’ll have to put himself out there, even if he just approaches it as friends at first. 

**Note: As a demi person who sees very little representation plus all the signs we’ve seen of Eddie being demi, this would be a great opportunity for the writers to do something fresh. In lieu of establishing Eddie as demi, they could just keep everything else the same leading up to 614.**

Can still do the whole runner of Pepa setting him up, which perhaps is what could prompt his conversation with Frank (if they were to make Eddie demi), especially noting the stark difference between his and Vanessa’s approaches to dating.

617: Eddie runs into Marisol at the hardware store and literally the only thing they needed to do differently was instead of him turning and walking away at the end, he just starts walking towards Marisol. If they still hadn’t established he already had her number (per the earlier pitch), this would be a way to do it. Otherwise, it at least leads us nicely into the next episode where he’s trying to figure out what to text her.

618: Literally keep all of this the same, just maybe not as giddy at the end? Just to keep in line with the demi of it all. He’s excited and proud of himself, but he doesn’t know her that well, he probably doesn’t have a crush on her in a way that prompts such a stereotypical teenage response.

BUCK

Oh, Buck. Buckaroo. There are too many things to cover, so I’ll mostly focus on Couch!Theory and Natalia. Everything prior to 615 stays the same, unfortunately. (To be clear, I love Coma!Buck, but come on, this was supposed to be his Year of Yes and he literally only said Yes to one big stupid thing.)

615: Buck meets Natalia in the same way, they have the coffee date, all of that. He still has the conversation with Eddie so we get into his headspace a bit and set up what happens next. But also, maybe nix Eddie’s comment about Buck dating people he’s saved. He put a bandage on her hand. Chill out.

617: Here’s where we do the most damage. This was a dumb storyline for Buck. What was even the point of all this? Lucy was just someone he made out with once. Has nothing to do with pursuing Natalia. He didn’t even interact with Taylor. And Kameron barely means anything to him (they really needed to build up this relationship more if they wanted us to believe she would come running to him.) I get that they’re trying to say his life is complicated but it literally isn’t. At least not in the way Natalia thinks it is. The whole story fell flat and just felt like a way to force conflict where there was none. It was a series of weird occurrences, but when Natalia left it didn’t feel like it meant anything. Because we don’t know anything about her. Maybe if we knew she had an ex who could never let go of anyone in his life or a parent who was a consummate people pleaser to everyone except her, this whole episode would have landed better. But none of that was established and has very little connection to where Buck and Natalia eventually end up.

Instead, it should have gone like this:

On their date, Buck starts out enjoying talking to Natalia about his near-death experience and the lessons he learned from it. But the next time we see them (still on the same date, or maybe even a second date), we can see he’s getting uncomfortable that death is the only thing she wants to talk about. Maybe he even still sees Taylor’s interview (but in the bar) and realizes he might be making the same mistakes all over again. Falling for someone who gives him the tiniest bit of attention, even if it’s for all the wrong reasons. He leaves the date, making it clear that he wants his post-death life to be just that—a life.

He comes back from the date to find Kameron waiting outside his apartment (or she arrives shortly after he gets home—we gotta think about production constraints!) He lets her in (even though I hate this whole subplot where she apparently doesn’t have any friends she could stay with?) They can still have the weird pickle scene at the end if they want, but honestly it felt out of place with Love Is In The Air playing in the background and everyone else’s stories being about romantic love. I legit was worried he was going to fall in love with Kameron and they were going to raise the baby together or something. Such a random ending for Buck in this episode.

618: Natalia still comes in when Kameron’s in labor and helps Buck. She’s still amazed at being there for the beginning of life instead of the end. That’s actually what she came to talk to Buck about. She’s used her work as a death doula to hide from the world, but she’s attracted to the way Buck fights to save lives and how he lives his life so fully and openly. She wants a second chance with him.

Next morning: The couch guys are already hauling the couch out. Natalia appears in Buck’s shirt and says “Sorry they couldn’t save the couch.” Buck: “That’s okay. Someone else bought it for me and it wasn’t really my style.” He grabs some cushions from the corner and places them where the couch used to be. He sits down and pulls her into his lap. “This is much better.” Natalia: “And more romantic.”

This leaves the Couch!Theory an open case. Buck isn’t quite there yet, but it still acknowledges the metaphor and sets a course for the next season. The way it stands now Buck hasn’t learned anything. He’s just buying another couch, this time with someone he barely knows. There is no way he can know she’s the one this early on. Especially not with his history and with how very little they even know about each other. The writers tried to use Couch!Theory as a shortcut to get the audiences to buy in to a relationship with a woman and it’s just a lazy cheat that we all saw through. The main theme they kept alive all season for Buck and they just threw it away at the end. Such a waste. 

This is a show that often shines in how they can thread themes together between the calls the first responders go on and what’s going on in their personal lives. The writers usually are able to thread season-long themes into the other characters. (Though did anyone else just totally forget that Hen and Karen were foster parents? Or that Athena and Bobby still hadn’t gone on their honeymoon? Literally all they had to do at the end of 617 was have Athena or Bobby say “Four years married and we still haven’t gone on that honeymoon.”) 

But they’ve struggled season after season to do this with Buck and Eddie. Buck is their main character! How can they drop the ball so much with him? I would say they’ve done a slightly better job with Eddie, especially in Season 5. But I literally cannot tell you what Eddie’s journey was this season other than avoid being set up by his aunt, which was only the final 5 episodes of the season and was barely even a story.

The most infuriating thing is this season had way fewer calls than previous seasons. There were whole episodes where it was only the 118 off shift in their personal lives. And yet this season especially felt disjointed and without focus. 

Here’s hoping ABC comes in and says they want to walk all of this back. Eddie and Marisol went on a couple of dates, but it didn’t work out. Buck never did go get that couch and either we see a short run of his relationship with Natalia or they just mention it didn’t work out. 

And look, I think Natalia could be good for Buck. I like that she’s not stick thin. She’s not white. She’s very different from anyone we’ve seen Buck with so far. The writers could sell me on her as a consolation prize for no Buddie, but they really fumbled the ball here and it’s so disappointing.

So here’s hoping we get some fixes in Season 7 (whenever the studios start paying the writers what they deserve, that is. #WGAStrong)

[millenniumblog]

[ID: A chart describing the core values of each of the nine Enneagram personality types with YuGiOh characters correlated to each of the types.]

YuGiOh Enneagram Analysis, Part #1

Please note that this is the “boring” informational post about Enneagram with the Types listed and explained as well as a few other things. The next post is what has the actual, in-depth character profiles promised!

Introduction & Motivation

Over the past several months, I have been trying to analyze my strengths and weaknesses as a writer and learn more. I have been writing fanfiction since I was a little kid, making my first FF.net account in 2003 when I would have been twelve years old. Even before that, I was a lurker and wrote fics to share with my childhood best friend on paper or floppy discs.

YuGiOh came into my life at some point shortly thereafter. I know this, because I spent my thirteenth birthday in a comic book shop, mostly watching some of my male friends play the trading card game. I had some of the cards, but I was never much of a player, unable to keep up with the seemingly rapid rule changes. Besides that, I was always way more interested in the story and characters than I was in the card game. I remember I even wanted to call “YuGiOh cards” “Duel Monsters” instead to make it seem a little closer to tween-y LARPing.

Eventually, I gave up on collecting cards or trying to ply the game. I felt that while my male friends didn’t mind me being around when they played, they weren’t extremely interested in helping me learn or keep up. I felt I had other strengths, so I started carrying around a notebook even more than I already did. I started my fledgling forays into online fandom. And YuGiOh was a big part of the beginning of that.

I can’t remember posting any YuGiOh fic in particular, and I’m sure that if I had it would make me cringe now. What I do remember is reading some and also spending a lot of time lying on my bed, headphones plugged into a small purple stereo, listening to the first of the two American-released CDs with YuGiOh-inspired music on them. In particular, the last three tracks were pieces of music from the original score composed for the 4Kids dub, which is - for some reason - different from the original Japanese music.

During that time, I would fantasize and conjure my own YuGiOh plots in my head, most of which were focused on the Ancient Egyptian and more spooky, spiritual, and horror themes in the show. I was really fascinated with the reincarnation angle, though my understanding of and opinions on how that works have grown with time.

Years went by, and I didn’t think about YuGiOh much at all. Then, something happened in 2018. I don’t know what got in my head, but it was like all the joy I once found in thinking about the YuGiOh characters came back in a giddy conversation with my childhood best friend. Then, for a little while, it wouldn’t leave me alone.

I started writing for the fandom then, and after several detours, I’m trying to get back in the groove of it.

My approach to the tone of YuGiOh-fanning is that it’s a bit serious, but it’s also with a tongue placed in my cheek because of how incomprehensible or silly the plot can be on a meta level. Sometimes, it almost brings tears to my eyes by being so over-the-top about something that, in the real world, would make no sense at all. But the drama, in the context of the universe, somehow rings true.

I think that’s all owing to how most of the primary characters are just... really freaking great characters.

It has often puzzled me. Like, did Takahashi do all this layering on purpose? Is it really there, or did earnest fanon just make it seem like it? And, as a person, I am always here for a good fan-and-canon symbiosis.

This post is going to be, from here on, an effort to match the YuGiOh characters to the 9 Enneagram Personality Types. I am writing this for my own benefit as I continue to work on my pet YuGiOh fanfiction project, It’s Always Sunny in Domino City, which is a mixture of YGOTAS-vibes-and-concepts taken seriously and a sincere take on fanfiction for the actual canon. It’s dramedy about a sizeable chunk of the main cast a few years post-canon with some canon divergence such as the Memory World arc not yet and possibly never-happening. If that sounds like something you’d like, I would humbly request you check it out!

Either way, this will be an in-depth character analysis cheatsheet for all of the characters above, based on my observations, opinions, and feelings. I invite discussion, but it’s fine if we need to agree to totally disagree!

If you are interested and enjoy what’s below the Read More and in the coming second post, then you are welcome to utilize the character analyses to aid you in your own fanwork!

Enneagram

What is Enneagram, and why am I using it?

Enneagram is a personality categorization system that one might compare to the somewhat better-known MBTI. However, in the words of excellent writing-advice YouTuber, Abbie Emmons:

MBTI shows us how we behave.

Enneagram shows us what we believe.

I will be referencing Abbie’s video Using The ENNEAGRAM To Write CONFLICTED CHARACTERS and her free Enneagram-cheatsheet, available in the description of the linked video. Whether it’s before you continue reading or after, if you’re interested in writing, I would highly recommend you check out her channel!

The Enneagram system has nine basic personality types that overlap and interact in really interesting ways. It is not a hard science, and it’s not a horoscope. Instead, it’s supposed to be “based on conventional wisdom and modern psychology.” All I can say is that with every set of characters I’ve tried it with, it works! Once you get the hang of it, it feels kind of like ~✰~magic~✰~!

Below, I will list Abbie’s simplified definitions of each of the personality types, in order:

Type 1: The Reformer

The Rational, Idealistic Type:

Principled, Purposeful, Self-Controlled, and Perfectionistic

Basic Fear: Of being corrupt/evil, defective

Basic Desire: To be good, to have integrity, to be balanced

Key Motivations: Want to be right, to strive higher and improve everything, to be consistent with their ideals, to justify themselves, to be beyond criticism so as not to be condemned by anyone.

Type 2: The Helper

The Caring, Interpersonal Type:

Generous, Demonstrative, People-Pleasing, and Possessive

Basic Fear: Of being unwanted, unworthy of being loved

Basic Desire: To feel loved

Key Motivations: Want to be loved, to express their feelings for others, to be needed and appreciated, to get others to respond to them, to vindicate their claims about themselves.

Type 3: The Achiever

The Success-Oriented, Pragmatic Type:

Adaptable, Excelling, Driven, and Image-Conscious

Basic Fear: Of being worthless

Basic Desire: To feel valuable and worthwhile

Key Motivations: Want to be affirmed, to distinguish themselves from others, to have attention, to be admired, and to impress others.

Type 4: The Individualist

The Sensitive, Introspective Type:

Expressive, Dramatic, Self-Absorbed, and Temperamental

Basic Fear: That they have no identity or personal significance

Basic Desire: To find themselves and their significance (to create an identity)

Key Motivations: Want to express themselves and their individuality, to create and surround themselves with beauty, to maintain certain moods and feelings, to withdraw to protect their self-image, to take care of emotional needs before attending to anything else, to attract a "rescuer."

Type 5: The Investigator

The Intense, Cerebral Type:

Perceptive, Innovative, Secretive, and Isolated

Basic Fear: Being useless, helpless, or incapable

Basic Desire: To be capable and competent

Key Motivations: Want to possess knowledge, to understand the environment, to have everything figured out as a way of defending the self from threats from the environment.

Type 6: The Loyalist

The Committed, Security-Oriented Type:

Engaging, Responsible, Anxious, and Suspicious

Basic Fear: Of being without support and guidance

Basic Desire: To have security and support

Key Motivations: Want to have security, to feel supported by others, to have certitude and reassurance, to test the attitudes of others toward them, to fight against anxiety and insecurity.

Type 7: The Enthusiast

The Busy, Variety-Seeking Type:

Spontaneous, Versatile, Acquisitive, and Scattered

Basic Fear: Of being deprived and in pain

Basic Desire: To be satisfied and content—to have their needs fulfilled

Key Motivations: Want to maintain their freedom and happiness, to avoid missing out on worthwhile experiences, to keep themselves excited and occupied, to avoid and discharge pain.

Type 8: The Challenger

The Powerful, Dominating Type:

Self-Confident, Decisive, Willful, and Confrontational

Basic Fear: Of being harmed or controlled by others

Basic Desire: To protect themselves (to be in control of their own life and destiny)

Key Motivations: Want to be self-reliant, to prove their strength and resist weakness, to be important in their world, to dominate the environment, and to stay in control of their situation.

Type 9: The Peacemaker

The Easygoing, Self-Effacing Type:

Receptive, Reassuring, Agreeable, and Complacent

Basic Fear: Of loss and separation

Basic Desire: To have inner stability, "peace of mind"

Key Motivations: Want to create harmony in their environment, to avoid conflicts and tension, to preserve things as they are, to resist whatever would upset or disturb them.

Now that you’ve seen all those, what do you think your favorite character is? In YuGiOh or anything else! It works great for original characters and even yourself and your loved ones.

The actual Character Profiles will be in coming post(s), but continue reading if you want me to explain more about how and why the Enneagram is a great personality typing system. #nonspon, or whatever.

The Enneagram Chart

Now, you could just go to the Enneagram Institute’s page on How the System Works, but below I’ll cut it down to only the parts I’m interested in and explain those in a way that helps me.

Unlike in astrology or MBTI, which are both more restrictive in different ways, the relative position of each type matters a bit on the Enneagram chart, because it can be used to visualize a lot of things about a person!

The Basic Chart

The Types are shown in a clockwise fashion with “1″ in the 1 o’clock position on an analog clock. The interior lines mean things, but I have trouble reading it without further delineation.

Centers of Response

Below are two small charts, displayed side-by-side. (If it’s too small, try right-click, open in new tab!)

The chart on the left shows the three “centers.” The “centers” indicate the first ‘processing language’ a person would use to respond to stimuli.

Type 8, Type 9, and Type 1 respond first based on instinct (primal, gut-feeling). If you want to go Freudian, this is from the id.

Type 2, Type 3, and Type 4 respond first based on feelings (social or personal desires, the heart). If you want to go Freudian, this is from the ego.

Type 5, Type 6, and Type 7 respond first based on thoughts (analytical rather than emotional, the head). If you want to go Freudian, this is from the superego.

Remember that, of course, every single type and person engages their instincts, their emotions, and their thoughts at different times and to different degrees, and some of these are learned or changed behaviors. This is about what their innate drive toward that would be.

Likewise, the same “centers” can also be used for the chart on the right. You will notice that all three of these are defined by what is typically considered a negative emotion. This is because this is about a person’s instinctive, not particularly conscious emotional response when they are backed into a corner and deprived of something that is core to the needs of their personality type.

Type 8, Type 9, and Type 1 tend to respond to a threat to their psychic well-being with anger/rage.

Type 2, Type 3, and Type 4 tend to respond to a threat to their psychic well-being with shame.

Type 5, Type 6, and Type 7 tend to respond to a threat to their psychic well-being with fear.

Stress vs. Growth

We all know that there are times when a person isn’t acting like themselves, for better or for worse. Usually, “You’re not acting like yourself,” means that a person is behaving badly. Of course, it’s way easier to withdraw and bristle and defend rather than growing in the midst of adversity. However, it is certainly possible to experience character growth in response to experiences, good and bad. Unlike a lot of other personality typing schemes, the Enneagram has a way to display and predict what stress and growth do to a person.

The Enneagram never suggests that any Type is an island unto itself. Every person contains multitudes, but a person’s Type is likely to remain relatively stable throughout their lives, once they have had a chance to develop any personality at all. This means that when a person is stressed or growing that they do not become the type they emulate. Rather, they are more highly expressing that aspects of their personality that reflect those drives and desires but in a way that is either fraught, sickly, or unwell (in the case of stress), or aspirational, flying-high, and incorporating the hard-lessons into who a person is going to be going forward (in the case of growth). The latter, especially, isn’t a sustainable mode, while a stressed person can become more entrenched in their bad habits and defensive coping mechanisms.

Stress

Note the white, directional arrows. Each number has an arrow point pointing to it and an arrow leading away from it. The point indicates that this is the stress manifestation for the Type at the origin of that arrow. The origin of each arrow indicates the Type being described.

Confused? Let me finally give you a YuGiOh example.

When I was trying to identify the Types of the characters, defining Marik was difficult, because he has a “Yami,” or Dark Side, which has its own personality and will but which is not its own separate soul or person than Marik himself. Rather, it’s a kind of fantasy/magic-assisted personality splintering where Yami Marik is a full manifestation of the negative traits Marik needed to embody to survive.

So, for reference:

When stressed, Type 1 behaves more like Type 4. 

When stressed, Type 2 behaves more like Type 8.

When stressed, Type 3 behaves more like Type 9.

When stressed, Type 4 behaves more like Type 2.

When stressed, Type 5 behaves more like Type 7.

When stressed, Type 6 behaves more like Type 3.

When stressed, Type 7 behaves more like Type 1.

When stressed, Type 8 behaves more like Type 5.

When stressed, Type 9 behaves more like Type 6.

Alternatively, you can use these sequences to follow the stress lines:

1-4-2-8-5-7-1

9-6-3-9

Growth

Think of the above-explanation in reverse.

The sequence:

1-7-5-8-2-4-1

9-3-6-9

As a Type 1 grows, they incorporate more positive traits of Type 7.

As a Type 2 grows, they incorporate more positive traits of Type 4.

As a Type 3 grows, they incorporate more positive traits of Type 6.

As a Type 4 grows, they incorporate more positive traits of Type 1.

As a Type 5 grows, they incorporate more positive traits of Type 8.

As a Type 6 grows, they incorporate more positive traits of Type 9.

As a Type 7 grows, they incorporate more positive traits of Type 5.

As a Type 8 grows, they incorporate more positive traits of Type 2.

As a Type 9 grows, they incorporate more positive traits of Type 3.

Wings

The final thing to know about the Enneagram chart for my purposes is about wings. The wing of your personality traits accounts for the complementary and contradictory aspects of your personality. They are the inconsistencies that make you human, predicted and jumped in. Typically, a person is not thought to have both possible wings but one or the other. A wing is one of the two adjacent Types to yours, the number before, or the number after, and it is annotated, for example:

Type 1, Wing 2: 1w2

Type 1, Wing 9: 1w9

Link to Part 2 Here!

[buddiebeginz]

tw: child abuse/other references to abuse

Finally caught up to the current episodes of 911. I have a lot of thoughts on Buck and Maddie and their family situation from Buck Begins (and the episodes before it). From stuff I’ve seen around online I get the impression that most people loved Buck’s begin episode but it’s probably my least favorite of the show thus far along with Eddie’s ep. I love those characters but I don’t feel the show did their origin stories justice especially not when compared to the kinds of episodes the other characters had.

As for Buck’s story I was glad we were able to learn a lot of new information about his past, considering that was one of my big issues with Eddie’s ep that it felt like a lot of repetitive info we already knew. I’m glad we got to see what Buck’s life was like before he became a firefighter and learn more about his relationship with Maddie and that he had traveled a lot. Still as someone who grew up in an abusive home I feel like Buck’s origin story with his parents was handled pretty carelessly at points.

It’s kind of a common thing I’ve seen with shows though unfortunately. It just seems that most mainstream media doesn’t know how to handle abuse storylines (especially abusive parents) unless it’s storylines dealing with more commonly understood abuse like physical or sexual. If it’s abuse like Buck and Maddie endured where their life looked perfect on the surface but underneath there’s neglect and emotional abuse tv shows often give the parents an excuse (like they were grieving) and finds a way for the family to come back together at the end. Because they weren’t really “that bad”. But emotional abuse like Buck endured can sometimes be worse than physical.

It’s clear that Buck’s parents are toxic and that Maddie and Buck should both stay as far away from them as possible. I was really bothered by the scene with Buck and his parents at the firehouse. It felt like the show sort of absolved Buck’s parents of all their wrong doing and made it seem like they cared about him, like they always had when it was clear they never really did. They had him to save Daniel and when he couldn’t it’s obvious they resented him. I mean look at that whole thing with the baby box. That’s how little they cared about him. They didn’t even make a box to remember his important moments. Yes people can grow and change but they don’t do it over night and abusers rarely change.

I know there was a line Buck said (to Maddie) at the end about how he could forgive them because he’s never felt like he had a relationship with them in the first place so it didn’t really matter, which makes sense in theory but in real life that’s never how it is when you’ve grown up with abusive parents. You can try and detach yourself emotionally from them all you want but they’re still your parents, there’s still a part of you that will always hurt from never being loved the way you deserved by the people who were supposed to love you the most. Things like that don’t get wrapped up all nice and neat like like it felt like they tried to do with Buck and his parents. I am glad Buck got to express some of how he felt when they all had that dinner together but he definitely didn’t owe his parents forgiveness.

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The part I had the biggest issue with though was at the end when Buck went to see Maddie. Buck had every right to be angry and remain angry for awhile, at the very least Buck had a right to tell Maddie how he felt and express why he was angry and hurt by what she did and I felt like the show robbed him of that.

Buck walked in the door talking about how he had basically lashed out on Maddie because he knew that no matter what she would forgive him. It’s not Maddie who needed to do the forgiving it was Buck. Buck had trusted her his whole life. She had been like a defacto parent for all intents and purposes as his parents refused to be there for him the way he needed and now he finds out the one person in this world who has been a constant in his life (at least before he joined the 118) has lied to him about something huge. It makes sense he wouldn’t just shake that off. So for the show to just have him come in and act like everything is fine with him and Maddie I felt like was a huge problem and major disservice to Buck’s character and growth.

I’m not saying I didn’t want Maddie and Buck to make up, I definitely did. But Buck has never been good at putting his true feelings first and expressing himself. Buck has been selfish at times (plenty in season 1) but he has never been good about speaking up for what he needs and speaking truthfully to the people in his life about things he was dealing with. I mean he barely told Abby how he felt when he saw her again, he mostly stayed quiet and let her make it all about herself when he really should have been like “wtf why did you ghost me for no reason?”. Or when he didn’t tell everyone how hard he was pushing himself to go back to work and then developed a blood clot, or when he was scared to tell everyone he was seeing a therapist. He holds a lot back.

My point is if we’re supposed to be seeing Buck mature into a “better” version of himself he even said something about Buck 3.0 in a recent episode. How can that change happen if the show doesn’t let him evolve and let his relationships evolve. Even with the 118. I know they love him but I feel like they still see him as the hot headed screw up from season 1 sometimes. It’d be nice if they saw how much he’s grown too. (Not talking about Eddie. Eddie sees Buck more than anyone else does. He was the only one who told Buck he had every right to express how he felt and that he didn’t have to forgive his parents.)

Back to Maddie I think it was vital for Buck and for their relationship that we should have seen Buck tell her something like “it hurt that you kept that from me when you were the only family I ever really had (before the 118)”. I love Buck and Maddie’s relationship so I’m not saying I wanted some huge fight or for it to get drawn out on the show but I wanted Buck to express his pain and for him to call Maddie out on how wrongly she handled things. I know that she was also a victim of their parents abuse (not to mention everything with Doug) but that doesn’t absolve her from her lies to Buck once they both weren’t living with their parents anymore.

To be honest I don’t even understand why Maddie called her parents to come to LA. She said something about how because she has a baby on the way she wanted to reconnect with them but there is no connecting with people who are that toxic. And her need to connect with them shouldn’t have had to involve Buck if he didn’t want to see them. I definitely don’t understand why Maddie thought it was her place to tell their parents about Buck going to therapy especially without asking him. She told Buck that he should open up and tell them how he’s been feeling but like why? They clearly never cared about his feelings before and it was obvious when they all had dinner together they still don’t. At the dinner I didn’t like how Maddie seemed to be quiet most of the time or trying to just keep the peace with her parents vs standing up for Buck the way he did for her. At one point their mother got upset talking about the hospital and it sounded like she was going to talk about Daniel and Maddie stopped her. It’s like Maddie didn’t want the secret to get out to Buck either. Yet Maddie had no problem telling Chimney.

I’ve seen people saying stuff like no one better hate on Maddie. I don’t hate Maddie but I have a lot of issues with choices she made and the fact that it didn’t feel like she owned up to them to Buck at the end. It’s altered how I look at her and her relationship with Buck to a extent. Maddie lied to Buck even when she didn’t have to anymore. She told other people something that she should have only been telling Buck. She told her parents Buck’s business. She brought her parents to LA without asking Buck if he wanted to see them. She tried to excuse her parents by saying “they were grieving” . Grief is not an excuse to keep huge secrets from your children, to lie to them continually, and it’s definitely not an excuse to abuse your children.

I have empathy for what Buck’s whole family went through including his parents. I can’t imagine the kind of pain that parents would go through losing their child. But no child should have to bare the burden of their parents pain and that’s essentially what they made Maddie and Buck do.

I know this got pretty long but Buck is my favorite character I relate to him a lot, even more so after watching some of the current episodes. These eps about his family were just painful. I wanted to protect Buck because I felt like no one in his family was. I know what he was feeling in these episodes. Alone and unloved and like he couldn’t trust anyone and like no one in his family was on his side.

The whole montage at the end with Maddie and Buck which was supposed to tug on our hearts and remind us of this great bond they share as siblings ended up feeling kind of hollow to me. I think it could have been a beautiful scene if the show had used it after allowing them to talk about what had happened. It would have shown all they had been through and how they had grown and were moving forward. That they were all the (biological) family they needed and their parents didn’t matter. But since the show didn’t allow that kind of recognition the montage felt more like the show was saying we’re just going to sweep all that drama under the rug now it’s over and done with, here’s some pretty pictures. You don’t instantly move on from knowing someone you trusted lied to you your whole life. I just really wish the show would have done better for Buck in these episodes and better with telling a storyline about abuse. I know this is probably an unpopular opinion but I just felt like I needed to rant about it. If you made it down this far thanks for reading. 💗

[thedambookdragon]

Seth's Death

Hello!! Here are my headcanons about the upperclassmen (+ Abby and Wymack kinda) and Seth's death, I made myself very sad writing this, enjoy (: CW: death, swearing. Characters belong to the All For The Game series by Nora Sakavic

The only thing Seth and Matt really argued about was keeping the window in the bedroom open.

Seth was a Cold Person. He would fling the window open, let the fresh air and freezing temperature in, and pass out in a vest and boxer shorts.

Matt however, is a Warm Person. Almost every night, he would slam the window closed and argue that it was freezing.

“It’s mid-July, it’s fucking boiling.”

“It’s ANTARCTICA in here.”

The night Seth died, Matt only went back into his room once, for his pajamas. There was no way he was sleeping in there alone.

And the window was wide open. Seth, the bastard, had turned the entire room into the North Pole again, so it would be cold enough when we got back, drunk and exhausted, from clubbing.

But he never came back, he was never coming back, he was-

Dan found him a while later, head against the windowsill, taking deep breaths of cold, fresh air, fingers wrapped round the handles of the dresser that Seth stubbed his toe on so many times.

Matt left the window open after that.

He was used to the cold now anyway.

Danielle Wilds was the first female captain in NCAA exy and had put up with a lot of shit from her male teammates, including Seth Gordon.

Then, the new season started, Seth’s more toxic friends had left, and as he fell for Dan’s blonde-haired, high-heeled roommate, Dan was slowly learning to live with Seth’s existence- appreciated it even, especially after getting a blackout-drunk Allison home to her and Renee, respectfully and safely.

The first time Dan had been left alone with him, he was stood, maybe a little awkwardly, in the girl’s doorway as he waited to take Allison out.

“She doesn’t like flowers,” Dan said, pointedly.

“I know,” said Seth, annoyed. “They’re lilies. For her grandmother?”

Oh. Allison had been close with Nana Lily and her husband even through the drama with her parents, and had cried for days when she had died- a year ago, Dan realised.

More annoyed that Seth had remembered something that she hadn’t, Dan turned and left him alone.

From there, a strange friendship blossomed as Seth made himself comfortable with the team, eating dinner with them, taking Allison out to dates, and most importantly, actually listening to Dan when she gave him instructions- even when he and Allison were off.

The night he died, Dan flopped herself down at her desk as usual, to write a note in her journal. She wanted the normalcy to steady her, staying strong for her team, but then she remembered that it was Seth who bought her the planner.

He had picked one up for her at the grocery store the same day she lost her old one, and handed it to her with a borderline rude, “Captains should keep track of their things, Dan.”

Dan put her head in her hands and cried. She was going to miss that asshole.

Renee Walker mourned Seth’s death the only healthy way she knew- lighting a candle and praying.

She remembered the first time she met Seth, and had seen the hopelessness in him. She saw how he was waiting for another person to give up on him, but also saw how he clung to the foxhole court with a ferocity she could only respect.

That didn’t sit well with Renee at all, but she forced it aside as she and her roommates dealt with their teammates’ sexism and forged their own friendships.

She got her chance the same time Dan did, when Seth proved her theory right and stuck with the foxes, hanging around their dorm day after day, watching as she baked cookies and brownies and cupcakes.

“Where did you learn to bake?” he asked once, rude but making an effort.

“My foster mother taught me,” Renee replied, stirring blue food dye into icing for Matt’s birthday. “Do you know how?”

“Yeah,” said Seth, a little defensive still. “I used to make all sorts of shit with my brothers.”

“Have you ever made fruitcake?”

“Yeah.”

“Would you like to help?”

The next day, Seth showed up with a battered-looking notebook filled with children’s scraggly handwriting, and him and Renee happily went through it with him, deciphering recipes and making a mess.

She had burned with a quiet satisfaction at the time, thrilled to have an in with her sulkiest teammate.

That feeling was gone now. He had once said, jokingly, that if something happened to Seth, Renee could keep his recipe book.

She would keep the recipe book. She would use it as often as she could, her own tribute to yet another life taken so soon.

Wymack was Seth’s emergency contact, and if Seth was alive when he found that out, he might have been a little happy about it. He walked into the hospital, found Allison, and took her home. As tough as Wymack was, he didn’t want to see Seth. Not like that. 

Seth acted like he hated everyone and everything at any given time, but his willingness to win, to make something out of what Wymack gave him, shone through in team meetings, when he argued, aggressively but thoroughly and sensibly, about plays, teammates, what to order for takeout and which opponent will be the hardest to take down.

He could have been something. He could have been something great, and Wymack had known it. He hoped that Seth had known it, too.

Abby was with Wymack, drinking wine and going through medical history paperwork, when he got the call. She cried right there and then, shocked at how easily she accepted it. She let Wymack go down there without her, and would have put the paperwork aside if she wasn’t looking at Seth’s history. She filled it out as neatly as she could, because what else could she do?

Then there was Allison. She was there, when paramedics rushed into the club bathroom and pulled him out on a stretcher, club staff staring impassively as Seth, her Seth, was pronounced dead on arrival. 

She didn’t cry. She would cry later, when her whole body wasn’t numb from the shock, when she realised that she wasn’t too drunk, she wasn’t dreaming, and Seth really wasn’t waking up.

She would cry when she next saw lilies, or brownies with raisins mixed in, or the number six jersey left crumpled on her bed. And then she would pull herself together.

These memories would be painful for a long, long time. But at least this way, Allison would remember him.

[thewalkingdead-imagines]

My Take on TLOU 2

Warning: Major spoilers for tlou part 1 and 2 below!

Before I start: None of my criticism is meant as hate against anyone who loved the game. This is just my personal opinion, if you liked it or feel differently than me, that’s completely fine, to each their own!  Also, this is solely about the plot, not the gameplay, the scenery, the graphics etc. because those were unarguably breathtaking and incredibly well done. Either way, here we go:

• Starting off with the elephant in the room: I absolutely hated that they killed Joel. I hated this so so much. 

1. The fact that they killed him at all Killing off a main Character is rarely the right call and it most definitely wasn't the right one for tlou in my opinion. Joel and Ellie’s father-daughter relationship and its growth was what made the first game so special and by killing Joel, they killed a whole lot of the game’s essence already. Plus, and this is a personal thing, I (and I am 100% sure lots of others) loved Joel as character, which makes killing him off even worse. ...which lets me come to my second point

2. How they killed him First, the fact that they did it so very early on in the game. I spoiled myself on accident and knew he was going to die way before I even started the initial game but I can say that I was entirely shocked that it happened at the start. I thought it might be done towards the middle, which would have at least given us some time with him and a possibility to say “goodbye” in a way but instead you get very few moments with him at the start and then his death. That’s it. That alone is a punch in the face for anyone who loved this character and the first game. Then, they make him save Abby only for her to lead them into an ambush. I was also very confused that they made Joel follow her without questioning it, sure this one is debatable, but after years and years of being a hardened survivor, do you really think he would just trust a random stranger? He grew softer, sure, and he also grew to trust people more, but not enough to just follow a random stranger who said they had a whole ass group without questioning it at least for a moment. He didn’t even seem to be just slightly wary and to be honest, that just seemed unnatural to me.  The brutality of his death is another punch in the face. Abby tortured him, for god knows how long. She first shot his kneecap off and then tortured him until he laid paralyzed on the ground, blood overflown and barely conscious. They did that to a character the whole first game lead you to love. Then they make Ellie come in to watch Abby give him the rest with a fucking golf curb while she pleads for his life. Sorry but what the fuck? We’ve seen Joel survive so fucking much, he’s survived being impaled by an iron rod for fuck’s sake and took out whatever people threw at him and he dies like that? Without even giving him the possibility to fight back? There’s so much going on in my head when I think about that moment that I honestly can’t even put all of this into words.

• I get that this all was done to set up the remaining plot and honestly, that was the next problem in my eyes. This whole story revolved around a revenge plot and how much you have to stop this circle of revenge. To me, that’s more of a predicable and overused plot but that might be a personal thing. My problem is even more that they made the whole story about this and that it felt like a severely forced teaching moment / moral of the story type of thing that lasted for 25(?) hours. I’m not against teaching moments per se, that’s not the thing, and I wanna be clear about that but I hate it when its a. forced b. way too obvious and feels unnatural, and to me that was the case in the second part.

• Now about 1/3 through the game, I didn’t want to completely give up on it yet. I thought/hoped there might be a chance for me to even somehow like it in the end. So I wanted to  stay open and for a little I could still see that there was a bit of the essence of the first game left. I loved the cut scenes of Joel and Ellie so so much. I can’t emphasize how much I adore them. They did a great job with them, really. The scenes at the museum are pure perfection and they honestly made me despise the fact that they decided to kill him even more. I will never get over Ellie putting the hats on the dinosaurs and Joel, and I will surely not get over his gift to her. This guy went out and searched his ass off to find her a cassette with the first moon-landing, just to be sure that he has the perfect gift for her. This is beyond adorable. I’ve rewatched these scenes so often already and they honestly get me emotional each time. These scenes felt like the first game again, they gave you that cozy, warm feeling when you got to watch their relationship grow. I also loved the guitar shop (or their way towards it) cut scene, it kind of conveyed what I would’ve wished for for the entire game. A good bunch of action and horror when they have to make their way through but it still has the essence of their relationship and their story when they discuss the teenager’s deaths.

• In short, I really really wanted to see more of these cut scenes and kept on hoping for more until they switched everything up and a cut scene for Abby started. 

• I already expected them to try and make Abby look better or made the thing she did to Joel kind of “understandable��, especially because I’ve seen that there were people who really started to love her character. So I kind of expected something big to happen. To me, it didn’t. So her father was the surgeon that Joel killed. Sure she hated Joel (fair enough, he killed her parent) but is that enough for me to understand, excuse etc. what she did in Jackson? Fuck no and that has several reasons. → Joel didn’t kill (nor fucking tortured!!) her father because of something small, like a few supplies etc. he killed him because he literally was about to kill his adopted daughter for a vaccine that might have not even worked out. He killed him to protect someone. Also:  → Her father moreover visibly seemed to doubt that he would do this procedure if Abby was the immune girl, which is pretty much hypocritical bullshit. → Abby’s father didn’t give a shit about Ellie too, he could have let her wake up and make a conscious decision whether she wanted to do this, he didn’t. He just approved of killing her → He threatened Joel with a surgical knife  → He would have stayed alive if he would have let Joel just go with Ellie / refrained from killing her  So this honestly didn’t make me feel for her, this only made my rage for her grow. She had to know that Joel killed her father (and prevented the vaccine) because he didn’t want this little girl to die for something that might have not even worked. Then, he saves her ass from a sure death and she still decides to torture him to death? There was not one moment of doubt in Abby, not one and what makes it worse is that she doesn’t show any remorse about what she did at any time during the game

• I really hoped that they would stop after this but they really made you play all 3 days as Abby, the same time as Ellie. They really force you to play as character who has killed and brought so much pain over the characters you grew to love (probably as an attempt to force you to like her after seeing her side). So instead of using these hours to give you time to play with these beloved characters, they give it to her. Sorry but that’s bullshit. 

• Besides this, it also absolutely threw off the pace of the plot. You just wanted to know what happens to Ellie now that Abby on top of it all also killed Jesse (!!!) and instead you get thrown back to square one. • I’m not interested in her weird love triangle with Owen and Mel, I don’t care how she got from Salt lake city to Seattle and I don’t care about her work out program. All these plots just frustrated me more tbh.

• Now, I wanna add that I tried to ask myself if I would’ve liked her if she hadn’t killed Joel and honestly, I’m 100% sure I wouldn’t. I just really don’t like her personality. All this time she just seemed bitter and boring, moreover she repeatedly said that she helped those others for herself and to top it off, she also fucked a guy with a pregnant girlfriend (fuck Owen too btw). So again, how do you expect me to like her?

• I did like Lev and Yara. Honestly, if naughtydog wanted to do something so very new, they could’ve just made a whole story about Lev’s struggles within this post apocalyptic community. That would have at least been interesting and wouldn’t have fucked your favorite characters over, just saying.

• Now flash-forward to the scene back at the theater. Abby’s just killed Jesse, she’s got Tommy hurt on the floor and then you’re forced to play as her and hurt Ellie? Fuck that  (Also, the way they had Ellie walk around in that scene? C’mon that’s not how she’d walk around a room while she’s searching for her enemy)

• This thing kind of leads to one thing that wraps up a lot of the end well, Ellie was panicked and broke down when she realized that Mel was pregnant, Abby said “good” when Ellie plead for Dina’s life and said that she was pregnant. I’m not saying that there’s a general difference between Ellie killing people and Abby killing people, it’s obviously shit either way but there’s a clear difference in how they handle it. Ellie is clearly distraught while Abby stays cold, and after everything (also everything else I’ve mentioned) they still wanna make you sympathize with Abby and be angry with Ellie for doing all this. A lot of the game is set up to this (at least that’s what i felt like). Just one example: Abby plays fetch with dog, Ellie is forced to kill dog (also, weird how you’re just forced to kill dogs when you play as Ellie and not Abby, huh?)

• While naughtydog tried to make YOU (as well as Ellie, honestly) see all the different points of views they make Abby entirely ignorant to it, without any remorse and still try to make you have sympathy for her. She does not try to be insightful regarding what she’s done to Joel and see Ellie/Joel’s side just once. She actually mentions that Joel deserved much worse and suggests she did everything right in Jackson. This ignorance and complete lack of remorse...I think this is one of by biggest problems with this plot. Also, that very last attempt to make you feel for Abby when she’s lost her bulk and stand at those pillars? Really? Kinda cheap 

• Again, I get where they wanted to go with the story. I get that they wanted to show that you lose everything when you just seek for revenge and that the circle needs to be broken, but it was so one-sided in the end. Both, Abby and Ellie lost a lot, but Ellie loses absolutely everyone and Abby still has Lev. Ellie loses even two fingers, which doesn’t even allow her to play guitar, which is another fucking punch in the face. It was more about letting Ellie face the consequences instead of Abby and to me, that’s just the wrong call to make after the entire first game lead you to love her and Joel. So, it felt dissatisfying to let Abby go in the end. I get why they did that but it felt like this whole journey was for absolutely nothing. Especially after they ripped her from a life with Dina and JJ to go back to hunting Abby down. She lost everything and didn’t even get to end it. 

• Generally, what this game did...I don’t think that this is something you do with beloved characters. You just don’t do them completely dirty and they did so with Ellie and Joel. People loved this game majorly because of Joel and Ellie’s story and relationship and were excited to see more of it in the next part and they screwed those people, their viewers and players, completely over. You don’t have to be a complete viewer pleaser, don’t get me wrong, but you also don’t need to completely shit all over them. After all, these are the people who buy and support your game, it’s just not fair to them.

• This might be a personal thing but I’ve seen so many creators ruin good stories just because they wanted to do something super creative, edgy and entirely new with it. 99% of the time that goes horribly wrong. Don’t get me wrong, you have to do new things to keep it fresh but at the same time you cannot lose what made a story special in the first place. You have to make sure to keep the essence of the story alive and at the same time do something new with it. Unfortunately, i feel like the creators of this game didn’t even want to keep this essence alive, they just wanted to do something entirely new and they belong to the 99% who managed to ruin it.

• You know what I would have loved as plot for the second game? If they would have let Ellie explore that her life can mean something and matter even without a vaccine. The first game even perfectly set the second one up for this. Resolving Joel and Ellie’s conflict + making Ellie realize that she’s more than just her immunity + a new adventure...that would have perfectly continued the story. It would have kept the essence of the game going and mixed it with something new. Now, they pretty much ignored how Ellie felt about this part (except for two cut scenes and a tiny bit here and there) which was pretty much her main issue since she got bit. The last cut scene with Joel and her outside...it just made we wish so much that they got the chance to properly talk everything out. And by now, I kinda just pretend that everything after this night didn’t happen.

• So honestly, I’m just very disappointed and upset. It felt like they were mostly just trying to prove that they had the balls to pull a plot like this off, to show that they had the balls to kill a beloved main character and have you play with their killer.  Sure, that might be ballsy and bold, but to me, that’s not what good story telling is about. Good story telling is not a game of “my dick is bigger than yours”. But maybe that’s just my opinion.

And there’s one more thing: Happy endings aren’t always bad, lazy and unrealistic And depressing endings aren’t automatically creative, deep and good I feel like that’s something a lot of creators don’t realize

[sometimesrosy]

hi rosie! I know it's been months since the 100 ended and I've seen lots of people talk about how they failed bellamy and clarke but I was wondering what you thought of raven and her storyline in s7. do you think it was good for her character and her story arc?

Ahh. Raven’s arc.

Yeah, so the problem with Raven’s arc is JR hasn’t known what to do with her since season 5. Season 4 was the last season with a good character arc for her, and even that one had a major character glitch as he tried to take her from the pragmatist who would blow up a bridge or dam or tell Clarke to kill Lxa while surrounded by her armies, to a person who said “it’s not your blood that matters, it’s your heart.”  Which was one of the worst lines in this whole show. It’s not even funny like “we’re back bitches!” It’s just corny and soppy and dumb. Her character shift on science island always felt false to me. It should have been Bellamy who held Clarke in check with morality, since that had been HIS character arc. I thought it was a misstep then, and now knowing the entire narrative arc, I think it was where they started to go wrong with Raven. Until then she was my third favorite character after Clarke and Bellamy.

I ALWAYS had a problem with this, but I was giving them the benefit of the doubt that they could pull it out. Season 5 was the least bad for her, with her sacrifice for spacekru on the ship, but honestly I didn’t think they went far enough with that. I feel like they should have explored her feelings of guilt more at not being able to get her friends home, or leaving Clarke behind alone.  And there was great potential in the scene where she and Clarke took McCreary down using her own body as the weapon (especially for a character whose body was always in pain and whose body had failed her... idk that’s quite some symbolism there,) but instead they chose to retreat and turn her back into the judgmental shrew that told Bellamy he shouldn’t have saved the slaves, and told Clarke she was the one who said whether everyone lived or died.

So like. She never addressed with Clarke what happened with Finn at his death. The blame she put on Clarke, when SHE wanted to instigate a war that would have had them all exterminated, including Finn. For some reason, the genius couldn’t connect those dots that her plan would have caused all of her people to massacred? I mean, it’s normal for her to have that failure in such a time of high emotion, but six years later, she still thinks Clarke was wrong to do what she did? No. Plot hole. Forgetting all the times that she enabled Clarke’s plans, or eagerly set about torturing and killing (remember SHE’S the one who electrified Lincoln without a BIT of the remorse that Clarke and Bellamy had,) is a failure of character.

Also, she never addressed the FACT that she wanted to trade Murphy to the grounders for Finn’s life and have him tortured to death in place of her boyfriend who was a literal mass murderer, AND she blamed Murphy for Finn’s actions when Murphy was the one trying to stop him the whole time. And THIS is a plot hole for a character arc and narrative line that was about Raven having learning about forgiveness and morality and leadership and sacrifice and hard decisions, and making judgments on Murphy, who frankly has been one of the most moral characters of the show since season 2. His morality might not be the SAME as everyone else’s, but it was the most firm.  So, this narrative arc again did not go FAR enough. 

In season 5, I figured that they would make up for the s5 scanty Raven storyline with a stronger s6 one.. That didn’t happen. I thought maybe it was because her love interest left, so she took on his judgmental role, but it didn’t work well. I also thought that part of the problem was that it would make her into too big of a character and they needed to keep the focus on the main characters, Clarke and Bellamy. But from s5-7 MURPHY got a large role, too, that brought a thorough narrative arc and finished out his character journey. So he got the focus that they never managed for Raven. I hear tell that Richard helped Murphy’s story in season 7, so that might be why. But idk. It shows that they were capable of finishing a character story with attention and detail, but they just failed with Raven. 

So season 7 had Raven confronting her own leadership and putting her in Clarke’s place to face the judgment she put on Clarke. And...oh she was sad and felt guilt and had to face the repercussions of that. But... it didn’t go far enough. She was reunited with Clarke and was no longer angry at her, and they were a team again. But this wasn’t HER story arc. Her story arc just kind of went *sad trombone.*

I know she was the one who went into the anomaly and met with the sparkle aliens, but that just seemed so forced and fake. Yes, they built up the morality narrative, but... like. It should have been Clarke. Instead they turned her into the crazy vengeance lady, like Daenerys, even though her entire narrative was about her dealing with her pain and she kind of never killed anyone in vengeance? I mean she spent 6 years ALONE and she only wanted to kill herself? IDK. It doesn’t make sense that THIS was the end. She sent madi into battle too save Bellamy and that did make her crazy lady. She had her after death reckoning and we saw no crazy lady. 

Sorry, that went off into failure of Clarke’s story.

How did that affect Raven? I think that from about season 3, Raven was used as a substitute to fill in gaps where they lost characters, or moved characters around. Where they changed their narrative ideas, and they needed a narrative tool to do something, they would stick Raven in... because she was a strong character who was involved with all the other main characters (except maybe Octavia.) She became like a swiss army knife who would take the place of characters that were needed but didn’t fit. And that meant that HER character was not really consistent in the later half of the series.  And it feels WRONG. Someone’s judgy? Make it Raven. Someone’s empathetic? Make it Raven. Someone’s mean? Make it Raven. Someone’s righteous? Make it Raven. Someone’s a sister? Make it Raven. Someone’s a daughter? Make it Raven. Some main character needs a supporting character to prop them up? Make it Raven. They just moved her around to fit the other character’s stories. Even her big morality arc was to support Abby, Clarke, or Murphy. :/ THAT’S why it didn’t work when they made her the Clarke proxy in the transcendence narrative. Because she hadn’t actually worked through HER story, but through Abby’s Clarke’s and Murphy’s. Bleh.

And she also basically disappeared in a lot of season 7, too. Same as Octavia. Who had her story with Sky Ring and skyringkru, but then disappeared until she gave the inspiring peace speech with the goddamn petty, dumbass stupid grounders, whose main flaw FROM SEASON 1, is that they are too stupid to have survived this long. All they want to do is fight. And blame everyone else for what they did. And the eligius prisoners, and the brainless cult sheep. Honestly. 

And what do we have? The most unnuanced, flat character in the show. Sheidheda. Like there isn’t even any symbolism or archetypal energy in there. He’s just there to make them fight for NO FUCKING REASON. 

These are the characters who had decent story arcs that were resolved.

Murphy and Emori Diyoza Gabriel And Indra a bit. Better than most. 

Fucking DEV had a better character ending than Clarke, Bellamy, Raven, and Octavia. 

Actually, Mackson was satisfying, although skimpy. But then the characters didn’t have a really deep narrative line, so their ending was in keeping with their story. But it fit with their long term stated goals, what they wanted out of life. Just to be together in peace with maybe some chickens, by the shore, right? That was THEIR goal. The ending was theirs.

That was never what any of the other characters wanted. Or not ONLY. Do the right thing. Live a good life. Create a better society. Save humanity. Be good people. Live morally. 

nope. But it worked for Murphy’s ending too. He didn’t want to die alone. He died, with Emori. Then he came back and got to life his half life with his friends. 

I just can’t get over how they tossed the main story of being the good guys and saving humanity. I suppose there was always the question of whether they’d get a happy ending emotionally, but I never thought they’d destroy humanity, erase Bellamy and say Clarke was never the hero. 

I guess I needed to address the endings of the other characters to see how they all fit in with Raven’s. Because none of the characters stood on their own, so we have to see how they were woven together and compare and contrast.

Raven was my biggest disappointment as a character in this show from season 5 on. I kept waiting for her character arc to come together or get the attention Murphy got. She had the weight to be major character, but her story just wasn’t told. She became a supporting character and really lacked meaningful development. 

[realm-sweet-realm]

Prison Cell, chapter 2

This is a story taking place in an AU where the studio became the sketch dimension before most of the sacrifices were made.  While this AU will have an emphasis on horror, especially in the later chapters, I also want to show the resilience of some of these characters.

---

"Can I be the one to go down there?" Susie asked.

"No," Abby answered firmly. "First we need to decide what we're going down there for. And I'm sorry, but I don't think it's going to be a rescue mission. I don't trust you not to turn it into one. Beyond that, though, whoever it is, it has to be someone at least somewhat nondescript. So, not you- you're pretty well-known, and your size alone is pretty distinctive. And not me, either- there are no other black women in this studio, so there definitely aren't any who are loyalists. And not Henry- he's a wanted man. Any volunteers?"

In the end, Jack was chosen for the first mission. He was fairly forgettable in appearance, and the one of the two people down there who knew him well wouldn't be one to call him out. Of course, the other was Joey Drew, but he was nonetheless the best candidate.

After Jack had been assigned, there was a brief discussion about where to hide Henry, they found someone to replace Norman as the projectionist, and a circuit of people were chosen to keep watch of the elevator at night so that no one would be attacked.

---

The next day, Jack put on the loyalist robes, traded his hat for a mask, and headed down in the elevator. The first lower floor that the elevator stopped at was at the old breakroom. Two men were there, playing pool in uniforms but no masks. It was strange how normal it looked. Jack figured that the masks must have only been for specific uses, including any visits to the upper floors. Hopefully he didn't stick out like a sore thumb.

"Hey," he said to them, trying to disguise his voice somewhat, "I have to check on the prisoners. I'm covering for a buddy. But he forgot to tell me where they are. Can you help me?"

One of the men gave him a funny look. There were a thousand things that could have given him away. Maybe all loyalists already knew where the prisoners were kept. "Floor 3B. Take two lefts. You can't miss it."

Jack thanked them and left.

Floor 3B was the second-to-last one, and it opened in a nondescript hallway. Once he’d followed the directions, he got to what looked like an unremarkable row of office doors. They looked like that, but Jack could hear someone crying within them, and could smell human waste. This was, undeniably, the place. Jack tried a few doors and found them to be locked. So, after checking to make sure that there was no one else nearby, he tried talking to the people within them. There were six prisoners in total. One of them was Emma LaMonte. Four of them had been a part of a small insurrection early on. Their stories broke Jack’s heart. One of them, Lacie, had been left with a broken leg that they had done nothing to treat. It had set incorrectly and was now a permeant cause of pain and poor mobility. Another of them, Shawn, had been fed ink. The final prisoner was also a surprise.

“Allison? I thought you were a loyalist.”

“I was, but I wasn’t very good at following the rules. Tom caught me breaking a pretty big one. He doesn’t want me to end up dead. So, he dragged me in here, and told the others that I’d done something less severe. Something that would get me locked up a long time, but not killed. I get treated better than the other prisoners, and Tom comes to visit me and take me around most nights like I’m a free person, but he still doesn’t trust me not to get myself killed. I know it’s only temporary, though.”

“Temporary?”

“Well, Tom says that Joey is working on a way out for all of us. I hope that’s true. But I’ve been in the dark pretty much since the beginning.”

Jack nodded. “I’m real sorry this has happened to you. Can I ask what you were doing? Oh- and do you know where there might be more prisoners?”

“I don’t know about other prisoners. But as for what I was doing- I was visiting the outside without permission. I actually did it several times before I got caught. If you want to do it, the portal is on floor 2B.”

“Okay. Thanks again,” Jack said before leaving.

The portal was not hard to find. A door like any other on floor 2B was in fact marked with the word, “portal.” Someone had left their keys in the door. Jack pocketed the keys and went in.

The inside of the room had, in addition to many typical janitorial supplies, a rack of small vials of dark, nearly-black liquid, a set of post-it notes, and a set of instructions. The instructions read, 

Step 1: write where you want to go on a note and stick it to a door.

Step 2: pour a vial of blood at the base of the door.

Curious as to how specific one had to be and how far the door’s powers extended, Jack wrote “China” on a note and poured out a vial. He opened the door, and on the other side was wilderness. Perhaps this was the very center of China. After being stunned for a moment at being able to see greenery and smell fresh air for the first time in months, Jack realized that, since the portal worked, there was a much better way he could be using it. Giddy, he wrote down his old address and repeated the ritual. The door opened to a closet in his own house. He could hear his dog barking and the voice of one of his kids, and for a moment he considered abandoning the studio and everyone in it.

Then the door shut, and opened again. Jack was roughly pulled through it, back into the supply closet.

“What were you doing!?” a woman yelled at him. Then, her voice dropped to a whisper. “Okay, give me back my keys and don’t tell anyone I forgot them, and I won’t tell anyone that you snuck a trip through the portal. Got it?” she was clearly just as frightened as he was.

“I won’t tell anyone. But could you please just let me have this? Just for ten minutes. Please?”

The woman appeared to mull this over. “Sure. But seriously- you can’t go through there dressed like that. Here, I’ll hold your mask...” the woman reached for his mask. 

Jack backed up against the wall. “Actually, I changed my mind. But don’t worry, I still won’t tell anyone.”

“Wait... you seem familiar...”

Jack opened the door and scrambled to the elevator, not looking back to see if she followed. 

---

“Okay, so the good news is that we know that the insurrectionists are alive,” Abby began after Jack had returned back and composed himself enough to report his findings. “And now we know about the portal. That’s very interesting. The bad news is that the prisoners are being kept in awful conditions, and they’re probably going to suspect anyone who’s wearing the mask in public places from now on. I guess the best thing to do is use someone who looks specifically like someone from down there. So, try to remember how the people down there looked. And thank you, Jack. That was very brave of you.”

Jack nodded and left Abby to her work. Planning an insurrection was difficult, and especially so on top of directing the art department. Shortly after Jack left, there was a knock on her door. It was Susie.

“Susie! Hi! did you get that list I asked for?”

Susie smiled. “Yep. Went to every department. There’s a good dozen or so people who are ready to hit the demon with an ax!”

Abby smiled back. Susie had been a big help to her. “Great! I’ll assign them floors.” hopefully the gambit would pay off. Hopefully they weren’t just throwing good fighters away. The forced blood extraction might have been frightening and violating to the people who received it, of whom there were more than a couple, but who knew when the insurrectionists might need their best fighters? If the demon just dragged them away anyhow, then this wasn’t the best use for them. Of course, being a leader in these times meant making a thousand decisions like that with limited information and hoping that things turned out for the better.

---

Days wore on. The guard system on the elevators had lasted all of a single night. The demon, finding a guard on each floor, had taken to eviscerating one of them. By the time the other guards arrived, the demon was standing over a corpse that appeared nearly inside-out. The demon scurried back to the elevator, and left before anything could be done to him.

The missions went poorly as well. Security had increased after Jack had nearly been found out. While the insurrectionists had managed to map out the lower floors (save for the very basement, which was sealed off), and found out that a great many of the loyalists were sick of a mysterious disease that caused blackened, shiny skin, they were unable to steal keys, free the prisoners, or access the portal again. After two weeks of no progress and three deaths, two of which had been killed after having been found out, Abby called the rebellion off. She felt it was what was best for everyone’s welfare, and since the loyalists had banned wearing masks on the lower floors, going undercover had become immensely more dangerous..

Susie continued to bring people together for meetings. She was not organized and dominant as Abby had been, and her meetings tended to be chaotic. The people were angry and had been emboldened. One night, a man stole a uniform and snuck down to the lowest levels. He killed a man with a knife and injured another before being imprisoned. The next day, Sammy came to the music department and escorted Susie to the basement.

"Where are you taking me?” Susie asked as Sammy clicked the elevator button to bring her to the lower floors.

“Don’t worry. No harm is going to come to you yet. This is something that Joey Drew is explicitly allowing. He knows that he needs to stop this rebellion, so he’s going to use sticks and carrots. And, well, this is the carrot.” Sammy’s face was unreadable.

They went into the room labelled “portal.”

“The first thing that I’ve been asked to do is tell you why all of this is necessary. Susie, your blood can open the portals to the outside. There were only six people in the entire studio with the right blood properties to do that, and your rebellion killed one of them last night.”

Susie nodded. “What I’ve never understood is why you don’t just let everyone out. I mean, you have a portal.”

Sammy took off his shirt, revealing a black growth that had spread across his chest, stomach, and shoulders. “If I spend more than a day or two out there, I will get sick and die. The same is true of everyone who was in the room when the ink machine exploded. Some of us are too deformed to even be allowed through the portal anymore. Joey is looking for a way to cure us so that everyone can be free. And until then, he needs your blood.”

“That doesn’t explain why he’s keeping everyone else.”

Sammy cringed. “That’s probably his own selfishness- wanting to maintain his studio the best he can. He’s not exactly as sane as he used to be. But... you’ll find out about that soon enough. For now, Susie, I’m supposed to give you your carrot. We have some money to spend, and I’ve been given permission to take you anywhere in the world you want for the day and send you back with an offering of gifts.”

Susie thought on this. “What if I told you that I wanted my gift to be Norman?”

“You’ll find out about him tonight. He’s a part of the bargaining.”

Susie’s face lit up. “Okay, wonderful!”

The two of them spent a day in Paris together. Afterwards, Sammy sent her back with two first-aid kits. One of them was fully stocked and then some, as it contained much of the contents that had been in the other one. The other they had emptied. Anything from it they couldn’t pack into the first box had been abandoned on the street, and they had filled the box with knives.

“Please promise me that you won’t use these unless absolutely necessary. Joey doesn’t want it to come to war, but if it does, there is a lot he could use against you. The loyalists could poison you with ink, or they could refuse you access to any resources and starve you into compliance. And thankfully, we don’t have guns, but if things ever escalated, we could get them, and you couldn’t. So, please, for own safety, only use these for self-defense.”

“I won’t let anyone know about these. But I'm not sure I can control them. Angry people that feel like they have nothing to lose are... really hard to lead.”

Sammy went quiet.

“Something wrong, Sammy?”

“Well, I told you that we were planning on using sticks and carrots, right? Well, Joey- if I can still call that thing “Joey”- is about to give you your stick. He wants to crush the rebellion with shock and awe. And I’m scared that he’s just going to make everyone angrier.”

Susie didn’t know what to say to that. “It’ll be okay, Sammy.”

“I sure hope so,” he replied, starting to cry.

Finding the portal again was easy- it was right where it had been at the beginning of the day, in some supply closet in some department store. A loyalist checked over what Susie had brought back, but Sammy had made sure that the person to do so would be another sympathizer, so they were let go. They stepped onto the elevator again. “Alright. Time for the stick. I’m supposed to deliver you to the very basement. I’m sorry.”

[abrunettefangirlnerd]

Little Bird - Mini

 Request: wanted to ask you if you could do a Loki x teen!Reader. Where the reader meets Loki in some way and she touches him and connect their souls 'cause she has powers she doesn't know about. And then some day she's in pain or smth and Loki feels it and comes to her. And she finds out she just can connect her soul with someone she trusts. And loki is all sweet ? And angst maby. Please and thank you.

Pairing: Loki Odinson x teen!Reader

Chapter: Mini Story

A/N: Okay so I am not going to do official chapters but I think I will release a few mini stories about their lives together. Not sure how many I will do. I am really loving how adorable Loki is and his interaction with the reader. If you want to be tagged let me know. Hope ya’ll still enjoy it!

Chapter One       Chapter Two

“This is so not fair.” You whisper, out of breath.

             Loki’s lean figure slightly leans forward, hovering over your own. His breathing is heavy and his hair tries to cling to what is left of his bun. You take in a few deep breaths of your own and ignore the sweat dripping off of your body. The team has been making you physically train. Not with your powers but with punches, kicks, and flips. When they said you would get to train, you initially thought this meant you would get to control these so-called powers you seem to possess. Apparently not!

“Once you can control your own body during a fight, controlling your powers will become easier.” Loki grins. “Besides, I like you on the floor gazing up at me.”

             Loki takes pride in his little bedroom comment. Meanwhile you swing your leg around and knock him off his feet. A thud on the mat tells you that he is down and is time to get up. Using the little energy you have left, you push your body up into a standing position. Much like the way Nat or Steve do during a fight that in your opinion is a show-off move. Regardless, one night you asked Nat to teach you. You figured there may be some satisfaction in executing it one day. Funny how the time comes sooner than expected.

             Looking down at the god beneath you, you can’t help but allow a well deserved smirk to take residence across your lips. This is the first fight you have won, hopefully it won’t be the last. Taking in Loki’s appearance, you begin to understand what is so appealing about being the one left standing. The dominant person standing.

“Don’t get used to it, little bird.” Loki breathes. “I’ll get my rematch later.”

“STOP!” Tony’s voice booms through the intercom. “I can’t take any more of your sexual banter in the training room. Keep it in the bedroom!”

             A faint spread of heat rushes against your cheeks from Tony’s comment. Despite what most would think by looking at you, you are quite a private person about that area of your life. You know Tony is all talk and doesn’t mean anything by it. He doesn’t even know what is going on behind closed doors at the compound. It would be quite shocking for them all to find out.

             Tony gets called out for a meeting at Stark Industries and allows you to call it an early day. Thankfully he had to take Wanda and Vision so even they couldn’t make you practice meditating on your powers. Feeling them as a part of yourself and not as a threat, and accepting them. It will allow you to hone your powers and use them. Seems like there is a lot of stuff they are making you do first before actually letting you use your powers. Meanwhile, you’re sure they just went at it themselves without all this mumbo jumbo.

             Following Loki back to his bedroom you are lost in thought about how to improve at your training so you can get to the next level. It barely registers that you sit on his bed crisscross as Loki disappears to the closet to change out of his training gear. With the snap of his fingers, you are now out of your own training gear and in your favorite pair of sweats and tank top.

“Time for a rematch.” Loki’s low deeps voice appears behind you.

             His arms wrap around your torso and his fingers attack your stomach. You cry out in laughter and pain as you try to pry his hands off of you. As a child your father would constantly tickle you, usually in surprise attacks like this one. Twisting your body in his arms, you manage to face him. Loki’s smug face peers down at you. He thinks he has won. Guess again.

             Suddenly his fingers are no longer moving. His arms are slowly unwrapped from your body. Their movement falters for a moment as Loki attempts to fight back, but you quickly regain control. Electricity thrums through your arms as your magic overpowers his. You manage to lift his arms above his hands against his bed railing. With a bit more concentration you will a free length of lace to wrap a nicely tight bow across Loki’s wrists. Now you are the one looking smug.

“You’ve been practicing without me.” Loki is breathless once again. “I have to say, if I wasn’t a bit terrified I would be 100% turned on.”

             Leaning your body over his, you look deep into his eyes as you bring your face closer. As your lips meet, every nerve in your body is engulfed in flames. Never in your entire life have you met someone that makes you feel as alive as Loki. Even a simple kiss excites everything inside of you, even your bones. Never have you felt like losing such control but yet feeling as safe as could be. But before either of you could get carried away, you break the kiss and sit at the end of the bed.

“Definitely less terrified.” Loki gleams toward you. “Though we still need to be careful.”

             Loki’s reminder saddens you. With a flick of your wrist Loki is released from his lace bondage. He is the one person in the world that you want but yet you cannot fully have him. Tony’s remark earlier left you a little flustered. Only because the two of you haven’t actually had sex yet. Neither one of you is in a big rush, but since you can’t it makes you want it more. Funny how that is always the case?

             It was Loki’s idea. Since no one is sure of the full extent of your powers, he thinks it is best to keep emotions from an all-time high. You agreed and still do, most of the time. You often wonder if he is as miserable about it as you are. He doesn’t show it and you do your best to hid it as well. It isn’t always easy to be so close to him, alone, and not get what you want.

Sometimes you think Loki has another motive behind why you two should delay. He said he could be dangerous if he gets carried away. Since he has arrived in your life, outside of watching you sleep, you have been getting to know a lot about his past. He isn’t always eager to share but he does anyway. Some things take longer than others to surface but you know he is going to tell you in his time. You don’t want to rush him, but this particular comment definitely has peaked your interest.

“The first night in my room umm…” your cheeks turn a light pink as you think of the right words. “What did you mean by ‘I can get dangerous if I get carried away’?”

“I was hoping you didn’t remember that.” Loki lets out a shaking laugh. He takes your hands in his and concentrates on them instead of meeting your gaze. “I am not Asgardian like my brother. My birth father is from another realm where he is king of these horrible beasts.”

             Loki’s voice begins to waver. He takes a moment to calm himself before continuing. His breathing is uneven still as he recalls all that he has learned about his heritage.

“Basically they are ice monsters. Cold is their pleasure and they have no problem harming anyone to get what they want.” Loki sneaks a glance at you to gage your reaction. “My natural form is a lot.. bluer, colder. I highly suggest you never touch me in this form. Legend says a single touch can turn anyone into frozen stone. I’ve never tried it, and I really do not want to start with you.” Loki sighs and you know he is finally getting to his point. “I am afraid that if we are intimate with one another I may lose control and my glamour will fade, revealing my true form. I worry that it will frighten you, and I worry of what I can do to you.”

             You see that what is left of Loki’s calm and collected façade begin to fade. Obviously this isn’t a topic that he talks about often, and you feel honored that he could share it with you. Wrapping your arms around his neck, you sit on his lap and wrap your legs around his torso. As you stroke your fingers through his hair you feel a wet cold tear fall against your bare shoulder. Loki has been in pain a great deal of his life and has mastered the art of silent crying. You hope one day it won’t have to be so silent around you.

“Thank you for sharing with me.” Your voice is low, calming, soothing. “I believe we are what we decide to become, not who we are born. You may be blue and able to freeze things, but you are anything but a monster.”

             Loki’s grip around your hips tightens as you speak. Most people in the past, even his brother, has written him off as the bad guy. Until recently did people begin to see the hero and ally that Loki has always wanted to become.

“You’re my hero, Loki.”

             Loosening your hold on him, you peer into his tear stricken eyes. Leaning in close, you kiss his cheeks just below the eyes. Kissing away his tears. Revisiting Loki’s gaze, you look for an indication to stop but you find nothing. Again you lean in close and lightly brush your lips against his.

             The fiery heat radiates off of your body like before. Though something is different this time. A cool electrifying current passes through, starting at your lips and spreads through your whole body. The feeling excites you as you realize this streak is coming from Loki. He is letting down his walls little by little, staying up enough to keep you safe.

“I’m not going anywhere.” You assure him.

“Neither am I, little bird.” Loki’s cold breath brushes away your heated exterior. Quickly he gazes into your eyes before connecting his lips with yours once more.

Taglist:@drabby-abby​ @senpaiweird​ @clairewinchester14 

[inawickedlittletown]

317/318 - Some Thoughts

Gonna put it under a cut for both spoilers and length. This is 4,700 words so you know, at it again with the rambling. 

I’ll start off by saying that I really enjoyed this episode. This and last episode are called a two part finale and I definitely buy that as 3x17 sets up 3x18. In particular it sets up the return of Abby, something that everyone has known was coming and concerned about. And I think when it came down to it, it went down like I expected it to. 

The episode opens on Abby and we get to have a glimpse of her fiance and the other people on the train and we learn that Abby lives in Phoenix. She also seems happy. And as someone that liked Abby, it was nice to see her again but even then it had me dreading seeing what it would do to Buck. 

We move on to the station where Hen is doing a practice exam. Eddie is showing Buck a brochure for Summer Camp because Christopher wants to go. Immediately, Buck goes into protective dad mode because Christopher at a sleep away camp for two weeks? What if something happens? What if he gets homesick? Buck is definitely not on board with that and Eddie admits that he isn’t too thrilled either and that he was hoping for assurance from the team. Bobby is the one to offer it. Even Chim seems skeptical about Christopher (a city kid) going to summer camp and points out that Eddie’s plan to get reassurance clearly wasn’t well thought out. 

This scene was adorable from how much Eddie just isn’t sure at all about his kid going to summer camp to Buck’s overprotective reaction and just the fact that Eddie was showing the brochure to Buck in hopes that Buck would make him feel better about the whole thing and give him a different perspective. Perhaps Eddie expected Buck to be more open to the idea of Christopher taking chances and becoming even more independent (as much as a kid can) and expected Buck to push for the fun rather than have Buck be more cautious and concerned. And while the rest of the 118 do get involved in the conversation, it is clear that Eddie was looking for Buck’s opinion. It is in the end Bobby who supports the camp idea because of course Bobby did Summer Camp as a kid in between the figure skating, hockey, and probably being a boy scout. And while I love knowing so much about Bobby as a kid, when do we get to find out more about Buck’s childhood? Hen speaks up then and she mentions how Denny would not be into the whole camping thing which makes Eddie bring up how excited Christopher is and how the camp will have the kids garden their own vegetables and cook and Buck immediately calls it “child labor” which I just love because he’s so clearly against the camp idea. 

We then find out what’s happened with Athena’s fireplace — you know the one that Bobby and Michael decided would be a great idea to destroy simply because Athena was in the hospital and they were both having feelings. Of course, Athena is out of the hospital now and she is not happy about it. May’s graduation party is in two weeks and Athena couldn’t possibly hold a party with that mess in the middle of her living room. It’s a light moment that I love because we get to see fierce Athena and also May. We also find out that Michael will be getting his test results back finally (and it’s good results...but even better, Michael sees the doctor again in an elevator and by the end of the episode they’re on a date) and it’s the start of seeing that Athena is not doing well after what she went through in the last episode. 

Athena is such a strong character. She’s not meek, she’s not someone that comes off as a victim or that appears vulnerable often and we’re seeing someone that hasn’t lost their fire but that is clearly shaken by what she’s gone through and I love that it’s not something shoved off to the side and that instead we get to see the repercussions of what she went through. And what I love the most about this is that Athena has such support from her family and from her friends and that they’re all there for whatever Athena needs to do even if that means stepping back from being a police officer. And it opens us up for an interesting storyline for her in S4. 

We get a glimpse at Josh and Maddie at the call center next and Josh is preparing for his testimony for court and I really appreciate that Josh is getting that closure he needs by doing this and that we actually do get a glimpse of him later saying his piece. I think he absolutely deserves that and that hopefully next season he does get to find his footing and find a boyfriend because he deserves it so much. He’s suffered more than enough already. 

And then we finally get to the main emergency of the episode. The train derailment and crash. This is one of those calls that is clearly huge and time consuming and that the show could have easily dragged out for two episodes. Indeed, it takes up a huge chunk of the episode’s screen time and while I think it was a great choice of an emergency I do wish that some of this had happened in the previous episode where all of the emergencies seemed routine and could have been taken out to really give the train a bigger spotlight. 

The 118 arrive on the scene and Buck and Eddie are sent to check out the train car that’s practically on a 90 degree angle. Abby is out there trying to get back on the train to look for her fiance and Eddie goes to tell her no and Abby suddenly realizes he’s from the 118 which immediately means that she realizes Buck has to be around there somewhere. 

I appreciated so much the way that Abby is desperate to go in and help because that’s just who she is. It’s the reason that in S1 she made sense with Buck — their need to help people brought them together and this is important because of the parallel that can be seen later when Abby explains why she never returned.

Buck in the meanwhile hangs back and he very clearly has one of those “just saw a ghost” moments when he first sees her and then he approaches and Abby says his name and there is a split second where the camera is on Eddie and Eddie’s expression just says “you’re Abby” because this is someone he’s heard about...this is someone that hurt Buck and in this scene Buck does not make it any easier for Eddie to not dislike Abby because there is just so much pain and confusion and worry mixed in Buck’s face as he gets near them because Buck is of course worried that Abby isn’t okay at first and then he has to come to terms with Abby freaking out because she’s worried about her fiance. Abby’s moved on. She never came back and she moved on. 

The situation isn’t ideal, and Abby has to tell him about her fiance in a place and time where such information can only hurt Buck and looking at his face after she yells that she’s looking for her fiance, it’s clearly a blow. 

In 3x16 we see Buck exploring the idea of what his life might end up being in the future because the job is the only thing he has going for him. And so for Abby to return with a whole other life and having moved on is a blow to Buck who probably didn’t expect to see Abby again and I think it brings back those feelings especially since we know from 3x16 that Buck has abandonment issues that Abby is very much a part of. However, I don’t think that Buck actually believes that he’ll end up like Red anymore. 

Eddie is a bit of a bystander during all of this but when Buck can’t form words, he jumps in to ask Abby to describe the fiance. But after Eddie runs off, Buck turns to walk away but he then turns back to ask for the fiance’s name and this scene is done so so well in that Buck hesitates to say anything else to Abby but he forces himself to and there’s clearly some regret on Abby’s part. Buck is holding himself together and being professional and you can see that it takes absolutely everything in Buck to stop himself from letting his feelings of hurt and anger take over because the situation requires that Buck be a firefighter and be a hero and he can’t stop just because Abby showed up again and with a fiance that Buck has now promised to save. Oliver Stark’s acting in this scene — absolute perfection. 

Just go back and rewatch that scene. The way that he delivers this line: “No. No. Don’t worry about it” with such restraint like he’s holding back words and like Abby speaking to him is physically hurting him — boy did that hurt to watch. 

Buck and Eddie make their way up the train car and Buck gets to Sam first. Eddie is right there with him and it’s very interesting to me that Eddie and Buck just don’t talk about it at all. Yes, at this point when they’ve made it all the way up to where Sam is they can’t because Sam is the fiance and would overhear and professionalism but before that Eddie elects to let Buck take a moment. And Eddie despite knowing the conflict of interest involved here, doesn’t tell Bobby what happened, instead of that he trusts Buck to do the job and maybe he keeps a close eye on him. 

Bobby sends Hen and Chim to help out on the ground with the rescue dogs and he goes up to help Buck and Eddie with Sam who is trapped by a beam. Things get complicated when they realize someone else is trapped by the beam and not just that but moving the beam off one means that other will likely die. There is no easy choice there and Eddie tells them both victims have an equal chance which does not make any of it easier. 

Buck tells Sam that they don’t choose who lives and who dies and he’s talking to him and finds out that the wedding is in June and that furthermore he is a father. Abby has gone and found herself a whole family and he is just so hurt by it all...but that also means that Buck is even more determined to save him. When he returns to Bobby and Eddie though, they tell him that the other victim (let’s call her Rummer because I don’t think the character was given a name?) has better vitals and protocol says they save the person that is more likely to live. 

This brings us to another perfect moment in this episode. One thing that makes Buck such an effective firefighter is how quickly he can think on his feet and figure out ways to rescue someone. We’ve seen this come up time and time again so it isn’t surprising that Buck has an alternative idea that will save both Sam and Rummer but of course it’s super risky. I think we needed this scene. Not only because it shows Buck once again being so willing to do whatever it takes but because of Buck’s state of mind and how there’s this pressure he’s putting on himself to bring Abby her fiance back because Buck sees Sam’s life as valuable. He says as much to Bobby — Sam is a father, he has a fiance. Buck on the other hand...his ex-girlfriend couldn’t even properly break up with him. 

But this is also about Bobby and Buck. And this is the scene in conjunction with a scene we see later towards the end of the episode, that makes a point of finally bringing back up the way that Bobby worries about Buck and cares about Buck and how much Buck doesn’t see that. How much Buck doesn’t realize that he’s been lucky so far to get out nearly uscathed from everything that’s happened to him. There is risk involved in the job but as Bobby says, “you can’t just rush into any situation and assume it’s going to be okay” because he’s right. And this is especially hard to take right after Buck mentions so casually that the train car falling on him would be so much worse and heavier than the firetruck that crushed him a year prior. 

During all of this, Bobby also finds out about Abby and there’s something about the frustrated way that Eddie growls out her name, his scowl and how he physically has to get away from Buck and we see that Eddie knows what Abby returning has meant for Buck and how hurt Buck is from seeing her and Eddie is the one person that knows what it’s like to see the past return so he knows how Buck must be feeling and he is 100% against Buck risking his life because of her. I also want to point out that Eddie gives Buck the time to tell Bobby that the fiance in question is Abby and that he only tells Bobby after Buck doesn’t say it and because he knows that it’s important information. But before that, Eddie was willing to keep that information to himself because he felt that Buck needed him to. So their friendship is yet again one of the best parts of this show. 

It is Eddie that stops Buck and Bobby from continuing to argue the matter when they don’t have time so we don’t get to see how Buck convinces them to let him go out there and cut into the train car, but that’s what we see him do. And luckily, Buck manages to do it and rescue both Rummer and Sam. We watch both Abby and Bobby watch this all happen. And this would have been an excellent moment to also have an Abby and Bobby scene to add some depth into her return and maybe have her have another perspective on what she did to Buck. So this is where we suffer from having so much shoved into one episode. 

Sam calls out to Buck to thank him as he’s being loaded up into the ambulance and Abby thanks him as well and when Sam hears his name, Sam is shocked to find out that this is Buck. And to me this is interesting because apparently Abby could talk about Buck with the new man in her life, but she couldn’t be bothered to call Buck up to apologize for the way she left him and never returned. 

After Abby and Sam leave in the ambulance, we are left with Buck standing there and Eddie comes over to join him and it’s so clear that he’s worried. He asks Buck if he’s okay, but Buck doesn’t answer. Instead he asks what’s next which is Buck deciding to focus on the work instead of Abby and what just happened. He doesn’t want to deal with it yet, not when he still has work to do. Poor Buck. So he runs back to find something to do and Eddie follows. And one thing I wish we’d gotten is a moment for Eddie to talk to Buck about this and if not Eddie then Bobby. Maddie. Anyone. 

In the meanwhile, Hen and Chim have their own rescue to conduct and we see Hen save a boy’s life and Chimney is reminded how amazing Hen is and I think all of this helps to start to let go of Hen and want her to succeed in her plans of going to med school. Since 3x17, he’s been struggling with it and we even see it earlier on when he doesn’t know how to encourage her. But by the end of the episode he’s helping her study. I do want to say that it is valid to want to keep growing and that I give props to Hen for wanting to be a doctor and that it can be an exciting direction for her character to take. I don’t think it will take her away from the show at all, or even from being a paramedic for a while. After all, can’t she do that and med school all at once? If anyone can, it’s Hen. I just hope it gives us interesting storylines. 

When we next see Buck, he’s sitting on a bench overlooking LA and waiting for Abby and this scene is so heartbreaking. Abby approaches and it’s easy to tell that this isn’t easy for her. It’s even harder for Buck, though. This is closure that I think was absolutely needed, but I don’t know if it did enough for me. This is another place where I wished that we’d had a slightly longer scene to really show the closure effectively. Or that we had gotten to see Buck talk about it with someone else afterwards. 

Abby watches Buck for a moment before he realizes she’s there and then she joins him and Buck asks about Sam because he’s Buck and of course he cares. Abby thanks him, but Buck says he was doing his job. Abby apologizes for how Buck found out about everything and the thing I loved about this moment was seeing Buck immediately turn to look at her taken aback that she’s apologizing and trying to explain herself for that instead of the thing that actually hurt Buck — how she left him. So it’s clear that Abby is well past that, that she might have even expected Buck to not be hung up on that anymore. She’s read his reaction to seeing her again completely wrong and I am glad that Buck says, “that’s what you’re apologizing for” and doesn’t just let her bypass the past like that. 

The body language in this entire scene is just perfect. There’s awkwardness and a stiffness in Buck that we don’t usually see. He doesn’t quite look at Abby and instead he keeps looking away from her and looking down. This is Buck with less confidence than we ever really see him and it’s painful to watch. I’m also fascinated by the way it’s shot because it’s from behind them so that we are seeing their backs more often than not and profile views of their faces but not their front. Even when the scene first begins Buck is completely turned away from us. 

Buck nervously asks when she knew that she was leaving him and the courage that it took Buck to ask that and not just bury that question — I am here for it. The fact that he even goes as far as to describe what the last time they saw each other was like and he’s pushing for an answer is exactly what I wanted for him. And Abby answers him and I like her answer a lot because it gives us a view into the complicated state of mind that she was in when she left. 

I still hate how Abby picked up and left and then gave Buck no explanation and just stopped responding — there are no excuses for her not breaking up with him.  

Abby explains that her identity was lost to her because she identified herself by everyone she was helping — her mother and the 9-1-1 calls and that she needed to leave to find herself again. I think all of this is valid and even Buck seems to understand this. I think it hits close to home for him not just because of his connection to Abby, but because Buck’s identity is his job. It’s something that Buck has said a lot this season and something that he came to realize even before Abby returned. And I think this is why it was important for Buck to already realize that with Red and to have had that convo with Maddie and know he isn’t alone. 

Buck still presses on about how Abby didn’t come home after finding herself. Abby explains her fear of becoming that person again if she returned and that is a valid answer too. It still doesn’t make it okay that she didn’t try to reach out to Buck to break up properly. She says she missed him and wanted to see him but that doesn’t make her behavior towards Buck back then any better. She didn’t need to see him to write him a letter or to reach out in any way to end what they had. And it also annoyed me that somehow in her mind leaving Buck like she did wasn’t something she didn’t need to apologize upon seeing Buck again because hurting Buck didn’t affect her as long as she was able to move forward with her life which clearly she did. 

Buck says, “I’m glad to see you happy. You deserve it” and because it’s Buck and he’s the biggest puppy in the world he means it. Of course he does, but I don’t think that Buck is any less hurt. I do think that knowing the reason she never came back helps and that it gives him answers to things he never got answers to, but Abby doesn’t know about Buck’s abandonment issues and she doesn’t know the damage she did on him and she doesn’t know that Buck can relate to how Abby felt back then. And I don’t think that any of this was about making Buck feel better about what happened with Abby. I think it was about him no longer having that question of “why” in his mind anymore. 

I think they should have talked more and we should have gotten more from this scene but I also appreciate that it ends with them not quite friends again and that there is some closure there for Buck so that he can put Abby behind him officially and know that she’s somewhere happy. 

The last few five minutes of the episode is May’s graduation party and everybody is there. We have a montage of the party with some photo booth moments. Lots of Buck and Eddie goofing around with and without Christopher and everyone else taking their turns too. It’s clear the cast had a blast filming those bits. One particularly good moment is Buck trusting his chest forward and hitting Eddie with one of the twenty or so bead necklaces he has around his neck. I wonder how intentional that was on the part of Oli. 

We see Buck helping Christopher write a message for May and those two together will never not be cute. May asks Maddie if they can talk once Maddie asks about school which makes me curious about what May might be planning on studying (maybe nursing?). We also get a scene with Karen, Hen, and Michael discussing the firepit that the fireplace has now become and the shade that Karen throws at it with her quiet “No” when Hen asks if she sees the greatness...not that Hen isn’t judging either. Athena and Bobby get a moment and he comments on how she’ll be glad to be back at work in 30 days clearly not knowing that Athena doesn’t think she’ll be ready to go back at all so that opens up potential for interesting conflict regarding that even though I think that Bobby will stand by any of Athena’s decisions. 

During the party montage we also see other things to give us some ideas about what else is going on with everyone’s lives. First is Chimney showing up to help Hen study at the firehouse which I loved because I think Hen needed him to give her his support. Later we see Hen doing another practice test at home with Karen and Denny grading her and she gets the scores that she’s been aiming for. Doctor Hen, here she comes. 

We also see Michael sitting outside a restaurant waiting for his date and I am so happy for him. I want Michael dating again and that doctor seemed perfect for him. Marry the doctor, Michael. I also really appreciate how this parallels to the way S1 ended with Bobby and Athena meeting up for a date.  

We see Christopher leaving for Summer camp and Eddie is watching him go (so I guess Christopher won out on going on that trip) and then we see Eddie look at a card that Christopher made him that reads: “You are going to have a great time, Love, Christopher”. This is an interesting scene to me because the note is cute and it’s obviously Christopher wanting to make his dad feel better about him going away for two weeks, but the camera work and the way that Eddie looks away from the bus as it leaves implies that Eddie was supposed to be looking at something at the end of the scene or someone...whatever way he was going to spend the two weeks without Christopher perhaps? (insert eyebrow wiggle). Instead he’s looking at nothing. Now we can’t be sure, but I can’t help but wonder if this was edited to not include someone that was supposed to be Eddie’s love interest. Ana. Otherwise, why shoot it that way? (And why introduce her to then not do anything with her in this season?) I guess Eddie could be looking at the bus driving away, but it’s just a little bit odd because while watching the episode the first time I expected her to be standing there and we probably will never know. 

We get to see other moments of the party. Buck and Bobby get a small scene where Bobby asks how Buck is doing and Buck says he thinks he’s good and I think he means it and believes it. I don’t think that seeing Abby damaged anything for Buck, but I do think that it left him in a place to move on from the memory of her without any more questions. Buck is in a good place in a lot of ways by the end and we can only look forward to whatever may come next for him and I think he’s ready to that to be anything. This scene is also a call back to the last time we saw Buck and Bobby at Athena’s house when Buck wasn’t okay and instead collapsed due to the blood clots. But now Buck is actually okay. 

This is all of course being shown while we get a voice over from Maddie. We’ve had a few signs up until now with the feeling tired earlier in the episode and then Chim asks her if she’s seen a doctor yet since she hasn’t been feeling well and Maddie immediately knows what’s up and rushes them out of Athena and Bobby’s house. Because she’s pregnant. And the scene when she comes out of the bathroom with one and then a second stick. I loved that moment so much because they have come to freaking far and that is where the episode ends. 

I really appreciate shows that end their seasons on good notes and that leave a season in an uplifting way especially this one because of how long the hiatus looks to be due to real world problems. We also have a lot to look forward to of course. Athena’s storyline is bound to be complex and interesting, Hen and med school, something is up with May, we don’t know where Buck’s headspace when it comes to dating and such will be after that closure with Abby, Michael still doesn’t have a full clean bill of health but things are looking up for him, Maddie and Chim being pregnant, we don’t know what’s next for Christopher and Eddie, and we are of course still just looking a crumbs of Buddie and nothing concrete to go on but also nothing hugely negative to hold against the possibility of it happening so who knows. Overall, just a good and enjoyable season finale. 

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Other Meta/Reviews

[keepingupwithfundies]

CO 1103: A Duggar Bachelor Pad

The Duggars engage in hurricane relief efforts. Jessa & Ben take their kids to Kansas City. It is Felicity’s first swim lesson. Jed & Jer show off their new place, and Duggar Family Fun night is a competition at a corn maze.

-T 

Hurricane Dorian has hit the Bahamas, and many of the Duggars are trained in relief efforts, so they headed to the Bahamas to help where they can. The region was devastated, and the Duggars are organizing and distributing supplies. They helped connect doctors to people in need. Jana and Abbie are there and helping support the efforts. John says no one is ever really safe from natural disasters, and you have to help where you can. Jason says being able to help with aid has been a blessing and he is glad to be able to help others in their time of need.

At Jessa & Ben's, they are preparing to take a road trip to Kansas City. This is their first road trip with 3 kids. It is a three and a half hour drive, and they are hoping the kids will nap. Spurgeon says he usually naps but sometimes he stays awake. Jessa says they have some mom hacks: traveling with snacks, traveling in PJs and getting dressed when they're 15 minutes out. They are looking forward to an apple orchard and maybe the zoo. On the ride, they sing songs like Amazing Grace. Ivy is napping. Spurgeon says he likes looking out the window and singing songs on trips. Michelle always had a plastic tub she called a "survival kit" for long trips. Jinger said on their long trip, they would go for 3 hours and then let Felicity run around and that would tire her out for the next 3 hours. Jessa has wrapped some toys for the boys so they get to open them up and play with them along the trip. Spurgeon liked the wrapped toys, but Henry gets frustrated. Henry and Ivy nap, but Spurgeon doesn't.

Ben and Jessa arrive, and meet up with their friends the Chapmans. Brandon & Jenna Chapman were friends of the Seewalds from Church, and their kids are close in age: Spurgeon is close in age to Isla, Henry to Judah, and Ivy to Zion. They arrive at the orchard, and Jessa and Ben try to figure out whether the apples on the ground are ok. Some of them look ok, but generally Ben thinks the low hanging fruit is there for a reason. Ben and Brandon start trying to get the apples down from the top of the tree. They jump, lift up kids to get them, and climb on the wagon. After collecting a lot of apples, Jenna says they will have to look up apple recipes while the Seewalds are in town. The Seewalds and Chapmans are so happy to be reunited.

In LA, the Vuolos are heading to Felicity's first swim lesson. She is 15 months, and they want her to be comfortable with the water. Jinger says there are a lot of pools in California and she feels safer with Felicity being able to swim. Jeremy asked if she did lessons as a kid, and Jinger says not really, but her younger siblings do all the time. The oldest kids learned to swim, and so did the younger kids, but some in the middle are not as big of swimmers, and that includes Jinger. Jessa says she is also a terrible swimmer, and Joy says she can't really swim. Kendra is a good swimmer, but Joe isn't. Jeremy also learned as a kid, but isn't anything special. Jinger has been getting lessons from a friend who was trained by an instructor. They arrive at the pool, and Jeremy gets in the water with Felicity and Instructor Kenneth. Jinger thought it was a good opportunity for dad and daughter time. They go a few different things to get her comfortable in the water, and eventually do a little dunk. Felicity starts crying, and she is not a fan of dunking in the water. Felicity sees Jinger on the side of the pool and wants to go to her. Jinger goes and hides behind a post. Jinger wishes she could comfort her, but knows it is good to get her comfortable in the water. Jeremy said he has learned more than Felicity, but it was a good start.

Jed and Jer have moved into their own place. The living room just contains a ping pong table since they don't have couches. It has a little kitchen and plan on getting a small table. They share a room with two twin beds. They have their own bathroom and closet for the first time. Jed and Jer say that they aren't the first to move out before marriage: John did for a while to pursue his pilot's license, and Joe went to college but came back. They have an office as well. The twins say it is up to the older kids whether they want to stay or move out, and a lot of them love living with their family. Jed says this is just the next spot for him to go, and his parents are excited for him. The other bedroom has a bunk bed and is a guest room. Joe and Josiah arrive to check out the new place. Josiah brought some patio chairs along for them to sit in. Joe says it is nice, but a small house. Everyone jokes about what you should give as a housewarming gift for a bachelor pad: trash cans, air fresheners, home-cooked meals, restaurant gift cards.  Jed and Jer have only been out for a week and a half, and haven't cooked yet. They're making burgers for dinner for their brothers. They preheat the oven for fries. Both twins are not good cooks, and Josiah steps in to help. The twins say their brother's have wives who can teach them how to cook. They miss living with their brothers and mom's cooking. Both the twins are waiting for Mrs. Right, and don't have anyone in mind now. Overall, it was a great night they say.

The Seewalds and Chapmans arrive at the zoo, and Jessa is breastfeeding while walking, something she only does on group activities. They go to a lorikeet exhibit- most Duggars don't know what they are, but Jeremy does- they're little birds, in the parakeet family. The parents thought feeding the birds would be fun. There is a callback to when Jessa & Ben had the brother help build a deck at their place ad a bird pooped on Ben. One bird comes and lands on Ivy's head, and this baby is entirely unbothered by the bird on her head. Henry, Spurgeon, Isla and Judah enjoy feeding the birds. It starts to rain, so they head inside to Stingray bay, where you can touch stingrays. As they pet the stingrays, they realize Henry is gone- apparently he's a bit of a runner. They find him quickly, but while looking at monkeys he goes for a run again and Ben goes after him. After the zoo, it is nap time and it was a great visit to the zoo and fun trip to Kansas City.

Instead of the usual Family Fun Night, the Duggars have family fun day at a corn maze. The family will divide into 6 teams with a timer each, and the fastest team out of their maze wins. John & Abbie have the two of them and Tyler and Josie. They head off into the maze, trying to walk fast and make their way through the maze. Jason's team- Johannah, Anna, and her 5 kids with a stroller. Joe's Team is himself, Kendra and Garrett. Kendra is pretty pregnant, so they don't expect to win. She is 36 weeks and feeling big with some aches and pains, but feeling pretty good overall. John's team is out of the maze in 11:37. Joe took a picture of the maze, and drew a map on his phone to get though it. Jason's team does it in 8:38 with Anna, pregnant, jogging to the finish. Joe & Kendra do it in 10:32. Kendra is contracting after going through the maze. Joy, Austin and Gideon are the next team in. They carry Gideon and just run the maze. Austin thinks that with the pregnant ladies and strollers, that will get them through this. Ben's team is next: with Jessa, their kids and Jordyn. Ben gives them a pep talk before they go in, trying to get them to win. Jessa also took a picture of the map, and she has a route planned. Joe & Jessa have plans, but John and Joy don't- which Kendra thinks fits their personalities. Jeremiah has his parents, Justin, Jackson and Jennifer. Joy's team is struggling to find the route out. Austin says if it wasn't for all the corn, they could see the end. That was his first corn maze, apparently. Joy's team finishes in 15:30. Jim Bob's team finishes in 7:48. Ben's team finishes in 6:25. Ben is proud of their win, and Jessa needs water. Jim Bob says everyone made in through and was a winner. They all clap, and talk about how much they value weekly family night and this was a fun way to do something new.

[travllingbunny]

The 100 (re-)rewatch: 4x13 Praimfaya

What do I say about this episode that hasn’t been said already? It is for The 100 what Through the Looking Glass was for Lost: a game changer, arguably marking the end of the first half of the show (though 4x05 was technically the 50th episode) and re-defining it.

This time, instead of making notes about the timeline at the end, I need to start with it: The largest chunk of the episode takes place over less than 3 hours, and is a race against time and against the upcoming death wave – just 90 minutes to make the pod intended for two people functional for 8 people and get the air recycler from the lighthouse bunker, then an hour to get to the Ring and for Raven to open the hangar door manually so they could enter before their air goes out… And then there’s time jump of 6 years and one week, or 2199 days. If feels insane, but this period was 11 times longer everything that happened in seasons 1-4 from the Pilot to Praimfaya (around 6.5 months, or 200 days).

To be fair, the season 5 finale was another game changer, and the only episode that may have had a timeline even weirder than this one – but the second time-jump, even though it lasted 125 years, did not have any of the same weight and meaning for anyone other than Monty, Harper and Jordan, since everyone else was cryo-frozen and practically continued their lives as if they had just gone to sleep a few hours before. But the time jump revealed in those last few minutes of the season 4 finale affected all the characters. They all lived through these 6 years that the show skipped, and only showed in about 2-episode worth of flashbacks (or not at all, in the case of Spacekru), profoundly changing their lives, relationships and arcs.

Apart from the radio talk between Bellamy and Octavia at the start of the episode, and two short scenes in the bunker, which are there to round up their story for this season, and the short appearance of Madi in the last couple of minutes, the entire episode involves just 8 people – Clarke, Bellamy, Raven, Murphy, Emori, Monty, Harper and Echo.

Octavia was well aware that she wasn’t ready to be a leader: “All I did was win a fight”. Bellamy tries to give her some confidence, saying she also gave people hope. But his comparison to – Prometheus – wasn’t the greatest, because, as Octavia points out, Prometheus got punished by the gods by being chained to a rock while a bird plucked his entrails. Dark foreshadowing for Octavia’s future?

The radio dies, so Clarke doesn’t get the chance to say goodbye to her mother. It’s an understatement to say that this is not the last time a radio dies and Clarke isn’t able to get through to someone.

Eh, about that…

Octavia tells Bellamy “I love you, big brother”. Bellamy tells her “I love you” back, for the second time (after he’s said it for the first time, to anyone, in 4x11). They have both made the point that it takes the end of the world for them to say it. These final episodes of season 4 are the time when several of the characters are expressing their true feelings to each other. Monty said it to Harper in 4x11, but she wouldn’t say it back at first, and lied that she didn’t love him, to make him let her die. Jasper tried to make Monty say it to him before he died, but Monty said it too late. Harper admitted to Monty that she did love him, after she had decided to live. Monty said “I love you” to Harper again in 4x12 while they were in the rover. And Murphy now talks to Monty about his relationship with Emori and Monty’s relationship with Harper, telling him that he’s experienced how love changes you, and asks him if he has told Harper he loves her.

And – totally unrelated, I’m sure – Clarke and Bellamy have deep conversations about their relationship, where Clarke wants to tell him something important, because she thinks she is dying of the radiation she got in 4x12 after she took off her helmet for a while and before Monty and Harper arrived and gave her Jasper’s. A large part of why she believes that is due to Abby’s vision. But because she implies she may die (“If anything happens to me…” – “Nothing is happening to you”), he interrupts her, because he can’t stand that idea – the same way she interrupted him when he wanted to tell her something before they separated in 4x06 (“If I don’t see you again…” – “You will!”). Interesting how those two always keep having interrupted conversations where one of them seems to want to say something important. I don’t know what that could be. They end up talking about their relationship, the leadership, Head and Heart, as Clarke is praising Bellamy for his big heart (something she always found appealing in him was his ability for love and devotion – which she saw in his feelings for his sister, even early on in season 1) and advising Bellamy to use his “Head” more, to be a more rounded leader. In the context, she is not criticizing him, she is trying to tell him he would have to be the sole leader, without her, because she thinks she’s probably about to die. She won’t, but he’ll indeed find himself in a situation where leaving her behind will really be his “only choice” – at least one that makes any sense, as staying and waiting would have only killed him and the other 6 people with him, while Clarke would have still died (or lived) regardless.

But I’m sure nothing in that conversation was deeply personal or intimate…

And later, when Bellamy is about to leave with Murphy to save Monty, and Clarke is about to go on her own to align the satellite dish so they could dock at the Ring – which will prove to be the last time they see each other in 6 years – Clarke stops Bellamy briefly to tell him something (even though they’re in a hurry, and Raven and Murphy are also present), and he interrupts her again, expecting another talk about leadership and using his head (he obviously didn’t realize the weight of that talk the first time), and she says she just wanted to say…”Hurry”. That doesn’t really seem like something you’d stop a person to tell them, when they’re already in a hurry. It’s almost like the episode was teasing that she had something else to tell him there. Now what could that have possibly been, hmm…

To be honest, I’m sometimes not sure how I feel about the Head and Heart phrase, because the fandom tends to take it too far and simplify both Clarke and Bellamy as characters and not really do either justice, making it seem as if Bellamy can’t or has never been calculating (like manipulating the Delinquents into taking off their wristbands, or pretending to be manic and self-harming while in a cell, in order to hurt himself enough so Abby would have a reason to come and set him free) or offered the more rational options (like not telling people that the knife Wells was killed with was Murphy’s, or not telling them immediately about Praimfaya until they have an idea what to do about it), or as if Clarke hasn’t acted purely on emotion so many times. I’ve seen people make contrived arguments why some of the things Clarke did (like desperately going into Mount Weather without any plan and doing everything to save the people she loves, or mercy killing Finn to spare him torture – after having done everything to save him, including offering her own life) were supposedly so cold and logical they would make a Vulcan proud, or people complaining why Clarke, who is “supposed to be a logical character”, did unwise things because she was emotional when, for instance, her best friend got murdered, or when her daughter seemed to be in danger. Both of them are, in fact, much more complex characters, and, as most people, many of their actions are a combination of reason and emotion. And it certainly doesn’t mean that one of them is more able to love than the other, or that the other has lost that ability after having to be a sole leader and assume both roles. The Head and Heart works better as a description of how they usually/typically approach leadership and decision-making at this point, where Bellamy can rouse the crowds with emotional speeches, give more successful pep talks to the others (although Clarke does great pep talks to Bellamy) and usually has a better feeling for the emotional state of the crowd, while Clarke is more likely to appeal to people with pragmatic arguments, try to forge alliances with outside forces, and look at the big picture. And I don’t think that makes their relationship codependent: they can both function on their own – and have – but they function much better together.

At the beginning of season 4, Raven arc seemed to be about leadership and having to make tough choices – she had a mini-arc in 4x03 where she started off telling Clarke that, while Raven was in charge of rations, choosing who lives or dies was Clarke’s specialty (!) when she told Clarke to make the list, but then went on to practically choose who lives or dies by denying medicine to Luna’s people. That did not end up having any consequences, but the rest of her arc this season was instead about her relationship with herself, her pain, confidence, her mind and will to live. This was beautifully resolved in 4x11, but in the subsequent two seasons, the show hasn’t seemed to know what to do with her. (It would be great if that arc about having to be the one to make the tough decisions and decide on life and death happened for her in season 7.) In this finale, she has another moment of self-doubt and regression, worrying that she is not smart enough without ALIE’s code in her brain. But after getting pep talks first from Clarke and then from Bellamy, telling her basically the same thing she had told herself in 4x11 through her vision of Sinclair, she finds the solution exactly by remembering what ALIE did in season 3 when she uploaded herself to the Ring. Something that was a moment of defeat for Raven against ALIE back then, now helped her find a way to save herself and others.

Murphy’s season 4 arc was mostly about him forging real friendships and being accepted into the group of people he antagonized and was exiled from season 1, showing that he changed during the time he was away from them and was not the same douchebag, now that he knew how to love  another person. But out of the core group, someone he’s had the least amount of interaction with was Monty. This was their first serious interaction, and in fact, the first time they’ve even been in the same place since early season 1. That means that Murphy didn’t expect hostility from Monty because the latter wasn’t among the people he had seriously hurt (he had already been kidnapped by the Mountain Men by the time Murphy’s murder of Connor became known and by the time he murdered Myles, tried to kill Bellamy and shot Raven), but he had forgotten the fact that Monty only remembered his jerkass persona and behavior from the early days on Earth, and the way he kept wishing for wounded Jasper to die – and that Monty has not seen any of Murphy’s development. Of course he hates him, I hated Murphy in season 1, too! But this relationship gets a big leap forward when Murphy brings the machine and goes back for Monty together with Bellamy, and even gets a hug.

Monty’s line “Eight people in space, and one of them is John Murphy” has the same energy as Clarke’s “The last two people on Earth, and one of them is a child from hell” from 5x01.

Jasper is, understandably, a very sensitive topic for Monty. And Murphy’s ill-thought line about “coward’s way out” (which I don’t think was malicious, as he had just praised Jasper for being stronger than he seemed) probably upset him even more because he had had similar thoughts: a few episodes ago, he called Harper a coward for wanting to commit suicide.

As for the Grounders in Space, Emori and Echo, due to their completely different backgrounds and histories, have the opposite reactions to all the new things they are encountering: spaceship, lack of gravity, seeing Raven spacewalk… Emori is excited and takes to everything new easily. She was an outcast, she never had an opportunity to be tied to one place or belong to a group of people, and has no reason to feel nostalgia for the Earth she’s leaving; and she’s used to adventure and adjusting to new circumstances. Echo is confused, somewhat scared, and lost without the things she knows, and without her clan to be loyal to and work for. (Maybe my biggest problem with the writing for Echo is that the show insists calling her a spy, which doesn’t fit with anything we’ve seen of her job, her actions or personality. By all accounts, she was a soldier/captain of the guards/assassin for Azgeda, who prefers to use direct methods, brute force and violence, while being subtle, perceptive, keeping a low profile or adjusting herself easily to new circumstances are really not her strengths.) These last few episodes of season 4 probably contain the best characterization Echo ever got in the show, and it’s certainly Tasya Teles’ best acting, particularly during her suicide attempt.

While Emori finds in Spacekru a family she’s never had, Echo finds a new clan, new group of people and leader to give her loyalty to. You can already see the change in Emori – she’s starting to care about people other than John, when she asks to give Clarke more time before they leave her. Emori and Murphy joining forces to give Raven the necessary oxygen seems to be setting up that trio as a close friendship on the Ring.

After Bellamy has helped Echo with her helmet in a small moment in 4x12 and then talked her down from suicide in this episode, the show is really not subtle in trying to foreshadow Bellamy and Echo’s relationship with this:

(Oh look - the old “just falling on each other” trope that TV shows do when they want to foreshadow something will be a thing, without actually bothering to develop it! ..Wait a moment, Monty and Harper fall next to each other, Bellamy and Echo fall next to each other, and Murphy and Emori and... Raven fall next to each other? Was the episode trying to tell me something about those three on the Ring, hmmm? J/k)

I guess they thought that was enough? Which is weird, since these are merely the first steps, where these two stop being enemies trying to kill each other or their loved ones, and become almost-friendly allies by circumstance, who may, for starters, become friends after a certain period. (Three years?) And Bellamy talking Echo down from suicide, just like Echo hearing him give a speech about war and violence in 4x05, can serve as a decent setup for Echo falling in love with Bellamy. However, there’s been absolutely nothing to set up or show why Bellamy would fall in love with Echo. On the other hand… it’s debatable whether anything in seasons 5 and 6 suggests that he is in love with her. In the next two seasons, we see that she looks up to him as her leader, he cares for her and considers her one of his people (his “family”), and they are boyfriend and girlfriend (as seen in a physical relationship and occasional PDA), because they were stuck together for 6 years with just 5 other people. The show never makes that relationship look like a real romance story. And in those terms, one can argue that this is all the setup we need. This is a general tendency with Bellamy’s relationships – it wasn’t very different with Gina: while most of the other characters are at least occasionally shown to be in love with people they’re involved with, he gets these relationships that start off-screen, get little screentime, where he cares about the woman and likes her, but doesn’t really look like someone in love, especially not compared to how he interacts with his…platonic (?) partner, Clarke.

Oh Bellamy, you had no idea when you joked with Clarke back in 4x01!

It is such an interesting and heartbreaking end to the Clarke and Bellamy’s arcs in season 4 that she – after trying to be the Big Picture leader and save the human race for most of the season – ends up saving her friends, while Bellamy – who has tried to save any individual he could save today – was forced to leave one of the two most important people in his life to die.

Clarke never even knew for sure if they managed to open the hangar door and if they were alive. But while she thought she was sure to die (“My fight is over”) and was still putting all her efforts into saving her friends, no matter how difficult it was, she still has her survival instinct - after she had managed to align the satellite dish and finish her mission, she runs from the death wave into the lab.

Passing the Baton: I see what the show did there. Too bad the bottle was empty, as Jaha drank all of it in the season 1 finale. It’s also a sad reminder that Clarke and Bellamy never got to have that drink she was asking him to share in 1x09 and that he was offering her in 2z1x6. Will they have one in S7?

And the time jump is here. This scene is beautiful visually and thanks to Tree Adams’s music. I can even forgive the fact that Clarke’s lines are a bit too expositiony: she’s telling Bellamy about the bunker going silent and Eden being the only green spot on Earth, on the 2199 day that she radios him. But I guess she may be telling him the same every day, just in case it’s the first time he finally manages to hear her.

There are a lot of people who think that this was the best – or even the last moment when the show should have had Bellamy and Clarke get together. Many are really, really angry that it did not happen and that the show separated them instead. And this is where I completely disagree with a huge chunk of the Bellarke fandom. If they had both gone to space and started a relationship, that wouldn’t have been such a great resolution to this slow burn, wonderfully developed dynamic. But getting separated by a tragic twist of fate? Bellamy mourning Clarke and believing her dead for six years, while trying to honor her memory, while she is almost all alone and calls him every day without answer, for 2199 days? Bellamy learning she is alive and coming back, only for Clarke to learn he has a girlfriend now? Love triangle and a bunch of misunderstandings and a terrible conflict as a result of their separation? Coming back from it even stronger? Clarke “dying” again just a month after Bellamy got her back, and Bellamy forgetting everything else in his desperate quest to save her, brings her back with his love and faith in her? That’s a truly epic story, with the potential to be one of the best love stories ever seen on TV. Scratch that – it already is. I don’t even need to see them make out or say ILY for that to be true. I much prefer the story we got to the story that a lot of fans think they wanted.

Body count: Thousands of people, possibly millions, died all over the Earth – the majority of people who had survived the first apocalypse. Some in this episode – like everyone who was left out of the bunker. Others had already died before the timeline of this episode, as the death wave was hitting different places in the world at a different rate (as we saw in 4x01 with the people who died in Egypt). Among them were certainly the 365 Arkers who were left outside of the bunker, hundreds (thousands?) of Grounders, including Madi’s family and a lot of people from her community, and, no doubt, the wandering outcast Grounders (such as Zoran and Sienna from season 2). The show may have killed many people in seasons 1-3, but it really outdid itself here. At this point, as far as we know, only 1202 people are left alive on Earth, and 7 more at the Ring. We will later learn that 300 more humans are alive, in cryo sleep, on Eligius 4, and many others on Alpha.

Rating: 10/10 (because the problems I have with the episode are not big enough to compare to all that’s good about it)

[bellamygateoldblog]

The 100 7x01: Discussion

My general takeaway from the episode can be summarised like this: Echo is spectacular. (I might’ve said “oh my god look at her!!!!!” and “ugh she is just The Best” too many times to count).

This is long-ish because I really just wanted to consolidate my thoughts in one place. Bitch it’s me i got a lot to say!!!!!

The Good Parts

— The farmhouse setting. While it’s existence is strange and “a sore thumb” and worked to further push Sanctum being the abomination born of clumsily mixing genres and time periods in terms of construction/costuming, making everything appear disconnected and obnoxious, it was still a nice change. It made me feel warmer and more comfortable as a ‘modern’ viewer. It’s a breath of fresh air from the constant dark element: dilapidated post-apoc buildings falling from their foundation, endless woods, and equally cold-feeling labs and skeleton dungeons.

— Echo. This was a damn good episode for Echo and every second reminded me of why she’s my favourite. She’s a badass. I always love to see her falling naturally into leadership of her little ragtag groups who accept it wholeheartedly. From the “testing a theory” moment where she went ‘when Gabriel doesn’t speak >>>’, to right at the end when she killed the solider about to “eliminate” Hope (hesitation is death...oh no he can’t hear us he’s got airpods in oh my god). It was Echo that got them through the whole sequence with the anomaly, Echo who figured shit out, Echo who quickly judged the situations and formed plans to overcome the obstacles. In other words: she did THAT.

Favourite scene: Echo coming face-to-face with the projection of her own insecurities in the form of Roan and Echo 1.0, and physically overcoming them (shooting them down), along with the trauma and pain that they both represent. The perserverence and getting the job done despite the emotional torture felt like a callback to the Psychosis episode of 6x02 when she was clever enough to sedate herself to silence the voices in her head. I also think the dialogue chosen was also foreshadowing that she would become a leader by the finale (commander?) and i love to see it!

— Clarke and Madi’s conversation. Oh Clarke, you just keep reinforcing and validating my perceptions of who you are as a person over and over again lol. In all her self-importance failing to remember that Madi, in fact, had and was raised by her biological parents for half of her life (and the new knowledge that she spent six years telling her little mind tales from the book of her life whilst apparently never taking the time to learn about Madi’s or acknowledge/honour her birth parents in any way) is “yeah that’s about right” to me. Sure you could say she was still reeling from the events of six and her death-almost death-almost death again. But I’ve always had this Thing about the relationship between Clarke and Madi. And i’ve seen some of the lighthearted humourous reception that scene got from fandom, “#where do you think the child CAME from?!” which only served to remind me of my own impression that Clarke views Madi as wholely ‘hers’, as if Madi’s existence was tied to Clarke, but i might elaborate in a seperate post.

This scene was a lovely display of self-awareness I’ve rarely seen on Clarke (never even got it when she electrocuted said child two seasons ago- however that absense of apology and acknowledgement of the sheer wrongness of that action also fits very nicely with my view of her lmao, still though, a weird choice for your ‘heroine’).

— Clarke’s “feels like a different world.” Felt romantically-coded. I think Gaia/Clarke might be the most convinient relationship to transform into romance at this point. However I’m sincerely hoping this road they could go down won’t reduce Gaia to a crutch/accessory for Clarke, and that she doesn’t become merely a love interest. I’ve seen talk already of Gaia being “Clarke’s happiness” etc.. which is already confirming my worst fears. Sigh.

This moment very much felt like found closure and the turning of a page. But i will say it was a very sharp turn from the three seasons of shoehorned-in mentions of Lexa, and last season’s emphasis on Clarke’s very-much intact emotional response to her memory- “it’s why you cry when you think about Lexa”- to her looking at an image of Lexa’s memory of her, reminicing but having no emotional response to it, and brushing it off while sharing a soft look with Gaia (and this is a few days since s6? I don’t know how this timeline is working but Tbh it’s not like these writers ever concerned themselves with ‘realistic time frames’ anyway lol). Yep, Jason’s seasons are individual “movies,” alright.

Other *nodding approvingly* moments

— Raven’s subtle “elevator eyes” on Clarke when she started giving her orders again. I see you, Miss Reyes, and I appreciate you.

— Raven + the foot in her mouth and the cute way she catches herself both times. I just love watching characters fail at existing LOL. She was feeling more human than stereotype or plot device this episode.

— "Mommy and Auntie O” and the implication that Hope is a child inside an aged-up body.

— This quote: “I know what it’s like to lose your family 100 years ago and yesterday at the same time.” It’s so literal but I like it a lot.

— Clarke being ‘leader’ again is, as usual, solely a matter of convinient (and familial/love) circumstances and it felt very true.

The Rest

— The Eligius Situation. So Clarke and her inner circle conquer and live in a nice home, and we’re specifically told Clarke takes the master suite (and the dog), and I was like ‘fair enough’ but then she orders prison labour. She tells them to build her a compound that they won’t actually get to be apart of, and to live in tents while they do so. They aren’t getting anything out of this (before they resist and set their own terms). This is slavery. Also, those aren’t her people to boss around, look down on, and use accordingly for her own gain (in fact they barely know her or why she’s gone from being that one unloyal woman who executed their men and got herself captured like an idiot, then couldn’t make up her mind about which side she wanted to kill- to one in the uppermost position of authority...like...they woke up yesterday) But, then again, that never stopped her.

— Too much and not enough at the same time. The pacing of the episode in general was awful. Too much happening in quick succession, no breathing room, too many factions (no, actually Raven, where is ALIE when you need her? smh). I blink, I miss an entire scene and a character is now beating someone else up. Amazingly, i was still bored 90% of the time.

— The Children of Gabriel calling themselves “The Children of Gabriel.” It was always goofy, even more so when a grown man is saying it.

— Murphy + his self loathing over Abby’s death. Did I miss the part where she was ever good to him? One of their final moments together was of her telling him he deserved to die over Clarke after she spent the entire series treating him like he was inferior and disposable. uhhhhhhhhhh.

— The picnic scene. Jackson’s sudden violent outburst was unearned (it wasn’t even set up???), and also disrespectful. Wrong place, wrong time, bro. He’s grieving? Okay. But when Abby’s daughter is sitting right in front of you, making this about you, ruining a perfectly good toast in her honour with your uncomfortable accusations loses you points you never even had to begin with. And this is a ‘me’ thing but I can’t be bothered to be sympathetic when this is about Abby Griffin.

Also, I have to say it. Eliza’s acting took me out of the scene every time I looked at Clarke. I couldn’t for the life of me work out what those expressions were supposed to be.

— Russell, his manpain, and a fury over the consiquences of his own actions  that could rival the grounders (”my brother died in your ring of fire [while he was trying to murder you all]” hmm sounds like a you problem). But the worst part is, I simply couldn’t tell where he stood or what he was feeling. He’s so one-dimensional. He’s an evil man (so much for ”grey morality”).

— Clarke + Jordan. A small point to make but all Clarke has done since Marper made her ‘Godmother’ of their son has blame him for everything bad happening lol. Marper loses a lot of my respect as time goes on for that choice. As much as I dislike Jordan’s presence in the show, still not a great pattern to have noticed.

— Raven seeking approval from Clarke (specifically) for the Prime idea was...weird and very bad. When has Raven ever cared for Clarke’s validation, especially in the last few seasons?

Was also taken aback by how Indra and Miller are both suddenly so protective of Clarke, like i can make sense of the Indra part even though it relies on me making things up that aren’t supported by what’s on screen, but Miller?

— (Bonus moment that was bad for me, but not for the same reason it was for the rest of you: the scene of Hope finding the message in her arm. When she was removing the blood-soaked bandage I freaked out because I thought she was peeling her skin off. You’re welcome for that visual.)

The Mixed/No Feelings

— Clarke’s full-dark-no-stars. How many times have they told me now she’s “the head”? LMAO. 

I have no actual formed opinion on it. Only disjointed thoughts. Like i might’ve just gone “good for her” if Clarke wasn’t the person she is, with the history she has.

I appreciate the idea, to have her spend the whole episode declaring she is, in fact, completely fine, to end it having her explode with the repressed pain.

I mean...i realise the cognition behind it, but it’s eye-roll inducing at this point. This- kicking Russell to death (giving him exactly what he wanted and set out to provoke), and burning down a palace she promised to keep intact, once again going against the group to do her own Thing that they all ultimately have the suffer the consiquences of and help clean up- is just a repeat of past patterns, and Monty’s “do better” mantra that she desperately clung to like she owned it last season is nowhere in sight.

(Also, I can’t be the only one who spotted her physically smacking that Sanctum girl as she walked onto the balcony? Not cool. Wasn’t cool when Murphy acted like a dick to one of them either this episode.)

The rushed switch did a number on me, too, like Jackson’s did. Literally five minutes before she was preaching about a peaceful life for Madi that doesn’t take revenge (I think I know what they were going for with that but it just left me feeling confused and frustrated).

Furthermore, I’ve seen talk that this was her “burning down of a symbol of oppression”, something she experienced first hand (not so unlike Blodreina and the bunker she desperately wanted to escape and deliver her people from), but there was no noble, calculated intention there. She burned the palace accidentally in her rage because she was in pain and disorientated. The moral stuff was just an after effect.

The speech was also very ‘Clarke’. Feeling entitled to and making decisions on who lives and dies right after declaring this wasn’t their kill to make. She wasn’t the only person hurt by the Primes (but we’ve also been given no reason to care about any of the other victims- the manipulated, enslaved population have been turned into a joke and a punching bag for the main characters which...isn’t great either). And the castle could’ve been used to shelter some of the “too many people” we had problems with through the episode (or used to harvest resources from). It really comes down to if i think the situation justifies the reaction and if i hold her wholely responsible...and this is the part where i reiterate that i have no intact opinion and don’t actually care to have one either ha.

[aphrodites-law]

My Favorite

Trope: Soulmate marks.

Twist: Lexa doesn’t have one. Clarke does.

2/? - (Part 1)

~

A week passed at the hotel, but while Lexa glanced into the sitting room each time she walked by it, she never saw Clarke again. She went back and forth between the hotel and her apartment, putting her boxes away while the windows remained opened wide and the smell of paint slowly faded. Eventually she checked out of Griffin Hotel, where Jake gave her a cheery look before sending her off with a basket of fresh fruit from the breakfast buffet - a welcome gift, he’d said.

With her first classes to plan and organize, Lexa spent most of her time with her nose in her books and binders. She used the rest of it to familiarize herself with Polis, where she picked up a few habits in a matter of days. There was the grocery store with the peanut-butter pretzels that melted in her mouth, the bicycle path that cut through the park, and the coffee shop owned by Raven Reyes.

Raven ran a tight ship and was as welcoming as she was fascinating. Her two loves were space and food, and evidently she had combined them with great success. Her shop, Coffee on the Moon, was exactly what it sounded like - the best damn coffee Lexa had had in a uniquely decorated setting. The coffee machines were themed like space crafts, which Lexa had noticed were wildly popular with kids (and perhaps even more adults); the walls were painted in swaths of silvers and dark blues; and the art hung up was courtesy of local artists. In the display case, well-garnished sandwiches made with local produce rarely lasted the day, if even the rush of lunch hour.

Raven seemed to know everyone and everything, an unsurprising fact given her infectious energy. One morning, Raven had come into her shop without her prosthetic leg on account of the pain, she had shared casually, but not once in the following hour had Lexa heard her complain. She was an admirable woman, and Lexa was particularly fascinated by how quickly she had charmed Anya.

Anya, who wouldn’t admit to feeling lonely while her daughter was at summer camp, had surprised Lexa with a visit that had turned into a week-long stay. She’d met Raven quickly enough, and immediately Lexa had noticed the change in her demeanor. Usually always on her guard, Anya had seemed to... soften around the edges in a matter of minutes. It was clear to Lexa that Raven had caught Anya’s eye, not only with her wit but also her ability to run such a good business.

Unfortunately for Anya, who didn’t like to be surprised by her own feelings, she dealt with attraction rather poorly. That is, she’d be ready to snap if Lexa so much as implied there was something there. Lexa, however, could understand her need for caution: Anya was a working mother who would soon leave back to her home, hours away. It was hard to envision this relationship having a future.

And, surely, it would have remained that way had Raven not suddenly noticed the tattoo on Anya’s wrist and shown off her own: a depiction of the moon with the logo of her coffee shop covering the words she’d had since birth.

“Got it at twenty-five when my boyfriend of ten years dumped me for some chick he didn’t even know,” she explained.

When Lexa looked toward Anya then, she knew her friend’s interest was piqued for good. It was rare to meet anyone who had willingly tattooed their mark like Anya had. 

“A decade gone to dust because some skinny redhead told him what he’d always hoped to hear,” Raven revealed with a snort.

“So you don’t believe in the mark?” Anya asked cautiously.

“Oh, I do.”

As equally confused as her best friend, Lexa invited Raven to sit with them at their table. 

“I just don’t think the way we go about it works,” Raven elaborated. “Just because you meet - it doesn’t have to mean you’re right for each other at that exact moment, you know?”

“Or at all,” Lexa muttered.

“Well, I do think there’s truth to it,” Raven admitted. “It’s fucking beautiful, really, if we just see it as it is, but we have a messy approach.”

Lexa shook her head. “It’s just always seemed like... Do you love the person because of who they are, or do you love them because the words on your wrist tell you to?"

Raven smirked, like she had asked herself the same question a hundred times before. To do so aloud, however, was bold. “The way I see it? Just because your souls are bonded, doesn’t mean the relationship doesn’t need work. Sure, most movies show us it's happily ever after once the first words are uttered, but in reality the words are just the beginning. It's not easy to go from perfect stranger to soul-tied, you know?"

Anya rolled her eyes. "Cry me a river."

Raven shrugged. "If it weren't so taboo to admit you're unhappy with your soulmate, maybe some would realize it's because they're taking it for granted. My friend, Bellamy - his soulmate was this broody chick who straight up punched him for sleeping with her friend. Insulted the shit out of him; word for word the string of insults that wrap around his wrist four times. Anyway, she didn't give a shit when he showed her. Took them three years to meet again, and then another three to even like each other. Now they're expecting their first kid. But I think the best thing they did was to grow as people. The mark showed them the possibility for something life-changing was there - but they'd have to work for it first."

Lexa glanced at Anya, who had yet to look away from Raven.

"Look, I know it's fucked how you're treated," Raven continued, "but I don't think the mark itself is to be blamed. I mean, I think it was designed as a way to make life a little easier, that's all. But then… I don't know, most civilizations blew it out of proportion and turned it into something else. Decided that those who have it are better than those who don't - and backed up their points by turning the exceptions into the rule. That people without a mark are going to steal your jewelry or murder your kids one day, just because this one markless dude some thousands of years ago happened to be an ax murderer. Everyone loves to forget that ancient Egypt worshipped the Markless. They believed that they were in control of their own fate - freer. And don't get me started on the Greeks! They had whole temples dedicated to them. There's a reason the statues of their Gods didn't have marks, but nobody likes to bring that up.”

“Moral superiority is one hell of a drug,” Anya shrugged.

Raven chuckled. “I don't think anyone is better than anyone; it's just a bunch of people trying to be happy."

"Well, you're definitely an exception,” Lexa sighed. “I’ve been reminded of my place in the world enough times to know that.”

Raven was about to reply when the door to the shop opened. When Lexa saw that it was Clarke who had just walked in, her heart jumped in her throat.

“You’re back!” Raven exclaimed before getting up to pull Clarke into a hug. “How was it? How’s your mom?”

Clarke grinned in the embrace before pulling back to sign something. Lexa watched with rapt attention, trying hard to follow the movement of Clarke’s hands, but understanding none of her language in the end. She watched as Raven tipped her head back and laughed.

“Classic Abby Griffin.”

Clarke then pulled out a heavy paper bag from her backpack and gifted it to her friend, who immediately looked inside.

“Yes!” Raven turned to Anya and Lexa. “Best goddamn blueberry pierogi in the country!”

Clarke looked toward them as well and gave Lexa a small wave.

“You’ve met?” Raven asked. 

Clarke quickly signed something. Raven blinked, then burst out laughing.

“Oh fine, just go, you idiot.”

Clarke bit her lip before dashing toward the coffee shop’s restroom. Anya got up as well.

“I’ll be right back,” she excused herself.

Alone with Raven, who was now counting the pierogi in the bag, Lexa’s curiosity got to her.

“Are you good friends?”

Raven turned to her and nodded. “Clarke and I got each other through everything. There wouldn’t be a Coffee on the Moon without her.”

Lexa found incredible strength in Raven’s ability to be so open. “I wouldn’t be here without Anya,” she admitted in turn.

“How long have you known each other?”

“Since college. Anya... just helped me believe that I was more than the missing part.”

Raven’s face fell. “Shit. I’m really sorry."

Lexa shook her head. “It’s fine. Just made me who I am today.”

“No, it’s not fine. You know - Polis doesn’t tolerate that. We have each other’s backs here, mark or no mark. I think you’ll notice when you start teaching the kids. They really give me hope.”

Lexa smiled. “I look forward to it.”

Clarke and Anya came back from the restroom together, not exactly chatting but... Lexa could tell they’d communicated something to each other by the small smile on Clarke’s face. Anya sat back down at the table while Clarke signed something to Raven.

“Oh okay,” Raven answered. “I’ll see you tomorrow?”

Clarke nodded before she glanced once more at Lexa, mouthed ‘bye’, and left the shop. 

Raven turned to the table. “Okay, well, I need to put the pierogi in the fridge and make some calls, but let me know if you need anything.”

Lexa sat back in her chair with a sigh. She watched Anya pick up her cup of coffee and then smirk.

“She doesn’t have one.”

Lexa frowned slowly. “What?”

Anya chuckled, then took a sip of her coffee. “You’re so obvious, you know? I figured I’d check when she washed her hands.”

Lexa immediately sat up, hope blossoming dangerously in her chest. “She... doesn’t have-”

“Nope.”

Lexa worried her bottom lip before grabbing her phone. Anya didn’t seem fazed in the least.

“Are you buying a hundred books on sign language?”

Lexa swiped something on her screen. “Yep.”

-

Part three

[britishboystm]

Boy in the Basement Pt. II

Warnings: mentions of death, swearing, just be prepared for a really dark series

***

Once again, the car ride was silent. Your dad was on a mission and nothing was going to stop him. It seemed as though the situation back at the house on Bourne Avenue ignited something in him. It was almost as if he had discovered a new purpose in life, a look in his eyes that had been missing for a couple years now.

His hands gripped the steering wheel with a stupid amount of force, knuckles turning a pearly white. Why was he so invested in this kid? Of course seeing what happened, you felt a certain remorse for what had happened and you most definitely wanted him to be okay, but your dad. He was so determined to get to this kid. All he had said since you've been in the car was that you guys were heading to the hospital. But you knew why. You knew the reason for it all. Your dad wanted to help him.

“Ever since we lost James, A piece of me has been missing.” He said out of nowhere. Your head shot up from looking at your lap and your eyes went wide. It had been months since your dad had uttered your older brother’s name.

“When I walked on to that scene, I saw this boy. He was unconscious and unresponsive. I felt so helpless. It reminded me of the day we lost James and I-.” He started to choke up. James had died of alcohol poisoning when you were just entering year 8. Your parents were distraught and helpless. You brother was so young, so innocent.

“That boy in there made me want to do right by James. I didn’t know him but I felt responsible. He looked so helpless” You stayed stoic and stared out the window, trying not to be reminded by James and the pain his passing caused your family. If you broke down, your dad would break down too. He had to stay strong. For the boy in the basement.

He sighed and sniffled slightly, trying to find the motivation to pull it together. He was a man's man and never liked showing weakness. Now more than ever. A true officer at heart.

Silence again, then words,

“Right well, I will head in, and you will wait outside for your mother. She is going to pick you up at the front entrance.”

“Why can’t I go in with you?” You were angered. You had already seen so much, but of course your dad didn’t know that. He didn’t have to know.

“That hospital is no place for a young girl. Especially with this boy’s current state. I’m going to work with the medical team that’s helping him to find out who this kid is and where his family is.” He pointed to the oncoming hospital.

“It isn’t fair.” You muttered as he parked the car in the hospital car park.

“Say that again.” He said through gritted teeth as he aggressively shifted his body to look back at you.

“You will text your mum and wait for her. Grab your bloody daypack and do as I say.” You stared him down with a fuming look on your face.

“GO!” He yells. You slightly flinch but pretend it didn’t get to you.

You huffed and grabbed your daypack from beside you. You tried to make a statement the best way a teenager can, by slamming the car door with the most force you could muster up, storming over to one of the benches that sat beside the entrance. You made a point to ignore your dad as he went through the sliding doors of the entrance. You texted your mum and waited. About fifteen minutes had passed until your mum pulled up. She gave you a small sympathetic smile, knowing you probably had been through a lot in one day.

“Pack in the back love.” She tried to lighten the mood but your anger was too overpowering to give her the time of day.

“Why is dad like this?” You wasted no time expressing your frustration with your mum, who you considered your closest confidant, besides Abby of course.

‘Like what dear?” She played daft, not taking her eyes off of the road.

“Why does he shut down like that, never let people in?” She turned the wheel aggressively onto your street. She wasn’t the best driver.

“Your father is a complicated man. You know that things have happened to this family that has caused a great deal of pain.”

“Just fucking say it! James is dead! You know it, I know it and dad surely knows it! I hate that this family never leaves time to remember him. We all loved him so why can't we show it?” She stops and thinks for a moment. Contemplating what to say next.

“It’s just hard to think of him being gone.”

“People deal with grief in different ways darling.”

“I just wish we talked about him more.” You mutter. Your mother pouts, understanding your pain. She ruffles your hair slightly.

“I know. Also no cursing.”

The next couple days consisted of you ignoring your father. When you saw him, which was very little anyways, since he was on duty a lot of the time, ticketing people for loitering, you simply didn’t acknowledge him. It was the weekend, so you spent most of your time catching up on your homework and helping with chores around the house. It was nice when it was just you and your mom. The home was peaceful and it felt like a weight was lifted off of your shoulders. There was no sulking around or angry grunts reverberating off of every wall in the house due to the slightest inconvenience.

It wasn't until Sunday night that everything changed. You had wondered where your dad had been. He would usually be home by 6 pm. It was 7:30. Dinner was ready to be served, but he wasn’t home yet. Your mother didn’t seem too fussed about it, which bothered you. She was super strict about being on time for meals and family time, but she was acting as though it was like any other day. She was hiding something, or a better explanation, they were hiding something.

7:45 came around and he still wasn’t home. You looked to your mother who stood above the pot full of tomato sauce, stirring with no care in the world, whistling even. You squint your eyes with skepticism.

“Have you tried ringing dad, mum?”

“Hm?” She was in her own little world.

“I said, have you tried ringing dad?” She placed the spoon on top of the pot and leaned slightly on the counter.

“I’m sure he will be home soon love, Don't get your knickers in a bunch.” What the hell is going on? You thought. You sat in the livingroom by the window, discreetly watching for your dad to pull up in the driveway, but you wanted to look like you didn't care because you were still technically mad at him.

After a couple of minutes, lights finally shined through the window. You peaked out to see your dad's car park. You didn't want to see him just yet so you ran upstairs. You of course had to make a petty entrance. Your mum called after you,

“Where are you going? We are about to have dinner”

“Just a sec, I have to grab something” You didn’t actually have to grab anything. You sat on your bed and waited for your dad’s voice to fill the kitchen downstairs. Instead muttered voices poured up into your room. Calm and also somewhat pleasant. What’s going on here? You jump up, put on your best pissy face and trudged to the top of the stairs.

But then you stopped. You could only see their sneakers but there was another person standing in the foyer with your parents. Mum never told you about a dinner guest. You slowly continue down and then once again you stop. This time in pure shock.

“Y/N, meet Chris”