#does he die in the penultimate episode ... yes ... but hes still so final girl at heart

[representative-democracy]

The Terror but its told through Ao3 author's notes

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Ao3 notes from x x x x x x x x x x

[hatosaur]

ep. 8 thoughts here we go. tw for sexual assault obv.

so i liked the episode, but not really as much as the others. compared to the others, i’m closer to lukewarm. the episode felt a bit rushed in the second half, because the first half spent an adequate amount of time setting up david.

i’m gonna talk about david first to get him outta the way.

i liked most of the details they added for him:

the christian thing -- as i was watching, i thought it was a good way to subtly imply the pedo thing without being overt about it. we also never got to see how much power david had in the game, so those beginning moments of the ep where his unequivocable leadership over the group is shown were really good at silently highlighting that. i’ve also seen it pointed out this being the “traditional” and “correct” way to maintain society and yet immediately turning to eating their own kind because of their one leader, versus jackson being communist and thriving because everyone holds the exact same amount of power, is really, really funny.

the subtle emphasis on traditional gender roles -- i don’t really recall him having this in the game but that moment where he insists he’s that one girl’s father because of his role in the town is a really scary prelude to what role he thinks ellie should take up alongside him.

the teacher thing -- much like the christian thing, but something that doesn’t quite hit till later. creeps me out just thinkin about it.

the detail that i didn’t like, which i feel crumples up all this good subtextual writing and throws in it the bin is david’s attempt to rape ellie. in my post about ep. 7, i was HOPING that they wouldn’t be more explicit about david’s...intentions than they already had been; and they did exactly that, but in the smallest way. in the penultimate moment, in the burning diner, david admits he likes “the part where they fight” the most and reaches for his belt. like...i get it. you want it to be clear-clear that he’s a pedophile, that had ellie gotten to the machete a bit later in the game, maybe he would’ve made that intention clear as well, but why go that far narratively? you already have the building blocks for the audience assuming he’s a creep, you even strengthened it in the subtext, so why make him attempt to sexually assault her, in a burning building i might add????

the only saving grace was bella’s acting chops and, of course, when she kills the mf.

i’m not a fan of craig mazin’s reasoning for his changes nor his understanding of the characters, especially in the bts for this ep. his point about david being right about ellie having a “violent heart” is gross, because no, she doesn’t?? she doesn’t have a violent heart anymore than joel does, or maria, or tommy, because they all live in the post-apocalypse. she’s a literal kid trying to survive and maintain the good that she has, why describe her in such a weird way? when she’s quite literally the embodiment of good and hope in the series??? i know more than you, craig. >:///

a change that i did like was the separation between what happened in the burning building and joel finding ellie. because yes, i agree, the whole point of ellie’s section was for her to come out victorious through her own making. that moment where they find each other again, with all the fucked up additions, did feel all the more relieving, i’ll give it that.

that other change where it’s not joel pulling her close, but ellie going in for a much-needed hug, was really good. to me, it works with the build-up of ellie’s reliance on his protection. “if you die, i’m fuckin’ dead out here” & “i can’t fucking do this without you” were building up to this point where she can (non-verbally) say that she needs him.

in the game, it’s more so “she’s finally safe, thank god she’s safe,” which is still good, clearly because it’s one of the best scenes in the game and because we’re in joel’s shoes, but i like that the show’s depiction of them plays into the dynamic of ellie loving joel’s protection and him just being there for her. shit, i like seeing how much ellie loves joel in the show!!! her cuddling up with joel REALLY felt to me like for a moment, she could pretend for a second that he’s more than some guy transporting her across the country, but like maybe a dad? something like a dad? something precious that she wants in her life for a long time??

the game being from joel’s perspective, we don’t get as much on ellie’s feelings, how she comes to love joel, and i really dig that the show is giving us that. like hey, i know she’s a kid and of course, that means she’ll latch on to him faster but maybe it’s a bit more complex than that, who knows.

HEY, SPEAKING OF JOEL: poor guy’s parts of the ep were way too short :( not just in an “i wanna see joel do more sick shit because this is a gameplay section” kinda way, but also in a “hey, you’re rushing the episode” kinda way. i wanted more of him tearing the place apart in search of ellie. the game had it that way to match the chaotic energies that both parties were going through just to get back with each other! but joel’s portions of the ep were lacking and it seemed like the episode needed that boost. in trying to remember what joel was doing in the episode, the first thing that comes to mind isn’t really his torture scene but him ambling about in the snow. not a great thing. give the man more to do, please. i now see what people mean when they say the action has been neutered a bit.

anyway, back to ellie again lol. 

bella was AMAZING in this. they’re so good at acting and acting like ellie that it’s like??? where they born to play ellie???? she killed all the feral moments, the vulnerable moments, the moments where ellie fucks up. the “ellie is the little girl that broke your fucking finger” moment was PHENOMENAL. 

last episode next week. it’s 44 min apparently?? i’m not liking how that looks. if it were up to me, it’d be a two-parter. a bigass slow burn. one episode dedicated to ellie and joel only, expands their growing relationship after winter, lets them be soft, has the giraffe moment, makes things seem okay, then at the end they get found by the fireflies. second starts with the anna flashback and really digs into what’s about to happen, rounding off the theme of getting into the scientific side of the cordyceps in a neat way, then kicks off the end segment of the game.

here’s hoping they nail it.

[low-budget-korra]

The Last of Us part II - SPOILER

Well, I read a lot of comments about Joel's death, coming from people who are just genuinely upset about losing a beloved character. So I decided to write about why I don’t agree with the argument that death was just shock value or weak storytelling/plot

First let's remember the universe in which the game takes place. It is a violent world. Shall we remember how other prominent characters died?

Sarah - A girl, a child who died in her father's arms. I will comment more on it later

Tess - Infected and shot dead off camera

Henry and Sam - Sam is infected and killed by his older brother Henry, who kills himself soon after

David - Ellie breaks his face with the machete in one of the most hard to watch scenes from the first game

Marlene - Killed in cold blood by Joel

Some unimportant characters who were also killed in a violent way in cold blood like the two guys that Joel tortured and killed, and David's friend that Ellie also killed

But what about The Last of Us part II?

Joel - Tortured and killed

Scar Face guy - Dead with a stab to the neck

Nora - Infected, tortured and killed by Ellie (ps: or ellie may also have "just" tortured her and left her to die)

Owen - Murder

Mel - Pregnant and murdered

Manny - Murdered

Jesse - Murdered

Yara - Her arm is broken with a hammer, she is stabbed and shot to death many times

Did you notice something in common that is repeated in both games? Well, the uncommon in that world must be more peaceful deaths like dying of old age and not the violent ones.

And it is worth mentioning that this violence does not forgive anyone, it can be a creep son of a bitch like David or an innocent child like Sarah. It is, in fact, a merciless world.

Well, let me start commenting on Sarah again. Her death was a shock to most of the people who played or saw the walktho of the first game and we can say that this is one of the factors that leads to the end where we had Joel rescuing Ellie from the hospital after already saw her as his daughter.

Let's not forget also that it is implied in the first game that Joel had to do a lot to survive, would he have done everything the same if Sarah hadn't died on the day of the outbreak? Difficult to say but I believe that not, losing her daughter that way destroyed Joel and certainly made him a tougher person. For example, for sure the time he tortures the guys there to find out where Ellie was taken wasn't the first time he did it. Oh and I'm not judging.

So it can be said that Sarah, her death was one of the things that led us to meet the Joel that we saw 20 years after the outbreak in the first game? Yes.

Can we also say that her death was shock value, to show the player the tone of the game? Yes, although I don't agree with whoever thinks that.

And I do not agree precisely because her death had real consequences for the protagonist, it was important in terms of storytelling and it was not just there to shock the audience and show that TLOU was a really heavy game.

The same goes for Joel's death.

Do you think that if Joel had died a more "peacefull" death as an infected or a "simple" shot to the head, it would have the impact it had for Ellie? Do not forget that Ellie has ptsd to have witnessed this. And her obsession with revenge also highlights the weight that witnessing that had on her psychological.

In a bizarre way Joel's death was a consequence of his own actions. If he had not killed the surgeon, Abby would not have felt this overwhelming loss that Ellie would experience years later and thus would not seek revenge as obsessively as Ellie does later.

Ah but Joel killed everyone in the hospital to save Ellie. Understandable but even so, it does not free him from the consequences of that

Do you want an example of shock value? Just look at the entire eighth and final season of Game of Thrones where they did a lot of nonsense just for "subvert expectations". Had it felt right that Arya was the one to ki the night king?No. Had it felt right Jaime had thrown off all the development from past seasons and run into Cersei's arms? No. Did it feel right Dany goinging crazy in the penultimate episode?No.

But why not? Because the show had seasons to establish that Jon Snow would kill the night king since his entire arc was there in the north. Develop Jaime's character, taking him out of Cersei's influence. Dany is always treated like someone who is merciful, the breaker of chains...

Now seriously, this looks like Joel's death?

"ah, but he was acting different, he was out of character" you guys did notice How much Ellie changed him? After Ellie, Joel becomes someone more "peacefull"and nice to others. Thats why he helps Abby and also cuz he was not alone and because the're infecteds run after them so they didnt have much of a choice. It was a mistake in a world where this is equal to death.

A violent, brutal and unfair death but totally consistent in a world where we see this a lot during gameplay and a direct consequence of the character's actions in the previous game or a violent death taken out of nowhere just to surprise us?

Okay, I know how hard it is to overcome the death of a character we love, I still get upset when I remember Lexa from The 100 or Xena or the Red Wedding in GOT ... actually the red wedding, is yet another example of brutal death but totally in agree with the world in which got set and also a direct consequence of the actions of certain characters.

I focused in Joel's death because is the most controversial thing of the game. Even tho a huge part of the fandom were already predicting his death and making all those theorys about It. And even tho we are all expecting Dina's death to be the Ellie's arc and we are all ok with Dina's character be only that: an fuel to Ellie action or wherever.

This ended up bigger than i expeced and i still dont coment about other important parts of the game. But i will do it soon

Anyway, the thing is don't let that feeling of upset for Joel make you be unfair with a game so well done in praticaly every way possible. A game that even tho it will be easy for them just put a lot of fan services, they didnt. A game that dares to instill compassion and debates in times like ours.

And Just... If you didnt like the game is okay, just is not because thinks ended up different than you expected that means the game is bad or something like that

[theparanormalperiodical]

The True Story Behind An American Werewolf In London (1981), And The 9 REAL Werewolves That You Might Bump Into This Full Moon

What makes a horror film a cult classic?

Is it a suspenseful and seriously-addictive plot? Is it iconic characters with quick-witted one liners? Or is it the way the director throws out the old rule book and redefines the genre forever?

An American Werewolf in London (1981) doesn’t score so highly on any of those questions, but despite hitting the big screen amongst a herd of werewolf-inspired movies, it is officially a cult classic.

But why? 

With CGI so bad it’ll rival a low-budget episode of Buffy, and with sex scenes so bad it’ll rival a high-budget episode of Buffy, this Yankee doggo wouldn’t need a silver bullet to be floored at the box office these days.

However, when the hum of the theatre-goers melted away into a hush as the opening shot of the Yorkshire Moors back in ‘81, this film was set to terrify the audience.

Jump-scares worthy of Annabelle 36: Yes, This Doll Still Ain’t Dead redefined the genre, with the shockingly realistic transformation scene taking centre stage.

Back in the 1980s, you didn’t see stuff like this. 

That’s why to the previous generation An American Werewolf In London is considered one of the most terrifying movies to date. But to me, the real terror doesn’t lie in the engorging snout of the American tourist, nor his every-decaying gap-year bestie. 

It’s how realistic this movie is to real werewolves.

Today’s post is all about how accurate the film’s portrayal of the werewolf is to the legends of the beast, and the roll-call of the 9 most famous real werewolves.

Let’s get spooky!

First, Let’s Recap Of An American Werewolf In London (1981)

The horror genre is infamous for many things.

The grotesque violence against women, female characters with less complexity than a box of condoms, and plots thinner than the women cast as final girls.

This film is no different, but it's the latter point that really matters here. 

The story starts with two American tourists who decided to spend their Gap Year in England. 

Yeah, me neither.

But instead of having an emotional connection with an elephant in India, they stumble into a cosy little pub named The Slaughtered Lamb. Chockful of secretive villagers and satanic imagery - oh, and a vague warning about the full moon - our scene is set. 

Basics, they tell ‘em: “Teach english to the primitive villagers all you want, just don’t go on the moors or you will get pregnant and die” 

Guess who gets lost and ends up on the moors. What’s that I hear? Mysterious howling that is getting closer to them? 

One of the pair - Jack - is attacked first, and is mauled by the wolf-like being. David is attacked too, but the pub-goers shoot it before it has a chance to rip his throat out.

But moments before he passes out from the pain, he does not see a creature. He sees a naked man, instead. 

(Dun dun duh)

David wakes up 3 weeks later in a London hospital with no recollection of the attacks, but a policeman fills him in, claiming he was attacked by a lunatic. David’s dead pal Jack then makes the first of his appearances in a kind of ghostly-corpsy form. He lets him know that what attacked them was a werewolf, and that David is now one. 

Jack urges David to commit suicide to prevent an attack he cannot control, and to end the curse that makes Jack appear as a ghost that will continue with the existence of the bloodline. During his stint in hospital, he falls for a nurse who he shacks up with when he leaves hospital.

During his first full moon, he stalks the streets of London, slaughtering several in the process. He wakes up in a wolf enclosure at the London Zoo, unharmed by the creatures and with no memory of last night.

Eventually, he begins to piece together the reality of his, uh, werewolf-ness, and attempts to prevent another massacre by getting himself arrested, but he fails. He is drawn into an Adult Cinema by Jack, and meets the ghosts of his other victims who helpfully suggest suicide methods for him to try. 

David transforms for the last time, and continues his attack into central London until he is cornered in an alley. His nurse-lover rocks up, and attempts to calm him. For a moment this seems to work, but he is then shot by police and dies. 

A sequel did follow up this film, and and sees a similar story set in Paris. The setting isn’t the only difference, however; this time we see an underground werewolf society that’s looking for ways to control the, uh, werewolfness using drugs. 

How Accurate Is This To The Legend Of The Werewolf?

Haunted houses, mass murderers, and the creepy details of infamous court cases - it doesn’t take much to justify typing ‘based on a true story’ onto a movie poster.

But the original inspiration behind this film doesn’t just follow one vague story about a vague ghost doing vague ghost things like taking that 10 quid out of your coat pocket even though you spent it on that candle from TK Maxx and are officially in denial that you have a problem it’s not a problem mum it just really rare to find that candle okay these are american imports.

The writer-director, Max Landis, wanted to focus his film on something real, on “something where you really [didn’t] have to suspend disbelief”.

To Landis, Werewolves are an “international” monster, with each individual culture having some man-beast supposedly roam their lands and ravage their communities. He even cited historical cases like in France or in Wales where people were burnt to death for their afflictions, cases that will get their attention later in this post.

So if this film was directly based on the legend of the werewolf, what was the legend of the werewolf?

*Inhale*

A werewolf is a human that can shapeshift into a wolf having been cursed by another, or by an affliction from another werewolf during the night of the full moon. 

Then again, tales tell of drinking water from the puddle created by a wolf’s footprint or wearing a fur belt too much that can cause one to become a ‘wolf-man’.

Scientists have debunked claims stretching back as far as 27 AD with a variety of medical causes unexplained in years gone by, from Lycanthropy (a disorder from which one believes they can transform into a wolf) to Werewolf Syndrome (medical conditions which involve excessive hair growth), to Poryphoria which coincidentally is also used to debunk rumours of vampirism. But the widespread belief that once dominated the world suggests supernatural forces could have been at play, too.

In fact, only in the 18th century did official court cases stop referencing werewolves in Bavaria and Austria.

Nevertheless, this hasn’t stopped myths and mysterious stories from still cropping up today. 

Historically, werewolves and witches were often closely aligned, whether the wolves were used by witches for their own purposes, or they were ridden by them. Therefore, a link was forged between witchcraft trials and the hunts for the man-wolves.  

That being said, it wasn’t just witches they were closely allied with: Germanic tradition might have focused on the former associations, but the Slavic countries considered them closely allied with vampires. This belief in werewolves in Europe - the epicentre of the beastly action - emerged in the 14th century, and peaked in 16th century france. 

This is where the first link between the historical cases of wolf-men and the movie emerge. If the number of werewolf cases grew during one era, this can point to 2 things: that rumours of werewolves fuelled more rumours, or that werewolves were real and thus spreading the curse.

So, when Jack appears as a corpsey-ghosty-being-thing and tells him that the werewolf bloodline needs to end with him, the film conforms to werewolf legends.

Specifically, werewolves were considered to have a variety of give-away traits whether transformed or as a human: unibrows, curled fingernails, low-set ears, and a certain swagger were dead giveaways for werewolves in their human guise. 

Or, when in wolf form, it will bear characteristics such as not having a tail, bearing human eyes and speaking with a human voice. So yes, that scene in Twilight is an accurate depiction of a werewolf. 

But aside from David looking like a wolf during his transformation, one of the key similarities between historic cases and the film is the post-transformation effects:

Having returned to human form, werewolves are often weak and completely debilitated. In fact, severe depressions are often mentioned, too, something that must become pretty annoying if its every 4 weeks. 

Remember when David was in that coma for 3 weeks?

Remember when the ghosts lectured him on suicide methods?

Speaking of folklore mirroring the film, remember the totally-not-creepily-named pub? Ah yes, The Slaughtered Lamb:

The five-pointed star was enough satanic imagery to suggest a divine link to the werewolf that isn’t explored in the movie, but historically curses from gods, saints, and the devil are mentioned. The latter is specifically true for Russia, suggesting this werewolf might be fresh from Mother Russia. 

Oh, and of course, witches supposedly did deals with the devil, suggesting a witchy-satany-link that explains the decor of the pub. 

Given their warnings of a full moon and a desire to protect the young men from their original forays onto the moors, it suggests the decor was put in place as a protection against the supernatural forces haunting the area, or maybe even a deal with the forces to protect the pub or village itself. 

The penultimate parallel is the OG attack itself.

The policeman claims David and Jack were attacked by a lunatic. And if you check out this post on the full moon, you’ll know how well this fits the concept of the werewolf. 

The final key similarity is this: 

The Ancient Greeks and Romans believed in the power of exhaustion to cure people of werewolf, uh, -ism. The captured victims would be subjected to unruly levels of physical exertion in the hope that it would drive the beast from the body. 

We discover in the second film that the actual ‘cure’ is adrenaline. By engaging in activities which encourage enough adrenaline to rush through the body, the beast can be kept at bay.

This is confirmed by the concept of killing a werewolf in the first film: when the werewolves are shot, they immediately return to human form. 

Quick flashback to GCSE biology, ‘couple dots connected, and here we are.

The 9 Real Werewolves That Have Existed Throughout History And Might Still Exist Today

So - we know that An American Werewolf In London is pretty-gosh-darn-accurate to the legend of the mythical beast that is the werewolf.

But it’s not like werewolves actually exist, do they?

Do they?!

#1 - Pierre Burgot (1502)

The 16th century was a pretty shite time to be alive. If you weren’t dying in childbirth, you were being beheaded for adultery, you dirty b*tch.

Pierre Burgot was facing such a predicament, but his was slightly more furry. Whilst tending his sheep like most french farmers, three men on horseback rocked up and asked him if he’d like to renounce god and follow them, instead. With the promise of protected sheep, he accepted, and was later turned into a wolf as a part of the contract.

Then, in true devil-worshipper-werewolf fashion they terrorised the region, willingly becoming wolves to kill, pillage, and eat innocent civilians. 

When Burgot was eventually attacked during a quick snack, he was discovered in human form, mirroring the movie titling this post.

#2 - Giles Garnier (1573)

A hermit concealed in the woods who may or may not turn into a wolf is a pretty common tale still cropping up today, but back in the 16th century, this was more popular than ever. 

With a taste for childrens, he began to pick off and partially devour young locals. The villagers’ proof of his attacks, however, did not simply come from pinning the attacks on a recluse:

They saw a wolf maul a young boy and followed it to see it transform back into a human form - the human form of Giles Garnier.

Garnier even confessed to his shapeshifting-situation. 

#3 - Perrenette Gandillon (1598)

A 15 year old boy was livin’ his best Middle Ages life when he saw a wolf lunge at his sister. With its human hands it grabbed her and killed her, then switching its attention to him. 

It might have left deep wounds, and he might have died days later, but the boy had just enough time left to cough up a brief description of the hairy hands he saw grab his younger sister - and the scar gracing the wolf’s body.

From here the villagers led a mob to the house of Perrenette Gandillon, a woman who bore the same scar. This was actually a very common way to deduce a werewolf back to its human form. The thing is, they then worked out that it wasn’t just her who was getting wolfy.

Her whole family had actually been spotted in beast-mode, something they later each confessed to. 

(They were even believed to pace on all fours in their prison cells.)

#4 - Jacques Roulet (1598)

This is the ultimate werewolf story, bringing together an ostracised member of a community and family relations that would make Christmas dinner more awkward than my UKIP aunt naming dropping Jacob Rees-Mogg.

When a young boy was found mutilated and two wolves seen, they were hunted down until a man dressed in rags and in a daze emerged from the darkness.

Jacques Roulet was his name; slaughtering innocent children was his game.

It is believed that he and his amigos had been given their powers by the devil himself, and the eventual confession of these amigos supported this claim.

#5 - Peter Stubbe (1582)

Whispers of werewolves have littered court records and conjured up local legends for centuries, but there are some people that stand out from the crowd - this is one of those werewolves.

Peter Stubbe was a well-off farmer who made his name in the community. Unfortunately, how we remember him is different to his community. Supposedly, Stubbe made a pact with the devil, requesting that “at his pleasure he might work his malice on men, women, and children, in the shape of some beast”.

His pact resulted in a murder spree spanning 25 years. By the time he was supposedly discovered as the culprit of the murders haunting Bedburg, he was described as devoid of humanity during his time as a wolf, and he had no memory of his actions once returned to his human form. 

#6 - The Beast of Gevaudan (1764)

Our story starts in 1764, when the residents of Gévaudan started noticing people were dying. Sure, it’s nothing new for 250 years ago, but when their throats were consistently being ripped out, concerns were raised.

With 210 attacks being blamed on these legendary man-eating animals or wolf-dog hybrid, this became a myth all too real for the inhabitants of the area. Lone men, women and children near livestock were the victims of these attacks, suggesting a totally normal beast attack, right?

But when they discovered that only the necks were being targeted, this pointed to much more mythical roots, explaining why we consider this one of the most prominent potential sightings of a werewolf to date.

#7 - The Livonian Werewolf (17th century)

You’d think werewolves would be mysterious marvels of nature, rarely divulging the realities of their lives, right? This guy bucked the trend.

Thiess of Kaltenbrun was a typical Swedish bloke who spent his time practicing folk magic, wearing fur pelts, and becoming a wolf. Widely known to be a werewolf - despite being in his 80s - the authorities brought him in for questioning on an unrelated matter. From there he spilled on his specialist lifestyle.

He claimed he and others of his kind would only change on certain days like Pentecost or Midsummer Night by throwing on a wolf pelt, a common method of becoming the mystical being.

He also claimed that they would kill and ‘gather’ meat in wolfy form, but cook it in human terms. 

Yet the most peculiar point he made was that werewolves were not demonic creatures, but were agents of god. Werewolves would spend their free time travelling to hell to battle the devil and the witches, and bring back the livestock they had stolen, contradicting all other tales we have seen so far.

#8 - The Southend Werewolf (1952)

William Ramsay was only 9 years old when it first happened. One day, he suddenly felt an icy shiver take over his body, a smell like rotting meat float around him, and an aggression overcome his mind. He was shivering, he was growling, he was in-tune to his senses.

He had - or so he claimed - become a werewolf. 

He then finished up his transformation by ripping a fence post out of his garden. Super-human strength was often reported whenever this would overcome him, confirming that all these signs bear a similarity to cases of demonic possession. 

Other events of turning into a werewolf bear similar resemblance, including him attempting to attack and kidnap a prostitute and biting doctors attempting to restrain him. After every event, Ramsay would fail to remember the attacks. 

He even checked himself into a mental hospital in an attempt to get to the bottom of his affliction in the 1980s. They found no explanation for these events.

And it was following these similar cases of him ‘turning’ - including one that involved the police and splashed his story across the papers - that the Warrens decided to pay him a visit whilst in London. They deduced that this was a Demon Animal Spirit. Having been suspicious of his claims prior to their investigation, they then claimed an exorcism was required. So, Ramsay was flown out to the USA, and an exorcism performed by Bishop McKenna occurred. 

At first, the exorcism did fuck all. But it was only when the bishop touched his forward and asked the demon to reveal itself that Ramsay once again began to turn. That was the final time that Ramsay ever became a werewolf.

#9 - A Mysterious Beast Is Killed In Montana (2018)

Strange and unknown creatures are always being killed, captured, and caught on camera. But with the ‘hoax’ label stamped firmly on most of these cases, they often go disregarded. This is not one of the cases.

In May 2018, deep in rural Montana, a creature was shot dead by a rancher. Cloaked in long, grey fur, bearing huge claws and an oversized head, this was no ratified beast.

The authorities had no clue what it was. 

The teeth and paws were too short to belong to a wolf, and the floppy ears and fur did not point to a doggo, either. 

Do You Think Werewolves Exist?

If you liked hearing ‘bout werewolves, I’m sure you’ll love to hear a new ghost story everyday, right?

Tap follow to see a new one in your feed on-the-daily!

[shirtlesssammy]

15x03: The Rupture

Then:

Long Live the Queen

Now:

We start right where we left off. Hunters are guarding the failing perimeter, while our team heads back to the crypt to perform Rowena’s spell. They set to salting the place while Rowena casts her spell. It starts to reinforce the barrier, but then things start to flicker and Rowena is knocked back in a blast. The spell didn’t work.

There are too many ghosts and they’re too strong. Dean suggests killing as many ghosts as possible before the wall falls, but Rowena scoffs at the idea. Belphegor walks off and Cas follows him. Dean gets all soldier mode and starts yelling about not giving up. 

*Samwitch Alert* Sam, ever the mediator, hunkers down next to Rowena to ask if she needs anything. He rests his hand gently on her shoulder and they share meaningful looks. 

Meanwhile, Bel and Cas wander the graveyard. Bel tells Cas, “You can’t even look at me.” Put a pin in that comment. They wander to the hell mouth. 

Sam and Dean discuss strategy. Dean’s pissed at God. (*AHEM*). He’s not going down without a fight. Sam is distracted, staring at a lovely framed Rowena looking at the Book of the Damned. 

Bel has an idea. He suggests finding Lilith’s Crook, a horn Lilith used to keep order with all the demons in Hell that she sent to Earth.

If they get it and use it, they can draw all the ghosts and demons that are now topside, back to Hell. Rowena has a spell of her own devising to close the hole in the ground. (Crack thought: This is a healing spell. Maybe she’ll use it on herself to heal her own wound.) The spell only takes a couple ingredients, and she’ll need an assistant. She says this while looking at Cas, but then says, “Dibs on Samuel.” Lololololol. That’s right, girl, he’s all yours. 

Someone will also have to lob the spell bomb over the edge of the tear. Belphegor then pipes up asking for help in Hell. “I want protection. Muscle.” Without a beat, Dean responds, “Yeah, Cas’ll go.” And Cas’s look of WTF sums things up quite nicely. Cas has been to Hell before. I mean, yes, uurgh, saving your sorry ass from it, Dean (ok, I’m on no Dean hate-train but it’s easy to lash back at him when he’s being this way.) “Well, it sounds like I don’t have a choice.” I feel like all three members of Team Free Will uttered something along those lines tonight and I’m not well. Dean says, “Go team.” There’s no free will in this house. 

Ketch is still in the hospital and is visited by the demon, Ardat. Things don’t go well. (Remember in Temple of Doom when they ripped a still beating heart out of someone and an entire film industry created a whole new rating because of it? Now they’re just showing this shit on network TV at 7pm. What a time to be alive.) (Also, good riddance Ketch. You killed Eileen and I’ll never forgive you.)

Belphegor continues to needle Cas with the idea that he’s not wanted by the Winchesters. Cas tries to ignore him. Cas asks how they get down there. Belphegor isn’t sure and walks closer to the edge to look over. Cas pushes him over the edge and a good time was had by all. Cas jumping in after him, not so much fun. 

Bleached hair hunter (what’s her name, she seems cool and I hope she sticks around) shows up with all the spell ingredients for Rowena. Dean reveals that he DOES know about Harry Potter. 

Dean hears from Ketch, but it’s not Ketch, and Dean spills their entire plan to Ardat. Question: If Castiel is spelled with one ‘s’ but his nickname is spelled ‘Cass’, why wouldn’t Belphegor’s nickname be ‘Bell’? (Why yes, I do like to rehash centuries old fandom sticking points.) 

Cas and Belphegor wander around a very quiet Hell. Everyone is topside apparently. 

Belphegor tells Cas that he thinks he’s growing on Sam and Dean, “like a cancer.” Cas tells him that they’re using him and that he shouldn’t mistake that for care (AAGHH, stop). They find Lilith’s vault. 

Inside the vault, they discover a demon happily looting the place. He greets Belphegor cheerfully. Looting is fun! When the other demon doesn’t have the horn, however, Cas kills him immediately. Cas is SO DONE. Belphegor leads Cas to the box containing Lilith’s crook and we learn that it’s warded by an Enochian hymn praising Lucifer. How very on brand for Lilith! She was also the only one who could read Enochian so, Belphegor points out, it’s a damn convenient thing that Cas came along on this trip to Hell. 

Cas tries to recite the incantation on the box but it fails. Belphegor points out that perhaps it ought to be sung. We as a fandom are then ROBBED of Misha singing the entire incantation. (CC: Shaving people punting things? After a suitable mourning period, of course.)

Dean sets up next to the Hell pit while inside, Sam’s torn between fighting alongside his brother and performing the quieter (but essential) magics inside. THIS SCENE -- this tiny line represents so much of what I hope for Sam’s journey this season. That he’s described as a witch by Rowena, that he’s GOOD at this and leadership… There’s so much potential just waiting below the surface for Sam to give voice and form. “And magic isn’t fighting?” Rowena asks him as he frets. “[Dean’s] doing his part; it’s time for you to do yours.” GUH

In Hell, Cas pulls out the crook. It is indeed a sheep’s horn. He’s about to hand it over when he’s tossed across the room. It’s Ardat! She’s been onto Belphegor since the gates flew open, suspecting that he’d try to take over Hell. Cas and Ardat fight, Ardat arguing that Belphegor’s aspirations are much higher than he lets on. Belphegor kills Ardat and Cas confronts him about her claims. Belphegor laughs and then casts Cas from the vault. 

He crows over his victory to Cas. The crook is a siphon that can pull all the souls into him, giving him godlike power. Cas realizes that every move by Belphegor has been carefully planned to somehow get Cas down to Hell with him to open the chest and get him the horn. WHERPS.  As Belphegor blows the horn, the Earth and Hell resonate with it. Cas struggles against a forceful wind to try to get back into the vault and stop Belphegor. 

For That Shirt Barely Survived Science

In the crypt, Sam and Rowena join hands and start the spell.

They chant together. Sam turns away for a moment to look towards the door, no doubt wondering what’s going on outside. Rowena calls him to task with a gentle smile and “Sam.” GUH that’s what finally broke me. (Boris has always been the more ardent Samwitch shipper but this gentle remonstrance really did me in.) The spell ignites. Dean’s hex bag glows and he hurls it into the pit. Belphegor fills with souls. It’s happening! All the things!

And then Cas tackles Belphegor and the horn ceases abruptly. He punches Belphegor again and again. (It has been a VERY trying couple of days.)

Upstairs, something’s wrong. The rift continues to crumble but Rowena looks…afraid. 

Cas is interrupted from punching Belphegor by the demon pleading for mercy in Jack’s voice. “It’s me. Jack.” UGH fucking demons. Cas is visibly tormented by this. He spreads his hand, hesitates, then summons his grace. It...FLICKERS. (Ruh roh) Still, it ignites enough for him to press his palm to Belphegor’s forehead - to Jack’s forehead - and smite him. (Ever since that Shaving people promo, I’ve been expecting Jacks’ body to burn but I never imagined that Cas would have had to be the one to do it. What a horrible, traumatic thing. Excuse me while I wrap Cas in a blanket, then myself, then Boris, then all of you readers.) (Boris: *crying noise, crying noise*)

Sam and Dean compare notes over the phone. The crack is closing but “something doesn’t feel right.” That old hunter instinct is correct, because things are about to get even worse. Rowena wanders across the room while Sam is on the phone. He looks over in time to see her STAB HERSELF in the shoulder. She pulls out her resurrection sachet. “Won’t need that where I’m going.” 

Rowena bitterly explains that they’ve bungled their last option. Or, penultimate option. There’s one more spell she can use to contain the souls. “Death is an infinite vessel,” she explains. “It draws its power from its caster.” Tears linger on her cheeks as she reveals that there are only two ingredients: her “still-coursing blood and the last is my final breath.” She’ll absorb all the spirits and after a time, her body will break down and release them all to Hell where they belong. (She will also, of course, be trapped there AND dead which SUCKS BIG TIME.) 

Sam tries to talk her out of it but she doubles down. She needs to die and Sam’s the one who must do it. “My real, permanent demise is in your hands. It’s in Death’s books.” Sam tries the “screw fate” argument on her but it doesn’t fly.

Outside, Cas reemerges from the pit and Dean confronts him about the shaky spell. Cas explains that he had to kill Belphegor and the crook was destroyed, and Dean handles it with his customary grace. JK Dean flips the fuck out. 

Rowena says something incredibly intriguing to me, then. Rowena tells Sam that she wouldn’t kill herself for the sake of anybody, but she would do it for prophecy. For magic, to which she’s devoted her life. (I’m looking directly at Billie here, who chose to reveal the agent of Rowena’s demise to her. Who MEDDLED and helped bring this about. Billie! What’s your game? Call me!) Sam tries to pull away from Rowena, who has gripped his hand and pressed the knife to her gut. “We’ve gotten quite fond of each other, haven’t we?” she asks and places a friendly hand on his shoulder. I’d love to write that suddenly PUPPIES ran into the crypt and they played with them for the rest of the episode but…

Rowena tearfully commands Sam to kill her, weighing her life against the fate of the world and the survival of Dean. She pushes AAAALLL of Sam’s buttons. Sam embraces her and stabs her right in the gut at the same time. She forces him to look her in the eyes afterward. “That’s my boy,” she tells him and I take a crying break from this recap because this performance is too goddamn much. 

And just like that, the first ingredient is in play. Rowena walks from the crypt in her flowing pink gown like a stained rose and souls fly into her. She strides to the edge of the pit and looks at Team Free Will one last time before saying, “Goodbye, boys.” She throws herself down into the depths of Hell. The ground seals behind her. It’s done. 

For Buffy Summers “Death is your gift” Science

In the bunker Dean’s footsteps echo down an empty hallway. He checks in on Sam, who’s sitting sorrowfully in his room. Sam brushes away tears before turning to face Dean and I’m basically dead right now. 

Dean drops a quick recap: the town is safe, Hell is closed, Ketch is dead. Dean tries to rally Sam. They beat Chuck’s final apocalypse. Hooray?

Afterwards, Dean throws a giant taco party for all their hunter friends. JUST KIDDING! Dean drinks hard liquor alone in the library when Cas comes in.

Cas asks how Sam’s doing and Dean is just…so angry. Dean asks Cas why he didn’t stick to the plan. Cas defends his decisions. “Something always goes wrong.” 

Dean rejoins with: “Why does that something always seem to be you,” and I’m feeling sudden empathy for Ketch, for I have also just had my heart ripped out of my chest and held, still beating, up to my face. 

“You used to trust me. Give me the benefit of the doubt.” But that’s no longer the case. Cas winds through the issue quickly, with spare words. He’s tried to talk to Dean about what he’s going through, about his failing powers, but Dean freezes him out. Dean still blames him for Mary’s death. Cas realizes it now fully, perhaps. He is DEAD to Dean. This is all delivered so softly. So TERRIBLY softly.

Dean meets this all with utter silence. He is so emotionally shut down, he can’t even shout anymore. There are no broken lamps. It’s just one non-functioning Dean with no words and bare flickers of eye contact.

“I don’t think there’s anything left to say,” Cas concludes and turns to go. 

Finally, Dean speaks. “Where you going?”

“Jack’s dead. Chuck is gone. You and Sam have each other. I think it’s time for me to move on.” Dean speaks not a word, doesn’t move a muscle, and Castiel turns and walks out the door. And just like that, Team Free Will fractures.

We’re back to Sam and Dean against the world, and doesn’t everybody just…feel great?

______________________________

Oh, My Still-Beating Quotes:

Get me close to the epicenter, find me a nice protected ghost free space. I’ll patch those crumbling walls right up and we’ll all be home for high tea.

I’ll be damned if I’m gonna let some glorified fanboy get the last word

To put it in American action movie terms, you’ll be carrying the bomb, I light the fuse, you toss it in

Oh Cas, your voice, it’s like an angel

I’ll be a god. Or, you know, close enough

I know this in my bones. It has to be this way.

I know we’ve gotten quite fond of each other, haven’t we?

______________________________

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[travllingbunny]

The 100 (re-) rewatch: 4x12 The Chosen

4x12 The Chosen

While this is the only penultimate episode in the first 5 seasons that isn’t supposed to be the first part of a two-part finale, half of the episode (the storyline with Clarke, Bellamy and the rest of the team on the mission to fetch Raven) is practically Praimfaya, part 1, while the A storyline feels like the season 4 finale for everyone who is still in the bunker(Kane, Abby, Jaha, Octavia etc.), although she gets two more scenes at the start of 4x13, before that storyline gets a direct continuation in the flashbacks of 5x02, Red Queen.  

This episode also feels like the culmination of Kane’s arc. After this, it seemed like the show didn’t really know what to do with him, except to make him a supporting player in the story of Abby’s downward spiral, which really begins here. (I do really like Kane’s final episode in season 6, though.) Jaha will get one last hurray in his important role in Red Queen, but after this, it feels like the leadership baton has really been passed to the younger generation.

My thoughts on the complicated grey moral issues from this episode and season 4 in general got too long when I finished writing them, so I’ve put them in this previous post. 

Other thoughts on the episode are below.

This may be my favorite Abby moment in several seasons: going back on her previous statement that “Maybe there are no good guys” (from the season 2 finale) and telling Clarke that yes, there are good guys, and Clarke is one. She is a hero. It’s also a sign of the show starting to show that moral relativism of that kind is not its final statement on morality. Sadly, Clarke does not quite believe her (as we will see in 5x01, she still tends to think “There are no good guys”, and even after changing her mind and accepting Monty’s message to “Be good guys”, she still doubts in 6x02 that she is one of them – even hearing Abby in her mind, voicing Clarke’s own guilt and self-loathing, telling her she is not one of the good guys.) Instead, she is looking towards Bellamy – wondering if he will forgive her (which he does, just a few hours later) and needing to know if he also thinks that she is one of the good guys.

I’ve always thought that the moment in 4x11 when she aimed a gun at Bellamy and burst into tears as she realized she couldn’t do it, was what finally pushed Clarke to fully understand and admit to herself how she felt about him. When we see everyone at the start of 4x12, Bellamy is brooding and looking at no one, while Clarke is hyper-focused on him.

This is the last time Clarke and Niylah see each other before Praimfaya and the six-year time jump – and it’s a bit sad that Clarke doesn’t even seem to say goodbye to her, but – even though Clarke did care for her and has tried to make sure that she survives, Niylah has probably always known that she was not one of the people Clarke feels most strongly for. That was already obvious in 3x11, when Clarke was focused on Bellamy’s emotional state (even though she had learned Niylah had lost her father). Niylah was a good friend (with occasional benefits) who provided some comfort to Clarke when she was traumatized by Mount Weather and wanted to run away from everyone, when she was grieving for Lexa and when she was feeling the pressure of trying to find a solution to save the human race from the upcoming end of the world, but it was also a way for Clarke to avoid the potential pain of a relationship with someone she really loves. In any case, this short scene is where Clarke barely even sees Niylah or can’t pay attention to her because her focus is elsewhere - is very telling.

Later on, after Bellamy, Clarke and others leave, Octavia saves Niylah when she almost finds herself thrown out by both Grounders and Arkers – which makes her later devotion to Octavia perfectly understandable. Niylah’s laid-back, kind and empathetic nature (she doesn’t blame the Arkers who wanted her to throw her out for being a Grounder and points out it’s a result of people being afraid) seems like a perfect foil to Octavia’s anger. Unfortunately, as we saw in season 5, Niylah proved to be way too adoring of Octavia and unable to challenge her and help her moderate her actions.

During season 6, I’ve seen a comparison made between Abby bringing Kane back through bodysnatching to Kane saving Abby against her wishes in 4x12, but I don’t agree with that: it’s a very different thing to have to actively kill someone you love, and I think it was very unfair of Abby to ask that of Kane. She could have committed suicide instead, like Jasper did. She was not able to do the same herself – she smashed the radiation chamber in order not to risk Clarke’s life, she opened the bunker because she wasn’t able to let Kane die, so why did she expect him to be that strong, or that able to turn off his emotions, to actively kill the person he loves?

What in the world made Jaha think that Octavia would respond well to him, of all people, appealing to her loyalty to Arkers as “her people”? This is the second time in season 4 that a Blake sibling has called out one of the Ark leaders for what they did to them back on the Ark (after Bellamy told Kane “You floated my mother” in 4x07), and I really liked that. Forgiveness is nice, but it’s even nicer when people are not pretending that everything has been forgotten.

We’ve had so many instances of Bellamy saying “My sister, my responsibility”, and in season 5 we’ll get Octavia saying “My brother, my responsibility”, but here we get a unique version of that with her saying “My people, my responsibility”- in the same meaning that Bellamy said “My sister, my responsibility” in 5x08 after poisoning Octavia. Is this the first time she’s called Arkers “my people”? In any case, one noticeable change from seasons 1-3 Octavia is that, in season 4, she no longer says she is a Grounder –which used to annoy me every time, because it made no sense. It’s not like that’s a lifestyle and you choose it and just need to decide you’re a Grounder. By season 4, she seems to have realized that Grounders will always think of her as “Sky girl”, so she doesn’t feel that she belongs to the either group. Until she decides to make them all into one group, Wonkru. (Not that this will end “Us vs Them” divisions – because the Eligius prisoners will become “Them” in season 5!)

It’s not just Indra who’s had an “Enemies to Lovers” relationship with guns! Grounders have now raided the Arker supply to get the guns for the expected battle with them. OK, but how many of them have had even the basic training? We know some did in the camp in season 2. Have they been training the others? Has Indra? On the other hand, not all Arkers are guards or former guards, or Delinquents who needed to train in season 1, and everyone (except maybe Bryan) from the Farm Station is dead, so I don’t know how many Arkers are that good with guns, either, and having half of the numbers of the present Grounders (many – most? – of whom were probably warriors, knowing what Grounder culture values) sure wouldn’t have helped.

I don’t know if this is the first time Jaha has allowed someone (Kane) to change his mind, but it is sure a rare moment, whether he did it because he realized that the last remnants of the human race killing each other a day before the apocalypse was bad for the human race, or because he realized that Arker chances were not the best and that they could have all been killed.

This episode has obvious parallels and contrasts with 1x05 Twilight’s Last Gleaming, and it bookmarks Kane’s arc really well. Unlike the first culling, which Kane deeply regretted when he realized it wasn’t necessary, this one is, but few people are volunteering to die this time. One exception is David Miller, taking himself out of the lottery to give his son more chance to survive – another example of a parent sacrificing themselves for their child, which recalls Tor Lemkin’s sacrifice for his daughter.

In the end, Clarke’s list did end up being significant, but Kane and Jaha still would have a few spots to fill, since some of the people on the list were not there (Raven, Clarke, Bellamy) while Octavia did not count, but since Octavia left them with 99 spots, giving one to Niylah, that means they had 3 spots to fill with others. One of them was Miller (who did get chosen in the lottery) and I’m guessing that the other two were probably also lottery winners that Kane had already announced before the riot started.

The show was still trying to justify its name, with this storyline of having to choose 100 people to survive. Then it gave up in seasons 5-6.

By the end of season 4, and Murphy and Bellamy were still not friends, and Bellamy still didn’t trust Murphy and thought of him as someone who cares only for himself. Clarke had, by that time, spent more time around Murphy post-season 2 and gotten to know him better, and be aware of his love for Emori. But Murphy’s change has been about having someone he loves, and starting to care for his friends – it’s never been about starting to care about general morality or the lives of random people he doesn’t know. He’s never been that guy, so his season 6 arc of wanting to become a bodysnatching Prime wasn’t really a big surprise.

(Interesting how we see characters say this line to or about someone they love._

Murphy was never troubled with ethical dilemmas of whether to sacrifice someone he loves to save a greater number of people, which also means he is really not troubled by the hypocrisy of being angry whenever he or Emori seem deemed disposable, while he’s at the same time treating many other people as disposable. For instance, in 4x08, he was very much in favor of testing someone for Nightblood, pointing out that it can save them all, and even admired Emori for getting that random thief to get tested instead of (potentially her) – and only became upset and angry when it was his girlfriend who was going to be tested. This time, he sounds points to Bellamy that he “killed them” (him and Emori) by opening the bunker, since they have no chance of having a seat saved for them. True enough, but what did he expect? That Bellamy would let his sister die to save him and Emori a spot in the bunker?

The reason Bellamy forgives Clarke pretty quickly after she tells him she’s sorry, is because he completely understands where she’s coming from. And he knows he means to her a lot. Just like he understood her motives in season 5, because he had been there himself – but what upset him in S5 was that he started to think she didn’t care about him. Which is why he immediately forgave her when he realized how wrong he was about that. Bellamy and Clarke can quickly forgive each other because they understand each other better than anyone and can empathize with the tough decisions they have to make.

In this episode, they go back and forth, discussing that issue, whether to try to potentially save everyone, or to save a close friend who would definitely die otherwise. First it was Bellamy calling out Clarke on having been willing to leave Raven out of the bunker to die. Later, Bellamy is the one to bring up saving everyone - suggesting that, if Nighblood works, they should go back so Abby could make everyone Nightbloods; and it’s Clarke who retorts that it would mean that can’t save Raven. (I don’t like when people exaggerate the whole “Head and Heart” thing to the point that they try to make it look like Clarke is always driven by logic and Bellamy by emotion. It is much more complicated than that.) But I don’t know how I’d feel if it turned out that they wasted a chance to save hundreds of people in order to save their friend. This is not the case though, because, as Clarke points out, it’s too late to see Nightblood tested – as it would take days – and they couldn’t even convince people to let them in the bunker if she was sick, let alone start making people Nightbloods based on that.

If Monty and Harper hadn’t come to save the group when they had lost their car, and instead had gone straight to Polis, would they have been left outside of the bunker?

One of the rare interactions between Clarke and Echo happen when Echo tells Clarke: “I was just trying to save my people. Was that so bad?”, and Clarke obviously empathizes with her. Clarke has constantly shown the ability to empathize with people, even her enemies. 

On the other hand, when it turns out that Emori’s suit has been torn a bit and she’s starting to get radiation poisoning, Murphy’s first instinct is to suggest to take Echo’s suit by force, and he points out that she had followed them and saved them just out of self-interest. Which is true, though I don’t think Murphy is right that Echo would’ve attacked them. That wouldn’t have helped her. I think she was waiting for a chance to prove herself useful, make them owe her, so they would let her in the lighthouse bunker, exactly as she told them. Quid pro quo. But the same is true of Murphy and Emori – they are also there on the mission because they want to ensure their own survival, so it’s interesting that Murphy – who tends to sees the worst in people – blames Echo for the same things he’s himself guilty of.

I remember someone arguing that Clarke didn’t sacrifice herself for her friends in 4x13, because she would have died anyway if he didn’t align the satellite dish. True, she would have, but let’s note the fact that Clarke had a guaranteed spot in the bunker and was going to be safe, if she hadn’t gone on the mission to save Raven.

Let’s also note the fact that Clarke gave her helmet to Emori, risking her life again (since she did not know if the Nightblood solution worked), saving both Emori and potentially Echo. Maybe Murphy, too, since I don’t see Echo just going down lightly and letting him take her helmet off. This is the second time she’s risked her life to save Emori’s, a fact that *cough* certain people tend to forget.

Let’s also note the fact that it was Clarke’s idea that they go to the Ring.

Timeline: This episode begins 23 hours before the death wave is to hit Polis, at least according to the characters’ calculations (though those have proven to be unreliable throughout season 4, as the death wave proven to be much faster than anticipated). It’s mentioned that the team going to retrieve Raven will need 10 hours to Becca’s lab on the science island. However, they lost a lot of time because of the attack, losing the car, problems with anti-radiation helmets, before meeting up with Monty and Harper and getting another mode of transport. By the end of this episode, they have arrived to Becca’s lab, and by that time, the death wave has already hit Arkadia, though that’s unimportant as everyone who was there was already dead or had left.

My re-rewatch has also helped me figure out the timeline of season 4 more precisely. At the beginning of 4x04, Roan says it has been 3 weeks since they made the alliance (which means, 3 weeks since 4x01). Since 4x02 was set 9 days since Clarke destroyed the City of Light, this means that these were rare moments when some time passed between episodes: 8-9 days between 4x01 and 4x02, and additional 10-12 days spent in doing repairs on Arkadia, before, during and after 4x03. But since 4x04, things have been happening very quickly: 4x05 started soon after 4x04 (the period of time Octavia needed to reach Arkadia after Ilian found her, and less than the Azgeda army needed to march to Arkadia from Polis), 4x06 on the next morning, and Clarke was already in the lab in 4x07, making it all just a couple of days. And in 4x07, the characters said the death wave was coming in 10 days. So, the entirety of season 4 lasted  just a little over a month (and seasons 1-4, minus the last few minutes of the season 4 finale – a little over 6 and a half months). Not only was ALIE wrong when she thought Praimfaya was coming in 6 months, but Raven’s assessment, made 9 days later, that it was coming in “2 months or less” was not entirely wrong only because it turned out to be less – half of that time.

Body count: Several desperate Grounders who were trying to steal the anti-radiation suits. (What were their further plans, if any? Where did they intend to find shelter during Praimfaya?) One of them practically threw himself in front of the car and was over by Bellamy. “As if he wanted to die”, Clarke said – and he probably did. I can see why a quick death by your own choice and helping your friends would be preferable to a horrific death in a death wave or slowly from radiation. The seven others were killed - six by Echo, one by Bellamy.

Hundreds of other people, including over 300 Arkers, were left outside of the bunker, so while they did not die in this episode, they were practically left for dead, which makes this episode one of the most heartbreaking ones. At least one of them chose it – David Miller, who gave his lottery spot to his son Nathan, in another case of a parent sacrificing themselves to give a chance to their child (which reminds me of the first culling and Tor Lemkin). Ethan’s father (the same guy who was giving speeches against Ilian in 4x06 and who now started the riot with Jaha) is certainly among those who were left outside, asking Jaha to take care of his son. Which we will, but not for long, as Jaha himself would die not long after, during Kara Cooper’s rebellion. Cooper’s husband was also among those left outside, while she was presumably counted as essential personnel.

Rating: 10/10

[maddhatterreviews]

Sasha’s path in season 2

Y'know, I didn't mean for this kinda thing to be the focus of this blog. I wanted to primarily talk about video games and maybe bring up comics and movies every once in a while. I had no intention of turning this into a cartoon discussion blog, but this is where we are, so let's talk about Amphibia.

Amphibia is a new Disney Channel cartoon about three young girls being transported to a world of talking frogs. The series follows only one of the girls, Anne, who was taken in by a family of Frogs named the Plantars, as she tries to find a way back home. It's basically one of the few Western Isaki shows. 

For reasons known only to the mad and the divine, Disney decided to air the entire season all at once; with a new episode every day for five weeks. So the finale's already come and gone. And it was quite a ride. After spending months in the small village of Wartwood, Anne is finally reunited with her best friend from Earth, Sasha...Only to find out Sasha came to Wartwood with an army of toads. 

The toads actually trick all of Wartwood in come to their homebase just to kill Hop Pop for inadvertently starting a rebellion by standing up to the toads that have come to Wartwood over the course of the season. 

As the series goes on, Sasha is revealed to be a pretty terrible person. Manipulating and coercing Anne to do things she didn’t want to on Earth, and teaching Grime to do the same to his soldiers so they’ll fight harder for him. The plan to trick Wartwood was actually her’s. 

But at the end, Anne finally stands up to Sasha, frees Hop Pop and Wartwood, and destroys the Toad Tower. (Although she didn’t actually want that to happen and one of the less stable frogs planted explosives against her orders not to do so) 

The Tower going down causes Sasha to almost fall from the roof and Anne and the Planters try to save her. Even though, like I said, Sasha came up with the plan to kill Hop Pop in the first place. Sasha seeing the Plantars doing so much to save Anne makes her realize she’s been a shitty friend, and her actions have directly put her friend in mortal danger. 

It’s interesting that, despite seemingly taking advantage of Anne for most, if not the entirety of their relationship, it’s made very clear that Sasha does genuinely care about Anne’s wellbeing and happiness. She just thinks she knows better than Anne on what that actually is and forces her to do things she wouldn’t want to do ordinarily. But as they are dangling from the top of the tower, Sasha has a moment of clarity; realizing being a real friend means putting your own feelings aside for the sake of your friend. Saying to Anne, “Maybe you’re better off without me.”

And to atone for everything she’s done to Anne, especially in the last few hours, Sasha let’s herself fall so the Plantars can pull Anne to safety. 

Really think about that. A thirteen year old girl was willing to let herself die after realizing what a shitty person she is. But the thing that makes this particular plot point interesting, is that Sasha doesn’t die. 

I mean she’s a child and this is Disney, there was no way Sasha was going to die, especially in the first season. So Grime comes out of fucking nowhere and saves her. And before walking away with the rest of his Toad army, he gives Anne a dirty look, unquestioningly think that Anne THREW her off the tower. See, just like Sasha actually cares about Anne despite how she treats her, Grime cares about Sasha despite being a tyrannical warlord. 

So, like I said, the season finale was a bit of a ride. It ends with Anne emotionally drained after seeing her oldest friend almost dying for her, and fairly certain that nothing will ever be the same between them. But fully prepared to venture outside of Wartwood with the Plantars to find a way home. 

Anne’s path forward is pretty firmly established, but the big question is where Sasha will go from here. The most hopeful course of action would be for Sasha to take the revelations she’s experienced to heart and strive to be a better person. Leaving Grime and the toads to reunite with Anne and the Plantars on more humble and peaceful terms. And had this series come out when I was a kid, I’d expect this to be the how everything would play out. But this is a Post-Avatar world we’re living in. It’s not out of the ordinary any more for cartoons aimed at kids to take darker turns in it’s storytelling. 

Speaking of Avatar, I feel like Sasha may go through a similar situation as Zuko at the end of Book two when he freed Appa to help Aang, doing something that went against the very core of who he was as a person. Sasha doing something so uncharacteristically selfless as letting herself die for Anne when their relationship up until that point was so monumentally one sided, it will undoubtedly result in the same existential crisis that Zuko went through. Though...maybe not with the day long coma and the fever dreams. 

But while Zuko at his core was a good person, doing morally questionable thing because of a misguided sense of honor and a desire to get back in his abusive father’s good graces. Sasha, at least at present, doesn’t seem like a good person. Being manipulative and amoral, with her only real redeeming quality being her genuine friendship with Anne. And well...Anne and Sasha aren’t exactly friends anymore. 

The main reason Sasha sided with Grime was because of a promise for the toads to help her find Anne and their other friend Marcie, who by the end of the season is still missing. But not only does Sasha not seem to take any issue with the fucked up things Grime wants to do, she’s the one who came up with the plan to murder Hop Pop for a purpose she has absolutely no stake in. She has no reason to help the Toads keep their iron grip on the Valley, but she does it anyway, and even takes advantage of the trust Anne has garnered from the frogs of Wartwood to set her trap in the first place. 

So while Sasha face-heeling would make sense in the context of realizing she’s been a cunt to her best friend, it would make just as much sense for Sasha to double down on her actions and gradually becomes a worse and worse person as the story goes on. 

It’s also a factor that now Grime knows how to better manipulate people thanks to Sasha. It would make sense for Grime to twist the events of the finale to frame Sasha in the right, and lead her to continue on her already set path, and preface all the terrible things she continues to do as the ends justifying the means. Yes, she’s hurting innocent people, but if it means getting Anne and Marcie back to Earth in one piece, she’s willing to do it. She may not like who she’s becoming, but if it’s for her friends it’s worth it. 

In this sense, Sasha learns from her near death experience that a friend should give of themselves, and do things you may not want to for the sake of your friend. The problem comes in how she goes about that. To her, Grime and the Toads are the best chance she has to find a way back home, so it’d be easy for her to rationalize continuing to work for them. She may not like what she’s doing anymore, but she’s doing it for Anne and Marcie. 

There’s also the thematic element of setting Anne and Sasha up as character foils to take into account. Anne started off as selfish and a bit of a brat, but through the various adventures she’s had with Sprig and the various other frogs of Wartwood, she’s grown as a person and become more thoughtful and compassionate. She’s actually saved the town more than once during the three months she’s been in Amphibia, and it all culminates in the penultimate episode of the season, Anne of the Year. Where all of Wartwood celebrates how far Anne has come since she arrived. 

Sasha, on the other hand, was held captive by the Toads for months until she helped Grime protect their tower from giant Herons and taught him how to get the best out of his subordinates with empty flattery. When Grime give Sasha the offer to become his second in command she relishes the idea of gaining enough power to basically do whatever she wanted. 

The longer they stayed in Amphibia Anne became more of a hero, while Sasha became more of a villain. Anne will most likely continue to grow as a person, and the more she and the Plantars explore the Valley, especially with the whole “Hop Pop is the face the rebellion” plotline, there is almost certainly going to more instances where Anne will have to defend more towns from Grime’s army. Spreading stories of the strange, tall, gangly creature with a sword standing up against the Toads. While also putting her in direct conflict with Grime and Sasha. 

Is Sasha still going to fight Anne to save Anne? Will she come to the decision that the best what to keep Anne safe until she can find a way home is to keep her prisoner? After all the only reason Anne was in danger at Toad Tower was because she left her sight. 

And what if Sasha decides Grime isn’t doing enough to figure out how to get her home, and takes control of the Toad army away from him. I mean the toads already like her more than Grime, it wouldn’t be that hard for Sasha to convince them to make her their leader despite her age. And as he’s being led away to be either exiled or executed, Sasha says to him, “I bet you wish you hadn’t save now.”

Am I seriously suggesting Disney make a cartoon where a teenage girl both becomes the main villain and develops a death wish?

When Sasha let go of Anne’s hand at the top of the tower, she wasn’t just willing to die, she was expecting to die. Grime saving her means she’ll have to deal with that...and for a thirteen year old girl, that’s not going to be easy. It’s going to fuck her up emotionally and mentally, and it’ll only get worse if she does go full darkside. 

A huge wild card in the story is Marcie. So far we don’t know where she is, what she’s doing, how she’s going to be introduced. There is basically no information on this character or what her relationship with Anne and Sasha is. We know she was the one who brought the Music Box to Sasha and Anne’s attention, and she was probably just as manipulative as Sasha is. But since we don’t know what Marcie’s been going through, we don’t know how she’ll react to the changes in both Anne and Sasha or if she’ll side with one, the other, or stay as an independent entity. 

Amphibia is a surprisingly good show so far. Which isn’t too surprising considering the guy who made it also worked on Gravity Falls. It will be a matter of time before we can say with any kind of confidence that it will be remembered as one of the highlights of modern cartoons...but it seems like a safe bet. Especially with how the first season ended and what it sets up. It’s entirely possible I’m talking out of my ass on this one. Nothing that I proposed will come to be, and Sasha will just become one of the good guys. But the fact that Amphibia built it’s characters so well I could have this kind of discussion and not have it seem like absolute bullshit, that’s saying something. This show has a lot of potential. And I can’t wait to see where it goes from here.

[msbeccieboo]

Arrow 7x21 Brain Dump

Late, late review…oops! This episode was SO GOOOOOD!!!! I’ve seen a real mix of reactions for 7x21, but personally I LOVED IT!! TOMMY MERLYN guys…nuff said!! Obviously, it was painfully Olicity-light, which is criminal given our time restrictions, but when an episode was this good, I can overlook some things haha! I’m going to take it as an episode in its own right, even if we should have had it earlier in the season, again. I actually thought that this would be a short review this week as, being a bottle episode, not a lot really happens. But with Tommy back in play, a whole boatload of emotions, and my flash-forward Olicity babies being back in play, it got long as usual. Sorrynotsorry.

Oliver and TOMMY!!!!

Oh Oliver. Poor Oliver went through it this week. The episode picks up where we left off last week with Oliver in a concrete sandwich (luckily dodging all the rebar), after sister-dearest dropped a building on him. Coming to, he calls for Overwatch and John (he knows who’s important) he looks up and we hear:

“Need some help?”

*Roll titles* Da da da da da da dah-da!!🏹

More beneath the cut

TOMMYTOMMYTOMMYTOMMYTOMMYTOMMY!!!!! Once more for the haters….TOMMY MERLYN!!!! YAAAAASSSSS!!!! In case it isn’t clear, I love me some Tommy Merlyn 😍😍 I will gladly accept any and every version of him that they can give us. Rat Poison Hallucination Tommy? Yup. Flashback Tommy? Sure. Earth 27.3 Evil Clown Tommy? Bring it! Any version, any time, anywhere, I’m there! So that is where I stand on the Tommy Merlyn debate haha! I loved how he was used in this episode. For me it didn’t feel like it had been overdone before, as I’ve seen some people say. We have actually had very little Tommy since he died. We have only had him as a ghost/hallucination for one tiny scene in 2x09 (I’m not counting the Alien dream as he didn’t even speak, and was just a really bad CGI job), since then he’s been back either in flashback, Earth X, or Human Target form, so the opportunity for a prolonged vision-Tommy, as the voice of Oliver’s morality?? Sign me the hell up!!

Colin still knows, and plays Tommy so damn well. He slips straight back into the character, and he is so like the character we knew from S1 conversationally, and in his mannerisms. How he has differentiated between the various versions we have seen over the seasons is just testament to Colin’s acting ability. Ugh, he’s fabulous.

So Oliver escapes from the rubble with help from Tommy and a trick arrow, and then a whole emotional rollercoaster ensues for a decent portion of the episode. I liked that straight off the bat, Oliver notes that he must have a concussion, he knows he’s dreaming, and he doesn’t care, he just goes along with it for the opportunity to ‘speak’ to his oldest friend again. I was living for the easy nostalgic conversations they had. They joked about the whole secret half-sister thing they now shared, with a cute little nod to Thea, Tommy’s beard 😂and a story of ‘Ollie’ hotwiring Malcolm’s car and getting grounded. This was so cute and light, given the dire circumstances.

Source: smoakmonster

The conversation eventually turns round to Serious Things, and a hashing out of Oliver’s duelling feelings on Emiko, on redemption, on killing for the right or wrong reasons. Oliver’s Daddy issues manifest, and it was emotional to see just how fucked up Oliver still is by the actions of Robert and Malcolm.

Tommy warns him that he needs to break free of his and Robert’s cycle of lies and hate that he is trapped in. He has a chance of a clean slate, to keep his past from hurting his kids, but Oliver won’t listen, convinced that he must kill Emiko to keep his family safe. He eventually breaks out of the room and joins the team. Not heeding Tommy or Dig’s words of caution, he leaves the team and pursues Emiko, intent on killing her. She tells him she knows about the baby, and the rage we saw on Oliver’s face was epic!

Despite Dig catching up with him and telling him not to, Oliver takes aim and shoots Emiko in the chest, killing her. However, when Oliver turns around he sees that Diggle has an arrow in his chest, and he falls down to his death, where we see the rest of the team, also all arrowed!! Then snap!! Back to Tommy…it was all a dream.

Source: arrowdaily

WRITERS, NEVER DO THAT TO ME AGAIN!!! I NEVER WANT TO SEE JOHN THOMAS DIGGLE DIE!! 😭😭😭

We get back to Oliver with Tommy, with Oliver crying over Dig’s ‘death’ 😭 no baby nooo!!! Tommy tells him his vision was a “reminder of what it feels like”. Oliver replies "Of seeing my loved ones die? Of seeing my family be threatened?" His voice breaking on the family part ended me 😭😭😭

Source: olivergifs

Tommy likens these feelings to how Robert must have felt; that fear leads to vengeance then to cruelty and abandonment. And that as long as Oliver keeps giving in to his worst impulses, he will never be free of Robert’s cycle. He advises him on what he needs to do regarding Emiko.

A lot of Tommy’s words to Oliver here and throughout the episode sounded more like Felicity in their nature, from the lighter parts:

Source: ebett

To the more supportive words he had for Oliver: 

“Lean in to the best parts of yourself; your loyalty, your selflessness, your courage, your compassion, and show that side to Emiko. You are living proof that people can change, and you’ve got to find a way to see that in her too.” 😍

I can almost hear Felicity telling him ‘Tommy’s’ words. And this makes sense, with being a dream/hallucination and all. These are all voices in Oliver’s head; a mix of his own thoughts and the words of the two people who knew him best before (Tommy) and after (Felicity) the island. So, once more for the Tommy haters in the back…this wasn’t a conversation between ‘Tommy’ and Oliver, Oliver wasn’t asking for Tommy’s opinion; it was an internal dialogue between two conflicting desires within Oliver; it was Oliver’s conscience having a little tête-à-tête.

Oliver hears the team coming for him, and realises his time with Tommy is up. He says goodbye to his friend by telling him:

Source: misomeru

DEADED! Sobbing.like.a.baby. This felt like a true, final goodbye. Oliver took his realisation from ‘Tommy’. He knows what he has to do to stop Emiko and keep his soul and his family safe.

Anyway the team rescue Oliver and take him back to the lair, where they learn that Emiko and co. have stolen back the bioweapon from last week and are in the middle of slaughtering the SCPD, with Emiko dressed as Oliver *le sigh*. Oliver confronts her on the roof of the SCPD (ah, the memories…), has the opportunity to kill her, but doesn’t. He tries to reach her, offers her a chance at redemption once more “help me end our family’s cycle of violence”. Instead, half-sister-supervillain tells him she is going to kill him, his family and his city, then dares him to kill her. Oliver tells her no, and she actually looks…disappointed?? Then just zooms away on a zipwire arrow…see you next week Emiko!! The team arrive on the roof, just as an SCPD helicopter arrives to apprehend them….the end!

With regards to Oliver’s stance on not killing Emiko…I am totally ok with it. I don’t think its’s character regression on his part, it’s his choice to end a cycle of violence and guilt. I wrote a little more on redemption here, but my personal take is that redemption isn’t necessary for Emiko, just the opportunity of it. Oliver could easily detain her indefinitely and help her to redeem herself, or not, that is her choice. But it is important to Oliver that he tries his hardest to give that chance to her. I hope that he sees her choice in the matter by the end, and doesn’t continue beating the proverbial dead horse. (Or, you know, that someone else just kills her, or she falls off a cliff or something 😂)

Olicity

Ok, yes, I was hoping for more this week…a hug at least! We got the concern and the love, both separately and very briefly face-to-face 😡. Much as in my perfect world all episodes would be full of Olicity moments, this week, taken as a standalone, didn’t need a lot of Olicity in order to be a good episode. It was a great episode…on it’s own, in a vacuum. But it’s the penultimate Olicity episode ever. I would have liked more focus, that’s all.

Anyway, here’s the pretty:

Source: olicitygifs

Source: olicitygifs

Bonus: Cheeky bum grab 👀😏

Source: lucyyh 💗

Felicity

Felicity wasn’t the primary focus of the episode, this was definitely an Oliver episode, but given her dual storylines in the present and the FFs, we still got a lot of her on our screens. My gripe is that this would have been fine in any other episode, but this was her penultimate show!! But it is what it is…onwards and upwards and all that!

We first see her, back at Smoak Tech HQ, where Alena tells her that the SCPD are there with a warrant. All Felicity wants is some tech to help her locate Oliver (said tech is being manhandled by ‘Lieutenant Butterfingers’ LOVE HER 😂😂), but Sergeant Bingsley (ugh) has other ideas. Emiko has sent them the footage of Roy killing the guards, and they also linked the Ninth Circle bomb to Archer, and Archer back to Smoak Tech, and he is there to arrest Felicity…RUDE!!! Felicity and Alena escape, by taking out all the officers with a supercharged Canary Cry-esque burst from Felicity’s security system. YAAAASSSS GIRL!! 👑👑👑

I liked the focus on Alena and Felicity’s friendship in this episode; meant to mirror the ‘reveal’ in the FFs, and set up Felicity’s leaving, no doubt. Alena tells her that of course she will help her “I’m not letting you do this alone”, and they head to the bunker to find Oliver and the team. (Side thought: if the team are now working for the SCPD, why don’t they SCPD know where the lair is? Why don’t they go there to arrest Felicity/Roy/anyone else? Huh.) Felicity gets in touch with the team, but not Oliver, and helps to guide them through the building. Classic Overwatch. I loved how Alena was all of us when she asks Felicity how she breathes when she does this!

Then we see Emiko show up at the lair. Change. the. locks. people! 

Source: felicitysmoakgifs

NOOOOOOO!!!! Save baby Mia!! But now Emiko knows agggghhhhhh!!!!! I loved Felicity’s attempt at reasoning with her; her baby is innocent, just as Emiko was, and it seemed to work, as Emiko left them unharmed. This was really a reality check moment for Felicity, of the direct danger that her baby would/could be put in if they continue this lifestyle as it is for much longer. I think Felicity is just so naturally positive, and has such faith in her own abilities, and in Oliver, that she had honestly believed that they would all be ok up until now.

Source: feilcityqueen

Felicity’s reality, her feelings, (and her hormones) all come crashing upon her at once, as she compares her situation to her own childhood experiences. And where she had always hoped that things would be different when she had her own children. Her whole speech about her comparing her childhood with her dreams for her own children, and her doubting her parenting ability was just heart-breaking:  

“Growing up my parents made my life miserable, and I promised myself I would do better when I became a parent...I imagined this life and this is not it. Somehow I have done something worse...I can’t even keep my children safe.” 😭😭😭

NOOO!!! I just wanted to give her a hug! This leads into Alena suggesting that there’s ‘another way’ for Felicity. She tells Felicity that she can go off the grid, run the company remotely, but raise her family with Oliver in private, away from the SCPD and all the ungrateful fucks in Star City (I may have paraphrased slightly there!). This seed planted here is likely going to be how we see Felicity written out in the finale next week 😭

Source: ebett

Team Arrow

Roy Freaking Harper. The man. The legend. Love him. He’s the hero Team Arrow has deserved, and has been missing. NTA could never. And it was never more apparent than in this episode. After the blast, Felicity gets in touch with them and updates them with the SCPD developments. 

As the generator kicks back in, they realise that the blast bringing the building down blew out a gas line and the whole of the lower level is filled with a toxic and flammable gas. Gas + generator = BOOM (hmmm this plot sound very familiar). Unfortunately the generator is on that same lower level, and needs turning off in order to save them all from going up in flames.  So on one side we have Rene crying over his rep, Dinah bitching about losing her job and saying that Roy should give himself up to save the rest of the team. Then we have Roy, who just parkours straight into the toxic gas, sacrificing himself to turn off the generator and save the team. Eat it NTA. And they did! The overreaction by Rene, and especially Dinah, who sinks to the ground like the love of her life has just been killed (again 😬) is just ridiculous! Roy, being the badass parkour ninja bunny that he is, manages to jump back up and out of the gas. Yay Roy! Next thing, Dinah’s guilt clearly kicks in and she’s giving a still remorseful Roy a pep talk, telling him how the world and the team needs a hero like him. What the actual fuck Dinah? MAKE UP YOUR DAMN MIND! This woman could win the world yo-yo championships. Her weekly, or hourly, flip-flopping from one completely different viewpoint to another is tedious, exhausting and whiplash inducing. Go away. I beg of you. This pep-talk should have come from Dig. He’s Uncle Dig, pep-talks are his jam. And he would actually believe and stand by his words. Instead, Dig was sidelined again for more ridiculous bird action, because comics.

Roy’s guilt and apparent suicidal tendencies over the pit-rage-fuelled killings last week, combined with Dinah’s “dying is the coward’s way out, every day that you stay alive you try to redeem yourself” can only be leading to his exile on Lian Yu, surely? That will be where he seeks his redemption. But 20 years?? Man, I think he might have some more pit-mishaps coming up first!

FFs

My boy William is back!!! YAY!!! We got some overdue future family Clayton-Smoak-Queen feels this week. First off, just look at these little Olicity babies…those expressions!!!! 😍

Felicity says that in order to stop the Archer-powered Army, they need to take Archer down for good. William tries to help, with a ‘quick and dirty virus’, but Felicity denies him, insisting that he keeps safe. He rebuts with another plan to take Archer down by hacking Slimy Galaxy One Dude in proximity, employing a little flirty-flirt…Season 1 Felicity reference FTW!!!! Felicity again tells him no, that she wants him safe. This leads to him blowing up at being excluded, just like when he was a kid, and his anger at being left behind come up. Felicity apologises for not coming back for him, and tells him they just wanted him safe, and to have a normal life, but she is interrupted by a hacking emergency and Will walks off. This leads to him opening up to Mia about his feelings of abandonment, and this was another chance for us to see Mia’s softer, empathetic side, especially in her defence of Felicity. She reminds him that Felicity was still watching over him, that she backed his company and helped him to succeed, to which William replies “I didn’t need her money, Mia, I needed a mother” 😭😭 I just want to hug him!! Mia tells him that the only way to come to terms with it, and to find out their real reasons for ‘abandoning’ him is to confront her head on. This never gets to happen in the episode, but this conversation must surely mean that this will happen next week? And I’m guessing her answer will come with a surprise of some sort (hopefully of the Oliver-variety!!).

Will decides to ignore Felicity, and goes to hack Archer directly from Slimy Guy, who is still as cringe-inducing as ever. Not nearly as cringeworthy, however, as Rene’s terrible hair, as he is brought out as the man who ‘inspired’ the Zeta project?? Ugh, ratty rats must be killed. Squeak squeak Rene! Slimeball gets an alert and leaves them, only to return moments later with a gaggle of Zeta soldiers. They have detected William’s DNA, and Slimer announces that he knows who William really is, with “Such a pleasure to finally meet the son of Oliver Queen and Felicity Smoak”!!!!! I adore hearing him be called both of theirs son soooo much!!

Meanwhile, back in the lair, we meet the “mad scientist that converted Archer into Frankenstein’s monster” (Felicity’s words haha), who turns out to be non-other than…Alena! Ok, so not the biggest reveal ever, but I still loved the scene. Felicity summoned her to help destroy Archer by freezing her bank accounts and passport (still got it!), and we get to see angry protective Mia confronting her, while Alena looks at her, rather softly, and laments:

Source: eloquence-of-felicities

She then goes on to apologise to Dinah for what happened to her Canaries. And she means it. She explains how she came to releasing Archer to Galaxy One. I liked here how they didn’t go with her being an outright evil mastermind...she tried to license out the program, then was subject to a hostile takeover, and had her loved ones threatened by Slimey Dude Kevin Dale. A shared look between them implied that maybe her 'loved ones' possibly included Felicity? Or maybe just that she was hoping Felicity would empathise with that choice? We never get to know, because the lair is suddenly swarmed with Zetas, as the remaining team (minus Connor and Zoe) are apprehended by Galaxy One. 

To be continued…

Bonus:

William: *hacks*, Felicity: *that’s mine*, Mia: *who can I punch?*

So yes, exciting times in both timelines!! ONE EPISODE LEFT GUYS!!! HOW ARE WE GOING TO MAKE IT?!?! 😬😬😬

Thank you as always to the fabulous gif makers, you beautiful people! 😍😍 (The uncredited, poor quality gifs are mine haha!)

[truthbeetoldmedia]

Shameless 9x14 “Found” Review

It’s the end of an era, Shameless fans. After nine hilarious, gut-punching, heart-wrenching seasons, Emmy Rossum has left the show for good. For the past eight years, her portrayal of the eldest Gallagher daughter has left viewers in fits of laughter, fits of tears, and everything in between. In her send off episode, she reminds us and her siblings just how much she will be missed.

In her penultimate episode, Fiona came into a large sum of money, $100,000 to be exact. Just as she had accepted her fate and gotten a job at the local gas station working nights, she was lifted from rock bottom and given the chance to start anew. So now, she must decide what she wants her future to look like. This is understandably difficult for Fiona because, well, she’s never really had that choice before.

She decides not to tell any of her siblings at first, but observes what their lives would look like without her in it. She’s raised each of them as best she could, and as she watches them get ready for their day the next morning, she realizes she’s done a better job than she ever knew. As nice as this is, it’s a bit of a gut punch when she begins to see that they don’t need her anymore. Debbie even asks if they can switch rooms so that she has more space for her and Franny, and asks Fiona what her future plans are. It’s as if they’re giving her a reason to leave without even knowing it.

And then there’s Lip, who kicked Fiona out of the house a few episodes back. While Fiona has cleaned her act up and gotten Lip off her back, it’s likely that his threat still lingers in her mind. It’s not just about if Fiona is needed in the Gallagher house, but does anyone want her there anymore?

As Fiona tries to decide what to do, the rest of the gang are up to their own shenanigans. Frank has been released from the hospital and is camping out on the couch. He needs around the clock care and complains relentlessly about need more Oxy, causing the family to consider dumping him under a bridge. Realizing they could get in serious legal trouble for that, given Frank’s age and poor health, they instead discuss getting him a caretaker. After all, their lives are too busy to be dealing with Frank, of all people.

Across town, Fiona’s hearing actually goes well. Her public defender tells her she must pay a few thousand dollars in fines, which she definitely has now. While out, she goes to visit Ian in prison to ask for his advice. After telling him she’s thinking about leaving, going someplace warm, he tells her to do it, that he’ll always be there for her. Fiona is a bit taken aback, but takes her brother’s words to heart. She knows she can’t stay in the Southside forever.

Ian also briefly mentions what’s going on in his life, how he’s working in the infirmary, got lice, and, oh yeah, is bunking with none other than Mickey Milkovich who works in the laundry room (Is anyone else getting serious Alex Vause vibes?).

Fiona supports her brother, and it’s clear that he supports her too. It seems like this is just what she needed — to be really, truly heard. And perhaps because Ian has spent some time away from his family, he knows how trapped one can feel in the Gallagher house. So with that, Fiona’s mind is made up.

While Fiona plans to distance herself from her siblings, Debbie and Carl grow closer. After butting heads over Kelly and both having their hearts broken by her, they bond (and vandalize her truck). So when Carl accepts a job as the manager of a nearby Captain Bob’s location, Debbie refuses to let him give up on military school. Unable to get through to him, she calls in Kelly for help, blaming her for her brother’s sudden lack of confidence. Together, the pair are able to snap Carl out of it. And after a brief time apart, Kelly and Carl get back together.

Continuing her maternal streak, Debbie goes to get Liam and bring him home. When she finds him at his friend’s house, he reminds her that he asked the whole family the previous night if he could move in, and they said yes. Liam, not willing to be ignored anymore, gives Debbie a list of demands the Gallaghers must meet if they want him back in the house. Most notably, he wants to be surrounded by black culture, which he feels he’s been robbed of living in an entirely white household.

Across town, Lip once again goes on a wild goose chase when Tammi’s BRCA test comes back positive. She has the “baby good” kind, leading us to assume she’ll want to have the baby, but Tammi is hesitant to bring a child into the world when she knows she may still die of cancer at a young age. While Lip tries to tell her he’ll stick around, Tammi refuses to believe he’ll be a good father. She jumps back and forth between decisions about the unborn baby’s fate, first wanting to have an abortion, then deciding she’ll have the baby, then opting to put it up for adoption. In the end, we’re left wondering right alongside Lip what she’s going to do.

When Lip finally gets home, he finds Fiona packing her stuff. She reveals to him that she’s leaving and asks that he take care of everyone for her, metaphorically passing the baton. Lip agrees but insists they throw her a going away party. Fiona knows that if she stays for the party, she’ll never leave. And so, when everyone has left the house again, she sneaks out to the train station and then onto a plane, bags in tow. The scene beautifully parallels the Season 1 finale, in which Fiona almost left Chicago with then boyfriend Jimmy/Steve. The only difference is that this time, she goes through with it (and sadly, Jimmy/Steve is nowhere to be found).

Back at the house, the party goes on. As everyone drinks and dances, celebrating Fiona and the role she had in their lives, Debbie finds an envelope stuck to the fridge. In it is $50,000, half of the money Max gave Fiona, and a note that simply reads, “Love you.” And Veronica says it best when she reminds Debbie, “Yeah, she does.”

Looking back at this season, I realize I expected it to be like the earlier seasons — more outrageous, more dramatic. What I failed to realize is that Shameless can never be what it once was because the characters are no longer the same. They’re still Gallaghers at heart, yes, but they’re adults now and while they’re the same people, they aren’t the same family.

I think we started to see this shift in dynamics when Ian, played by Cameron Monaghan, went to prison and was no longer a regular on the show. He was barely mentioned by his siblings, and it seemed as if his sentencing had little to no effect on them — because it didn’t. I’m not saying that the Gallaghers are inherently selfish people, but they have their own separate lives. If it wasn’t for their monetary hardships, I think they’d all be living on their own right now, not in a shared house. As Fiona realized in this episode, they just don’t need each other anymore.

However, this doesn’t take away my frustration with the way Fiona has been treated for the entire second half of this season. Because in this episode alone, Debbie noticed Carl getting down on himself and refused to let him be upset for more than a day. And mind you, Carl was going through heartbreak, not being cheated on, cut out of a huge business deal, and a sudden alcohol dependency. The more I think about it, I feel like Fiona turned to alcohol because she couldn’t lean on anyone in her family.

This is why Fiona’s send off is so bittersweet to me. I’m ecstatic that she’s finally getting out and making a life for herself, but I’m heartbroken that she was pushed to do it because her family seemingly didn’t want her around anymore. Too bad she didn’t take Liam with her — he sure knows how she feels.

I hoped that this finale would be something unexpected and jaw dropping, but as I said previously, Shameless just isn’t that show anymore. Instead, Fiona left with a quiet and understated notion that this is her happy ending. She doesn’t need all the chaos and the trouble she thought she was addicted to. You can take the girl out of the Southside, and maybe, just maybe, you can take the Southside out of the girl too.

So what is Season 10 going to look like? Well, Fiona left half her money to her siblings. So maybe they’ll use it to get far away from each other and start their own lives too, as best they can manage with a little over 10K each at least. With no mention of Xan and Tammi constantly changing her mind about the baby, it’s hard to tell where Lip’s storyline is going. Debbie and Carl were left in relatively stable places at the end of the finale, and while Frank needs to be off his feet for the next few months, we all know that being the cockroach he is, he’ll come out the other side just fine (as fine as Frank can be, that is).

Perhaps the only promising aspect of the coming season is that Cameron Monaghan is set to return as a series regular, after only half a season being gone. Whether this means we’ll see him in prison with Mickey is yet to be revealed, but either way, I’m excited to see where his story goes.

For now though, I’d like to appreciate Emmy Rossum and her beautiful portrayal of the delightfully complex woman that is Fiona Gallagher. I’ve never seen a character quite like her, and I’ll forever be thankful for the smiles, laughs and tears she caused me while watching her on my screen. Truthfully, I’m nervous to see where this show goes without her. But regardless, there’s nine seasons telling the captivating story of Fiona to look back on. And though its on-screen end was quiet, I’d like to think it wouldn’t stay like that for long.

After all, if there’s anything we know about Fiona, it’s that she brings the party with her wherever she goes.

Jessica’s episode rating: 🐝🐝🐝.5

[lena-in-a-red-dress]

It’s Frahn-ken-shteen... [a Season 3 thought experiment]

As we near the finale of S3, I've been focusing more and more on what the season has done well, and what I've noticed is that they've introduced a lot of really cool and interesting ideas-- they just weren’t executed particularly well. 

It’s like they threw all these ideas at the wall of the writers room and just said “okay go”. As ideas, none of them are completely horrendous. With a little more care, they could have been crafted into a really strong season serving Kara's narrative and give it both weight and direction. 

So I gave myself a challenge-- if I dissected the season into it’s main story plots, and stitched them back together to create a more coherent narrative, what would the season have looked like?

Here's what I came up with:

(warning: it’s a long one, complete with gifs)

For me, the load-bearing arcs of the season should have been the Kryptonian cult and Argo City. With those two as the stanchions of the main story plot, everything else would work to support them. 

Coville’s cult would be the main villain of Season 3a. Instead of the sporadic all or nothing that cropped up here and there, they'd be running in the background the entire front half. They don't have to be the focus for every episode, but we as the audience would know that the DEO knows they're dangerous, and knows they're up to something.

Rather than being schooled by Coville in her own religion, Kara knows about Worldkillers-- they’re what people on Earth call urban legends. Spooky stories meant to teach Kryptonian children the value of trusting in Rao and obeying his doctrine.They’re ghost stories, and here the human idiot Coville is trying to worship them (and perverting Rao’s word-- let’s not forget that). This flips their dynamic so that Kara is more secure in her knowledge of Krypton than Coville is in his, and also sets the stage for the cult threat to segue into the Reign threat in 3b.

What Coville does do is spark Kara’s search for fragments of Krypton that might have survived and made it to Earth. We could have one bottle episode where she’s traveling the world hunting for another probe, and maybe that’s how she finds the Legion’s ship. She also finds some troubling records/notes in Coville’s cult that leads to some uncharted area of space that should be empty, so why is there a note? That’s how they find Argo (and Alura) for the midseason cliffhanger.

In 3b, we would take our time exploring Argo and seeing Kara really struggle with all the awesome/awfulness of finding her people again, and being torn between two worlds. She would get a chance to face and address the nasty and complicated emotions that comes with being unbelievably happy her mother is alive but also how could you send me away? Don’t you know I would’ve rather died with you? How could you use me to lure Alura in for arrest? How could you let our planet die??

And while we spend a few episodes on Argo, we’d spend some time seeing what life is like on Earth without Supergirl. This is where we’d see the really powerful arc of J’onn and M’yrnn, Alex slowly coming to terms with losing Maggie and Kara back to back-- and her slowly looking into the idea of adoption, with lots of hesitation and uncertainty. 

We see her feeling like her friends were really just Kara’s friends, and her loneliness just comes crashing down until Lena and Sam come knocking for girl’s night. James runs into his identity reveal crisis, Winn runs into his mom, and we see the final stages of Sam’s transformation. 

Kara starts sensing something is wrong when she starts seeing elements of Coville’s cult on Argo (the priestesses have been in direct contact with Coville for some time). Her suspicions are confirmed when she receives a distress call from Alex at the DEO-- there’s a new Kryptonian in town, and her name is Reign.

Because the nebulous use of “dark magic” to explain anything Worldkiller is anathema to me as a storyteller, the trinity’s origin/purpose would be the biggest actual change I make to this season. The “witches” may still create Reign, but with science rather than magic and it would tie back into the lore because they created her to embody the boogeyman-figure of Kryptonian legend. 

Once her premise is firmed up, Reign’s purpose would come out of that-- either she’s judge/jury/executioner for National City’s criminal element, or she’s a planet-killer. Maybe she’s both: if humans refuse to be ruled in fear, they can perish with the rest of their planet. But it’ll be more clearly developed, and not a sporadic “oh she can tunnel through the earth now just because” (also: Julia wouldn’t die. That was a shitty, unnecessary development)

The season would end with Alura and some choice friends from Argo coming to Earth’s aid alongside Supergirl. Once Reign is defeated, Kara now faces her choice of Argo or Earth. She chooses Earth. It’s her home now. She has family here, and a duty to protect the people who gave her a planet to call home. Alura wishes she too could choose to remain, but she has her own duty on Argo. She failed them once-- she can’t do it again. But they can still visit each other, and communicate via hologram: no more programmed “I do not have sufficient data...” responses from Alura. It’ll be the real thing, whevever Kara needs her.

Now, some addendums:

The Legion of Superheroes - 

As soon as Kara finds them, they’re featured heavily for about 3 episodes in the penultimate climax of the midseason finale, and then they’re sent on their way. Mon-el is happily married and devoted to his wife. Seeing him happy, with serious purpose, is what Kara needs to move on. Yes, it sucks to still lose him, but he’s alive and doing well, and that allows her to start healing.

Sam & Ruby - 

I am 100% okay for Sam’s arc to remain relatively the same. I’ve loved getting to know her and Ruby, and I’m really attached to both of them now. The only thing I’d change is on the back end of stuff-- maybe tailor the promotional material/interviews to keep some of Reign’s development secret. I would have loved to meet Sam without already knowing that she’s going to become Reign. 

I would also maybe tone down the whole Alex-Ruby dynamic. It’d still be there, but not quite so in your face. The perfect fix would be Alex and Sam getting involved, but I would be very mindful of the timing so as not to do any discredit to how important Maggie was in Alex’s development and growth as a person.

Morgan Edge -

Since Morgan Edge didn’t end up affecting Kara’s arc at any point in this season, I would have left him to act as Lena’s foil throughout the entire season. They’re evenly matched in resources and ambition, and I would have loved to see Lena play more against him in their battle of wits. 

For me, her battle with Edge would be a more interesting exploration of her Luthorness than the Great Kryptonite Rift. How would the shifting dynamic between her, Supergirl, and Kara have influenced Lena’s strategy against Edge? Would she become more ruthless as Supergirl’s faith in her waned? Would she rise above, and take some sort of high road in Kara’s absence? Not to mention, what would have happened if Lillian came back into her life AFTER Supergirl bites her head off over the Kryptonite?

In summary, I would just reorganize the season to slow the big ideas down and really take the proper time delving into the heart of the characters. Especially with Kara and her search for a connection to Krypton in 3a and dealing with actually finding it in 3b. And then we’d be able to clearly see and understand her personal revelation in the finale: Supergirl is neither wholly Kara Zor-el, nor Kara Danvers. 

She’s both, and all the stronger for it. 

[mdwatchestv]

Game of Thrones 7x06: Run Joe, Run

Woo boy that was A LOT. Like a lot, a lot. In so many different ways. I would even go so far as to describe some elements as 'extra'. Yes there was excitement, action, and feels. I even admit to screaming bloody murder when the zombie bear came from a direction I didn't expect. But when all was said and done I couldn't help but feel a bit...used. This season, although boasting some great moments, has felt undeniably different than previous years. Instead of focussing on building out a world and the characters that inhabit it, the show is now rocketing towards a foregone conclusion. If the world of Game of Thrones is a chess board and we have spent the past several years watching knights and queens slowly slide around the squares jockeying for position, this season is the equivalent of knocking it all to the ground and letting the pieces literally fall where they may. Alternatively, if the world of Game of Thrones was a high-end Barbie collector's basement, this is the season his eight-year-old niece broke in, ripped 1993 Holiday Barbie out of her box and made her make out with 1960 1st edition Ken. And neither of those things are inherently bad, playing with dolls and knocking a boring game on the floor are both entertaining in and of themselves, but they are also a departure from what we have come to expect.

Before this season I never thought about things like "Wait- how many long miles IS Westeros? What is the land speed of a laden Raven? What's the MPH on a dragon? How long by air? How long by sea?" I wasn't worried about the logistics, the tech specs. We had other things to worry about, like battle strategies, familial strain, and tyrannical kings. But now it feels as if the curtain is starting to be pulled aside and we are for the first time seeing the mechanics at work behind the scenes. While there were thrills to be had in this super-sized penultimate outing of season seven, they came at a price. In the after-episode special Benioff and Weiss openly admitted to essentially reverse-engineering the entire episode in order to get the final shock of zombie dragon, rather than letting it be the consequence of an organic series of events. One of the reasons Game of Thrones works so well is that consequences, even the upsetting ones, feel earned. The Red Wedding, for example, tragic as it was, was ultimately palatable because it made sense in the larger story. It was the tangible result of a series of connectable actions, not a gambit for ratings. Often the killing of beloved characters leads fan to become disillusioned with a show because it's done in the service of shock value, rather than organic storytelling. But as major characters drop on Game of Thrones, it only acts to draw the audience in further because it’s done in a way that rewards previous storytelling. The idea that characters are existing in a real world with real stakes and consequences is compelling and rare. Up until this season Game of Thrones never had characters rendered immortal by their series regular contracts, or even clear-cut heroes and villains. Yes, we root for different characters and houses, but at this point no one has a clean moral conscious. Those qualities are exactly what made Game of Thrones so good, and what it is seemingly starting to lose.  It's worth pointing out that up until recently the show has had source material to rely on for guidance, and is now having to pick it's own path to the end. Viewer’s theories about the show’s endgame have become increasingly out there, perhaps in response to a world where outcome is not necessarily determined by prior events. For better or worse, anything is possible. 

This episode was some moments of interest strung together with moments of "what?!?!?". Let's begin. ZARTF (Zombie Acquisition and Retrieval Task Force), as well as a few randos clearly marked for death, sally forth into the north. This whole episode gave me greatest hits of Lord of the Rings vibes, including "walking in a straight line across a mountain", "being rescued by a giant winged beast at the last second", and "rolling up half dead on a horse". I really gotta carve out 10 hours to rewatch those. To pass the time tromping through the snow our seven "heroes" try and work through their daddy issues (a little late imo), and Jon makes a half-assed attempt to give Longclaw back to Jorah (conveniently failing to mention it's like the only thing that kills White Walkers). The first sign of trouble comes when the group is set upon by a zombie bear! You hate to see that. Some of the red shirts are killed, Top Knot McGillicutty is wounded, and Jorah saves the day with his dragon glass dagger. Which I guess they all have? Or just Jorah? Unclear. This scene is what we like to call in the biz a foreshadowing.

Meanwhile in Dragonstone Dany is mooning over Jon Snow, even though he is a short stack (he IS super little) and ignores Tyrion who is attempting to invent democracy. In their exchange it's reiterated that Dany can never have babies (beyond her dragon babies), making a potential hold on the Iron Throne tenuous at best (Jon is still the *true* heir, but doesn't seem like Bran is going to tell anyone that anytime soon). Dany would rather not talk about any of that though, and would rather crush/not crush on the King of the Short. Speaking of women on the edge, the Sisters Stark are also failing to see eye to eye. After discovering Arya's BAG OF FACES (I have so many questions about the logistics of face wearing, but I am simply too tired to get into it), Sansa is understandably concerned. These concerns are heightened when creepy-ass Arya pops in to play a decidedly threatening game of questions. Arya seems to think Sansa is out to usurp Jon because she is a Cersei-in-training. Sansa thinks Arya is a terrifying demon child. This is a relationship that has also become frustrating centering around a conflict that doesn't ring true. While it's true that Arya and Sansa have become very different young women, there is more that unites than divides them at this point and Arya's extreme aggression towards her sister feels unwarranted. The core characteristic of the Stark family is that they ARE the Stark family. Arya put aside her dreams of Cersei killing in order to reclaim her heritage, and with the pack dwindling the remaining wolves have to stick together now more than ever. Both of these women have been through extreme trauma, both of them have had to make unthinkable choices in order to survive, and both of them have been continually underestimated by their male cohorts. I'm not saying this is a relationship that should not be without conflict, but their animosity lacks nuance. Granted this show doesn't have a lot of experience with complicated female relationships, but Sansa and Arya attempting to reconnect as complex young women in a time of crisis feels like a real missed opportunity.

And I have seen the Twitter theories that say that the two girls are gaming Littlefinger together, that Sansa sending Brienne away (to an I think prematurely scheduled zombie viewing) right after Littlefinger advised her to use Brienne against Arya is concrete proof. As much as I hope this is all true, it just doesn't seem likely at this point. But maybe Sansa's bizarrely abrupt send off of her last loyal subject really was a clue to a larger plot, or maybe it's just an excuse to put Brienne back in Jaime's path to give him a last second shot of moral obligation. I would love nothing more for my pessimistic theories surrounding two of my long time favs to be proven wrong. These two characters, no matter their ultimate fate, deserve the chance at a final team up.

Back up north, our band of brothers conveniently stumble upon a manageable squadron of zombies led by a White Walker. After dispatching the Walker all the zombies but *one* turn into dust. The plan is going smoothly! However the last zombie calls the rest of the hoard and they are well and truly fucked. The group sends good old Gendry to run back to the Wall (an unknown distance) to raven Dany for help, while the rest of the pack becomes stranded on a rock in the middle of an ice lake surrounded by the entire undead army. Here's where I have questions. Question 1: If Ole One Eye and Top Knot McGee can make fire whenever they want, why cant they have a fire on the island? Or at least gather around one of the swords? Question 2: Can the zombies not use bows? It seems like our group would be pretty easy to take down with a couple dozen arrows. Question 3: How long are they waiting/expecting to wait? How long does it take for the raven to get to Dany? More questions to come later. Anyway Top Knot succumbs to his wounds, meaning that One Eye is now on his final life. The Hound, who was pretty useless most of this episode, continues to be useless by alerting the zombie hoard that the ice is safe to walk on. Our party engages in a seemingly hopeless battle against an untold number of assailants, hoping against hope for a dragony miracle to happen.

And it does! Dany swoops in with her brood in the last second, blasting the zombies with fire, and rocking a seriously fabulous white fur coat, to save the day! Not only is her winter wardrobe literally to die for, it also looks like she may have skinned Ghost to make it, symbolizing her new allegiance (romance?) with Jon. I also have to ask at this point why this wasn't the original plan. Dany made pretty good time getting up there, didn't have to tromp through the snow, and likely could have had Drogon pick up a zombie in his talons-  all in seemingly less than a day! But I guess that would have been much less macho than grimly marching through the snow. It looks like the tables have turned in favor of our hereos when suddenly....the Night King picks up an ice spear and takes out Viserion! Nooooo.

This was a genuinely heart-wrenching moment, as an audience we have watched Dany's dragons grow from hatchlings to giant death machines, and seeing one of them ripped out of the sky was just as painful as losing any beloved human character. Again this was a moment that delivered an emotional punch, but the journey to that payoff was not as satisfyingly authentic as it could have been. Jon, realizing the White Walkers are somehow ready for dragon combat, sacrifices himself so Drogon can take off with his payload safely. But it's an empty sacrifice, because Jon is last minute rescued by BENJEN STARK, who is part ice monster, part North of the Wall lifeguard, all Stark all the time. If you recall Benjen, or Cold Hands I guess is his nickname, previously came in for the save with his swinging lantern when he rescued Meera and Bran. But Benjen's last minute saving days are over as he is eaten by zombies in order to allow Jon to escape. Sad.

Back at the wall Dany ignores Daddy Jorah in favor of wistfully staring out over the tundra, hoping for Jon to appear. And appear he does! Jon is more than fine, especially shirtless and wrapped in furs on Dany's pleasure yacht. The two have some weird flirting where Dany reveals she can never have children, and Jon actually refers to her as 'Dany'. Good thing they are both so hot, because that banter wouldn't cut it anywhere else. Also she's his aunt. I simply cannot stress that enough.

As a final coda to this decades long episode, we see the Night Army dragging the corpse of Viserion out of the lake only to reanimate him into an ice zombie dragon! Gah! Shit is most definitely getting real, as the Night King adds some real power to his arsenal. Will zombie dragon still breathe fire? Ice? Freezing rain? Excited to find out. Next week (the season finale???) looks like it will be the zombie summit down in King's Landing. I have zero predictions for this. My only hope is that Euron will be there, I miss him. In a world of uncertainty, Euron brings the party.

Stuff I didn't get to:

Stop shipping Dany/Jon, START shipping Brienne/Beardy

They almost took Beardy from me after I SPECIFICALLY asked them not too.

Beardy learned the word dick <3

Beardy rode a dragon!!!

MVP: Beardy. I don't have to defend myself.

XO MD

[talkingwithburritospodcast]

Baby Ducks In The FP - TWB70

The FP is like Breaking: Electric Boogaloo set in a dystopian society of young twenty somethings who don’t know any better about the real world.

Frazier Park and the 248

Frazier Park, a subdivision somewhere in the greater state of California where wars aren’t fought over color or race but by county lines and dance. Not the Samba, not ballet, no crunk, but video game dance battles. Beat Beat Revolution, similar but exactly equal to the popular ninities arcade Dance Dance Revolution encourages battlers to pop, lock, and step in the name of where you from for points earned and undeniable street cred. Hit your mark and you live to fight dance another day. Too bad for BTRO, leader of the 248. Good guy living in a bad town. He danced till he couldn’t dance anymore. Poor fella's heart gave out in a dance battle against the penultimate villain next door, L Dubba E, who is just as annoying as his name sounds. Sure BTRO could’ve been roofied or maybe lugging about in a huge pair knee high ultra space boots wasn’t the best choice of footwear when playing a game where you must step on small lily pad sized shapes in an effort to score big. Not knocking his style but those boots weren't made for walking, it's not just what they do. One of this days those boots are going to dance all over you. [caption id="" align="alignnone" width="1280"] Soul Man, 1986.[/caption]

Hero is In The DNA

JTRO, brother to BTRO and witness to his fall from grace, leaves the 248 in great hero fashion to grieve for a period of time unknown to everyone but the screenwriter of this film. There was a montage, so we must assume it’s been, like, fitty years since he's been gone. Okay, more like two at the most. Dude didn’t even grow a beard by the time KCDC trekked across the small stretch of highway in a beat up ol’ Honda in search of the forgotten 248 heir to the throne. JTRO, self exiled 248 member, made good with his time getting swole carry wood and chopping logs. When KCDC finds him, and pleads for the hero to return home, JTRO refuses. The 248 ain’t his life no mo. "I’d rather bust these logs and dream of my dead brother and question why he wore those damn boots anyway. He knew they were too big!” Frustration aside, JTRO understood what he must do: he most return to the FP.

A fallen tree in a forest doesn’t make a sound. However, revenge screams like a mutha effing donkey on steroids. FP Homecoming

Home isn’t like it use to be. With the 249 in charge it’s like 1940’s prohibition up in the 248. L Dubba E, heir to the one liquor store in town has stopped service the 248 disrupting life as we knew little of it; we can only assume that shit is bad on a dystopian level. No drink means the bums are dry and if the bums are dry, then the baby ducks don’t get fed. The baby ducks don’t get fed. Not my words. All credit goes to KCDC for that, which is the best line of the entire film and there are some doozies.

TRO Hearts Stacey In The Fp

Fathers, be good to your daughters Daughters will love like you do But without the drink, fathers becomes assholes and beat up on their daughters. No heroes journey is complete without a damsel in distress and as harsh and real as John Mayer sung that beautifully crafted song, Stacey is a complete mess. We don’t even know why JTRO would even bother, but we do know that he didn’t take a shot in high school. As she was blowing through guys, JTRO respected the and like the girl enough as not to be just another bike ride. He’s dizzy without even have slept with the girl and among other horrible attributes, she’s hanging withL Dubba E who we can only assume has herpes of the everything. But a hero has chilvery etched into his DNA, and JTRO can’t fight that feeling of wanting to save his Winnie Cooper. Maybe she is cute, in that Betty on crack next door type of way or maybe it’s because he only sees out of one eye. Did I mention JTRO wears an eye patch?

The Redeemer

No redemption song is complete without it’s maestro, BLT, to lead the redeemer to salvation. Through training and excessive hard work, JTRO will work his way to the supreme status of sleeping within the trainers quarters. Scrubs sleep outside. To be the best and covet a comfortable mattress, JTRO will have to be the best, but unfortunately his vision is cloudy — he lacks focus. That girl got him dizzy! No heroes journey goes without a training montage! (Jamaican Horns Here)

Running

Weights

Running with weights, DC, piggyback

Dragging a tire

Beat Beat Revolution Waffles sandwiches

And electrified tennis racquets - now lasts some low grade Rocky shit

NIGGA

N: Never I: Ignorant G: Getting G: Goals A: Accomplished Didn’t really bother me. Well, it did before this stupid ass validation as to why they allowed KCDC used it so freely when I saw no black people in this film. Middle class youngster during the nineties and up till now, still find it okay to use the word nigga when there isn't a black person around to correct them. Some of them just don't care because they're hip, listen to rap music, and have a couple of black friends. Words of wisdom: you will still get your ass whipped. Just saying.

Stripper Shame

I was more upset over the tire stripper pool. Okay, this is the moment in the heroes journey when he’s tested before the final face off with L Double E . JTRO, his trainer BLT, and KCDC invade a party hosted in the 138, a ramshackle Russian Trailerhenge park where dreams go to die. This is where we not only find the girl, Stacey, but our boys happen upon a tire stripper pole based in a pool of water. Now that’s trashy. Isn’t stripping for those idiots in that town insulting enough? You have this poor dunk girl —because alcohol how she eases the pain — swaying to in fro on a pole mounted in a tire surrounded by water in a kiddie pool? Now, that’s offensive. To test his training, JTRO has to entertain the musing of another loud mouth idiot who resembles a smaller and lest cool Gary Oldman from True Romance. It’s in this scene we learn what truly broke his brother BTRO, however, the characters never elude to the fact that BTRO was drugged before his death match with Double L, and the life hack to never send anyone to get you a drink. Date rape rule #1: Order your own drink and watch the bartender make it yourself, ladies.

BTRO Avenged!

The best two moments from this Beat Beat Revolution dance off is the bystander cuffing a woman’s breast for no apparent reason than to show a man holding one beast of a nonchalant woman and the fact that the death match was enclosed inside a ratty mesh cage. Yes, a cage match, people! If you’ve ever played DDR, you should understand how ridiculous this is as you literally jump, hop, and step in place to play this game. A cage ain’t gonna do nothing for you but give somebody tetanus in this instance. After the hero avenges his brother’s death, a fight breaks out and somebody pulls a gun. This was by far the best directed sequence in the movie. The effects were well done and the action scenes were quite impressive for a film on a limited budget. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r5QtZs09_0Y

The FP Does Not Get Made Without Overwhelming Support

As ridiculous a film this is; The FP does not get made if not for the support of family, friends, and the entire 248. Someone had to read this script and question whether the Trost Bros. had lost their collective minds. It’s in this support from I assume the place he’s from that this film shows its true heart. Listed in the credits: * Trost Bros. - Written and Directed * Ron Trost - Ex Producer/ Effects Coordinator * Sarah Trost - Costume * Brandon Trust - Directory of Photography * Jason Trost - Story By No matter how bad the film might be, it takes a lot of effort to pull together the resources to complete such an endeavor. Kudos to all involved in the production of this film. They were successful in their efforts to get a sequel made to The FP, and are currently in post-production. So, if this podcast episode encourages anyone to watch this movie, then maybe that’ll encourage you to support the sequel whenever it releases.

The Scoop Dujour

Links:

The squeal to The FP in the works. BEATS OF RAGE: THE FP PART II Almost Black - Indian student accepted into medical school as an African American [embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kp7eSUU9oy8[/embed] Dedicated to my wife.

Flava Text of the Week:

Never Ignorant Gettin' Goals Accomplished

The plate full but we're always open for suggestions

Leave us a voicemail or email about the podcast episode, ask a question, or share what entertains you. Phone 520-775-1690 Email feedback@talkingwithburritos.com Follow links: Twitter, Facebook, Google+, etc. Subscribe links: iTunes, RSS, email newsletter, etc.  

Talking With Burritos Presents A New Episode!

[may-shepard]

tfp, the ring, and the art of the false climax

(ETA: This post is causing trouble on mobile...sorry!? Many of the images are cut from mobile for some reason, and apparently it’s crashing the app. I’m wondering if it’s just too long. In any case, view on a computer for a more complete experience; reblog to avoid the inevitable Mofftiss curse. If I have time in the next little while, I’ll publish it in shorter segments.) 

TFP had a number of different intertexts--mainly, specific movies--which it drew upon for its motifs, themes, moment-to-moment imagery, and plot points. As approximately a million people noticed in the TFP aftermath, many of the movies referenced in this episode are horror films. Predominant among them was The Ring.

(For the purpose of this post, I’m going to focus on Gore Verbinski’s 2002 film, rather than the Japanese source film Ringu / Ring, because the former is much better known in the West, and I think it’s more likely that it’s The Ring, and not Ringu, that Moffat is talking about in this interview, where he mentions watching it. However, since the broad strokes plot outline of both The Ring and Ringu are very similar / the same wrt the idea of the false climax, the argument I’m making holds either way.)

The Ring is well known for being a really beautifully done horror film. It looks incredible, for one thing--it’s visually gorgeous and thematically dense. But mostly, it does something with the concept of hauntings, ghostly origin stories, and the standard horror plot that, at the time of its release, was incredibly stunning and exciting.

In short, The Ring fakes out its audience by presenting a false climax that appears to resolve the story, in a way that is emotionally nice, if a little unsatisfying, before pulling the rug out from under its own plot.

Because The Ring is such a standout intertext for TFP, i.e., TFP not only draws on it, but resonates with it in multiple ways, via names, repeated motifs, the framing of certain shots, as well as relying on it for nearly its entire climax, I really think the story of s4 and the series as a whole is not over. Even if you think there aren’t any further episodes coming down the pipe, I’m hoping this discussion might help people understand why the story feels incomplete. (Because it is).

If you’ve been trying to sit with the idea that the Redbeard reveal / presentation of Eurus’ backstory / resolution of Sherlock’s story is real / supposed to be taken at face value, but that reading isn’t working for you, maybe this will help.

Basic premises: the reading I’m doing here is a mind bungalow reading. The rationale for The Ring as a major intertext of TFP is that John has been shot, and TFP is the content of his hallucination as he’s bleeding out, which offers an understanding of why it’s so bizarre and tonally shifted from everything else we’ve seen in Sherlock. This reading pulls on the newly revealed information, in TST, that John is a horror movie buff--enough so that he feels the need to correct Mary on the difference between The Omen and The Exorcist. John’s proclivity for horror films offers one justification for why they not only seem to inform TFP, but practically take it over.

I’m hoping to show, for people who aren’t familiar with The Ring, exactly how wildly it dominates TFP, and to talk about how we can use this fact to make some sense of the episode, and possibly the future of the show.

Ridiculous levels of detail under the cut:

An Intro to The Ring

This is Rachel. 

Oops.

This is Rachel (Naomi Watts). She’s the main character of The Ring, and an investigative journalist.

Sidebar: I might have developed a bit of a crush on Naomi Watts when this movie came out. Crush, as it turns out, still active. 

Rachel’s a career-driven single mom of a son who spends his time apparently engaging in extrasensory perception normal kid things and drawing seriously disturbing totally normal pictures at all times:

(Not yet, Eurus!)

The story of The Ring starts when Rachel’s teenaged niece dies under mysterious circumstances, and Rachel’s sister, the dead girl’s mother, asks Rachel to investigate. The trail leads Rachel to what sounds like an urban legend about a cursed videotape.

She finds the tape at a creepy mountain resort, and watches it. It is, in essence, a mishmash of images set to an unsettling minimalist soundtrack:

Sorry, wrong creepy recording. This is the one from The Ring:

Yeah me too. (Note the nearly-fourth-wall-breaking gaze...remind you of anything?)

Hi, John. (Via @inevitably-johnlocked, specifically this answer.)

I’ll just say here that, in addition to seemingly casting himself as Plane Girl and Eurus throughout parts of TFP, John’s role as John in TFP overlaps with much of Rachel’s in The Ring. Rachel’s standout characteristics are her dogged attachment to the investigation and her somewhat deadbeat qualities as a mom. I’ll leave you to your deductions about why John probably identifies with her.

Immediately after Rachel watches the tape, the phone rings. When Rachel answers, a voice says, “Seven days.” We already know, from her previous investigations, that people die seven days after they watch the tape. Now she knows there’s something to the story, and we have a ticking clock motif--a handy thing that builds extra tension into any plot.

Tick tick tick, Jim!

I’m going to skip most of the investigative twists and turns in The Ring, because this movie is a treat, and half the fun is watching the evidence pile up that something supernatural is responsible for the mysterious deaths.

Long story short, Rachel’s investigations lead her to discover that the videotape is linked to a horse-loving couple whose possibly weird-scientifically conceived daughter caused a lot of trouble during her brief lifetime.

Oh, and they live on a remote island that you can only reach via boat.

Sorry, wrong island.

This weird island is the one from The Ring. Totally different island. This is the one where, while the weird girl with psychic powers was still alive, she seems to have subjected the residents to her whim. (*cough cough cough*)

ANYWAY--

Rachel interviews the girl’s father and gets nowhere, but the island’s doctor is a little more talkative. 

Important Backstory Alert:

Doctor: She wanted a child more than anything, poor Anna. They tried hard for years, but sometimes it’s just not meant to be. Then one winter they went away, and when they came back, it was with Samara. [I have to interject here to say you could argue that watching the tape means you have an APPOINTMENT WITH SAMARA, lol] ... Everything was fine, ’til Anna started coming to see me. Said she was suffering visions, seeing things, horrible things, like they’d been burned inside her. It only happened around Samara, that the girl put them there.

Okay. I just want to put a pin in that and go to TFP, because this is where we get some major intertextual action:

MYCROFT (firmly): I am aware of the dangers Eurus poses, and equipped to deal with them. JOHN: What dangers? MYCROFT (straightening up): Eurus doesn’t just talk to people. She ... reprograms them. (John turns back to look at the screen.) MYCROFT: Anyone who spends time with her is automatically compromised.

(all transcripts via Ariane de Vere)

Eurus is like the little girl from The Ring, putting ideas in people’s heads. As many, many people have noted, her hair and clothing in TFP are very close to Samara’s. 

See what I mean?

Like Eurus, we see Samara through a television screen. Here, Samara is depicted in old footage of a psychiatric interview:

One of many iterations of televisual Eurus:

(The Ring plays very substantially with the uncanny nature of television, its habit of invading our domestic spaces, and the way that we can be manipulated and even threatened through the set. I suspect there’s something similar going on with TFP, especially in light of increasing evidence that it’s the setup to an ARG--TFP is the bait, the inciting incident, that leads us into the game.)

In any case, Eurus, as we have her in TFP, is an interesting mix of Samara from The Ring and a figure from John and Sherlock’s past. In The Ring, Samara manipulates people by “showing them things”--she puts pictures in their heads. But Eurus “talks to people,” and, somehow, makes them do things.

In TAB, on his way to his death, Sherlock read John’s blog, the story of how they met. Here, in TFP, on the verge of death, John is hallucinating a blend of motifs from horror movies and that same story--the story of how he and Sherlock met, with their first bad guy (Jeff Hope) blended together with their most recent (Eurus), and a substantial dose of Samara in the mix.

All of this evidence is plentiful enough to say there’s definitely a connection between The Ring and TFP. None of this begins to cover the sheer lunacy of the climax of TFP, and its very, very strong resemblance to the penultimate plot points of The Ring. Buckle in for a trip to bonkersland.

The Ring’s False Climax and The Non-Finality of TFP

The action of The Ring comes to its first, and fake, climax, as Rachel is running out of time. It’s the seventh day of her seven-day adventure, and she’s on Murder Moesko Island trying to figure it all out. Even as her previous ex-commander ex-boyfriend, Noah, struggles to dig up some information on the Morgans’ daughter at a nearby mental hospital, Rachel sneaks into the Morgan family farmhouse and watches a tape from the hospital’s archive:

Interviewer: So what is it that’s keeping you awake? You must sleep sometime. Do you dream about something? Samara?

Interviewer: Let’s talk about the pictures. How did you make them? Samara? How did you make these pictures?

[Sidebar: the pictures are amazing]

Samara: I don’t make them. I see them, and then, they just are. 

Interviewer: Samara, I need you to start telling me the truth, okay?

Samara: Can I see my Mommy?

Interviewer: No, Samara, not until we understand what’s wrong with you. 

Samara: I love my Mommy. 

Interviewer: Yes you do. But you don’t want to hurt her any more, now, do you? You don’t want to hurt anyone.

Samara: But I do, and I’m sorry. It won’t stop. 

Interviewer: Well that’s why you’re here. So I can help you to make it stop. 

Samara: He’s going to leave me here. 

Interviewer: Who? 

Samara: Daddy. 

Interviewer: They just want to help you.

Samara: Not Daddy.

Interviewer: Your Daddy loves you.

Samara: Daddy loves the horses. He wants me to go away.

Interviewer: No he doesn’t. 

Samara: But he doesn’t know. 

Interviewer: He doesn’t know what? Samara?

[The tape cuts off.]

This is lovely horror movie stuff, well done. (If anyone wants to explore the above text in terms of potential connections with John, Mary, and Rosie, or in light of Eurus’s nonsense monologues / psychiatric interviews in the background of TFP, go ahead. I’m not planning to, but I think it’s a potentially rich vein.)

We have the evidence that there was something very wrong with Samara, and the witness (Rachel) who interprets what she sees as evidence of child abuse. As The Ring builds to a series of reveals, we’re pulled in two different directions: we have the evidence that this child has powers, that she’s used them malevolently, and, on the other hand, the idea that she should have been protected, she was just a child, and therefore can’t be responsible for what’s happened to her.

Rachel, persisting in her idea that Samara just needed / needs to be understood, and that she’s uncovered some terrible story of abuse, continues to investigate.

Similarly, the narrative of TFP pulls us in two different directions. Eurus is both a little girl who somehow just needs a hug, and the demon seed who had, and has, no trouble killing wantonly.

Since Eurus can be read as a proxy for John (and this is part of where TFP takes on serious dramatic weight), we have both sides of him, as well. John needs to be rescued.

John is also full of self-blame.

He casts himself in both roles, with one resolution: his own rescue.

In The Ring, Rachel, now joined by her previous ex-commander ex-boyfriend Noah, first SEEK MY ROOM find Samara’s room, which is located in a symbolic Rapunzel’s tower hello damsel in distress at the top of the world’s tallest barn:

After approximately fifteen minutes of climbing, they find this oddly-normal-looking-for-where-it-is little girl’s room:

Compare:

Samara’s room, like Eurus’s apparently normal childhood bedroom, hides darker intentions and secrets. In this case, hidden under the wallpaper:

The burning tree image they uncover is a clue that leads them back to the inn where Rachel first watched the tape.

There, in the cabin, Noah and Rachel search desperately for the reason why they’ve been led back to this place. Rachel makes an impassioned plea for Noah to help their son (who has also watched the tape, and is under the same curse). Noah temper tantrums spectacularly--

--Noah temper tantrums spectacularly, knocking a conveniently placed vase of glass beads onto the floor. They roll and form an arrow that points to the solution:

(Did I mention that the room in The Ring is “painted red” by the setting sun shining through the red leaves of a tree? Just saying.)

Rachel and Noah figure out that there’s a hidden well underneath the floorboards on the cabin. Noah fetches an ax and smashes up the floor, an act that takes approximately a million years of screentime but is very manly:

Go, Sherlock!

Go, Noah!

What is it called when you break through the floor instead of the fourth wall? Lol.

Here’s where things get really ridiculous.

A tv, possessed by the spirit of the dead girl, knocks Rachel into the well. 

No, really:

I know, totally different from being put in a well by a person who broadcasts herself through a tv and who everyone thought was dead, but you know.

The fall knocks Rachel out. She wakes up in the well:

Rachel: I’m here.

John: Yeah I’m here.

Rachel finds gruesome evidence that Samara was trapped in the well, alive, for a while.

The lid slides over the well--Rachel is trapped. She pulls up a handful of hair from the water, a hand emerges to grip her wrist, and we’re off into flashback territory:

Rachel receives a vision, presented as a flashback, about Samara’s murder. At first we see what seems to be a childhood idyll, accompanied by Samara’s singing:

Round we go The world is spinning When it stops It's just beginning Sun comes up We live and we cry Sun goes down And then we all die

[x]

But, we find out that this is actually the scene of her murder, as her mother approaches from behind her, puts a plastic bag over her head, and pushes her into the well: 

Meanwhile, at the bottom of the well, Rachel pulls Samara’s body up out of the water. She comforts her:

Rachel: It’s okay now. It’s okay. 

This parallels Sherlock’s puzzle solving on the surface, so he can find Eurus and save John. 

SHERLOCK: I ... am ... lost ... Help ... me ... brother ... Save ... My ... Life ... Before ... my ... Doom. (He continues swiping the words away.) SHERLOCK: I ... am ... Lost ... Without ... your ... love ... Save ... My ... soul ... seek ... my ... room. [x]

The gravestone puzzle allows him to find Eurus, and comfort her. 

SHERLOCK (in a whisper): You’re not lost any more.

Here we have it: a clear emotional climax for TFP--the climax that happened instead of the emotional resolution we were looking for, between John and Sherlock, but a climax nonetheless, if only in strictly structural terms.

In The Ring, this is the moment Samara’s body dissolves into bones:

Meanwhile, in John’s Well of Feels:

This moment in The Ring offers an escape from death for John Rachel. The curse doesn’t kick in: she doesn’t die, even though her seven days are up. She believes that, in discovering the true story of Redbeard Samara, she’s solved the puzzle and broken the curse. She contemplates the importance of understanding Samara, in the aftermath, as a surprising number of emergency workers and police crowd around this remote location, no doubt in response to Noah’s and Rachel’s call.

The Ring:

TFP:

Noah talks with Rachel about what happened, comforting her as she’s wrapped in a shock blanket, looking tired and worn out and damp:

Rachel: [About Samara] She just wanted to be heard. Sometimes children, they yell or cry or draw pictures. 

In case you’re having trouble telling at this point, this is from TFP, not The Ring:

John: Well, you gave her what she was looking for: context. 

Sherlock: Is that good?

John: It’s not good, it’s not bad. It is what it is. 

[And what it is, is shit, friends, or, more hopefully, about to go to shit in the most amazing way possible. Hang on: this meta has one more loop around the track to go.]

In both The Ring and TFP, this looks like closure, doesn’t it? It looks like the show’s over. TFP certainly did its darndest to pantomime an ending after this. And yet--

WHY IT ISN’T OVER YET

Now we come to the point, the entire point and the thing that inspired this post. If John is drawing inspiration from The Ring in his hallucination--and I am certainly convinced that he is--then we ARE NOT DONE.

The above is not the climax of The Ring. It’s a nice version of a ghost story: if someone could only just learn the truth, then we could put the haunting to rest. 

What a tender world that would be. 

Rachel goes home, and tells her son, who has also been cursed, that she solved the puzzle.

Aidan: What happened to the girl?

Rachel: Samara?

Aidan: Is that her name?

Rachel: Mm hm.

Aidan: Is she still in the dark place?

Rachel: No. We set her free.

Aidan: You helped her?

Rachel: Yeah.

Aidan: Why did you do that?

Rachel: What’s wrong, honey?

Aidan: You weren’t supposed to help her.

[^ my approximate feelings immediately after watching TFP for the first time.]

Okay so, let me fill you in on how freaking amazing The Ring was, as a first time viewing experience, when it came out. Horror had, as horror does, gone through a particularly shitty slump at this point. The decision to import motifs from J-horror was among one of the best things that could have happened to Hollywood, however you feel about cultural appropriation / this style of collaboration. The above moment, in which the not-at-all-creepy child informs Rachel that she is wrong, that she has in fact made a terrible mistake, was, simply put, a really standout moment in the history of horror cinema. It was the thing that people talked about when they talked about The Ring.

The false climax of The Ring is the thing that distinguishes it. Borrowing that false climax to the point where, beat for beat, it informs the climax of your horror pastiche episode, as Moftiss have done in TFP, is akin to jumping up and down and screaming, THERE! IS! A! TWIST! COMING! THIS! IS! NOT! OVER!

So, what’s still to come?

In The Ring, the twist is that Rachel actually avoided the curse when she made a copy of the videotape, during her research. Like a smart virus, Samara’s curse forgives the person who propagates it. 

If you don’t pass it on, you die. The curse is very much still active in the world of The Ring, which we find out when it gets Noah (poor Noah!). Here we learn the true nature of death-by-Samara. Basically, she breaks the fourth wall, climbing through your television set to come get you:

A fourth wall break so extreme, it’s lethal!

I know, Noah, this is how I feel about the ARG too. 

Noah dies, leaving Rachel to figure out that the key to saving her son from the curse is to have him copy the tape:

This is Moftiss, showing you how to hit reblog on those ARG posts that you find scary, but which somehow seem increasingly important to your survival, post s4.

Bottom line, the ending of TFP, in copying the false climax of The Ring--in addition to its numerous other signs that it is not seriously offering any kind of resolution or closure for its audience--indicates that it is fake as hell. The story is not over, there is more coming for our heroes, and much more coming for us.

tagging:

@devoursjohnlock @marcespot @waitedforgarridebs @221bloodnun @jenna221b 

I should probably tag others but I’m exhausted, please feel free to pass this on.

[recentanimenews]

THE GREAT CRUNCHYROLL RE:ZERO REWATCH Prepares for Battle In Episodes 16-20

Hello again, and welcome to the penultimate installment of the GREAT CRUNCHYROLL RE:ZERO REWATCH hosted by me, David Lynn! Last time on Re:Zero, everything fell apart in spectacular fashion for Subaru, and he hasn't taken it well. This week we venture further into Subaru's self-destructive tendencies that last week established, but end up moving toward a resolution every party may be happy with. Most satisfylingly, the issues with Subaru that commenters Pure6Evil and Heavenspiercing brought up last week come to the forefront with the developments here. But how does our panel feel about it? Let's find out!

    Let’s start with the biggest moment, the entirety of episode 18. Subaru’s self-destructive arc ever since the royal selection began comes to a head, and both he and Rem are forced to face their issues. Was this a satisfying payoff for you?

Kara: Yes… and no? From a purely fictional standpoint I really love the scene. The voice actors did an amazing job, Rem’s description of a happy life with Subaru got me in the heart, and it really did seem to be cathartic. If these were two of my real-world friends, I would probably bop Subaru in the head for asking Rem to be his #1 cheerleader right after the bait-and-switch he pulled on her, then take Rem out for margaritas and teach her how to be a good friend to him that still calls him out on his BS.

Paul: I'm glad that Subaru is finally addressing his personality problems, which he admits stems from a deep-seated sense of self-loathing. I'm less satisfied with Rem being there to prop him up. Social support is great when you're dealing with these kind of issues, but it felt like Rem was going beyond that, to the point where she was almost volunteering to annihilate her own self-hood for Subaru's sake, and that's not ideal. At least she shot down the idea of them running away together.

Noelle: I’m mixed on this. On one hand, Subaru being honest with himself, that he’s not a hero, that he is well aware of his flaws and how deeply rooted they are, that’s pretty good! A lot of this segment was him lashing out at things not going the way he ideally wanted, and being able to admit his own flaws was satisfying. Acknowledging faults is the best way to start working past them! Rem talking about how happy Subaru makes her is very sweet, letting herself have some personal happiness. But that Subaru instantly gets better and more charismatic after a girl gives him her love… that’s not really such a good look. Subaru’s problems run deep, and having a heroine in his life that loves him shouldn’t instantly change things around. And it doesn’t! Subaru still feels like the same person, self-hate or no! Give him more confidence, sure, but the way things were handled didn’t leave me too pleased.

Kevin: In short, that conversation is fighting for my favorite moment in the entire show. It does go a bit too over the top with Rem’s later parts, both in terms of animation (why so many birds? Where did they come from?!) and her actual confession, but any time that two characters have a conversation for 15 minutes and it’s engaging almost the entire time, clearly the show’s doing something right.

Joshua: This moment really was a long time coming for Subaru. After shouldering so much pain and trauma from the time loops, it was inevitable that the emotional pot was going to boil over, and spill out. While it’s easy for us and other characters to criticise him, Subaru’s admission that he hates himself was painful to watch. He’s made monumental mistakes like at the royal selection, but he’s also shouldering a lot of blame he can’t even tell anyone about. Having to watch loved ones die over and over, struggling to save them only to fail again at the next stage… I don’t blame him for wanting out. As Rem said though, that wouldn’t be the Subaru she loves. Rem countering Subaru’s self-loathing by pointing out what she loves about him was so sweet and moving. That whole scene was beautiful and a definite highlight of the series for me, although the “I love Emilia” line that sent the fanbase into a rage, sure did end it on a bum note. I just wish Rem could find someone who will reciprocate the love she deserves, because while she may be a demon, she’s an absolute angel.

Jared: I think for me, I don’t know that he’s actually done anything to improve himself. Having a big vent session like that can be cathartic when you’re bottling up all kinds of emotions like he clearly is, but trying to justify all the crappy things he did by saying he hates himself doesn’t do a whole lot for me. The fact that he has an idea where this all comes from is good. He just now has to actually learn from what he did and that’s where I don’t know that he’s actually come to that conclusion or even had it cross his mind. Considering by the end of it he’s back to thinking he’s the only one that can be the hero and save everything. It all just seems like an excuse for him to show why he’s been a complete turd and then have him do nothing to show that he’s going to improve in any sort of way.

Carolyn: I hated it at first. Rem was being super sweet and supportive and Subaru was being extremely self-centered even in his admission that he hates himself. She was telling him how she sees him and he kept turning it around to his own feelings. I loved it when she called him out a little bit… and then absolutely hated it again when she decided to cheer him on when he completely stomped on her heart.

Danni: I’m real glad this little character arc is over for Subaru. I’m not going to lie, it hit real close to home when he came around and admitted he had just been overcompensating for his own self-loathing. Self-loathing is a real vicious cycle. When you spend all your time stuck in your own head you become acutely aware of your own flaws and become paranoid that everyone else is just as aware of them. It’s tough to admit your own flaws and even tougher to own up to them, which Subaru finally did. Real maturity means being able to see things outside of your own point-of-view, and that means trusting in the things the people around you see in yourself that you cannot. I think Subaru took an important step towards maturity by accepting Rem’s love for him, and he showed even more maturity by being honest with her about his own feelings. The worst thing he could have done for her is avoided her feelings or lied about his own.

Austin: Personally, yes. I’ve seen this scene a few times now since I always end up rewatching it when I go to grab screenshots from it and every single time it’s made me cry. I love their putting everything out on the table, I love their monologues and how they paint a crystal clear picture as to what’s going on in each of their heads, and I love the conclusion as the laugh about their future. I was never (and likely never will be) frustrated that he rejected Rem, since it’s clear that he was doing it out of desperation and Rem could easily tell.

  The two sides of this arc—the royal selection and the Witch’s Cult—seemed like completely unrelated events up to this point. Do you like how the show managed to pull them together at the last minute?

Kara: I kind of suspected they’d be tied together because I get very Occam’s Razor about shorter anime (I know this comes from a long-running light novel, but I’ve not read it and we only just learned about a new season). That said, I do like where this is going. I’m always interested in world-building, and this is finally getting us into the meat of a lot of things I’ve been curious about.

Paul: Are they pulled together? I still don't know why the Witch Cult is targeting Emilia specifically, or what stake—if any—they have in the royal selection. With only 5 episodes left in this season, I fear we won't see a satisfying resolution to this story-line, because there's been a whole lot of “mystery box” style set-up and not a lot of pay-off.

Noelle: I’m with Paul on this one, that it doesn’t really feel that cohesive. Several times I found myself wondering what exactly the cult wanted. While I could certainly guess, there’s nothing really concrete to confirm things so far. They’re interesting plot points separately, but it doesn’t feel like they’ve managed to mesh very much.

Kevin: I like it on a conceptual level, because it helps make the world feel more interconnected by having different factions play off of each other. On a practical level, I feel like the Cult got revealed a bit too soon, and without enough gravity. When Subaru is having multiple mental breakdowns and we learn that Felt is the last candidate to lead the country, we don’t care nearly as much about a bunch hooded guys that appeared out of nowhere.

Joshua: The curse of enjoying an adaptation of an ongoing series, is having questions but no ETA on the answers. I think given Emilia’s similarities to Satella, and the Witch Cult’s obsession with the Jealous Witch, a collision course was inevitable. I think Re:ZERO’s biggest issue right now, is a lack of focus. Why was so much time spent building up Betelguese, if the attention was going to shift to the White Whale? His only appearance in this chunk felt too throwaway given how shocking his introduction was... It still feels like early days for the royal selection though, with most of the other candidates only having brief appearances so far. Hopefully as the series goes on, things become more naturally intertwined as these plotlines grow.

Jared: It does sort of feel like they’re trying to patch it together last minute since like some of the others, I’m still not entirely sure why they’re targeting Emilia specifically. I just figured it was due to the backlash in general she’s already faced, but yeah, probably one of those things that can be boiled down to an adaptation of a long series. Sometimes these kinds of aspects get jumbled when trying to squeeze a lot into a certain set of episodes.

Carolyn: Yeah, I’m also with Paul. I’m at a loss as to how it all actually ties together. I feel like there are so many loose ends to this story! But I love it, anyway.

Danni: I’m with the others in that I don’t quite understand why she’s being targeted or what it has to do with the royal selection. I’m guessing it has something to do with her looking like the witch, therefore being guilty in their eyes of impersonation? Which begs the question of why are they only just now attacking? Was she not already well known? I always assumed she was a prominent figure already before the Royal Selection and am now realizing we don’t actually know anything about her backstory at all.

Austin: Echoing everyone else’s thoughts on it not really feeling tied together. I think with the announced second season it’ll get a chance to wrap everything together nicely, but as of now there’s plenty shrouded in mystery.

  A surprise favorite for me is Wilhelm, the knight whose wife was the strongest swordsman and was tragically killed by the White Whale. What did you think about the sudden focus he gets, and largely the shift in tone (and genre?) that the whale hunt brings?

Kara: I wasn’t sure how I was going to feel about the whole White Whale thing, but seeing it evolve into what it is has been fantastic. I love Wilhelm (and all those other people) stepping forward for the hunt, and just this sheer wave of emotion people are getting. Wilhelm is the only one with a flashback, but even with the minor characters coming in, it’s clear how many people this has affected. I’ve enjoyed this a lot.

Paul: I'm still waiting for the White Whale thing to come full circle in some sense, in order to complete the Moby Dick reference. I enjoyed the flashbacks to young Wilhelm and Theresia, specifically to how her prowess completely, effortlessly overshadowed his own, and it was fun to see modern-day Wilhelm carving chunks out of his hated nemesis, but I admit all of the literary allusions gave me pause. Moby Dick is a story of self-destructive obsession, and I had no idea how an army armed with swords and spears could possibly prevail over the Re:ZERO equivalent of the Tarrasque from Dungeons & Dragons. I still don't know how they're going to salvage victory from the jaws of defeat after the conclusion of Episode 20.

Noelle: Wilhelm is straight up awesome. An old guy going absolutely ham on a gigantic monster was so, so great to watch. As for his backstory, I think I would have been fine without seeing it, because what they showed more annoyed me than endeared me. It was framed more as Wilhelm wanting his wife not to wield a sword because, what exactly? She seemed to be perfectly capable of doing so and not against it. Having her being dead and him wanting revenge was good enough without those details. Cut the flashback, and I think I would’ve been perfectly fine. The old man is taking this whale to town though, and that’s fantastic. 

Kevin: As a first time viewer, it was really cool seeing someone actually competent at fighting getting to show off. I think the last time we saw an actual fight like that was Reinhard versus Elsa in the first arc, and Reinhard only really attacked once. As a repeat viewer, it somehow got even better, because I know Wilhelm’s backstory going in, so every blow he deals has a lot more cathartic weight behind it.

  Joshua: I’ve been a huge fan of Wilhelm since the series first simulcast, but I totally forgot just how kinetic this old man is! I mean, did you see how cool he looked when he was younger? He totally puts me and my out-of-shape younger body to shame. You gotta think, his body may be grey and wrinkled now, but that badass is still inside. Wilhelm is a very noble, chivalrous spirit. Him thanking Subaru for the opportunity to avenge his wife was a brief moment, but it carried the gravitas of what that meant to him. I’d like to see more of Theresia and what brought them together though. The White Whale Hunt has added a new layer of world-building emotional death to the series that I think it really needed.

Jared: Oh man, Wilhelm ruled. I was really feeling down on the three episodes prior to the White Whale battle and that really turned things around for me. Although, I’m a sucker for big battle sequences. Plus, he made his fight sequences seem like some of the boss fights out of Metal Gear Rising and Shadow of the Colossus. What happens to him seemed kind of inevitable as he was getting all the death flags you could imagine, but I enjoyed his role and his backstory for the most part. Although the weird sexism he throws in when he learns his future wife is the swordmaster wasn’t great.

Carolyn: I love Wilhelm for sure. But I’m a little bit nervous about this big fantasy shift. We’ve had this dark, mysterious story so far and now it’s big and epic and there’s a huge battle and it’s just very different. I’m sure the next week’s episodes will make this all make sense to me. The show has been fantastic so far.

Danni: I said this at some point during the Naruto rewatch and I’ll say it again: I live for stories about old men carrying lifetimes of regret finally returning to the source of that regret for closure. I could say more, but I feel the rest is best summed up in this tweet.

Austin: I really like the focus he gets since it makes the world seem a bit more “alive” by giving the spotlight to characters who have a history in the world everyone else knows. As for the whale hunt, I love the band of everyone coming together under a common cause and my gut tells me the whale is going to end up being important later in the story.

  As we approach the final week, are there any developments you are hoping the story hits upon before it wraps up (for now)?

Kara: Like I said, we know there’s a season 2 coming. And there’s something like ten volumes of light novel? So I’m bracing myself to not get a full payoff. If there’s one thing I could wish for (and probably won’t get) it’s more information on Roswaal’s entire situation. I have so many questions.

Paul: I'd like to know, at the very least, who's responsible for siccing the Witch Cult on Emilia in the first place. That would provide a clear antagonist and a clear goal in opposing them for the second season.

Noelle: I want to know what the cult’s deal is. There are so many unanswered questions of what is the witch and why do they want to do what they do that leave me wondering. I don’t need everything to be mapped out, but the cult doesn’t really have a motive besides kill people, and I need more than that to feel the gravity of an antagonist. I don’t think everything will wrap up neatly, the royal selection in particular, but that’s okay because season 2 is incoming.

Kevin: I’m not sure there’s anything I can say that wouldn’t be spoiler-y in one way or another, so I’ll leave my thoughts about the last arc of the show for next week. I promise, I have thoughts.

Joshua: Having already seen the series, I’m hoping that I pick up on any new hints I missed the first time round that could give me an idea of what to expect in season 2.

Jared: I’d be happy with a decent cliffhanger and getting a better view of a singular antagonist than what we currently have. Stuff like Roswell, the whole royal selection process, the other candidates true intentions, and even Subaru’s goal of trying to save Emilia will probably be left on the table because of time constraints.

Carolyn: Definitely want to know what’s up with Roswaal. I have loved and been suspicious of him from his first episode. And just more of an explanation on the White Whale situation. There are three?! What is going on?

Danni: I just want to see more Beatrice. That’s all. At this rate my Betty reserves will never last me through the winter.

Austin: Back when I watched this for the first time I wanted a meaningful scene where Emilia and Subaru get a chance to talk. Like I said before, I’m hoping the second season ties everything together, so I’m pretty fine with it being this open as of now.

  And of course, what were your highs and lows this week?

Kara: High point was Wilhelm going absolutely HAM on the White Whale. I could watch that for hours. Low point was Subaru managing to convince one perfectly lovely girl who deserves better to help him in his pursuit of a completely different perfectly lovely girl who deserves better and her being like “sure.” I’ve finally realized why people are so protective of her.

Paul: My high point was Subaru admitting that he's been royally screwing up this entire time and then working up the courage to face his problems, to make amends, and to finally start using his head when confronting the obstacles before him instead of trying to brute force his way through every situation. My low point was the sinking feeling I got when I realized there's not very much screen time left for the writers to resolve all of these plot points that they've been juggling. I hope they don't just introduce a bunch of new mysteries and leave us with a cliffhanger conclusion.

Noelle: I have a few highs, one being the negotiation scenes with Subaru and the candidates. That people are not willing to help if there’s no benefit to them, that begging is often nonconductive because that relies on people’s goodwill even if helping would hurt them more than help them—those are some points I don’t see addressed very much. Also, Subaru putting together all the information he got from the candidates during his failed route to make a great negotiation. Naturally, I have to mention everyone coming together to beat up that whale. Low point: the Rem confession scene. That could’ve played out so much better. Rem, you deserve better.

Kevin: High - Dear God it’s hard to choose this week. Pretty much the entirety of episode 18 for Subaru and Rem was amazing (I cite my first answer for the week), but episode 20 for Wilhelm (and a little bit into next week’s first or second episode, if I remember correctly) balanced action and character development spectacularly while also being great on rewatch because of the extra knowledge going in. Low - “I love Emilia.” God DAMN IT, Subaru! As I put in the Rewatch chat “Episode 18, timestamp 23:23. The moment when half of the Re:Zero fanbase decided that Subaru deserves every single thing the plot throws at him.”

Joshua: This batch had so many high points. Subaru’s breakdown and Rem’s heartfelt confession is a big tentpole moment for the entire show, but smaller events like Beatrice’s pained face as she reluctantly sent Subaru to his death left a huge impression too. I also loved the use of an annoying chiptune ringtone against shots of a tense, nervous army awaiting the arrival of the White Whale. It sounds ridiculous on paper, but was so chilling in practice. Also, Crusch. Every time she was on screen was a high point. For a low point, I have to ask: where did Subaru get the authority to negotiate Roswaal’s mining rights? He’s just a house guest and Rem’s a maid, so will Roswaal return home, see the contracts and be “Argh! Not again!”, or does he pay wages with land deeds or something?

While I loved it, I also think the confession scene could have ended better. Subaru, you don’t just ask a girl to elope with you, then say you love someone else. I wish Rem had reacted to it more. Her devotion for Subaru is leading to her taking it all in stride, but she shouldn’t have to. She deserves to find someone who truly appreciates her.

Jared: High point would definitely be the White Whale battle episodes. Wilhelm being real cool during that fight was great, as was everyone else doing their best to try and that big whale down. Also, during the meeting when Subaru produces his phone and everyone looks at it and are very perplexed was a good little bit of comedy. Low points would be Subaru being a dummy. Reducing Rem to only being a character that exists because she has to love Subaru.

Carolyn: I liked the scenes where everyone just flat refused to help Subaru for their own selfish reasons while simultaneously telling him how very selfish he is. Everything involving Wilhelm was fantastic. Prequel please. For once I have a legitimate low point and not one I have to stretch for and like everyone else it’s the way Subaru promised to run away with Rem and was then like, “Yo, help me out with this other girl I actually like.” Rude.

Danni: My high point was easily watching buff Captain Ahab tearing apart his flying magic Moby Dick. My low point is Rem devoting herself entirely to Subaru. Like, I get it! You’re 17! Of course you want to devote your entire life to the dude you have a crush on! One day you’ll grow up and how to compartmentalize attraction away from love and attraction and look back on all your bold declarations of love for Subaru and think, “Oh geez. That was embarrassing huh.”

Austin: As for highs, this may sound bad but the loops of suffering Subaru goes through that lead up to the scene in episode 18 are done really well in my eyes. Between last week’s scene with Subaru and Emilia and Subaru seeing everything he cared about in this world destroyed time and time again this week, it broke him down in a way that made his request and rant to Rem really hit hard and easily one of the most unforgettable batch of episodes in any anime for me. As for lows I didn’t really notably dislike anything in this batch so I will instead complain that my favourite voice actress’ characters didn’t get more screen time (please give Anastasia more time to shine, I am definitely not biased at all).

    Counters: Weekly: Barusu - 7 Subaru Deaths - 1 Methods of Death - Freezing

Overall: Barusu - 31 Subaru Deaths - 10 How Subaru Died - Disembowelment, Disembowelment, Stabbing, Curse, Combination (Curse+Dismemberment), Slit Throat / Torture, Suicide, Freezing, Beheading, Freezing

Just one more week left in this whirlwind of a show! Next week will be episodes 21-25, so if you're not already caught up, be sure to finish Re:Zero by next Friday!

Here's our upcoming schedule!

- Danni will finish off the Rewatch on October 18th with episodes 21-25

  CATCH UP ON THE REWATCH:

Episodes 11-15: Enduring Heartbreak

Episodes 6-10: From Apples To Demons

Episodes 1-5: Starting Life in Another Rewatch

Re:ZERO Introduction Questions

  What are your answers to the above questions? Do you agree with Subaru's choice to pursue Emilia over Rem? Let us know in the comments!

  -----

David is on Twitter @navycherub. Ask him about whatever sports anime is airing right now.

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