#even though season 4 isn’t up for some reason which I’ll assume is due to copyright or something

[nightwingandhissquad]

young justice (up to s3) is finally on uk/international netflix they’ve finally remembered us and given international fans a way to legit watch it and give it views it only took them 5 years

[bronyinabottle]

MY LITTLE PONY: A NEW GENERATION (G5 Movie) THOUGHTS

It’s finally here. The beginning of Generation 5. Though before I get into the movie in some detail I’m going to reiterate one more time what G5 means for my content and a non-spoilery summary of the movie.

Again, I will say that the movie nor will the G5 series coming later have much of an effect at all on any of my blogs. The revelation in Secrets of the Dragon’s Tear that life itself is also magic means that a world that implied to have no magic for years would mean the extinction of all life (Perhaps resulting in the wasteland we saw in the Season 5 finale). There may be something I’ll probably do at some point on a certain different blog. But even then, that may likely be a one-time thing and probably come around the time the series is starting to air.

That said, just because I’m continuing with mainly G4 content doesn’t mean I disapprove of G5. In fact, my non-spoilers thoughts on the movie is I think it is a good start for this new generation. There are questions I have that I’m not sure will be answered (Though many of those questions are the same ones I had in my Trailer/Preliminary thoughts) quickly enough. But the movie is structured well enough, in fact it’s probably a better movie as a whole compared to any of the movies G4 had (The 2017 movie, Rainbow Roadtrip, and all 4 Equestria Girls movies). As the 2017 movie was fun, but it jumped around a lot, sometimes scenes transitioning too fast. And while Rainbow Roadtrip may have been this on purpose, the entirely slice-of-life story taking up a long length… made it something of a less interesting plot to follow. It feels like some of that special could of been cut to at least a two-parter length and keep the same beats they hit. And while i have a soft spot for the 3rd and 4th Equestria Girls movies, I’ll always say a full-length pony adventure feels better suited for what I want to see out of MLP then spin-off movies with high school movie cliches and weird pony/human world shenanigans.

So movie-wise I’m not a G4 purist. It’ll take some time to see how Gen 5 compares to Friendship is Magic when we get to the series. As I feel it’d take a lot for it to surpass G4 in my mind. But I’m going to try to be as fair as possible and judge on it’s own merits. The implied connection to G4 by referring to G4 being ancient Equestria is going to naturally get the staff and hasbro pressured by fans to tell us what happened in-between the generations. Because that’s the trap they put the writers in when they made it so they want to try to say it’s in the same universe. That’s the double-edged sword Hasbro chose to have, trying to appease the G4 fanbase and keep at least some of them around. But at the cost of questions both nitpicky (Such as character design being inconsistent) or actual honest questions that need to be known (Why did magic disappear, and what happened to the Alicorns) for some of us to truly see this as the same Equestria.

After the break, I’ll have more spoilery thoughts

Even for a brief moment, it was nice seeing the Mane 6 and 2D animation. The former because of course those are the ponies many of us that saw all of G4 loved. And the latter, because while the animation wasn’t bad in this movie. I’m one of those who’d prefer to have 2D animation in an animated film. As in most cases aside from Pixar, it’s just a strong preference of mine. If this had the animation of the 2017 MLP movie but otherwise everything else was generally the same here, I feel that would of have been great.

I wish they didn’t have to have Sunny’s dad die off-screen, as he seems like he could of been a compelling character. And not to mention if perhaps he has any connection the “ancient” days in any fashion. But *sigh* I get it, it’s an old trope where part of the character’s offscreen growth is not having their parent(/s) around.

On a side note there’s quite a few times during the beginning of the movie that somewhat foreshadow what happens to Sunny later. 3 times where she had a fake horn and wings on her. Once in the flashback, then 2 separate times when she’s doing her protest where she has her own costumed wings and horn. As well as the helmet and mechanical wings.

Also, there’s no way around it. Some of the discussions this movie are going to get quite political. (Namely one part of Sunny’s song that could be seen as having a double meaning of a jab at Trumpsts regarding “Building your wall”) From the very premise in the early times, we know that the inspiration for the story was last year’s Black Lives Matter protests. Which honestly, I do support the message they’re going for. Having an anti-racism message to tell kids from the very beginning and making a focus on it is important when in G4 it only got briefly touched upon in Bridle Gossip and the Heath’s Warming Eve play. Although it certainly rose up to some form of prominence with Season 8 and onward. Still, while you can argue if G4 executed the anti-racism message well. it does come with something of a problem that the series finale left Equestria in the least divided it’s ever been.

And personally, I feel it’s a terrible interpretation of time to say “Well, it’s a realistic take. Racism has existed for years in our world. Same should go for the ponies” and while yes, racism is still rampant in today’s world. That said, that ignores that if we went from The Last Problem to the start of G5. There’s a huge difference between our world and Equestria. There is no ancient civilization that we look at like “Yeah, those were the golden days of world peace” when normally the “Golden age” was reserved for the high classes of Ancient Greece or Rome. It was most decidedly not perfect, with slavery rampant and wars for the sake of expanding an empire. While if you look at The Last Problem’s Equestria, you not only have peace between the three main types of ponies. But you literally have non-pony citizens in Equestria. You can see a dragon handing off a flower to a pony which can imply cross-species romantic relations. With the Friendship school still going strong, and was the reason that the world was saved in The Ending of the End. While perhaps it may be too glowing to say that future is perfect for everyone even in-universe. It’s certainly a hell of a lot better outlook then comparing to how we view even the so called Golden age of ancient civilizations. The Last Problem’s Equestria implies it looks to ally with every country outside of Equestria, not conquer them.

So it should still be a valid question on just how this world collapses to the point it gets to where G5 is at the start. I at least assume that it’s not the fault at all of any of the Mane 6 nor Twilight. Or at least I hope it isn’t, as I’d rather the MLP fanbase not have to deal with a The Last Jedi Luke Skywalker situation. (Where after the joyful end of the original trilogy, things go wrong as Luke almost murders the son of one of his best friends and his sister despite trying to hard and succeeding at redeeming his father who at that point in the canon was a galaxy-wide known ruthless mass-murderer.) I assume we’re at a point where everyone of the Mane 6 sans maybe Twilight are presumed dead. And even in Twilight’s case, there’s a chance that G5 decides to say that G4 overestimated the whole Alicorn immortality thing. Though I wouldn’t put it past Hasbro to have some event where the Mane 5 of G5 meet the Mane 6 in some special event whether that’s a a Season finale or a sequel movie/special. Where either the Mane 6 return in a limbo situation similar to the Pillars at the end of Season 7 or Time travel gets involved. They may even string us along on answering just what in the heck happened until they involve a meet-up with the Mane 6 in that way. Though I hope they don’t, I’d really like the beginning of the series (Or I guess this supposed special coming up in Spring supposedly?) starts to answer some questions. G5 should get a chance to stand on it’s own, but I hope the writers are actually well aware there will be so many questions people have and address them in the show. A cynical part of me feels like they’re likely to string us along until at least the Season 1 finale.

Onto the characters for a bit. I think Izzy Moonbow was absolutely the most stand-out character in the whole movie. She was energetic, funny, and aside from “The pegasi are bad news” she along with Zipp and Sunny were the most averse to the way the world was. She was already the most popular due to the tennis ball memes. But now it feels like she legit stands on her own and most certainly deserves to be the most popular character of G5 thus far. Behind her in a bit of a surprise to me was Zipp, who I thought would be mainly a Rainbow Dash-expy. Though she really helps out Izzy and Sunny in Zephyr Heights. Despite having Twilight be my favorite pony from the very beginning of G4 all the way to the end, I didn’t feel as strongly about Sunny for some reason. So she’s in the middle of the pack, she could grow on me later. I just don’t know if I click with her as much as I did with Twilight. As for the last two, while I don’t hate either of them. Either one could be the lowest of the 5 for one reason or another. Pipp (Although I will say she's probably my favorite character design out of the 5) feels like she doesn’t do a whole lot in the movie and it takes until she’s forced to be an outlaw because the other choice was to get imprisoned like her mother was. So she may come off as quite pretentious, though it’s arguable Rarity was the same way early in G4. But she definitely grew later. Could be the same case for Pipp. And as for Hitch, he has shining moments in the film. But what might hurt him is the fact he was such a bad friend to Sunny up until the campfire scene. “I’m the last real friend you have. You really want to lose me too?” is not a healthy friendship. Hitch may have been Sunny’s friend the longest, but it definitely feels like Izzy connected immediately. I don’t know if this show will get into shipping any of the main characters between each other mid-show, but if they do. I hope it’s between Izzy and Sunny currently, cause Hitch and Sunny just gives bad vibes even with Hitch getting better later.

None of the songs I felt were particularly too special. Though I think the closest was Sprout’s “Danger, Danger” song that has similarities to Smells Like Teen Spirit in some parts of the song since I tend towards more rock/metal-esque music.

I touched upon it earlier, but there’s perhaps a stand-out reason for why the G5 movie outdid the 2017 MLP Movie. They have the typical “Our heroic group splits after a sad moment before coming together again for the climatic good end” in Sunny seeing that that the two crystals don’t instantly bring magic back, and when Twilight left the group after an argument that happened with Twilight trying to take a pearl. They perform the same purpose in the movie. But the crystals not working, crushing Sunny’s hope for a little while works better into the story. Where as Twilight’s part frustratingly brought the sea pony scene to an end too quickly and/or doesn’t feel right of Twilight to have done that. It felt forced in the 2017 movie, but works out in the G5 movie. Especially since a part of it is that it’s not the crystals themselves capable of bringing magic back. But it’s the journey going after the crystals that brings the ponies themselves their magic back.

Just a small note on dictator Sprout, he tries to cause a war. Though admittedly the film seems to treat him as a joke the entire time despite his seriously evil ambitions. With the only repercussions is he gets a wishy-washy answer on if he was a good sheriff from his mom. I don’t quite know how I feel about that yet, but I wonder what they’ll have in mind for Sprout given his actions. He and his mom are the only ones that feel like a true antagonist. Though they seem to be ok with things fast when the magic comes back.

But anyway on to the ending, we see that Sunny becomes an Alicorn. Which I guess with no other real Alicorns around, I guess it makes sense to alicornify her since she’s the real leader behind what united the leaders of each type of pony again. Though there is of course this weird thing where her horn and wings don’t seem like as much a part of her body compared to very obvious connected wings on Twilight when she got hers. Sunny keeps her horn and wings to the end of the movie, and has colored streaks in her hair. Though I do wonder if that;s truly permanent. If it is permanent, I suppose at least they got to have a headstart and have it established at the end of the introductory movie rather then have it shock people at the end of a shortened 3rd season. I still feel like Twilight had well earned her alicornhood considering that besides what she did in the series. She has a whole childhood and time as a teenager learning under Celestia. Which had to mean something, and I’m not sure Celestia just leaving her to live the rest of her days with her friends in ponyville was that. Sunny has no doubt been trying countless time to try to spread friendship throughout her life even after the tragedy of her father’s passing. So there’s no doubt she’s been through a lot, and may indeed be worthy of being an Alicorn at this point. Though in terms of screentime before Alicornhood it's definitely a lot less then Twilight had. And it is at least nice to see that it is possible for non-unicorns to become one. (The only case of that we sort of got was a children's book that may or may not be canon that implied Cadence was a pegasus before she ascended)

Though you have to wonder if the visual differences such as Sunny’s alicorn horn and wings, the cutie mark only on one side (Yes I know that’s how it was normally in the MLP generations before G4. But a distinct visual difference between shows is still noticeable even if the context of G4’s cutie marks on both sides of the flank was about it being easier on the puppets for Flash), and how animals can have wings or weird round shapes such as those bunnies when G4 has normal looking animals. There’s enough striking visual differences for any nitpicky G4 to say “This isn’t the same Equestria”. And if someone tries to say maybe some sort of evolution happened. That’s still trying to put a little too much real world logic on this fantasy world. And evolution tends to take millions of years to have such dramatic changes. Not 1000 years or so, there should still be normal looking animals at this point and time. And these small details are probably going to be the things most ignored but nonetheless can build a case that this isn’t the same Equestria. Even if they touch on the important questions like how magic disappeared and what happened to the Mane 6, there will be details they make different that will add to the case that this is it’s own universe if it doesn’t quite matchup with what was remembered about G4. There will be fans who will be that nitpicky to call G5 out of continuity for small details like that. That is again the trap they put themselves in when they decided to try to say it’s the same Equestria.

All-in-all though, I think that’s at least a good enough chunk about my thoughts on the movie to end off here. If there’s something I missed or something from the movie you’d like me to give a particular opinion about or elaborate on something feel free to ask me here. G5 is indeed off to a good start, just I will be along the many hoping some questions get answered sooner then later. And I’m not sure I’m confident in getting anywhere until a Season finale or a 2nd movie. And it’ll be a year before the series starts proper (Though again I guess there’s a 44 minute special coming in Spring to try to hold us over). But I could definitely see G5 finding it's own following, now there's just the inevitable clashes between some of the more vocal fans of each generation bickering at eachother. But hoping there will be enough that take the movie's lessons on divisiveness to heart and be able to enjoy both even if there may be preferences.

[stop-breaking-my-heart-telltale]

TWDG: The Final Season | Character Discussion | 1/2

Part 1 | Part 2

“Everyone’s counting on me to step up. Be the leader they need me to be... I really want to be that for them.”  

So.... let’s talk about Marlon. 

I mean, let’s really talk about him. Ever since I started this blog, some common questions I get revolve around Marlon- “How do you feel about Marlon?” “Do you think he deserved a redemption arc?” “Why do you think he was sent to Ericson?” “In your opinion, is Marlon a bad person?” and many others. 

Some ask with expectations that I’ll express a distaste or hatred for him, while others ask with a more sympathetic approach. If you know me, if you’ve been here for a while, then you know that I do indeed like Marlon as a character, and today I want to talk about him from my perspective while playing this game. 

And with that comes a seemingly unnecessary disclaimer, but one I feel I need to add in order to make it abundantly clear: I will be discussing MY thoughts, experiences, and feelings about Marlon within TFS and give my take on his character. Because we’re not the same person, you may have a different opinion or perspective on his character, you may disagree with something I say, and that’s perfectly okay. You’re entitled to your opinion as I am mine, and I do encourage you to join in on the discussion and express your thoughts about Marlon, but I also want to let you know that you can do that without attacking me or anyone else. 

Really, this is pretty much me looking at Marlon’s role and arc within TFS, discussing points of his character that I find interesting, exploring the why’s and how’s of his actions, maybe coming up with a couple theories as to why he was sent to Ericson, and basically giving a lot of personal opinions of him. It’s a discussion meant in good fun, that’s all I’m saying. 

Before we dive right in, I do want to thank @pi-creates​ for providing me with most of the screenshots used in this. I appreciate the help! If you haven’t already, go check out Pi’s blog for some of the best screenshots and model swaps in the TWDG community! Thank you, thank you!

[First and foremost, y’all are sleeping on Ray Chase’s performance as Marlon and it really shows]

“Looks like I was announced as Marlon, the central focus in this first episode of The Walking Dead Season 4 coming in a few weeks. I've been playing this series since the beginning, and it was a real honor to be a part of the canon. I hope you enjoy!“ - Ray Chase’s Twitter account | July 26, 2018

I want to start this off with praising Marlon’s voice actor, Ray Chase, for doing such a perfect job of bringing Marlon’s character to life. Every emotion and infliction feels genuine, and there’s isn’t a single moment where I don’t “see” Marlon, y’know? I mean that in the sense that every line delivered is believable and doesn’t break my immersion with, “Oof, they really used that take?” 

I know we throw praise upon Melissa, Tayla, Sterling, and Gideon [and for good reason, they’re all fantastic, too!] but even with them there are a couple of lines that I notice have a lack of flow or sound just a bit off. I’ve played TFS how many times? And not once have I had that issue with Ray Chase as Marlon, so bravo to this man. Credit where credit is due, his performance is damn near flawless.

Especially in the confrontation scene at the end of Done Running. I’ll get into that scene as a whole later, but just looking at the performance and the intense, impactful emotion brought to that scene, just..... *chef kiss*

Thank you, Ray Chase. 

[What’s up with your haircut, Marlon?]

“Uh, I look cool... I say, I look cool.”

Lemme talk a little bit about Marlon’s design- I think he looks great. 

I love the little details in the Ericson varsity jacket he wears... including the fact that it looks just a tad bit too snug on him. Like, either the boy doesn’t have another jacket or he’s grown so attached to this one that he’s not willing to admit that he’s outgrown it a bit. 

I’ve had a lot of people point out that it’s nice to see a teenage character in these games with actual acne since most media pretends that acne just doesn’t exist, and I agree. We all know that if this were more realistic, then everyone would have terrible, greasy, dirty skin but... y’know. 

And y’know what? I like the mullet! It’s unique! And I choose to believe it’s a representation of Marlon’s past with bad decisions he’s too stubborn to admit were bad decisions... I mean, he’s had it since he was a kid and hadn’t grown it out or cut it off [to our knowledge, I suppose] sooo... there’s that. 

Or maybe he does actually think it looks badass. Either way. 

Hell, my biggest complaint about Marlon’s design is that I wish they kept more to this concept art attire:

Because Marlon looks super good in this concept art. I love the headband with the mullet and his clothes actually look more comfortable... but like, it’s fine. He still looks great in the game, his little jacket’s cool, bringing back the mullet...its fine. I’m just sayin’. He looks great. 

[Marlon’s introduction in TFS]

“It's our little kingdom. I just do what I can to keep the peace. Wasn't always like this, though. There used to be a lot of us, but...you know how it goes.”

Let’s talk about how Marlon’s introduced. 

We get our first look at him after Clementine and AJ crash their car during the walker attack. A bunch of arrows come flying, hitting walkers attempting to get ahold of them, and as Clementine glances over she sees a figure pulling AJ out of the car. And even though you can tell it’s Marlon, this closer shot from Pi-

-100% confirms that it’s him. Not that you had any doubt, but still.

What’s interesting, though, is that while snooping around for some insight about Marlon from the writers/devs, wandering around reddit, replaying the game myself, and even glancing over the all-knowing wiki that’s never wrong ever, it seems agreed upon that Marlon wasn’t alone, despite no one else being specifically mentioned to have helped Clementine and AJ. 

Which makes sense that that’d be the case, but I did come across a handful of people who are pretty adamant that he was alone, which is an interesting take, though I disagree.

I’m pretty sure most people do, too. I mean, Marlon says, “It's good we found you when we did. It wasn't easy getting you two out of that wreck, and walkers were on the way.” So I don’t even think that was the writers’ intention of it being solely Marlon who saved them.

What’s funny is I came across a post Instagram [I know, the most legitimate source for info and thoughtful opinions] that was surprisingly trying to redeem/defend Marlon rather than chastise him by claiming he’s a hero who saved Clementine and AJ by himself. 

The thing is, they’re both unconscious after the wreck, so unless Marlon has super-human speed to grab AJ, zip around the car to grab Clementine, and then uses super-human strength to carry both of them AND their belongings all while killing any threatening walkers coming after them with his bow... I’m gonna have to press [X] Doubt. 

Besides, I like the idea of it being vague. I like to think that was the intention. “Who was Marlon with? A hunting party! You fill in the blanks!” That sort of deal.

With everything that we know about Marlon and the safe-zone, it does lead to questions about why he and whoever felt they had to go outside it to see what was happening. Marlon points out in his conversation with Clementine that they “had to work fast. I don't know what would've happened if we hadn't seen the smoke...” And later Violet mentions an explosion, so I think it’s safe to say that they heard the explosion and followed the smoke to the location. 

If you don’t know about the raiders and the twins [like it’s your first time playing] then you probably assume that Marlon and his group were being kind in rescuing them, which I don’t doubt but it does make you wonder about things from Marlon’s perspective, y’know?

This is one of those “shhh, don’t think, just go with it” moments. If I had to give a reason, I’d say that the group he was with didn’t think twice about checking it out and even if Marlon did protest, he didn’t have much choice but to follow. Then, seeing that it’s Clementine and AJ, I believe he genuinely wanted to save them. 

“All alone with the kid? Not a pleasant thought. I've seen some rough scenes. But that one would've been up there.”

We get our second and more official introduction to Marlon after Clementine escapes her dorm and confronts Tenn... and it’s pretty fucking good. I mean, everything from him being hidden in the shadows with his bow drawn, to the clear concern yet sternness in his voice as he assures Clementine they’re not going to hurt her and to put the knife down, to his sympathetic apology for scaring her is just an A+. 

One thing this season does exceptionally well is introducing its characters. Marlon has such a confident yet chill way about him when you first meet that it’s actually disheartening to think that in two hours he’s gonna be pulling a gun and MURDER....

Sigh. 

Let’s not jump that far ahead yet. I’m not ready. 

What I find appealing about this next part is Clementine’s reaction to seeing the inside of Ericson for the first time and how taken aback she seems by it. I also love how easy and comfortable it is to talk with Marlon as they’re walking through the yard even though we just met him. 

I enjoy that you can tell he’s trying to get a better idea of who she is without pressuring or overwhelming her and doing his best not to offend. And even when Clementine questions if he doesn’t think she can handle herself, he’s decent about apologizing and explaining that’s not what he meant. But he’s also not afraid to be upfront about AJ’s behavior since they brought him here, either.

He does come off as annoyed when talking about AJ being a handful. We don’t know how long Clementine’s been passed out or how long they had to deal with AJ after he woke up, so who knows how much of a little terror AJ was before they either dumped him with Louis or Louis decided to take him to the music room to chill... where he then bit Ruby. 

Anyway, the first impression I got of Marlon is that he’s genuinely friendly, trying to help Clementine and AJ even if AJ’s been a nuisance, and he’s confident in the system he has in place for them. He is rather forward and proud about being the school’s leader when first telling Clementine. 

Having played through the whole season several times and knowing how Done Running ends, it’s interesting to look at Clementine’s first conversation with Marlon with that all knowing perspective- knowing what he did to the twins, knowing that Brody’s involved and that Marlon’s going to eventually kill her, going to try and frame Clementine for the murder, knowing that he was planning on giving Clementine and AJ away...

I can definitely look at this conversation with a more skeptical lens and say he’s more so trying to sell the idea that he has everything under control in this kingdom for kids and he’s a proper leader with a system in place despite being so young with no adults around. But hey, that’s the natural progression- Ericson is a perfectly chill safe haven and the Ericson crew get along swell... except no, the cracks slowly begin to surface as the episode goes on until all hell breaks loose with Marlon at the center. 

[Rosie is best girl]

“You said dogs brought back bad memories. I'm sorry, I didn't realize you were so scared of them. But I swear, Rosie's not as frightening as she seems...See? She's harmless. She just needs to get to know you, is all. Here. I'll show you. Do you trust me? “

I’ll be completely honest- the thing that initially sold me on trusting Marlon the first time I ever played this episode was his relationship with Rosie. 

If you know me, then you know that I love dogs. I have a pup named Piglet that I adore, I’ve grown up with dogs my whole life, and I have a huge appreciation and soft spot for animals.  I’m one of those people that can’t stand others who are mean or cruel to harmless animals. It’s different if you’re hunting for food or if an animal attacks you and you’re defending yourself... but I’ve known people who have gone out of their way to hurt animals. I’m out in a country area with a lot of dangerous roads for wandering animals, and the amount of people I’ve driven with who’ll swerve to hit a squirrel, a cat, a dog because they enjoy it is too many. After those incidents, I cut those people out of my life.  If you don’t have that love and appreciation in your heart, then I want nothing to do with you. 

So when I saw that Rosie, while the school’s dog, is more portrayed to be Marlon’s dog above everyone else, I remember thinking to myself, “Okay, I trust him. He clearly loves this dog, wouldn’t mistreat her, and that’s a step in the right direction.”  

While I wasn’t skeptical of him and his intentions before, it really was that natural relationship he held with Rosie that kind of sealed the deal for me- “I like Marlon! He’s probably going to die because he’s the leader and they never last but when it does happen, I’m gonna be super upset about it.” 

And well, to be fair... I was super upset when he died, just more so than I originally planned because there was also that element of betrayal mixed into the pain, y’know? 

Speaking of trust and Rosie- My second favorite Marlon scene is the office scene. But let’s talk about the Rosie bit specifically. After Tenn leaves and Rosie comes in, she scares Clementine and brings back those traumatic memories of when Sam attacked her. 

Marlon comes in and cools the situation, and I love the way he talks to Clementine in this moment. 

I love that he doesn’t immediately turn to Clementine like, “What’d you do?” but recognizes that she’s afraid of Rosie due to her previous experience, one that he remembers her mentioning. He also knows how well trained Rosie is to recognize scents and people, which explains why she’s behaving that way- she doesn’t know Clementine. 

I feel like I’m using this word a lot, but Marlon’s approach to helping Clementine with her fear of dogs feels so genuine. He holds his hand out and waits for her to accept, and if she does, he walks Clementine through what to do, beginning Clementine’s bond with Rosie. 

“Get down on her level. Let her get your scent. It's okay. She's not gonna hurt you.”

It’s incredibly sweet and humanizing to see Marlon like this. 

The best part about this scene, though, is that you can reject Marlon’s offer and he won’t be upset. 

“No problem. I'm not gonna pressure you.”

And he doesn’t. He doesn’t get annoyed, he doesn’t press, no questions asked, and he doesn’t say anything to make Clementine feel bad for her decision. He respects that she isn’t ready to get close with Rosie.

The reason I love this is because how many times have we made decisions in this game, big and small, and had the other characters get annoyed or try to guilt us? “Oh, you don’t want to bond with the dog? Rosie’s the best, everyone loves dogs! What’s wrong with you?” None of that here. That’s something I appreciate about Marlon in this moment. 

It shows that when he wants to, he can listen and understand those around him... something he clearly struggles with when it comes to certain members of Ericson.

I’ll swing back around and talk about that entire scene in a bit, but one last thing about Rosie... can I just say how heart breaking it is to hear her whine at Marlon’s funeral? Solidifying that she was definitely Marlon’s dog more than anyone else’s? And the way Rosie lays on his grave several times in episode 2? 

Oof. 

[Ericson’s perception of Marlon prior to the final confrontation and after]

“...when the world went to shit, he bailed. All the other adults did. Left us behind to fend for ourselves...  Now it's just us kids left.”

I want to touch on how the Ericson crew seem to view Marlon as a leader before and after the final confrontation.

When looking at and discussing a character, it’s important to not just focus solely on them. You can gather a lot about a character based on how others respond and perceive them.

Not everyone expresses something towards Marlon within Done Running. Y’know, like Omar or Ruby, for example. Though we do get a bit more from them after Marlon’s death, their perception of him is different now that they’ve learned what he’s done and witnessed his murder.

So we don’t know how Ruby, Omar, Willy or Mitch viewed his leadership prior to those events, y’know? It’s safe to assume that they’re fine following him as a leader since they’re background characters at this point and make no objections to his leadership at any time before the confrontation. But, after learning the truth, they turned against him. 

Then things get complicated when Marlon’s murder traumatizes them. 

What a mess.

But for this section, there are two characters I want to get into specifics about. They’re worth talking about because they further Marlon’s character, but they’re not the most important, y’know? Characters like Louis, Tenn, and Brody will get their own sections. 

The one I find most interesting among side characters is Aasim. Right off the bat, you get a feel for what his relationship is like with Marlon:

Marlon: “How'd it go out there?”

Aasim: “How do you think it went?”

Brody: “Be nice, Aasim.”

Aasim: “The safe zone's nearly dry. I could barely find enough for tonight. We're gonna have to scout out further if we want food for the winter.”

Marlon: “We'll talk about it later.”

Aasim: “Bullshit, we should talk about this right now-”

Marlon: “I said later, damn it!”

So... they’re not exactly besties. The game makes a clear point that Aasim is more vocal in his disagreements and concerns towards Marlon than the others. They even reiterate it when you talk with him later:

“He keeps pulling back the safe zone. We have fewer and fewer places to hunt. Which means we're gonna have fewer and fewer things to eat.”

No one else opposes Marlon like he does, not counting Brody in the basement since that’s a whole other thing and Brody will get an entire segment to herself later.

It’s pretty clear that this isn’t the first time they’ve had this conversation, but because Marlon’s in a place of power, Aasim doesn’t have much choice but to go along with it. Because no one else is speaking up, he doesn’t have anyone to back him up, and you can tell he goes with it reluctantly. He also voices annoyances when it comes to how Marlon treats Louis if you go hunting.

Knowing this, you can infer that Marlon doesn’t want to hear what Aasim has to say, and he doesn’t appreciate someone questioning his leadership. When Aasim steps in Marlon’s path and says, “Bullshit, we should talk about this right now-” what does Marlon do?

He shoves his shoulder into Aasim’s as he pushes past, and in a louder, commanding tone, replies, “I said later, damn it!” which leads to Aasim glaring after him... but he doesn’t pursue. Marlon has a hard time with someone like Aasim and his response is to shut him down rather than stop, listen to his concerns, and address them.

That’s something Marlon struggles with as a leader- control and listening. Control over his temper and anger, listening and addressing the concerns of the people he swears to protect.

The reason I bring this up is because Aasim is our first indication that the image Marlon was giving off previously isn’t as spotless as he wants us to believe. Aasim plants a seed of doubt, y’know? He gives an argument that the player can get behind.

“Yeah, why not extend the safe zone? If food is really as bad as you say it is, then what other choice is there? Just be extra cautious so no one gets hurt,” which can then lead to thinking, “Why is Marlon so insistent about the safe zone? Is he hiding something?”

Once that seed is there, it grows.

Now as for how Aasim’s view of Marlon changes during and after the confrontation, you can see that he’s one of the few that wants to hear Clementine’s side to things, and he steps forward after Louis/Violet intervenes.

Then after Marlon dies, Aasim is... well, he’s rather neutral? And I say that meaning he’s more in a middle ground between Louis and Violet, who are on extreme opposite ends. Aasim isn’t okay with Marlon’s death, nor is he okay with AJ killing him, but he can see that kicking Clementine and AJ out isn’t the best solution. Hence why he voted for them to stay.

You can see he’s still angry at Marlon for what he did during the funeral scene, but the game doesn’t care to show more beyond that. Which, in my opinion, was a missed opportunity on their part.  

And because I’m me, I also want to add that this perfectly sets up the idea of Aasim taking over once Marlon died and the writers shot themselves in the foot for wasting him like that. Good job.

Now let’s talk about Violet. People love when I do that.

Marlon and Violet don’t interact too much prior to the confrontation. The most we see them together is during the card game, and they’re chill. Violet makes fun of his hair, he says he looks cool, they’re decent to each other, it’s all good. They’re on friendly terms. 

Which I do find it interesting that she seems like she’s chill with Marlon, but she has such a hard time with Brody. Granted, that’s because she was supposed to go with them but asked Brody to cover her, and then when the twins died, she felt guilty. But you’d think that she’d also have some issues with Marlon, given that he was also there and, like Brody, unable to save them.

You could argue that because Violet and Brody were friends before it had a stronger effect, whereas she and Marlon weren’t ever that close, so it didn’t strike as bad, y’know? 

Though this does kind of get explained later if you choose to stick with Violet through ep4. Well, sort of? A little? She tells you:

Violet: “...I remember how Marlon described it, what we were gonna turn Ericson into. It's not the way any of us pictured it.”

Clementine: “How did you picture it?”

Violet: “I guess I couldn't. I just listened to what Marlon said. How it would be a home, a real one. But I couldn't really wrap my head around it.”

And when she talks about people who cared about her that she pushed away, she does list Marlon as one of those people, which is super interesting given all the loathing she’s done towards him after the truth came out.

It could be that in the past, she saw Marlon as the leader and why would he lie? He’s the one who stepped up, promised that they’d made Ericson into something special, into a brand new home... what reason does she have to distrust him?

So when she finds out the truth... well, that betrayal completely shatters everything she has for Marlon, going as far as for her to believe that AJ was justified in what he did and shit talking Marlon in front of his mourning best friend. 

So her reaction to Marlon after this makes sense, but what does this tell us about Marlon himself?

Again, depending on how you view him, you can look at this idea of Marlon being kind to Violet and them being on friendly terms after what happened to the twins a few different ways- Marlon was manipulating Violet solely for his sake, or Marlon felt guilty that something he did hurt her this bad and tried to make Violet feel better, or both.

I think it was both. After the twins died, we all know the amount of guilt Marlon carried with him, so having to be confronted with the fallout of that in the form of someone like Violet... he had to be careful. I don’t doubt that he cared about Violet or that he tried to reach out to her, but he also had to protect himself for the sake of maintaining his leadership and control of Ericson. So, of course, he had to lie to her which manipulated her feelings about him and the situation. 

I believe Violet recognized it, too. When she says they should’ve asked more questions about what happened, I think that’s her being more pissed with herself for trusting Marlon and not questioning him further, for taking his word for it. 

I’ve come across theories suggesting that Marlon actually manipulated Violet into placing blame onto Brody rather than him, which is why she is on friendly terms with him but not so much Brody. And that’s a valid interpretation. There isn’t any solid evidence of this within the game to suggest either way, but I can definitely see how someone would come to that conclusion. Especially after the confrontation.

Now let’s touch on Violet if you appeal to her, because Marlon does something that makes me go “Hmmmm...”

Clementine, when she appeals to Violet, say, “Violet you have to believe me.”

To which, Marlon immediately steps in and says, “You don't. You met her, like, two days ago!”

He doesn’t even give her a chance to speak. 

With Louis, he’s so overly confident that he has him completely wrapped around his finger that he doesn’t feel the need to say anything. He feels he has control over Louis. But with Violet, he feels his control might not be as strong, so he needs to remind her that she just met Clementine, whereas she’s known him for years- something he uses against the whole group.

And when Clementine tries to talk to her, Marlon takes a low blow and it’s super shitty.

“Don't let her get in your head. Hey, what would Minnie want you to do? She was my friend, too. So was Brody.”

He’s desperate to crawl out of the grave this situation has put him in that he’s willing to go this low, doing everything he can to make sure Violet doubts Clementine... and y’know, whose to say this is the first time Marlon is using Minnie to manipulate her? And when it doesn’t work, he gets frustrated like “Violet being difficult. Why am I not surprised?” which could suggest that it hasn’t always worked. 

It goes back to what I was saying- Marlon tried to get close to Violet and she never let him. She was difficult to be around after the twins died due to her grief and Marlon struggled with that. 

When he finally comes clean, this is where the real shift happens with him and Violet. You can see the hatred burning on her face every time the camera pans over to her now that she’s felt betrayed by him and his actions. 

Right before Marlon dies, if you choose to say nothing, Violet will step forward and start saying that he doesn’t get to stay, but gets cut off when AJ shoots him. 

All in all, Violet is a big case against Marlon and a showcase of how far his manipulation as gone within Ericson.

[Marlon’s office and foreshadowing of motivations]

“Whenever someone goes outside the safe zone, bad shit happens. People die or disappear. I just... I could really use the help, Clementine. Taking care of these kids, it's not easy. I'm worried that if I don't figure something out, if...if I don't fix our food situation... I can't lose anyone else. We've already lost so much. Friends, siblings... I can't let another kid die. It could break us.”

Swinging back around, let’s talk about the rest of the scene in the office. 

First off- it’s implied that Marlon uses the office as a bedroom given the mattress on the floor and some of his personal belongs laying about. Like the photo he keeps of him and Louis. 

The bed isn’t for Rosie, we assume, since we later see her sleeping outside while chained up. This might be just because they wanted Rosie present for the confrontation scene but didn’t want her loose, so they put her outside when you’d think that she’d sleep inside with everyone else. 

Or, maybe she just prefers to be outside when the weather’s nice, or they keep her as a guard in case something were to happen, that way she can alarm them. 

Anyway, why does Marlon potentially sleep in his office rather than in a dorm? Or does he have a dorm that he’ll sleep in, but keeps the mattress there just in case? 

Well, a show of authority, for one. Even if he does keep a dorm room, it’s likely that he made the office his own as a way to be like “The headmaster is gone, this is my office now. I’m in charge.” 

Which makes sense. 

And when you think about what Louis tells us about Marlon having all these sleepless nights and tough calls, it’s not hard to imagine him spending late nights in his chair going over different plans and stressing over the food situation/safe zone, as well as letting the guilt of the twins weigh on him to the point were he’s too exhausted to even leave.

Moving on to the actual conversation between him and Clementine. He does show a vulnerable side to her, which I like. He can feel the pressure he’s under and sense the loss he’s suffered. But...like before, looking at this knowing what I know, it’s not hard to see certain things in a different light opposed to what you’d see as a new player.

What’s interesting, though, is while I do enjoy this conversation and the bits of insight it gives to Marlon’s character, there is this subtle, slightly off undertone of the whole scene after the Rosie bit. 

At this point, we’ve talked with Aasim and he’s planted the seed of doubt.

We’ve heard the story about the twins. Violet came and talked to us about it, we could visit their graves and learn that they died at this time last year. Anyone who has played any game or heard any story can pick up on that the twins are important. They’re not going to use these girls as some throw away lines. They’re going to come back one way or another. 

We’re literally living in their dorm. The dorm that Marlon put us in. They’re heavily connected to Tenn and Violet, two important characters I previously discussed. Then, Violet comes barging into our room and talks about them some more. 

It makes the gears turn, y’know? 

And with Marlon being very insistent that they stay in the safe zone, it’s not hard to question the story about the twins. I went through and skimmed a couple play throughs on youtube to this scene and a lot of them were theorizing that the twins weren’t actually dead or something wasn’t right, some cracks are starting to show. Why else bring it up? Marlon being the one to push the dangers of the safe zone and everything with Aasim... it’s not hard to pick up that he might be hiding something.  

The thing I find fascinating about people’s perception of Marlon is how they interpret his motivations when it comes to Clementine and AJ, and that can be tracked back to this scene. 

We all know that he’s planning on giving them to the raiders if they come back. It’s a hard fact. Brody warned us before she died, and dialogue during the basement scene backs it up. 

But the question I’m curious about is... when did this motivation begin? 

When did Marlon decide that he would give Clementine and AJ to the raiders if they ever came back? 

Because the text doesn’t tell us anything until Brody’s death, I feel like we all have a different moment where we believe that became Marlon’s secret motive, y’know? 

In all my digging, I’ve read posts about this idea, people giving their thoughts on when they think Marlon secretly turned on us, or if he was ever really on our side. 

One has people theorizing that Marlon saved Clementine and AJ with the intention of giving them away from the beginning. 

So he saw taking these two in and earning their trust as an opportunity to save everyone else at the school [the people he cares about] rather than have to sacrifice anyone else like they did with the twins. Clementine and AJ were just a means to an end if the raiders came back. 

Which is a rather sinister way to look at it and puts quite a negative spin on Marlon’s actions towards them - like how he’s willing to let them stay at the school not out of kindness but out of bad intentions, and every kind thing he ever did was to win over their trust so he could lure them out into the woods and do a trade if necessary. 

The line “Take this. I don't want you gettin' lost.” gets pointed at a lot due to how Marlon says it, the infliction of it, and it’s theorized that the hidden meaning behind it is “Take this, if you get lost then I can’t make the trade.”

Same thing with “Just remember to stay in the safe zone. We need you to come back home in one piece.”

Which isn’t a wrong interpretation of this. You can totally look at this conversation between Marlon and Clementine as Marlon subtly foreshadowing his turn, or betrayal, at the end of the episode.  

“...It's how we've kept ourselves from unwanted attention for so long. Well... For the most part, anyway.”

“I can't lose anyone else. We've already lost so much. Friends, siblings... I can't let another kid die. It could break us. Sorry. I'm just... There's a lot of pressure.” 

“What, did you think I was gonna throw you out?“

Then there are the middle ground people who believe Marlon didn’t save Clementine and AJ with that intention in mind, but it started to appear as an option to him either a bit before or during the office scene. Y’know, it came as a passing thought that ended up lingering until he acknowledged it as a solution to a potential problem. 

Again, pointing at the dialogue from before- him suggesting that he’ll do whatever it takes to keep his community alive... just like he did before. 

And while he gets along with Clementine and AJ [or as some would suggest, he appears to be friendly], they’re not his family. He isn’t close to them the same way he is the rest of the school. and if he has to give anyone away, it’s going to be them, whether he wants to or not. 

Marlon didn’t want to give Sophie and Minerva away, and he’s carried that with him up until this point. We see it manifest to a breaking point that lead to Brody’s death and, eventually, his own. 

Finally, there are the people who believe that the idea of giving Clementine and AJ away didn’t occur to him until after the incident with Abel. After Brody panicked and told him about getting robbed, then Clementine claiming they met a man with different colored eyes who wanted food, and the realization that the raiders could be back. 

This is where I personally stand when it comes to this idea. I believe that Marlon didn’t decide on this until he heard about Abel, and solidified it during the fight with Brody down in the basement. 

But what about the dialogue in this scene that potentially has double meanings? Well, I believe that’s the writers suggesting Marlon’s turn and motivations rather than Marlon himself, if that makes sense. Like I said before, you could take nearly everything Marlon says as some sort of foreshadowing or suggestion of what happened to the twins, what his true intentions are with Clementine and AJ, and what will happen to him at the end of the episode. 

That’s the thing- Marlon doesn’t ever go on a mustache-twirling monologue about how he knew he could use Clementine and AJ as trade if the raiders came back and that’s the real reason why he saved them, nor do we see him come up with the idea on the spot. 

Hell, Marlon never admits to the player that he was going to do that. The most he says is, “Shut your fucking mouth! I made the right call. I saved the lives of everyone in this fucking school! If they came back... I'd do it again!”  

Brody is the one who told us everything, and every time Clementine throws it back in his face, he tells her to shut up and threatens her with the gun. 

But from what I’ve tried to gather about what Marlon and Brody talk about in the basement before Clementine gets down there...

Marlon: “Why can't you just do what I ask you to do?”

Brody: “Because we caused all this, and now we have to deal with it!”

Marlon: “I am dealing with it!”

Brody: “By tradin' more of us away? That's not fixin' the problem, that's runnin' away from it!”

[I’ll come back to this full conversation later when I go over the basement scene by itself. It gets pretty dark.]

Which.... yeah. So, I’m not trying to say Brody was lying or anything just because Marlon never flat out admitted it to us the player, I’m just saying that we don’t know for sure when he made up his mind about this since the game never gives a clear suggestion for the sake of his dramatic turn from friend to antagonist. 

Did he have this idea from the start or did he come up with it during this conversation? 

We don’t know, but it’s interesting to look at the different views surrounding this question and how it applies to Marlon’s character. Because yeah, if you truly believe that Marlon had this intention from the start, it makes all of his actions in this episode pretty scummy. And again, that’s not wrong because there isn’t an answer here. 

I choose to believe that maybe the idea came as an unwanted thought in the beginning, but manifested into something real when he heard about Abel. He shared his plan with Brody, who didn’t want to go along with it. 

And y’know what... let’s finally get into the basement scene and Brody...

Continued in Part 2/2

[bestworstcase]

replies on this post ( @ngocthach4020​, numbering mine ):

Counterarguments:

1 - While I do agree that Zhan Tiri does a good job making it seem like she does care about Cassandra, the fact that Cassandra trusted a total stranger for over a year in itself makes her intelligence dubious at best. Not to mention Cassandra never asks the total stranger who mysteriously knows this much about her for her NAME during all that time, nor tries to find out anything else about her.

2 - Rapunzel is the heir to the throne. Of course she’s going to get more recognition than Cassandra. Cassandra herself was given multiple guard assignments throughout Season 1, cheered on by the people of Corona even when she came second place to Rapunzel at the Challenge of the Brave, and trusted with leading the assault against Varian in the season finale. This isn’t even getting into how she has plenty of opportunities at Ingvarr or Vardaros.

3 - The people of Vardaros focused on Rapunzel despite preferring Cassandra over her, yes, but that doesn’t change how they treated Rapunzel like dirt and Cassandra seemed to LIKE that.

4 - In the song I’d Give Anything, Rapunzel does acknowledge she wronged Cassandra.

5 - Just because Cassandra has legitimate grievances, it doesn’t excuse her trying to murder people who never did anything bad to her, which she does several times throughout Season 3.

firstly: i mean this in the kindest way possible but none of these are actually counter-arguments to the point i was making, which is that cassandra has very good reasons for her decision to trust zhan tiri and be emotionally vulnerable with her in the house of yesterday’s tomorrow. #2 is the only one relevant to the subject at hand, #1, #4, and #5 all concern things that happen after the incident being discussed and are thus irrelevant, and for #3 it’s unclear to me what point you think you’re countering and also, i have no idea what you’re talking about. 

but as with anything i have plenty of thoughts

#1: i have two thoughts about this one

the first is that this is, first and foremost, a writing issue. for whatever reason, the writing team was not interested in digging into cassandra’s character arc in s3, and they also were not interested in developing zhan tiri as a character, and they really were not interested in elaborating on the cass + zhan tiri friendship whatsoever. the end result of this lack of interest is that all of this character development is gestured at or loosely implied, and the vast majority of their relationship occurs off screen. we are shown their first meeting in relative detail, given a handful of brief glimpses that mostly comprise zhan tiri saying a line or two while cassandra listens and glares, and then given the end result of cass doing whatever zhan tiri tells her to do until a narratively convenient plot device is inserted to make her stop. the character development in this arc is extremely poor. no one is arguing that it isn’t. 

however my second thought is that, as a consequence, “cass travels with this person for almost a year without ever asking her name or trying to find out anything about her” is not, in fact, canon. that’s a matter of interpretation. (eg: i spent the entirety of the first half of the season assuming that of course cassandra knew who zhan tiri was, my reaction to CR in this regard boiled down to “well if cass didn’t already know that was zhan tiri she certainly does NOW,” RTTS did nothing to change my mind, and i was legitimately taken aback when OAH confirmed that cass just didn’t know. all of this was a plausible interpretation because so little of the cass + ziti relationship actually develops on screen. there is SO MUCH information missing.)

the point being: the only canonical information we have regarding zhan tiri’s identity and cassandra’s knowledge thereof is that cassandra doesn’t learn zhan tiri’s true identity until OAH. this does not preclude cassandra pressing the issue and zhan tiri lying to her by telling her a fake name, or feigning ignorance (a la “i’ve been trapped in that house for as long as i can remember and i have no idea where i came from or who i was before then,” which is absolutely a plausible cover story given the kind of things tromus pulled off whilst team corona was trapped in the HOYT and that cass herself has very recent experience with magical memory loss), or masquerading as an aspect of the moonstone itself (which is at least plausible enough that a good chunk of the fandom theorized that that’s who she was in the early half of the season). 

there is, frankly, no evidence to support interpreting cassandra’s “who are you?” as “i’ve literally never asked this question before” instead of “you told me things about yourself that i believed but it’s not adding up anymore so i’m confronting you on your lies” or vice versa, because... we just don’t know. i personally favor the latter interpretation over the former, because it makes more sense to me, but the text is unclear.

all of which is to say: the post was about why cassandra trusts zhan tiri initially, a questions which - as i said in the original post - is answered very clearly on screen. there is not enough canonical information about the development of their relationship afterwards to do anything more than speculative analysis, ie headcanon, regarding how zhan tiri cultivated that trust. for what it’s worth my personal assumption is that zhan tiri continued to act as she does in RR, fostering the emotional connection between herself and cassandra, and that shortly after the stinger in who’s afraid of the big bad wolf (ie their second proper meeting) she gave cass some explanation of who she was and what she wanted. i also make the general assumption that they shared a lot of conversations during the long walk back to corona because it is ludicrous to imagine otherwise. 

#2: cassandra is a commoner who was indoctrinated from birth with the cultural belief that the lives of the royal family are more important and have more inherent worth than her own. this only intensified once rapunzel returned to corona. cassandra exists in a system that chews her up and spits her out without so much as a thank you, and rapunzel is the center around which that system orbits. “rapunzel is the heir to the throne so of course she gets more recognition than cassandra, her servant” isn’t, in fact, a counterargument. that is exactly the problem. the world cass is in is inherently devalues her personhood. even her own father repeatedly prioritizes his duty to the monarchy over the wellbeing of his daughter.

in s1, cass is given guard duties which she is expected to fit around her already extremely busy schedule as a maid and lady-in-waiting to the princess, all without ever being made an actual member of the royal guard. she is given, in other words, all of the work and responsibility without any of the recognition, salary, benefits, or job security afforded to actual guards, and she is expected to do it during her scant time off. and she does it all with the constant unspoken threat of being sent to a convent against her will if she screws up looming over her head. that’s not... privilege or an opportunity, that’s flat out exploitation. 

even in SOTS, she is only put in command of the assault on old corona because most of the higher officers of the guard are out of commission, including the captain. and this happens mere hours after her father forcibly sends her to a convent, which really underscores what little autonomy cassandra has in her life and how capricious and arbitrary any “opportunities” that come her way in corona are. 

yes, she is better accepted in vardaros and the queen of ingvarr did at one point extend an invitation for her to join the battalion in ingvarr, but—again, that’s not really a counterargument. “cassandra would have to leave her home and move to a foreign kingdom in order to be treated with respect and live as her authentic self” is an enormous indictment of corona itself. 

#3: the vardarans are less than receptive to rapunzel attempting to force her sunny demeanor onto them and react with hostile indifference when she persists even after being told—by multiple people including vex, quaid, cassandra, and iirc eugene—that her behavior was not wanted or welcome. they make their opinions known without making any attempt to soften the blow, but—with the one exception of “ya clod” lady—none of them harass or bully her. i’m not sure where you’re getting “they treat her like dirt” from. they treat her like people who are annoyed with having someone else’s culture jammed down their throats by some foreign princess, which,

cass, by the same token, enjoys being surrounded by people she “clicks” with and with whom she can just relax and be herself, and she repeatedly cautions rapunzel against trying to make the vardarans act, think, and feel like coronans... in other words, she advises rapunzel to be culturally sensitive. and she’s right to do so. cass doesn’t start gloating about being better liked until after rapunzel lashes out at her and makes a huge deal out of cass’s events being different / more in tune with vardaran culture than her own. 

#4: things rapunzel does a full year after cass meets zhan tiri in the shell house are not relevant to the question of why cass trusts zhan tiri in the shell house and also lol no... she doesn’t? these are the lyrics of i’d give anything: 

[RAPUNZEL] I know we've grown apart It breaks my heart in two I miss your company The closeness we once knew

I won't pretend to know Just what you're going through But I'd give anything for you Yes, I'd give anything to relive everything with you So if you find that you're in darkness or despair Though you won't turn to me Please know I'll be right there Name any sacrifice I'll pay the price that's due 'Cause I'd give anything for you Yes, I'd give anything to relive everything we knew Yes, I'd give anything For you

i don’t... know how to read an expression of apology or even just acknowledgement of wrongdoing into this song because it... isn’t there. this is the exact same sentiment rapunzel spends the entirety of s3 expressing, which is that she misses her friendship with cass and would do anything to get it back and she doesn’t understand why cassandra is so upset. and frankly it really. does not reflect well on rapunzel as a character because cassandra explains her grievances very clearly at the beginning of the season: “my whole life, i’ve been cast aside for you. no more,” followed by, you know, the entirety of crossing the line.

like even just... compare rapunzel’s lines at the top of crossing the line:

[RAPUNZEL] This has to stop now Whatever it is that you're going through We'll fix it together, me and you Just like we've always done

to her lines in i’d give anything: 

I won't pretend to know Just what you're going through

there has been zero growth. zero recognition of the fact that cassandra has, by the time of i’d give anything, told rapunzel what she’s going through at least three times. (she laid everything out for rapunzel in the dark fortress after taking the moonstone; in gothel’s mirror room in TOTS, cassandra expressed her anguish over gothel’s abandonment and her feelings of inferiority; in OAH, cass used feldspar’s play to fumblingly express her difficulty sharing her feelings with rapunzel; and if you want to count the BVA rock telepathy and cassandra furiously screaming “i don’t follow your orders anymore!” in CR, that brings us to a total of five times that cassandra shares at least part of what she’s “going through” with rapunzel only for it to, apparently, go in one ear and out the other because by plus est raps is still like “what could POSSIBLY be GOING ON with cass.”)

the closest rapunzel ever comes to expressing her own wrongdoing is the mealy-mouthed “we both did things wrong” sentiment in OAH (“maybe you’re right and it is your fault, rapunzel... partially...”), which she then undermines by going essentially “but if you had just told me how you felt then none of this would have happened” (ignoring that cass... did... tell her how she felt... repeatedly... in s2...) and rapunzel acknowledging that it was probably annoying to deal with a sunny “flower child” when she was fresh out of the tower (which is true, but entirely glosses over her treatment of cass in s2). in the former instance it’s unclear what, if anything, rapunzel truly thinks she did wrong (certainly “not listening” isn’t it), and in the latter case she is apologizing for being ~too free-spirited~ in the first couple weeks after the tower which... wasn’t even the problem back then and certainly wasn’t the core problem in s2. and by her own admission in i’d give anything rapunzel still doesn’t even understand why cassandra was upset in the first place, let alone how she may have contributed to it. 

like the utter dearth of development between cass and zhan tiri, this is ultimately a writing problem that reflects poorly on the character, rather than a character problem per se. for whatever reason, the writing team didn’t want to examine the legitimacy of cassandra’s actual grievances—which by extension meant that they couldn’t write rapunzel as having any awareness of those grievances, so the end result is cass obsessing over gothel and rapunzel spending the entire season baffled, just baffled, about what cass is so worked up about, all while sadly pining for the friendship they used to have and vocalizing a desire to get it back but simultaneously ignoring everything cass says about why she’s upset, because rapunzel listening to cass would require rapunzel to genuinely wrestle with her own role in what happened, which isn’t possible because that would loop us back around to all those legitimate grievances that the writers just didn’t want to (or couldn’t) deal with.

but tldr no at no point in the narrative of s3 does rapunzel genuinely acknowledge the actual things she did wrong by cass.

#5: i’m genuinely not sure why you think this is even relevant at all, unless you somehow read “cass did nothing wrong” into the argument of “it is both natural and reasonable for cass to trust the one (1) person who appears to give a damn about how she feels,” which i think says more about you than it does about me. 

[hawkinsschoolcounselor]

Hi, this ask is a bit longer, sorry. this is PART 1. I'm here cos I'd like to know your thoughts on the way the responsible st people are treating their fans. Frankly, there's a number of folks I know who once were really into the show but are now losing or have lost interest due to the lack of info we're given. also found plenty of people on the internet that feel the same way. It's a shame but I think most of them are disappointed, angry, annoyed or simply stopped caring.

“Part 2: Maybe via screenshot? I, too, find myself struggling to keep my interest alive. I'm really not trying to be unreasonable here. I know we're in the middle of a pandemic and I doubt anyone'd expect s4 to be released within the next 2 months. but I find one has to become a little creative these days, but no, frankly this lack of content is insulting. No teaser trailer, no serious updates, only unofficial ones. Barely any twitter activity and if there's a new tweet it's only unrelated stuff.

Part 3: I don't think this presumptuous 'it's st. Everyone loves it no matter what' attitude is a wise move. How do you feel about it? I'm assuming your analysis, which are great btw, help you staying interested, don't they? But they seem to forget not everyone does that. At the end of the day people are people and people might lose interest and move on. It's a shame though. Oh gosh, I'm so sorry. Thanks for your patience.”

Thank you for writing in. There’s never a need to be sorry about an Ask made in good faith. I thought this one might be good to answer immediately even though I’m very behind in my responses.

I understand your frustration. It’s been over a year since season 3, and we probably would have gotten season 4 by now if not for Covid. When one considers that we probably aren’t getting season 4 until, conservative guess, this Spring, it’s difficult to not get frustrated. I do think, though, that we need to be careful about where we aim that frustration.

Perhaps it’s because I’m older, but I harbor no anger at the Duffers or anyone else responsible for creating Stranger Things. I grew up in the time before social media or streaming services. Aside from VCRs, we had no means of on-demand television, and our entertainment news was mostly limited to TV Guide. Behind-the-scenes peeks and TV trailers were sparse, generally limited to the weeks leading into the new Fall TV season. This just isn’t fazing me like it may the younger generation. I understand, though. Many of you are simply accustomed to what you grew up with, just as I am.

I do feel a need to defend the showrunners. We get quite a bit of information, official and not. We’ve gotten teasers, cast announcements, and the postings of a Twitter account run by one of the Duffer’s assistants. Yes, a lot of that content has slowed, likely due to not having planned for an extended delay, but I hesitate to cast any blame on them for it. I simply remind myself that they do not really owe us anything. I repeat, they do not owe us anything.

We receive the fruits of their labor in the form of a very entertaining TV show. It is something they’ve chosen to do, and they are doing their best to do it. I fear we may be at risk of being spoiled by our current (at least prior to the shutdown) level of access to entertainment. Instant, on-demand gratification has become the norm as a result of social media and streaming services. It’s really hard to blame you, and anyone else, for getting upset now that this trend has been suddenly disrupted, but we need to engage in some self-reflection here. What right do we really have to demand anything from these people?

Production is still on despite several other shows being outright cancelled. All reasonable steps are being taken to ensure a safe filming environment so that we can get the show as soon as possible. We do get updates from the social media accounts, even if those updates have become fewer and farther between. There’s an element of diminishing returns when it comes to this sort of thing. There’s only so much they can give us without spoiling the product itself. They simply be scraping the bottom of the barrel at this point.

We do have some unofficial “leaks,” yes. Honestly, I’m not sure how unofficial those really are, though. The set photos that have come out have been minimal to the point that I feel they may have been designed to be as such. If it were really all the work of rogue production crewmembers or fans sneaking in, I would have expected a lot more. I’m not saying that it all has been authorized content masquerading as leaks, but I am saying it could be. They know the fans who are still following things are the ones who would look at unofficial sources. It’s not too much of a stretch to consider that they’ve done this on purpose to get the online fanbase speculating in order to keep interest going. I know it’s certainly given me something to do after I analyzed almost everything I could think of from the existing episodes. Not everyone does that, as you say, but the more casual fans probably aren’t even paying attention to the time between seasons. Others, like me or you, are either creating, or consuming, fan content in the meantime.

I ask patience and understanding of you all. These are the people who have clearly created something you love. They are suffering from this pandemic, as well, but they are still trying their best to give us what we want. We may all need to lower our expectations a bit. I fear they’ve grown to be too high in recent years, resulting in an unfair demand on content creators. Since this is the season of good will towards man, I’ll simply leave you with this reminder: patience, tolerance, and respect are things we often demand from others, but fail to demand of ourselves. Everyone involved in the show is working hard to get things done, and we need to show patience, tolerance, and respect while we wait.

[amethyst-geek]

Theory on why Emilie used the damaged Peacock miraculous

So with the latest episode of Miraculous revealed that Gabriel apparently to wants to destroy the current world and replace with a world where he and Emilie can be together, now seems like as good as time as any to share my theory on what Emilie had been using the Peacock miraculous for. 

Ask some of you may have read in 1 of my previous post predicting Felix’s role in season 4 (which so far seems to have been debunked fo the most part), I predicted that Felix is actually Adrien’s twin’s brother and that Emilie’s father forced her to give to Amelie because Amelie and/or her husband were struggling with infertility and grandpa Graham De Vanily loathed the idea of having a grandchild who wasn't related to him by blood. I’m still assuming this to be the case in this theory expect I’m changing the means as to how Grandpa Graham de Vanily managed to coerce Emilie into giving Felix to Amelie. 

In my previous post predicting Felix’s role, I suggested that Grandpa Graham de Vanily threatened to destroy Gabriel’s career if Emilie didn't give Felix to Amelie. However I’m gonna change to connect with the fan theory that Adrien was sickly as child. Instead of blackmailing Emilie, I now think that upon hearing that Amelie anther husband were planning to adopt and Emilie was expecting twins, Grandpa Graham De Vanily poisoned the then-pregnant Emilie with some sort of magic potion that threatened the health of Emilie and her unborn sons and made it clear that he would only give her the antidote if she agreed to give 1 of the babies to Amelie (I’ll let u draw your own conclusions as whether or not Amelie was in on it or if her father lead her to believe Emilie willingly decided to give Amelie 1 of her babies. Alternatively, there’s also the possibility that Amelie herself was the 1 who poisoned Emilie). Emilie reluctantly agreed, lead Gabriel to believe that she was only carrying 1 child (as I said before, Gabriel and Felix’s interactions in his intro episode gives me reason to believe that if Felix is indeed the bio son of Gabriel and Emilie, then Gabriel isn't aware of it). Her father gave her the antidote, and she made an almost full recovery. However, her father didn't give her enough of the antidote. As result, while 1 baby was born healthy, the other baby was very sickly. Grandpa Graham de Vanily gave the healthy baby to Amelie, who named the baby Felix. 

Due to his sickly nature (as well as Emilie’s trauma of being forced to give up 1 of her babies), Gabriel and Emilie became very overprotective of Adrien. Even though they could afford the best doctors money could buy, none of them could help Adrien all that much. Eventually sometime prior to the events of the main series, Emilie confessed to Gabriel that she had been poisoned by her father while she was pregnant with Adrien (though she leaves out certain details, such as the fact that she was also pregnant with Felix at the time) and that the poison was magical in nature. This leads to Gabriel and Emilie realizing that they may need to use magic to cure Adrien of his ailment(s). Sometime later (about a year or so prior to “Origins”), they found the butterfly and peacock miraculous. Emilie then used the peacock miraculous to create sentimonster that helped Adrien recover from his magical ailment. 

However, after she did this, Emilie became sickly herself, and it was at this point  she and Gabriel realized that they peacock miraculous had been damaged. Gabriel then advised Emilie to not use the Peacock miraculous again until they could find a way to fix it. Unfortunately, Emilie and Gabriel’s very justified anger towards her father as well as Emilie’s understandable desire to get Felix back (though she keeps this part of her motivation to herself) drove Emilie to use the peacock miraculous again. Her plan was to create another sentimonster, 1 that would kill her father, alter everyone memories to make everyone think Felix has been with the Agreste's the whole time but to also give Amelie a replacement child (whom thank to the sentimonster’s memory-altering powers, Amelie would think she’d bene there the whole time). The new sentimonster she created was a young girl. However, before she could send the sentimonster to kill her father, Emilie succumbed to the effects of using a damaged miraculous and slipped into her coma. Gabriel then put Emilie in that life support thing. 

He then put hid the sentimonster somewhere, and took her amok item commanded her to become dormant until he could find use for her. Eventually, after he learned that several of the temp heroes were students at Francois Dupont, he decided that the sentimonster Emilie created would make a good sleeper agent. So he took the sentimonster out of storage and had her alter the memories of Audrey Bourgois to think that the sentimonster was her illegitimate daughter, whom Gabriel dubbed Zoe Lee. After Audrey passed out form he memory-altering, Gabriel then took Zoe back his place where he then had her alter her own memories to comply with the false memories she gave Audrey and also forget that she was a sentimonster. He then gave Zoe whatever her amok is in and sent her on her way back to the hotel. (and if this part of the theory is giving anyone deja vu, that’s because this part is a revision of another 1 of my theories; I wasn't planning incorporating Zoe into this post when i first started writing it, but then I figured why not) 

Later in the episode titled Gabriel Agreste, Felix returns and reveals to Gabriel that he is his son (Amelie’s husband told him on his deathbed), and Gabriel changes his plans so that his wish is re-write the world so that he and Emilie didn't lose Felix, Adrien had never been sickly (at least not to the same extent he was prior to his parents getting their hands on the peacock miraculous), and his father-in-law suffered a slow and painful death before he had the chance to poison Emilie. 

[buddiewho]

Is this unpopular opinion? I understand where Taylor is coming from. Does it feel mean to be called needy? OH, yes, yes it does. No one wants to be called that. If I were in Buck's shoes I'd feel absolutely taken aback, absolutely offended and downtrodden, but...there's some truth to what Taylor is saying. Apparently, Buck did't tell her about the double date scenario. He only said, "It's Buck, what are you doing Thursday night?"

She assumes she's coming over to Buck's place and that they'd be alone. Somehow, probably because she hoped to salvage the night she walks into the mess? Well, it's scripted, but still I'm thinking would you come in after you saw the fiasco? Or would you be like I'm out? Then you leave Buck to stew and talk about it later if he or you continue to call one another. Honestly. However, due to a script, Taylor goes through with it. I think there's a difference between how unnecessarily mean Veronica is being to what Taylor does after she storms out. Or what she says during. "Buck can't stop talking about it." (ie the disaster date that he had with Veronica and her being a neighbor sleeping with Albert his roommate). Not so sure about her offhanded "Buck's intimidated by strong women comment." Funny enough, that sounds like an ego stroke for Veronica; you see it's hard to defend someone who was UNNECESSARILY mean (also let's face it this is a room full of FOUR people who enjoy ego strokes, no joke).

Taylor however has a reason to be angry?

Sure, Buck had no idea of her feelings. He cannot be held accountable for that, but his actions made her angry. The point is, Buck did invite her over to keep up appearances. To show off the fact that hey yeah, I'm cool with this Veronica and Albert thing. We're good. I'm still trying to date, but coincidentally that date just goes and says, "Buck can't stop talking about it." Even if this wasn't done intentionally, because I don't think Buck sought out to do that; it happened that way and Taylor felt that way. He might've figured Taylor would be all right with it; turns out she's not. And I think there's an underlying thing there when she said "I could've really used a friend..." It's where she might be at in life; most likely due to the pandemic making her feel lonely and I think she's might've worked on some stories that put things into perspective. Speaking of which, I do think you can grow as a journalist? Correct? Perhaps it's always about being fame hungry, but it looks as if Taylor is trying to be a changed ethical journalist, who now knows that what she almost did to the Bobby and the 118 would've been disastrous (why tell Buck who you haven’t seen in a year maybe, “I see the people you work with. You have a lot of meaningful relationships there...” well there could be double meaning in that, but I do think it was way to show her having changed or realized that she was being emotionally manipulative and ‘immorally reprehensible’ to get her foot on the map. When the dust settled, she realized the documentary on the 118, was still her shoe in, even without the footage of Bobby- also this is me giving her HC backstory or MAKING ASSUMPTIONS)

 Coincidentally the very reason her and Buck went separate ways is because she was so adamant on using that footage. She was a different person trying to push forward her dream career. Like I said, the documentary still put her on the map though and now she’s a well known reporter/journalist: Taylor Kelly seen on TV and not just a voice in the sky, because hell she’s never getting in a helicopter anytime soon...

Things change. Opinions change, people grow and I think during this pandemic there's been enough heartbreaking stories for Taylor to realize I don't have to tell these stories in manipulative ways [ie calling Buck for a miracle during her recent story, her relying on that station who was her shoe in?] I don't know there seems to be something underlying to explain that Taylor is making that change, but while insinuating she's feeling kind of lonely just like Buck. However, Buck really goes about this the wrong way whether it was intentional or not? Have you ever put someone in an awkward situation? I'll be honest, I'm about as awkward as Buck and will think of an awkward situation for weeks, until someone calls out my awkwardness...do I feel like poop when someone calls me out? Always.

Taylor and Buck also have this past connection, whether it be based upon physical attraction, whether it is based upon the fact that there was manipulation on Taylor's part in the beginning (the mean part, but it can be forgiven much like Eddie screaming at Ana for the skateboard thing?), they have enough of an established connection for Taylor to call him out on bullshit. So what is she supposed to say suck it up and say what? It's my fault. I should've known this wasn't about actually dating me. This wasn't about a possible hook up, perhaps with something more, because hell the SIX HOUR call with the possible jumper/robber, wasn't a date? Anyway, that call, it was the most Buck and Taylor ever [emotionally] communicated and I think Taylor liked that change so it'd be why she said yes to coming over for dinner. Also, for Taylor and Buck it could be easy to fall back into, but they might have to still ease into it...

Maybe I'm on Taylor's side because I've been in a relationship where I was directly told I was the problem. I did the breaking up, three times (we were on and off) and it was me who would call the off, because frankly I was a little baby bisexual who was extremely afraid and probably still internally in the closet and I was also trying to be polyamorous. That's a whole load of shit. I needed to learn. I needed to educate myself and as my ex said, "you need to work on yourself." Which feels reminiscent of Taylor's, "if this is how you treat your friends then maybe Albert isn't the problem..." Does it sting when called out like that? Yes, it does, but in my case, let's say about 4-5 years later, I did a lot of work on accepting myself, educating myself and basically staying single and wondering if dating is worth it, or if I even want that right now...

It's crap, but what I want to say is I think I understand Taylor Kelly in this moment. Just all right, come at me, in a nice way if you can explain to me that Buck didn't make a mistake? That Buck isn't on some pedestal in which he can't make subconscious or conscious mistakes. You're thinking, wait! Don't you love Buck? Yes, I do (not so much in season 1). I was like wait it's going to be like this all the time with this character, I don't want it. Then we grow. Then we change. Then we adapt...hmm, maybe I'm in love with this ADHD bisexual bouncing golden retriever. Okay, cool. However, I think we're easily shifting blame to Taylor all because of the one mistake she nearly made when her character first appeared.

[queen-of-the-avengers]

There’s a Reason for Everything

Characters: Loki Laufeyson x Fire Goddess!Reader, Thor Odinson, Steve Rogers, Vision, Wanda Maximoff, other minor characters

Word Count: 1,870

Warnings: heatstroke, super fluffy

Request by @previouslyforgotten​: Ok so your request are open. Yay! Okay so this one is a little like dumb but it’s been an idea in my head for awhile. So the reader is from Asgard and she has fire powers and she hates the summer time bc when it gets real hot she has these ‘heat waves’ where the room may not be hot but she’s like sweating and can’t breathe bc she feels it’s real hot. ‘N maybe this takes place in the avengers tower? Since Loki’s body runs cold, he’d come and cool her down. So he’d come cool her down and it’s been like this since they were kids. So one day she comes down to the kitchen and Tony is like “you don’t look so good” and she’s like bout to pass out ‘n maybe like Thor knows exactly whats goin on so he catches her and calls 4 Loki and Loki comes in n grabs her and once they leave the room Thor explains to everyone what happened n it’s just fluff.

Summary: Every summer, you experience the worst kind of heatstrokes, so much so that you need the only Frost Giant you know to help you feel better. Luckily for you, he loves helping you.

Squares Filled: heatstroke for @badthingshappenbingo​ // healer for @marvelfluffbingo​ // showing you care without words for @fluffbingo​

Author’s Note: If you have any requests, please send them in! This is unbeta’d and any and all mistakes are all on me.

You’ve always been different than the other people on Asgard. Your father was born and raised here, but your mother came from an entirely different galaxy. She stopped at Asgard for reasons you still don’t know, met your father, fell in love, had you, then left immediately. Your father is the one who raised you, and now that you have time to think about it, it is the best thing that he could have given you. Your mother wanted to take you with her to wherever she was going, but your father fought for you.

Thank God he won because you wouldn’t have met your two best friends in the entire universe. Your father was very close to the royal family, so you practically grew up with Thor and Loki. You three did everything together--they were your best friends. However, you were always closer to Loki than with Thor.

What makes you different than everyone else on Asgard is that your mother was a fire queen. She was called that where she lived, and she happened to pass on her gene to you. Maybe that’s why she wanted to take you with her. Nonetheless, you have the exact powers as she did. Your father didn’t have any powers at all, so you take after your mother in every way possible.

While having fire powers is great, it absolutely sucks during the summer months. Your get overheated, your body goes into shock from the amount of heat you produce, no one wants to be near you when you get like this, and you suffer in silence while everyone else stays cool. Air conditioning and fans don’t help you in the slightest. The only thing that has gotten you a moment of relief is an ice bath, but that only lasts for so long because you melt all the ice.

It’s great having your powers in the winter months since you provide most of the heat to all of Asgard during that time. The other two seasons are perfect for you--not too hot yet, not too cold. It’s a pain in the ass to deal with, but there is always one thing you know for sure will work on keeping you cool.

It’s Loki.

He’s a frost giant which means he’s practically chilled to the bone. He doesn’t get hot at all, and when you two were little, he would always make fun of you for it. He’d tease you and barely give you a moment of relief before taking it all away and letting you suffer. You’d cry and beg for him to stay by you, but he’d never listen. The only way that he would is if his mother told him to stop being so mean to you.

As you grew older, that became a whole different thing completely. He didn’t get so mean whenever you asked for his company. He’d do it with a smile and let you cuddle him while he read a book. He’d keep cold thoughts and his body temperature low just so you wouldn’t suffer any longer.

This kind of became the thing that only the two of you would share. During the summer months, no one would barely see you or Loki since you two had run off to be alone. During the winter months, Loki would cling to you in a desperate attempt to get some warmth. He’s always hated his heritage and where he came from, so you do your best to distract him from that.

Through this intimate way to stay cool, you two formed a bond you’d share with no one else. Loki is your rock, the person you go to when you’re overheating, the person who would listen to all your troubles, and the person who would turn your nightmares into dreams. The longer you two stayed together, the more his feelings for you have grown.

Not only is he the only person who can keep you cool long enough, but he’s also the only one you want to do this with. If anyone else came up to you and offered to provide you with infinite coldness, you wouldn’t take it because then Loki wouldn’t get to do what he does every summer. He holds, pets your hair, tells you stories, and warms your heart.

It took you a long time to figure out what exactly he makes you feel, but you know now that it’s love. You love Loki, and despite never saying it, he knows it. You could be halfway across the universe from him and he’d still know it.

It’s not halfway, but you do spend your days on Earth with the rest of the Avengers. Loki is on Asgard, and Thor likes to come visit every once in a while, with news about Asgard and Loki. It’s peaceful to know that Loki is doing okay even though he had such bad intentions from the start. All of Asgard has forgiven him, and it looks like all of Earth is coming to that realization soon too.

You’ve only been here for almost a year, and it’s been so hectic that you hadn’t even realized it’s summer now. The average temperature in New York is 84 degrees, but it can get up to 108 degrees. There are other parts of the world that get even hotter, and you’re thankful that you’re not there during their summer months. However, New York is known for its humidity, so it makes the heat even worse with that much moisture in the air. It’s why you don’t go out at all during the summer.

Tony likes to keep his tower cool, and you’re so thankful for that. But it doesn’t stop the heat from spreading even in the chilliest of rooms. You wake up on the first day of summer just covered in sweat. You have to drink so much water because you’re sweating it all out, but there isn’t any water in your room. You’ll have to go to the kitchen if you’re going to even think about surviving in this heat.

Your steps are slow, your breathing is ragged, and your entire body is red as if you’ve been out in the sun for too long. Not yet a sunburn, but enough to let whoever looks at you know that you’re hot. You pass by the thermometer on the wall, and it says it’s 70 degrees inside the tower. 70 isn’t enough to keep you cool. You’d go to Antarctica, but you’re finding it very hard to make it to the kitchen right now.

Tony, Wanda, Natasha, Steve, Vison, and Thor are all in the kitchen just chatting away, so they don’t see you when you stumble in. Your vision is getting blurrier by the second, and your breathing is picking up. Your body temperature is increasing tremendously--almost to a point where you can cook things on your skin.

“I don’t think it counts that Vison can pick up the hammer. He’s not even a person,” Tony states.

“Do you think my magic can pick it up?” Wanda asks.

“You’re not worthy,” Steve shakes his head.

“That’s rude of you to assume,” she jokes.

“Go ahead, little witch, try. Many have and many have failed. Actually, all of them have failed,” Thor laughs.

You stumble into the closest thing near you, and that captures everyone’s attention.

“Whoa, you don’t look so good,” Tony states as everyone else gets up to help.

They don’t know you act this way since they’ve never dealt with you in the summer months before, but Thor knows this all too well. Your knees give out below you, and Thor is right by your side to catch you as soon as you fall. You’re burning his skin, but he sets you down gently before letting go of you.

“What’s wrong with her?” Natasha asks.

“Heimdall, I need Loki. It’s Y/N, she’s overheating again. Please hurry,” he says to the air.

Heimdall hears this quite clear, and he’s already sending for someone to get Loki.

“What’s going on, Thor?” Steve asks.

“Don’t touch her or you might burst into flames. It happened to me once. I’ll explain once Loki gets here but get anything that’s cold. The colder the better. Go!”

Everyone disperses at his command, and Thor moves your hair away from your face. Due to your powers activating, your hair is starting to turn into a fiery orange and red, but it’s faint. The longer you go without being cooled down, the more your hair will turn to flames. The Avengers bring you things that are cold, but none of it is enough to keep you satisfied. Everything melts too quickly as soon as it touches your skin.

Loki doesn’t take long to get to Earth as soon as he hears you’re overheating. He knows exactly where you are because he asks Heimdall every night to check up on you. He rushes into the tower and over to your unconscious body on the ground. Thor backs up to let Loki do his job while everyone else watches from behind him.

“I’ve got you, darling,” Loki whispers as he picks you up bridal style.

He briefly meets Thor’s eyes before taking you away. All the Avengers in the room look at Thor for an explanation. He begins his story with the first time you set him on fire.

Loki brings you to your bathroom so he can spoon you while in the tub. He’s afraid you might set everything on fire in your room. The bathtub is porcelain, so he doesn’t have to worry about you setting it on fire. He strips down to his boxers and you to your bra and panties. With that, he gets you and he settled into the tub with you right in front of him. He usually doesn’t do this, but he doesn’t know how long you’ve been overheating for, so he wants to make sure before he moves this to the bed.

His body is ice cold against your heated one, but it does the trick in cooling you down. He doesn’t let go of you until you open your eyes. Once your body is at a normal-ish temperature for you, you groan and sway your head to the right.

“Loki?” you whisper as you open your eyes.

“I’m right here, darling.”

“What happened? Did I overheat again?”

“I’m afraid so. Don’t worry, I came just in time. Didn’t want you to set the tower on fire,” he tries to make light of the situation.

“I missed you,” you mutter as his body cools down yours. “I don’t want you to leave.”

“I can’t for the next few months. Who knows when you might overheat again.”

“I’m serious. I don’t ever want to be apart from you again.”

“Then I’m not going anywhere,” he whispers into your ear.

He kisses the side of your head, and you sigh in relief from how cold his lips are. Maybe there’s a reason why he’s the only one who can do this for you. Maybe there’s a reason why opposites attract because you two balance each other out.

Hot and Cold.

Ice and Fire.

Two hearts as one.

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[mitigatedchaos]

Review: SAC_2045

(~3,700 words, 15 minutes)

This post will contain some minor spoilers for SAC_2045.

Summary: You may have thought SAC_2045 was a poor entry in the Ghost in the Shell franchise - actually, it's just intended for younger audiences.

Previously: Standalone Complex 202045:1-4 (superseded)

-☆☆☆-

And what did you think of the remaining episodes of GitS:SAC_2045?

[ @irradiate-space​ ]

Standalone Complex

There's a certain indescribable feeling associated with Ghost in the Shell: Standalone Complex as a work, an artistic touch related to the director associated with it, independent of other considerations. SAC_2045 has it, which isn't too surprising since Kenji Kamiyama is back.

SAC_2045 is Standalone Complex. For a brief moment, while watching it, I inhabited my pre-2016 personality and outlook. I can't tell you how much that means to me. Since the arrival of streaming I've tended to bingewatch series, but on the first run-through I decided not to bingewatch this one.

If you approach this show as season 4 of Standalone Complex (Solid State Society being season 3), it's underwhelming. Now, viewing it again, it's become obvious that a conventional season 4 of Standalone Complex was never the intent of SAC_2045 to begin with.

For those of you who have delayed until now, the English dub has been uploaded - it released without one due to the pandemic. They bring back a number of the voice actors from the excellent Standalone Complex dub, though having already watched it with subtitles, I didn't feel the need to confirm the dub's quality.

Sustainable War

To properly describe a new theory of war is the same thing as to invent it. While the idea of war as a for-profit industry has been kicked around for some time, it's generally assumed that this is a kind of parasitic relationship on the part of the war-making industry.

As time goes on, warfare becomes more abstract (partly because warfare happens where it can happen), much like society itself is becoming more abstract as information moves more quickly and humanity gains access to more energy.[1] In SAC_2045, "Sustainable War" is part of the context of the world and its current issues, but we aren't really told how it works - if it's similar to contemporary information warfare and a blurring of the lines between state and non-state actors, it's bound to be quite confusing.

I believe my earlier assessment of "Sustainable War" is correct. The key feature of sustainable war, the reason they say it's safe if you leave it to the experts, is likely that it involves AIs constantly forecasting against each other and moving units around with few direct confrontations. The goal would be to lock in a victory without having to fire a shot, except for small skirmishes that don't escalate to major incidents (due to the AI forecasting).

The presence of armed separatist movements even in Japan may also indicate that the ruling institutional bodies are engaged in a kind of Post-International Politics,[2] which treats all international relations as fundamentally existing between subnational entities - however, I believe that later information suggests this wasn't their original intent.

What makes it "sustainable"? Since if done correctly, very little is actually physically destroyed, the cost is less than conventional warfare, and thus the war can continue indefinitely. Why does it threaten humanity with destruction? Because there's an awful lot of military hardware waiting for someone to actually pull the trigger.

Season 1: Ep. 2

So what is the intent of the series' creators? I think they may be telling us through this dialogue between Togusa and Section Chief Daisuke Aramaki in episode 2.

Aramaki: Seems time has toughened you up. Togusa: Is that supposed to be a compliment? Aramaki: It is if you want it to be. Togusa: Then thanks for the kind words. “I made the right decision by choosing this line of work over my marriage.” That’s what you’re saying? Aramaki: Perhaps. [...] Togusa: They're bringing back Section 9? [...] Aramaki: But my takeaway from the proposal is this: The PM's reason for the urgent reforming of Section 9 takes priority over his personal motives. I believe his true objective is meeting the Americans' demands for the dispatch of special resources. Togusa: So it's as the Liberals feared? An American-born Prime Minister would be no more than an American puppet? Aramaki: I've yet to meet him in person, so I can't really say. But this is an opportunity to have the Major and the rest of you undertake a major operation for me once more. Togusa: What sort of op? Aramaki: Over the past few years, I have searched for an answer on how to deal with a society in turmoil. I'd like you people to lay the groundwork that will help the next generation find that answer. Togusa: I don't know what a man in my position can contribute, but I'll humbly offer whatever assistance I can.

Those of us who cried, Kamiyama, tell us the future once more! based on Standalone Complex's prophetic analysis of a memetic crime wave were bound to be disappointed. SAC_2045 is less rooted in the near future than in the now - cyberbullying, endless war amidst historic prosperity, employment suppressed by automation, savings eaten up by the complex machinations of finance, and a breakdown of national borders? That's today.

Those of us who hoped for a Ghost in the Shell: Unicorn, a psychically overpowering work that synthesizes the full body of Ghost in the Shell into a single coherent form to elevate us to a higher level of understanding, should have tempered our expectations. To reach each new philosophical level is more difficult than the last - to achieve that with Ghost in the Shell of all things would have required a multidisciplinary genius near the limits of current understanding.

Kenji Kamiyama is just an anime director. And anyhow, Gundam Unicorn was a book before it was an animated series. And who among us even knew we'd have to write a book before 2015? Ghost in the Shell was well-understood enough, so I instead wrote 25,000 words worth of hypothetical country and became a blogger, like the infamous Scott Alexander.[3]

If we approach SAC_2045 from the lens that it's a humbler work designed for younger audiences, however, some of the creative decisions make more sense.

Purin

Just how old is Purin, the MIT grad who joins the team later on? If I had to guess, that's '23歳' on that profile she provides, and Ishikawa notes that she 'skipped a few grades' on her way to a PhD. But she acts like someone a lot younger. She's enthusiastic and we're assured she's intelligent, but seems to be lacking social training. For example, she makes the mistake of assembling an era-accurate music player for Batou combined with a playlist after consulting the Tachikomas to find out what he listens to. There are two ways to take this.

The first is that she's intended as a relateable character for someone who would make this class of mistake. It's the sort of mistake I might have made at age 13-14, meaning that the show would probably be aimed at someone that age or lower. Overly enthusiastic, doesn't understand romantic relationships, impulsive, poor reading of boundaries / poor modelling of others outside of certain domains, impulsive in a way that causes social screw-ups? Yeah that could certainly apply to an ADHD kid of about that age.

And all of a sudden the tone of the first five episodes with the gun-fighting, the literal Agent Smith, the decision to place the focus in America, and even the mystery of the series being much simpler than Standalone Complex 2nd Gig's plot regarding Asian refugees in Japan make a lot more sense. This is Ghost in the Shell for kids!

Wow, I didn't think that could be done!

...is what I should say, except that around the time I acquired the ability to futurist shitpost, and I used that ability to predict that it would.

Purin II

The second reading is that the youth of the future are fucked up. She probably has some tricked out modifications, both cybernetic and genetic. Now usually you would tell someone to try to become a well-rounded human being. But...

The global economy has crashed. Batou mistakes her for a robot - creatures that look like pretty young women are a dime a dozen. In the dating market, she would be competing with full sensory immersion VR pornography on the one hand, and at the upper end of society where cybernetics are more widely available, likely women with a similar appearance but decades more experience and professional standing.

Note that in the original Standalone Complex, the team take down an 80-year-old Russian spy with the full prosthetic body of a 20-year-old. Full cyborgs aren't common then, nor are they in SAC_2045 (though cyberbrains are ubiquitous), but if the economy recovers that may change, and the sector she's trying to get in to (full-time salaried government rather than marginal private employment it would seem) is going to be very tough to enter either way.

So Purin may have to be over-optimized even to just appear on the screen. In fact, she says,

"Just so I could work at Section 9, I moved most of my sentimental memories to external storage."

Youch! It's no wonder she's socially maladjusted. Just how much of her social learning (in particular key events necessary to rebuild logical inferences on the boundaries of behavior on the fly) has she locked away?

Purin III

But you know who Purin looks like? Notorious internet personality, Gamer Girl Bath Water seller, and IRL video game character Belle Delphine.[4]

Or rather, it's the other way around - 2D animation compresses real detail into suggestive abstraction, letting your mind fill in the rest. Going from those impossible 2D shapes to 3 dimensions creates strange results, like training your machine learning algorithm on the salient features of a cat's face, applying it to human shape, and putting pink hair on the result. Belle Delphine adopts that otherworldly kind of appearance as part of her act.

Technically, this a stylistic choice. Within the framework of SAC_2045, this is what "a 23-year-old female" looks like.

Purin is in fact so non-threatening that her big red coat obscures her figure. I'm gonna go with younger audience. Now if only I could remember what pronoun she uses.[5/☆]

Motoko

With a full prosthetic body, outward signs of human-like aging are almost an artistic expression, much like in a world with cheap tissue engineering, visible scars are a choice.

When she was first introduced in the original Ghost in the Shell manga, we don't know how old Motoko Kusanagi is. It was once said that her name is analogous to "Jane Excalibur," which in English would be an obvious alias. In the first movie (from 1995), she's cool, almost cold and robotic.

In the original Standalone Complex, Motoko has a more mature personality than in the manga, but she has a clearly adult look by the standards of anime. Seriously, check out this fantastic character design (combat suit), although admittedly the better-known "leather jacket and bathing suit" design is more ridiculous, fashion-wise.[6] (Fortunately, she gets pants in her much more stylish second season outfit.)

ARISE starts off with a young Motoko Kusanagi in a chaotic post-war period before the Section 9 we know was assembled. This shows in her character design, but it really shows in her personality. This was actually why I had joked about an even earlier Ghost in the Shell.

There is a sense in which the 2017 live-action movie's Motoko is even younger. Scarlett Johansson is a killer cyborg with amnesia. She doesn't even have one day of formal combat training.

Motoko 2045

Ilya Kuvshinov designed SAC_2045's Motoko Kusanagi.

Yes, that Ilya Kuvshinov. You could be forgiven for thinking this is a teenager that hardboiled assassins Saitou and Ishikawa in the background have been hired to bodyguard.

Despite this, Atsuko Tanaka has resumed her role as Motoko's voice actress. Standalone Complex's Motoko looked 25 and felt mid-30s. SAC_2045's Motoko looks 16 and has the voice and attitude of 40.

This may make more sense than you might think.

Through Whose Eyes?

Throughout much of Ghost in the Shell as a franchise, Togusa, the only non-cyborg on the team, who is pulled from a police department instead of a military background, tends to be character used to help the people of our time relate to the future. He's the guy that doesn't know the things we also don't know, so in explaining concepts to Togusa they're explained to the audience.

In SAC_2045, most of the team are off doing cool cyborg things in America. Aramaki (whose in-world function is to create the bureaucratic environment within which Section 9 operates) tasks Togusa with finding them. The original Standalone Complex first aired in 2003. It's been 17 years since it was created - a similar situation to finding someone that reached adulthood who was born after 9/11. And during this time, Togusa's life has changed - the family man is now separated from his wife. And the world has changed - Togusa is now working for a private security firm. Togusa's role in the first five episodes isn't to guide the new viewers.

His purpose is to guide or stand-in for the old viewers.

The New Viewers

"Do you still hold a grudge against the Major and the others for leaving you behind?"

For the original viewers, SAC_2045 is your world, too. Togusa is there. Togusa is you.

The new viewers are Purin. Enthusiastic and smart but awkward and not confident in their skills. How could they measure up to these much more talented and experienced characters? (Also consider who is going to watch any sort of Ghost in the Shell - it's probably going to be a moderately bright and introverted kid, who is the kind of person that may be more comfortable socializing with people outside of their age band.)

But Motoko is visually separated from the rest of Section 9. Batou, Saitou, Ishikawa, Boma... they all have a much more adult look in keeping with their appearance in previous versions of Ghost in the Shell. What gives?

Batou is sort of a cool adult male figure - this is actually a pretty natural use of the character and his sense of humor as previously established in other Ghost in the Shell properties. We especially see this come through in 「PIE IN THE SKY - First Bank Robbery」 episode, with the old folks and the 21st century bank robbery.

Motoko's difference in appearance is because she's acting as a bridge between the two. The new viewer (as represented by Purin) is supposed to grow into being like Motoko as they gain confidence and experience. (The characters aren't each limited to a single role, of course.)

But SAC_2045 is still a work that's shared between two groups, similar to how the excellent Into the Spiderverse features both the teenage Miles Morales and an older Peter Parker that has lost his way, with the loss of the vibrant young adult Peter Parker being what starts the plot going.

The Last Quarter

With this framework, the rest of the work should express its nature as targeted at a younger audience itself. Watch the last few episodes through this lens and you'll see how much sense it makes. One takes place at a school. Even the bizarre 3D style that resembles recent video games makes more sense. If we take Togusa's earlier conversation with Aramaki as a discussion of SAC_2045 itself, later on there's even a sort of acknowledgement that Ghost in the Shell is a difficult work for someone of a young age.

So with that context in mind, does it work?

Standalone Complex

If I remember correctly, years ago, when I was perhaps 15 or 16, I was watching a tiny CRT television some time after midnight, and I saw the thirteenth episode of the original Standalone Complex - NOT EQUAL. It was like nothing I had ever seen before. I was immediately taken by it. And, from what I remember, I immediately understood it.

It was as though it were made just for me.[7]

To me, Ghost in the Shell is like a textbook. I thought that as a creator who has reached a place where I am able to be involved in that kind of work, I'm in a position where I have to convey its contents to a younger audience. Well, I knew it would be a lot of work, but I figured it would be my way of giving back to Ghost in the Shell. I thought that I needed to accept the baton and offer Ghost in the Shell to a young audience, to the same degree that Ghost in the Shell raised me to be who I am.

- Tow Ubukata, in a 2015 interview, regarding ARISE

For many people, Ghost in the Shell is a profound influence. I felt that it lifted me to a new level of understanding.

SAC_2045

But what about SAC_2045?

I can't view Ghost in the Shell with new eyes. When I first saw it, I wasn't the kind of person that casually memes futuristic ethical dilemmas as a means of practicing politics.

Compared to the anime I watched back when I was 13, would I have watched SAC_2045? Yes. Is it more philosophically and politically sophisticated? Yes. Would I have found it memorable? I think so.

Would a 13-year these days watch it? That's difficult to assess. I bet someone who does data science for Netflix could tell us, if they wanted. I'm sure Kenji Kamiyama and Shinji Aramaki are considering the same thing.

2017

How does it stack up compared to the rest of the franchise?

For most enthusiasts it's going to be one of the weaker entries, though it certainly does a better job explaining itself than ARISE.

Compare it to 2017's live action movie, however, and I think we'll find it isn't the weakest. The reason is that the writers of Ghost in the Shell (2017) decided to tell a story about bodily consent in which becoming a cyborg is a form of trauma. On some level this may have been a reasonable decision, but they didn't commit to the concept sufficiently fully to execute it well enough to carry the movie - and simultaneously, they dumbed down parts of the regular Ghost in the Shell material for American audiences. As a result the movie flopped both financially and artistically - except for the visuals.

In fact, I wrote a sequence of posts (1, 2, 3, 4) on how to rewrite the live action movie as an actual Ghost in the Shell property. I feel no need to do so for SAC_2045 - and I can't even think of what changes would need to be made.

I look forward to the second season.

-☆☆☆-

[1] It's short, but that's a concept in this post. "Advanced by Left-Wing theorists, Ninth Generation warfare sees all acts as existing on a spectrum of political violence. Most acts of ninth generation warfare consist of extreme pranks."

[2] If we accept the idea of "Fifth-Generation Warfare" as motivated by a desire to prevent the enemy from using their conventional military assets, then a corresponding theory of international politics would involve preventing enemy factions within foreign governments from taking control of those governments' institutions - effectively treating all countries as in continuous level of conflict analogous to a soft civil war.

[3] There is a kind of technique to this, but in my case I substituted ADHD for raw IQ and conscientiousness, which is part of why my posts are so much shorter than, for instance, Moldbug's. In any case, technically, Scott's blog posts on the matter amount to roughly a mere 11,600 words, and the book of the black forest amounts to approximately 26,000 words (which I'm told is entertaining reading), but I'm sure if we go looking we can find an additional 15,000 words worth of worldbuilding from a man known for writing 16,000 word blog posts.

[4] Would it be more of a legal liability to sell regular water with GGBW branding, or actual GGBW that could prove to be a potential health hazard?

[5/☆] There's some future strand lurking beneath the surface here that I can't quite put into words; a culturally divergent moe meltdown where an appearance this ridiculous becomes normalized among some sub-population. To quote the Funko Pop Hatred post,

There are questions about the anatomy of anime people and their internal organs, and particularly about what sort of impact-dampening alien meta-material their softer bits are made out of, but at least homo sapiens gokuensis looks like it’s a branch off a similar starting hominid! Whatever transhuman engineering company was responsible for manufacturing the creatures in the typical harem anime has some weird ideas about human beings, but we’re clearly in their ancient lineage somewhere.

Under Late Safetyism, everyone is a declawed catgirl.

Anyhow, I don't want to alarm you, but I can't guarantee that this won't be the future somewhere. Both Purin and Belle Delphine resemble Xiaoice, "The AI Girlfriend Seducing China's Lonely Men." (2020)

[6] Motoko's ridiculous outfits are a major flex on the non-cyborgs, who aren't indifferent to ambient temperature and whose natural bodies may have unflattering features. Similarly wild fashions can exist in places like Second Life, a 3D digital platform with mostly user-uploaded content. Presumably they're also a flex on every Japanese salaryman who still has to dress like a normal guy.

[7] "It's as though it were made just for me" is also how I feel about the original game Mirror's Edge. Its follow-up, Catalyst, is also a personal favorite of mine.

[a-crimson-lion]

A Look At Bakudeku’s Development (Based On That One Instagram Post): A Photo-Narrative Analysis

Word Count: 4,287 (Yikes…)

[This got long. Like, REALLY long. Don't expect too many colors. There's a lot to get through...]

For those out of the loop, I recently came across this Instagram post during unhealthy hours in the morning. The purpose of this post, I’d assume, was to debunk any negativity aimed at the Bakudeku dynamic/ship, claiming it was indeed not abusive and that the antis in question are ignoring canon in favor of playing Bakugo’s suicide instigation on repeat. Before addressing the post in question, I would like to state two things:

I am not stuck on Chapter/Episode 1 in the series. I have been caught up proper with every story arc up to the JT Training Arc and am roughly familiar with everything past that point. I don’t just take Katsuki’s now essentially forgotten suicide instigation into account; I’m taking every part of his actions well beyond that moment and how they reflect on him, internally justified or otherwise.

While I’m among the people who believe that Bakudeku as of the latest incarnation of the manga (up to Ch. 280) is indeed abusive, I am open to discussions on why it is not. In any case, however, I cannot ignore the fact that the dynamic/ship is incredibly problematic besides the skeletons in both Izuku and Katsuki’s closets.

So, in order to address this issue to the best of my half-awake brain’s abilities, I will review the screenshots within said post and break down how they factor into the Bakudeku dynamic and the overall development. Be aware that there are some manga and movie spoilers, and this is just MY OPINION. I could be wrong, and I’m okay with that. If you wanna talk without patronizing me, the comments are open. I also apologize in advance if I myself come of as patronizing. All the screenshots I’ll be discussing can be found in the video link above (or here).

Well then, no point in beating around the bush...

1) Izuku Taking Katsuki Out Of The Final Exam Gate (Anime Screenshot)

The first piece of “evidence” used to show the merit of Bakudeku comes from the Final Exam arc, shortly after Katsuki succumbs to All Might’s assault, only for Izuku to come in and deck the #1 Hero in order to grab Katsuki and carry him to safety, allowing them both to pass.

However, this photo marks a recurring trend throughout some of the other photos: they speak more about IZUKU as a character than Izuku AND Katsuki.

Izuku getting to save Katsuki is a major development… for Izuku. One that we’ve seen before. Think about it. The first time Izuku saves Katsuki towards the beginning of the exam, he has to punch Katsuki in the face because he was considering throwing the match just for working with Izuku. And after he’s been saved, Katsuki blows up (figuratively and literally) before aggressively kabedoning him. In this scene though? Katsuki got knocked the f*** out, so he really has no room to protest if Izuku comes in to save him a second time.

Plus, this isn’t really anything NEW with Izuku. We know that he’s aware in an abstract sense that what Katsuki did to him was “wrong,” but he doesn’t hold a grudge or any animosity to him towards that. He’s one of Katsuki’s biggest defenders and supporters, assuming Katsuki allows it. So really, him saving Katsuki isn’t really surprising or a major step forward, ‘cause he was always willing to do it from the get go. And again, Katsuki isn’t conscious during his second rescue, so we don’t really know if he would have let Izuku save him again or if he would have protested.

There’s nothing new here, and nothing balanced to the overall dynamic. Just Izuku being Izuku.

2) All Might Acknowledges The New Bakudeku Rivalry (Anime Screenshot)

Deku vs Kacchan 2 was a big moment for the Bakudeku dynamic. I’m not saying it’s a positive moment, nor am I saying it was necessary, but it was big. And in the aftermath of that fight, where Izuku and Katsuki are having a back and forth, All Might thinks to himself that the two have become true rivals now, or something along those lines. And it’s nice that he’s willing to spell this out for the audience and all, but uh…

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: show, don’t tell.

All Might is essentially telling us that Izuku and Katsuki are rivals now. What does the story have to show for it? A brief conversation during their house arrest, followed by a massive stall due to the Shie Hassaikai Arc and Cultural Festival Arc (albeit with one more instance we’ll cover later), and then what essentially equates to Katsuki yelling at Izuku a lot during the Joint Training Arc.

...that’s ...not much.

And yeah, you could expect me to be a good bean to the author and wait until the later arcs, but even then, the execution… just falls kinda flat, at least for me. Going back to that particular moment with All Might’s thought process, it kind of reminds me of Eraserhead essentially acting as a mouthpiece for the Ochako vs Katsuki fight during the Sports Festival, but that’s a can of worms I won’t be indulging today.

What I’m getting at is this: All Might letting the audience know that Bakudeku have reached rival status is great! Now if only the series could deliver more on that...

3) Standing With Two One For Alls (Heroes Rising)

Okay, seriously, if you haven’t seen Heroes Rising yet, I implore you, GO. WATCH IT. It is an incredible film and I would recommend it with warm words. And I’ll admit, it gives us a better incarnation of Bakudeku compared to the rest of the series.

Yes, I said “better,” not “great.”

Look, I’m all for Izuku and Katsuki working past their differences and the clusterf*** that was their childhood, and maybe Horikoshi not being as integrally involved with the film’s writing as people think he is has something to do with it, but uh… you do not say “put myself as low as to working with Deku” or something like that and expect to be casually tossed aside, at least if you’re me. And while I’m glad there was some genuine emotional tension as Izuku gave Katsuki OFA, some part about it feels… off. Like, nothing was really truly resolved. Katsuki wasn’t given OFA as a sign of forgiveness, as an acknowledgement. Katsuki was given OFA because there was an AFO level villain about to wreck the place and kill some peeps and oh look, the narrative made it so that Katsuki was the only convenient holder around! It kinda stings when you look at it that way.

Not that it matters, because a big thing most people forget is that at the end of this movie, THE ENTIRE THING IS ESSENTIALLY SWIPED ACROSS THE DESK AND ON THE FLOOR. Even if it was going to have some level of effort towards the development of the dynamic, that effort is essentially GONE because Katsuki doesn’t remember SQUAT, and what happens to OFA after the fight is NEVER DISCUSSED. It’s just a hard reset, BOOM, back to normal. *Sigh*

Really, the whole double OFA thing was for convenience, less so for any emotional leveling up that could have been done. And even then, Izuku is still somehow the one putting more emotional input into the entire thing than Katsuki.

4) “I Thought You Were Gonna Get Ahead Of Me!” (Anime Screenshot)

Katsuki’s methods of motivation are… admittedly not for everyone. They seem to work fine for Izuku, as seen sometime after the Cultural Festival Arc, but again, that’s just Izuku. We know how he takes Katsuki’s words and turns it into motivation, but why does Katsuki bother at all?

Well, maybe this comes with desperately trying to find reasons to like a character but progressively despising him and his narrative placement more and more as time progresses, but here’s my angle on it: Katsuki just doesn’t want Izuku dragging his weight for nothing.

Keep in mind, we’re talking about the same Katsuki who held a grudge against Shoto for holding back during the Sports Festival. The same Katsuki who wanted the #1 Hero to go all out and would continuously press to fight him. The same Katsuki who wanted to fight a deadly villain even after being instructed to get back to camp for his own safety. The same Katsuki who challenged Izuku to a fight to finally determine where the gap was, and who was frustrated when he won because the power Izuku possessed was All Might’s, so clearly he shouldn’t have lost.

In short, Katsuki doesn’t like it when people don’t give it their all. And I believe it’s been stated once or twice that once Izuku makes One For All his own, there’s a good chance they’re gonna fight again. So it’s in Katsuki’s best interest to make sure Izuku isn’t half-assing anything, because he wants to prove he can beat Izuku at his best, thus proving that KATSUKI is the best.

So it’s less so for Izuku’s benefit as it is for Katsuki’s own.

5) One Giant Leap (Heroes Rising)

Arguably one of the best moments of the entire Heroes Rising film amongst the fandom is the big handhold scene between Katsuki and Izuku as they make a last gambit effort to take down Nine with two One for Alls. Admittedly this is one of the best if not the best moment throughout the entire progression of the Bakudeku dynamic thus far. I’ll give it that much.

...which makes it all the more frustrating because again: MIND. WIPE. The audience knows it happened, but in canon we never know if Izuku discusses it with Katsuki or if anyone else was aware of the moment in greater specificity. IT ESSENTIALLY NEVER HAPPENED, and I’m starting to legitimately wonder whether or not it was for the best...

6) Datte Atashi No Hero (Anime Screenshot)

First off: how? Second off: huh?

Believe me, the second ending of Season 3 is an absolute bop, don’t get me wrong, but uh… again, it provides NOTHING balanced for Bakudeku, once again relying on Izuku’s perspective on the entire matter. I once read an interesting meta about this ending and how it could be interpreted (take this with a grain of salt), but the biggest contender is that this is in fact Izuku’s fantasy. Think about it:

Izuku is a humble traveling warrior, with nothing to distinguish himself in his own opinion.

Ochako is a magician because she’s alien to Izuku, an unheard of phenomenon.

Tenya being a knight, Shoto being a prince, and Momo being a warrior princess all correlates to their high standings in society, heroic or otherwise.

The reason Katsuki is a barbarian king is because he’s familiar to Izuku in an ancient sense; he’s known him for a long time. The list goes on, but you get the jist.

With this in mind, it’s not difficult to understand that even Katsuki willing to work with Izuku would be another aspect of Izuku’s fantasy: to be able to stand beside his childhood friend once more. And remember the ending of that scene, when Izuku does that big sword slash? That’s him having fully mastered OFA. Both are things that could happen given the manga’s recent direction, but still have yet to happen because this is, again, a fantasy.

And apparently Datte Atatshi No Hero is a reflection on Izuku’s feelings towards Katsuki. Take that as you will, but again, this does not speak for Bakudeku as a whole. Just Izuku’s feelings on the matter.

7) Win to Save, Save to Win (Manga Screenshot)

Since I’ve already penned myself into a short story at this point, might as well take the time to look at this famous phrase from the story.

Personally, I consider it bulls***. It harms both characters overall; yes, I said both. It excuses Katsuki’s need to be a blunt powerhouse that only targets villains, and it redundantly demands Izuku do more of what he was already doing, albeit with less sympathy. I know it sounds corny to say saving is more important than winning, but in the heat of the moment, what gets to the civilians in danger more often? Seeing a guy in a cape deck the latest disaster right in front of them or from a distance? Or said cape guy risking life and limb making sure that this person gets to see life another day?

There’s no perfect answer to it, but that’s my stance.

And this quote, “Win to save, save to win,” justifies the one thing that keeps Katsuki from truly outgrowing his past: his need to be the best. If winning is on the same level then saving, and Izuku has an innate capacity to save, then that means it’s okay for Katsuki to have to win all the time, right?

No. It’s not. And that’s not speaking for all the “Gary Stu” crap, either.

Because being pressured into being the best is what caused Katsuki to hate any kindness offered to him by Izuku. The desire to be the best had him bully Izuku for a decade to ensure that Izuku remained the loser and Katsuki remained the winner. That desire characterizes arguably the worst aspects of Katsuki’s character, and those aspects aren’t gonna fly in the Pro Hero world. Because if Nana Shimura, Shota Aizawa, the Pussycats, Mirio, Sir Nighteye, and a handful of other incidents have taught us anything, it’s that even at their best efforts, heroes don’t win all the time.

Katsuki needs to learn this, or it will crush him in the long term. But he hasn’t. The narrative has kept letting him rack up wins, and his current actions in the manga were spurred on by the fact that he still has yet to truly take a loss.

Say what you will, but I don’t like this line. For what it says about Izuku or Katsuki.

8) The Only One Who Can Accept His Feelings… (Anime Screenshot)

Me @ #7: Wanna see me go off?

Me @ #8: Wanna see me do it again?

Izuku’s perspective on the entire Bakudeku situation is a major reason why most fans condone it. “Izuku doesn’t appear obviously bothered by Katsuki, so that clearly means it’s not abusive/problematic, so just shut up!” or something like that. Well, I’m no psychologist, so I won’t go into a spiel about people ignoring their pain for the sake of others or people trying to excuse others in order to place fault on themselves whether or not it be accurate.

Really, all I can say is that NONE OF THIS should be Izuku’s responsibility.

I’m not blaming this on Izuku because he hasn’t had actual friends or a healthy support system in a long while, but the fact that he decides to take on and enable Katsuki in his element just… doesn’t sit well with me. The logical conclusion would be talking, not throwing hands. I don’t care if they’re “distressed teenagers,” neither of them should be doing this, and Katsuki was fully aware that the teachers would stop them in the first place; that’s not simply adults meddling in what isn’t their business. Katsuki should have really figured out by now that maybe the best course of action is to actually vent to someone without blowing their face off, and I get that he’s absolute s*** at feelings, but really, that’s more of a red flag that he needs to actually get help. And if you think a little too hard on Izuku’s feelings of the matter, well…

Imagine being ostracized for so long that you lose all sense of self worth.

Imagine being told time and again that your worthless, which checks out for you because clearly if your worthless, the guy that enabled that mindset is obviously better than you, and he’s entitled to use you for his own ends.

That’s what I get from this scene.

And again, this is all from IZUKU at this point; virtually NOTHING from Katsuki.

9) Double Detroit Smash (Heroes Rising)

I’ve already said my piece about the film. At this point, it’s beating a dead horse with a stick. Moving on.

10) Word of God (Miscellaneous)

Here’s the thing about Word of God in fandom: the general consensus is that it’s nice to get confirmation from a credible source, but unless it is portrayed in canon, it’s just more words which may or may not be true.

In this case, Kohei Horikoshi, the mangaka for BNHA, is saying that eventually, Katsuki will have to apologize to Izuku. Eventually.

As in, it still hasn’t happened yet.

As in, Katsuki still has yet to decide that what he did in the past was wrong and he should try to fix it.

As in, it currently shows no bearing towards Katsuki’s current character nor the overall Bakudeku dynamic.

Sure, it MIGHT happen, but in another interview (or mayhaps it’s the same one), Horikoshi stated that Katsuki originally wasn’t intended to get as much screen time as he did. Both of these situations are different of course, but with the recent turbulence of the War Arc shaking up the manga, is it really so hard to believe that an apology might slip away from Katsuki’s thought process?

On the bright side, an apology could happen. But until it’s canon, then it’s only a possibility, and therefore can’t be used fully for the intended argument.

11) X-Catapult Handhold (Heroes Rising)

I bet some people working on the movie and some fans on the movie felt spoiled when they included not one, but two handholding scenes for Izuku and Katsuki.

And while the first handhold is certainly a marvel of battle tactics, again, there isn’t much else going on with it. Is it nice to see Katsuki working with Izuku again? Yes, but contrary to popular belief, it doesn’t go past that. Katsuki’s just willing to work with Izuku, full stop. He’d probably be willing to work with anyone because Nine is f***ing tank. And sure, getting a handhold tease is nice, but it’s only to facilitate Katsuki’s subsequent yeeting of Izuku at Nine in an attempt to do damage. Nothing more pressing about the circumstances of their past or anything like that.

12) A Bit of Advice (Anime Screenshot)

Look, this is one of the tamer, better looks at Izuku and Katsuki’s relationship. He’s willing to put his pride aside and give Izuku some advice. But remember what I said earlier in #4?

It’s not just to make sure Izuku gets better, but so Katsuki can feel like it’s a complete win when he beats his ass.

And if we take the line “It pisses me off” into account, we can look at that flaw from the same angle. Remember, Izuku has All Might’s power, the #1 Hero’s power. To Katsuki, that means he shouldn’t have the luxury of making mistakes. But Izuku does. He makes mistakes, and Katsuki sees them and he doesn’t get to exploit them. He still wins, but not because of those mistakes. And part of that pisses Katsuki off. Izuku shouldn’t get to slack. So, Katsuki gives him some advice. Advice that will no doubt help Izuku in the long run, for his (and Katuki’s) sakes. It’s a good outcome from a not very good reason...

13) Have You Made That Borrowed Power Your Own? (Manga Screenshot)

Yeah, no.

I don’t care if Izuku is used to this treatment, it still isn’t reinforcing an overall positive tone.

I don’t care if Katsuki acknowledges at some level that Izuku’s power is becoming his own, he still has the gall to say it was no wonder he passed BECAUSE of his power. Which may be true, but it’s not like Izuku was relying on it 100%, and lowkey comes off as Quirkist.

All it tells me is that Katsuki is starting to acknowledge Izuku, in the “gadfly I can’t get off my back” sort of way. Is this the “best development” y’all are rooting for? Basic acknowledgement of another human being?

14) Outta My Way Punk! (Manga Screenshot)

Katsuki reflexively tells Izuku to get out of his way.

Izuku is used to it, again, that does not excuse it.

Once again, Katsuki reverts back to his usual behavior instead of showing a more subtle approach to show the audience that maybe he’s changing beyond what a chorus of other characters saying “he’s changed!” has to offer.

...even if it’s not abusive, you can’t really say that’s a “good” relationship, either.

15) Blackwhip Training (Manga Screenshot)

Katsuki willing to train with Izuku to help him master his Quirk(s) is nice.

Still blatantly in his element with lots of needless yelling and dominance assertion, but still nice.

And keep in mind, right after it’s clear they aren’t getting anywhere and Izuku tries to rationalize it, Katsuki decides to dip seeing as it’s not worth his time anymore. And even before that, at least in my translation, Katsuki seems to be more interested in beating out Blackwhip instead of having Izuku get a handle on.

Again, maybe not abusive, but not exactly supportive, either.

16) ??? (Anime Screenshot)

I personally have no idea what they were going for with this screenshot, but if I had to guess, that’s after Katsuki gives Izuku an escape window whilst he faces off against All Might alone during their Final Exams.

While I understand that this is early on in their dynamic’s development, the fact still stands that Katsuki still wants to fight for fighting’s sake. He may have been willing to at least give Izuku a chance, but he still sees Izuku’s retreat as cowardly, even though it’s a perfectly valid way to pass the exam. He still just wants to fight.

There’s no mutuality in that sense.

17) Quote from Justin Briner (Miscellaneous)

I don’t have much of an opinion for Izuku’s English VA, but for what it’s worth, I think overall he’s a really cool dude. The same, however, cannot be said for his quote.

I can buy into Izuku wanting to get stronger because of Katsuki, since that is a major plot point. I can’t do the same for Katsuki seeing the good in people because we don’t ever see it, really? In fact, it’s more like people latch on to Katsuki and he just tolerates them until they’ve completely wormed their way into his life. There’s no scene where Katsuki considers someone a good person because of something Izuku did, or anything even vaguely along those lines, at least to my knowledge.

As for their relationship, there have been more downs than ups, and it isn’t relatable to me in the slightest. Maybe that’s just ‘cause I don’t get the overall appeal, but their friendship never really strikes me as a… well, friendship. You could argue that’s the point and that’s what makes them different and interesting, but I would much rather we see more concrete proof of their relationship being at more understandable highs and lows while actually demonstrating it was mutual.

But again. That’s just me.

18) Joint Training Pep Talk (Manga Screenshot)

I’m basically repeating myself at this point. Katsuki might be keeping tabs on Izuku, but again, it’s not entirely for Izuku’s benefit. He just wants to make sure his new “rival” (successor to the #1 Hero, I might add) isn’t dragging his feet through the mud and actually getting s*** done so their eventual third clash will actually be worth his time.

...this relationship is so one-sided in two entirely different ways, I swear.

19) Speaking With Kacchan So Naturally (Manga Screenshot)

Why are we congratulating Katsuki for adding one more person to his already (surprisingly) sizable tolerance pile?

Why are we congratulating Izuku for bridging a gap other people managed to cross with little to no effort even though he didn’t do anything wrong?

Izuku is essentially saying “Good job on me for finally getting the same treatment as everyone else from that one person after over ten years.” Good on him, but uh… that’s not exactly a landmark worth framing the way the fandom does...

The relationship might not be outright abusive, but HOO BOY the bar has never been set lower...

20) “You’ve got a good friend in him” (Manga Screenshot)

And finally, the pièce de résistance. Which is really more narrative mouthpiece-ing.

Even before that, Katsuki yet again can’t take a compliment from Izuku for whatever reason. Yet again, Izuku just shrugs off all of Katsuki’s discouragement, intentional or otherwise. And I love me some Dadmight as much as the next guy, but really, does he have a good grasp on relationships? His only friends in his life were David and Naomasa, and he’s been shown time and time again to not be the infallible man many think he is due to being the Symbol of Peace? But suddenly he goes “Bakudeku rights” and y’all jump on that with no room for argument?

Katsuki has yet to prove what All Might has been saying. Again, telling rather than showing, therefore removing the meaning from the entire thing. Unless Katsuki proves otherwise, I call bulls***.

-------------------------------------------------------

So, my final verdict? Bakudeku is fine. It’s just not as great as the rest of you are making it out to be. I’m not gonna dictate whatever you ship or what you enjoy, that’s not my place, but at least keep these perspectives in mind. You don’t have to believe them, but just… stay aware, y’know?

Alrighty, I’ve wasted enough of your time. If you’ve read it until the very end, then… thanks. Carry on.

-Crimson Lion (10 August 2020)

[himbo-buckley]

Sex, Intimacy and Buddie (better known as I have a lot of feelings about this show, some of which are related to the before mentioned topics) - Part 4

Ciao, ragazzi,

i bims, die Kriz and I will be your tourguide today. (Yes, we’re on first name basis now, congratulations, kid, ya’ll earned it!)

Okay, so I rewrote this intro like 5 times by now. 3B has been so hard on me in a way that the rest hasn’t been. While I was writing 3A I had so many thoughts and ideas and conclusions from the get go, my main worry was to fit it all in and to make it coherent. And it took me a while to get there with 3B - but don’t worry, my friends, I did not disappoint and it is just as long as part 3, despite Tim Minear   personally coming to my home and vibe checking me for saying he had daddy issues. Which is fair, tbh. Sorry bro, I’ll stop calling you out like that. (No, I won’t.)

Also if you need a „quick“ refresher of what happened so far or you just forgot, here are:

part one - part two - part three

And also, the usual spiel:

This meta was supposed to be a lot shorter and only talk about how both Buck and Eddie use sex to distract their respective partners from whatever topic they actually wanted to talk about but since I decided to rewatch the show to make sure I don’t miss any such scenes, it has exploded a bit and taken on more topics

I should also mention that I am a Buddie shipper and while I tried, you will find several references and arguments for the ship in this Meta, not all of which necessarily call for a romantic pairing but just: These two are deeply connected and you cannot look at one without discussing the other and they are each other’s strongest emotional connection.

I should also preface this by saying that the whole of the 118 has some obvious intimacy / commitment issues except Bobby (which is sort of surprising) but *John Mulaney voice* we don’t have time to unpack all of that!

On another note I cuss a little in this Meta because my parents let me listen to TicTacToe as a small child and after that it never stuck that cussing is wrong so, uhm, parental supervision is advised or something

This Meta will so far have FIVE parts now. The original plan was to do three, one for each Season, and have it organised by episode so you could technically follow along (which is still true), but due to personal reasons, also known as *feelings*, Season 3 had exploded disproportionately and for readability reasons I have split it in three parts - there is part 3 which ends with the Christmas Episode, part 4 which spans what aired of 3B so far and the final part 5 which will include the final and my conclusion, if by then I am able to form thoughts again / still

Alright you guys, drumrolls please: part 4 (also called „*butterfly meme* Is this growth?“)

Episode 3.11:

I wanna be honest with ya’ll, Season 3B is sort of a mixed bag for me, because while yes, all the episodes have been great viewed separately, they just feel so … separate from each other, and with 3A having so many episode-spanning arks, it’s a bit of a letdown to return to the standalone episode format. Especially because it makes the whole two steps forward one step back thing so much more apparent as it feels like what happens in one episode has no consequence for the next. It felt a little like they burned through too much in 3A already and didn’t know where to go from there. Which is also true for me, so maybe I should stop judging.

Anyways, I’ll stop bringing the house down now.

Let’s continue with: Don’t you just love stan-ing two adorable, complicated badass firefighters? Yeah, me too.

Also, I wanna see the Doc again. Tim, can we? He could be friends with Frank? We could see them have tea and talk about those dumbasses at the firehouse? (And also legs, since, you know, Frank only has one?)

And also the bank guy, Harrison was fun. (This whole episode was.)

And I know it has nothing to do with Eddie or Buck or Intimacy or Sex (okay a little with those) but I do wanna point you to that damn meatball scene, because it’s so chaotic? First, why are all the ingredients laid out on the table but Maddie is making balls already only to then cover them in water? Look, I’m basically vegan (haha, how long do you think I’ve waited to shoehorn this in here) and haven’t cooked meat since I was … fourteen, probably? And even to me that just seemed wrong! Not to mention AFTER touching raw meat, Maddie only cleans her hands with a towel before opening the door? You used to be a nurse, Madeleine / Maddison! (Do we know her full name? I feel like we don’t.)

One thing I really love about 3B (so far) is how happy and settled my main man Edmundo Diaz is. It’s in the eyes, you guys! I don’t know if it’s a Ryan thing or a deliberate acting choice but whatever it is it translates well (haha, well, yeah, we’ll talk about that one later) into his character and it really makes you feel like Eddie is so much better. Like for all the analysis of Eddie I’ve been doing, I didn’t notice how much colder he grew since the beginning of Season 2 until this episode came and suckerpunched me with the warmth in his eyes. Good god, proceed with caution! Oliver could call me right now and say „Look, Buddie isn’t real, I just keep getting lost in Ryan’s eyes.“ and I wouldn’t even be mad, I’d just be like „How’d you get this number?“. (It was Tim, wasn’t it? Damn it, we talked about this, mate! I wanna meet his cat, not him!)

The episode doesn’t hold a lot of relevance in terms of this meta (aside from some parallels I’ll talk about in a moment) but I still want to discuss it a little bit because it means a lot to me. I just love Howard „Chimney“ Han with all my heart.

I wanna say something controversial now because we’re 500 words in and I feel like I haven’t made you regret reading my rambling yet, so here is controversial thought of the day #1: All these fucking characters are grey as fuck except Howie. Howie is good to the bone. He is the goodest boy. He is so gentle and sweet and non malicious and yes, I am including Evan in my list of grey characters because he pulled some SHIT! Okay, a little bit of shit. Things have been *implied*! (I don’t even know anymore. Maybe he’s just off-white or something.)

And what’s the worst my best friend Howard „Chimney“ Han has done on this show? Lied to his girlfriend a buncha times so she likes him better? I lie all the time. I just lied to my mother 5 minutes ago (Yes, Mom, I’m working on my thesis.)! And Howie just lied to make someone like him better. That’s not bad, that’s horrible self esteem!

Which brings me to another thing I wanna say because thank you, Jennifer Love Hewitt. If anyone from the cast gets to call me, it’s you, because you clearly had your thinking pants on when you took one look at Chimney and said: I want that one! You a real one and I will name check you on my way to heaven - not, that they’ll let me in, but the thought counts?

Now, lets talk about those parallels I mentioned before:

The Hans vs. the Buckleys.

Now, we still don’t know a lot about Mr. and Mrs. Buckley and what exactly made them bad parents (though I’m firmly team a little neglectful but not abusive) but we know a lot about Mr. Han.

One thing of the bat I wanna mention is that this episode confirms that Maddie at least had a hand in raising Buck - which doesn’t actually have to mean too much, because based on JLHs age, her relationship with Dough and the way their sibling relationship is played it’s safe to assume that Maddie is supposed to be between 5-10 years older than Buck (assuming she started nursing school after High School at around 18 / 19, which I think takes 4 years in the US? And she was an ER nurse for 8 years, making her AT LEAST 30 in Season 2, but considering how she emphasised that Buck noticed something was wrong with Dough even as a teenager and she met Dough at 19, I’m gonna assume Buck was younger then 16 because Dough won’t have shown his abusive tendencies right of the bat, so probably about 12 / 13, making Maddie like 6 years older than him? And since we DO have a definite age for Evan, Maddie is probably around 33 in Season 2 (which also works because they wanted to put her and Eddie in a relationship and Ryan Guzman is in his early 30 as well). And look, as the youngest child of two people I would call more than adequate parents I can tell you: older siblings always have a hand in raising you, especially when the age difference exceeds 4 years. One of my sisters is 5 years older than me and I was more scared of telling her about having a bad grade than I was of my parents, so…

Anyways, back to what is actually happening in the episode and how it both parallels and contrasts the Buckleys and Hans.

Like Maddie and Howie are the older siblings and Buck and Albert are the younger siblings, yet Buck and Howie are paralleled as are Maddie and Albert. Also, Howie resents his brother for the relationship he assumes Albert has with their father, but Maddie recognises that Buck probably had similar experiences growing up as she did. Of course one could argue that Howie and Albert never had a relationship before while Buck and Maddie grew up together, but look, Maddie was in an abusive relationship for quite a while and hadn’t been in contact with her brother for 3 years prior to Season 2 but it’s safe to assume they didn’t have too close of a relationship before that either, or the Buck we know would have gone to Maddie to investigate and find out why she dipped. So…

(Despite all of this, Maddie knew she could come to her brother for help in Season 2 meaning one, our boy is such a good boy always and the Buckleys can’t be all bad if Maddie knows she can count on her brother, meaning she didn’t think her parents screwed him up too much in the time since she moved out and gradually left his life. Just another thought.)

I also love how her firm believe in the strength and meaning of familial relationships triggers a shift in Howie. Please keep this in mind for when we discuss 3.16 in a few minutes, friends.

Also that kitchen scene has all my heart. They really said kitchens are a Buddie thing now, didn’t they? (Also from a non shipper perspective, Maddie and Buck are just the sweetest and for a TV show actually fairly realistic siblings. At least if I compare them to my siblings and I.)

Also in terms of the actually topic of my meta’s: this is our first indicator that Eddie considers the 118 his family. And we have another moment of Chimney seeking reassurance / being open with Eddie. I love that they have a friendship like that. (He was so excited about meeting Chimneys brother as well. A little bit puppy and like another reason why Evan and him are friends. (As if we need more)) Also love that Eddie is secure enough to voice these feelings!

(Eddie really does seem so healed in this episode? So open? And happy? Damn, Frank, you know your shit! My man had some growth.)

Now, for some sidenotes to round off this episode, because I have some and I wanna share them:

On the Buckley parents, I think the episode wants to imply that they had plans for Buck? Maybe career wise? Because in the pool scene he says something along the lines of: „Sometimes you have to put / get a little distance“ and since it’s been implied that Buck is also from Pennsylvania or somewhere close by, we can assume that he was talking about himself here. Like he moved all the way across the continent.

I’m also just gonna throw out a prediction for Season 4: since Nia is only a foster child and like 2 years old, it’s safe to assume that she has been only recently taken in. While I do not know the US-Foster system, I do have some knowledge about the German system, so I’ll just predict that either one or both of the birth parents try to get their child back.

Or they just sort of forget about all of this by Season 4.

And I really really really dislike the cancer storyline and how the show is handling it, at least in this episode, specifically in regards to May, who in my opinion, has been both written and treated by the show as someone younger than 18 here, only for the show to then turn around and go all: wow, such an adult, look how wise she is. So awesome. Like nah, son! 3A has shown that she is much maturer than she was treated in this episode.

And Eddie finally got to say „seen this before“ again. I feel like he says that a lot. Should I start a counter for that too or do ya’ll just wanna think about him naked for a bit? (I know, you guys, I know! Should I befriend someone who can make me a bunch of gifs of shirtless Eddie I can pepper in every time we get to heavy around here?)

Episode 3.12:

Ah, yes, „Fools“! The one episode I have to say I can not look at without wearing my shipper goggles. So be warned.

Which is why I’m gonna start with the elephant in the room: Ana Flores.

Now, I’ve seen (and maybe liked / reblogged / queued / drafted (Idk anymore, I’m up to 600 posts in my drafts, 300 in my queue and like 300 liked / reblogged already)) an interview with Ryan Guzman where he talks about Ana and how he isn’t sure yet wether they are heading for romance and how it needs someone incredibly badass to get through Eddie’s defences, because Eddie is barely over his wife’s death and yeah, that!
Look, if you’re here, I’m gonna assume you have read the other three parts of this „meta“ and therefore know that I am a proud member of the Shannon Diaz - defense squad and will fight anyone who says a bad word about her. And you will also know that I attribute most of the stupid things Eddie did in 3A to the fact that Shannon died. So there. All caught up.

Now, as for Ana Flores herself (and I’m writing this after 3.16, so who knows what happens next): She might be in Season 4 (I think the interview said something about it or she tweeted something) but I don’t think it has been confirmed yet? So considering what Ryan said they probably won’t end up in a relationship by the end of Season 3 (again, please remember when I am writing this).

I’m not gonna comment on the actress aside from saying, damn, I wish that were me! Other than that? I don’t really care about actors unless I think they are hot and then it’s more of a: uiiii, me like-y. (Madeleine Patch, call me!)

As for the actual scenes, well, I have mixed feelings.

On the one hand side, as I’ve said before, I work with children and the idea of dating the father of one of my babies is just plain wrong to me. So there is that. Morally speaking that storyline would be trash. (And very OOC for Mr. „My son needs to be protected above all“)

Then of course there is what’s actually happening between them which, one, from the get go she seems to not reciprocate Eddie’s advances (he keeps telling her to call him Eddie, she keeps calling him Mr. Diaz). Also that whole speech about horses? Yeah, I know you’re an english teacher but ähm, what? (Put it on the list, Tim, I need answers!)

To sum it up (and explain why I brought up Shannon aside from how much I like her), I don’t think it’s headed for a romance quite yet? They may be playing the slowburn game, but I think it was more like Ali in Season 2. Because as @greyhello pointed out to me in Part 2, Ali might have been there to show us that Buck was ready for a commited relationship and it had never been Abby that made him like that, just as Ana is here to tell us: hey, Eddie is finally accepting his wife’s death and maybe, possibly, some time in the near future, ready to date again. Probably. We’ll see.

Aside from that, I actually think a little crush could be something healthy and healing for Mr. control issues. But, again, we’ll see.

So, elephant addressed. Now let’s move on.

Sidenote: I feel like the parent-teacher conference made Eddie really regret so many of his life decisions. Someone needs to tell Buck so he can make a million puns from here on out and drive Eddie crazy.

(Sidenote: Carla said „big blue eyes“! You know who has big blue eyes? Ah, now I’m just clowning.)

Now this episode returns to the Season 2 formula of giving Eddie and Buck similar storylines:

Because while Eddie meets someone he could potentially be interested it, Buck is also made aware of his single status and the fact that he hasn’t dated in a while.

I do think Buck’s stance in this episode was both curious and familiar. Familiar because it reminded me a lot of Eddie in 2.04 and I think, just like Eddie did before Shannon came back, right then Buck is closing himself off from making connections, be they physical or emotional, because he got hurt too much.

Which is why I call it curious. Because I can not decide wether I consider his behaviour growth or a step back. In Eddie it would definitely be a step back, but in Buck who had been so willing to take any chance for physical intimacy just for the sake of a connection in Season 1 to now at least seem somewhat settled in himself and comfortable with what he has does feel a little like growth? (Then again 3.16 shows us he is just scared of getting hurt again, so probably just covering up is depression.)

Also, again with the kitchen! That puts us at five (?) scenes of Buddie talking about each other or with each other in a kitchen setting (six, if you count 3.03). Now I’m probably clowning myself real hard right now, but whatever!

But I do wanna point out how comfortable Eddie and Buck are discussing Eddie’s parenting struggles, which just shows how much he trusts him.

Now I know, I myself have made a textpost about Eddie discussing his parenting struggles with literally anyone, but ya’ll know I was kidding, right? It isn’t actually true. In canon he talks with exactly 5 people about Christopher:

They are Christopher’s therapist in „Triggers“, Carla, Hen, Lena … and Buck.

Now, here comes something interesting: For Carla and therapist, it is literally their job to help Eddie with his parenting struggles, but all the other scenes? Connected to Buck. Yeah. That.

Look, the Hen scene in the Christmas episode literally involves Buck and as I’ve said both Eddie’s and Buck’s reaction here heavily implied that Eddie has had a conversation with Buck about his fight with Chris before telling Hen all about it.

As for Lena, again, she is *literally* there as a substitute for Buck. She uses his locker. Her name is taped over his - and that is actually such a nice visual, that I wanna talk about it real quick, because I’ve seen it called disrespectful a few times and I don’t agree.

One, the fact that they left the „B“: funny af, someone from set dressing is probably laughing themselves silly about this and is allowed to call me now; also a constant reminder who’s locker and place she is actually occupying. Also how she can never really fully replace him, she can’t cover the hole he left fully, he is always there, lurking.

Two, the fact that it is tape: tape is slightly see through. It is temporary and easily removed. Tape is just a quick, momentary fix. Tape can be taken off / away without effort.

So to sum it up: There’s no one he trusts more with his son.

Which is also why Buck is there at the end: because Buck is who Eddie trusts. Buck is who Eddie goes to when he’s struggling as a father. Buck is who Eddie wants by his side cheering Chris on. I mean, they are literally pushing him together while Carla films (stands on the sidelines, ready to help as needed, but not fully a part of their family unit).

So, to go back to the elephant in the room? Right now I’m not at all worried about Ana Flores.

On another note it’s also one of the last real Buddie scenes we got in 3B so far and while I do understand that there just wasn’t any storyline for them to do such a scene organically, I am very worried about what it could mean. Because I still remember when Teen Wolf stopped putting Tyler H and Dylan in scenes together because people kept screaming queerbaiting.

I don’t want that to happen here. I love Buddie and what it could represent but I’ve also written too much about their respective characters AND their connection by now to disregard how meaningful they ALREADY are and how important even as a platonic pairing they are. Because they make each other so much better and proof that straight man can have deep connection with each other and how two flawed people can help each other heal in a way that I don’t think any other relationship in this show shows.

Back to the episode, though. The ark between Christopher and Eddie here is truly beautiful and I love the way we see Eddie growing as a parent. And I think the show wrote those scenes so well and they felt truly natural and were incredibly important, both for Eddie and Christopher.

I do think, as much as I love Christopher always being Eddie’s number one priority, no matter who Eddie ends up dating (yes, even if he dates Buck) we need to see a bit of a shift here. (Also, just in general, because Christopher will grow up, even if he’ll never be as independent as a fully abled bodied child might someday be.)

Eddie needs to learn to let go of control and of Christopher a bit. Look, a partner will never come before Christopher for Eddie (unless Chris is like in his 40s and has moved out and is living his own life. And even then it’ll be close.) but in order for anyone to ever fit into his life he needs to make a little space at the top and that includes taking away a bit from Christopher.

(Also just selfcare reasons, you guys, parents need to learn that it’s okay to sometimes think about themselves! And we already saw Eddie break once cause it became too much, how easy do you think that can happen again?)

Sidenote: We all know Buck built that, right? He’s been shown again and again to have some mechanical / maschinary (?) understanding plus fairly interesting problem solving skills.

Episode 3.13:

I love the locker room scene. Firstly, it’s a definite reminder that these three have bonded a lot and it’s such a sweet familial scene.

Also Eddie’s advice: yet another hint that he’s healing from Shannon’s death.

Compare it 3.08 and the conversation Bobby had with Eddie. There are no definite callbacks or anything like it, but it is very very very obvious that Eddie is talking about his dead wife here. Who he told he loves her in her last moments. So there.

Now, as for the healing part, could you imagine 3A!Eddie saying something like that to anyone?

Even in 3.03 or 3.06 with Buck, the person he lets himself be the most vulnerable with, there are still always terms and conditions with his words.

He trust no one more with his son, which, okay, is what the scene was about and what has the highest priority in his life but still, his trust isn’t bound to himself, it’s bound to his son, not to himself, not something he has in general for Buck, but something he has for Buck in regards to his son - that Eddie trusts Buck with himself is only ever implied.

He forgives him - „also what it means to be a part of a team“. Eddie sort of impersonalises his forgiveness here, he doesn’t forgive him because he’s Buck and he’s Eddie, he forgives him because they are part of the same team.

With Eddie there is always a wall.

But here in the locker room there isn’t. It’s just: if you love her, tell her, cause you might not get another chance - Eddie certainly doesn’t have another chance to tell Shannon.

And okay, you might say, isn’t that kind of a condition as well? Saying ‚I love you‘ because tomorrow isn’t promised? And sure, it kind of is. But Eddie’s also basically saying: once upon a time I told my wife, who art now in heaven, that I loved her as she was dying and then I got real mad at her and the world after because she left me and she was planning to leave me anyways and now I’m here and I’m over that and I’m just glad I got to tell her ‚I love her‘ one last time. I’m no longer angry.

Growth, you guys.

Episode 3.14:

I feel like the writers read some of ya’ll’s Buddie fanfiction, realised how it mischaracterised the relationship between Buck and Chimney gets and said: not on my watch!

In other words: If Eddie and Buck are different sides of the same coin, Buck and Chimney are the same sides of different coins. They share so many traits and experiences!

Now, this episode. Man, you guys, it really has me stumped. Part of me thinks it doesn’t have relevance and part of me keeps going back because it thinks it does?

Oh man, you guys, I’m lost. I don’t know.

All right, executive decision: no relevance, just another drop on the breakdown-stone that is 3.16.

Someone please tell my man’s boy they need him!

Episode 3.15:

Fun fact to start ya’ll off: this was only the second episode I watched somewhat live being a little new to town and the first I saw without spoiling myself on tumblr. So it has a special place in my heart any way you look at it.

(But then again this episode also involves several of my nightmares: drowning! being below earth! Being in small enclosed spaces! Being buried alive! Huge amounts of mud that will not leave your clothes and fingernails for the next six hundred years!)

Also, uhm, did I say „Fools“ was the *one* episode I could not look at without shipper goggles? So I’m contradicting myself. It happens. Move on. (Yeah, or repress it and join a fight club! Also name check me with your therapist, please! We may have breakdowns but we do them healthy around here!)

Because these fuckers went off! Whew! I’m serious, after watching the episode I sent a clip of that scene to my roommate and asked to rate how platonic this was. Which she did not. Because she doesn’t know math, apparently. - My point is, she sees it and she doesn’t know the show.

In other news this episode convinced me Oliver is pulling an Andrew Robinson (and yes, I know he said it was in the script but then Andy also followed the script, so…).

Sidenote: Eddie is the oldest, right? Damn, for some reason I thought he was the middle child. He has big middle child energy.

(Also why they namedrop Galveston like that? I googled it an it’s just a town? Why, Tim, why?) (At this point he is just torturing me, I know it. This feels personal.)

Anyways, this episode, you guys! I have thoughts! (And they are very hard to put in order so please excuse any jumping around at this point.)

The birthscene is great and can we just for a moment think about 25 year old Eddie hugging his mother in law so very lovingly? He’s so happy here. So soft. (Also I’m about to turn 25? I would not be able to deal with being married right now either?)

And yes, this episode confirms that Eddie has killed people, and while I know it was selfdefense, I just, it’s very weird to me because these characters have become so real to me, so to see one of them kill without a care is kinda off-putting. (This is why I will always consider Eddie grey and why I can never consider Buck white - because he had been planning on joining the Seals meaning he had to consider the possibility of killing and has probably learned to kill (Do you think that’s why he’s so non aggressive? because he knows he could take everyone down?))

I’m just gonna come out and say it: anyone who says Eddie isn’t impulsive has not watched this show. In fact I’d even say he is more impulsive than Buck.

Yes, Buck will do weird and dumb shit on a whim because the thought just crossed his mind and it sounds good and he doesn’t think about the consequences, but just does it. (I could make a case that our boy has ADHD but this is not what this meta is about)

But Eddie? Eddie is impulsive in his reactions. Everytime he is in distress (emotional not physical) he stops thinking about consequences and just starts reacting. Especially if it’s about a child!

Shannon is pregnant - lets sign up for the army.

Our child has a developmental disorder - lets stay in the army.

My parents want to take away my child - lets move halfway across the country.

(Not allowed to talk to your best friend? - lets go streetfighting.)

Eddie probably thinks these things through to a point and he mostly has a plan, but he is so reactionary. He is like a raw nerve and that’s what makes him impulsive.

It’s why, instead of letting them pull him out enough until he can radio, Eddie cuts the fucking line. Because this is a child, this could be Christopher and Eddie needs to be enough to save him.

(Are you crying yet?)

I’m not gonna talk about Afghanistan except to say: ah, Eddie. My man, you are enough! Always!

(But maybe that was his guilt over killing talking? Maybe he does feel bad?)

Also why did the woman emphasis ‚Staff Sergeant‘ like that? Was that an indicator that Eddie got promoted?

Also Eddie the fucking boy scout / alter boy / goody goody two shoes trying to get up because of a superior office despite lying in a hospital bed (and not even having been cleaned from his blood yet, urgh that’s gotta itch!)

Sidenote: in light of 3.16: do you think Eddie still talks to Mills, Binder, Norwahl and what all their names are or do you think that would be too hard for him? I’m leaning toward not talking but I really liked Mills (she reminded me of Buck and Lena, tbh.)

And now, for our regular scheduled program: Shannon and Eddie.

First of all I loved all of it. I loved that we could really understand why Shannon left. I love how much they clashed but still had those little moments of recognition.

And look: The juice box scene was very rough. Eddie is likely currently suffering from PTSD, definitely having a culture shock and here is his wife who is barely holding on as well and she just wants to leave, she can’t deal anymore and both of them are so desperate and wow, just wow. Kudos Ryan and kudos Devin Kelley, I’m sad we won’t see you again, but I do hope I’ll see you somewhere else one of these days!

I’ve talked about their relationship a lot already, so I’m not sure if I have any fresh takes but I will remind you of a few you already know:

Eddie is not in love with Shannon after Afghanistan (haven’t decided yet if he was in love with her in the birth scene)

Shannon *needed* Eddie to open up to her just as much as she needed to be open with her

Eddie was not able to be emotionally intimate with his wife

they cared about each other very very much and I do think they tried

they are family (remember what I said in part 2 about Eddie talking to the 118 about Shannon? This here proof that he definitely defended her actions at some point to them as well)

Shannon was in an impossible situation with her mother and a special needs child and likely burned out and just … she needed someone to have her back, which Eddie couldn’t because he himself was suffering from PTSD at that point

I’m still mad as fuck, they killed her off! If they give Eddie any other endgame romance that isn’t Buddie without like two seasons buildup after killing off HIS WIFE I will riot!

Which brings me to Eddie and his parents which was rough, you guys!

Look, as someone who worked with children I can see where his parents are coming from in that scene but also wow, just wow.

How cold and insensitive and fuck, no wonder someone is repressed as shit, that was horrifying and I really can’t talk about this more than to say this hurts and also explains too much about Eddie. (Can we have the locker room three bonding about having horrible parents in Season 4, please, Tim? And can Buck come too? We could do it at the loft?)

As for his conversation with Christopher, obviously it was cute as fuck and also I love how he began the conversation talking to his child like every adult male I have ever met talking to a kid about something he knows will go over it’s head („It’s like we’re talking about completely different people.“). (Okay, maybe not just adult males. Maybe we all talk like that around children sometimes. I know I do.)

I really liked how they reinforced once again that Eddie wasn’t a natural at being a dad (compare how he holds his son to season 1 Buck who most definitely knows how to handle a child (And now I’m wondering if him being good at it was always planned or a „Oliver did a great job the first time we had him interact with a child so we decided to make it a trait“-thing. Damn you, Tim, for making me think so much!)) but became good at it because he was willing to learn and he cared! Dads of the world (also Moms, we aren’t all super duper either) take note!

That being said the conversation also left a bit of a bitter taste in my mouth because, one, it felt a little petulant of Eddie to turn around and leave for LA, the way it was presented here and two, Christopher at that point didn’t understand yet what Eddie was actually asking him about and it felt a bit like manipulation. Please everyone, do not consider a conversation like that consent from a child. Any adult can get a child that age to say anything they want because children just want to be liked (It’s why when children are involved in criminal proceedings it’s so hard to interview them because children follow every suggestion because they think this is what the adults want them to say.).

Now, let’s talk about puppy!boy for a second!

In 1.05 Buck tells Abby: „no one is good when it’s personal“ - well guess what buddy boys, this one is very personal for one Evan ‚Buck’ Buckley, thank you very much, that boy is losing it.

Okay, let’s compare it to the episode before and then two episodes later:

Now, obviously the situation with Maddie was a little different. Mainly because this was a hostage situation and he realised (because Seal training, remember?) that there wasn’t a lot he could do to help her right then but then again … neither was there in Season 2 when Maddie was in danger and he still acted far more frantic in the car with Athena than he did here? Like the only stupid thing he did was drive a little dangerously this time?

And of course, two episodes later we see Bobby react when Athena is in danger and while we don’t see him be frantic we do see him get ready to kill someone, so, yeah!
 It could of course be inconsistent writing or deliberate to keep the attention and worry more on the people in the call centre but since they haven’t pulled anything like that before I’m leaning more into my clowning.

I mean, we also have to consider that Buck was Eddie’s lifeline here, he was supposed to be the one to get him out, so he feels extra responsible but then again we have Hen make this comment about having two cut lines, which of course says that Hen thinks that one: whatever reason Eddie had to cut his line will definitely be considered a just as valid reason by Buck to cut his line but also: BUCK WOULD DECIDE TO DIE DOWN THERE WITH EDDIE. Sorry for the yelling, but no, I do not think Buck acted out of character in 3.14.

(Which is very irresponsible, you guys. You are fathers! What happens to Christopher when ya’ll die in a well somewhere in fictional California? I can not live in fictional California! I will not be taking care of your child, Buddie! Figure it out yourself! No. We are done here! This conversation is over!)

(Okay, not quite, because I actually don’t think that would be realistic! More realistic: Buck giving Eddie his harness so he can get pulled out first and then dying down there alone.)

Like I’ve said in the at the beginning: Oliver might be pulling an Andrew Robinson. It might have just been the way they thought Buck would act if he lost Eddie while being responsible. It might have been fever making him delirious (which, btw, kudos! Because you can hear how sore his throat was and omg, that shirt hurt!)

Never mind I found the heavy focus on Buck in an episode about Eddie fairly curious - which is why now it’s video-talk time!

First: I will not bear Shannon slander around here! Yes, she was in way less scenes than Buck, but the actress also was never a main character, so ya’ll need to remember there are like 2 scenes of them as a family. And they probably didn’t have the time, money and energy to film some just for a montage - especially considering that the three of them have hardly been a family together, because first Eddie was gone and then Shannon, so…

But yes, we do have to admit that Buck was in most scenes, and yes, we do have to consider the implications of this which are: Buck is definitely a vital member of the Diaz family and when Eddie says: I’m always gonna come home to my family, this now includes Buck and I hope we see him tell him that at one point in the final cause I need him to!

And then of course there is also the radio scene in the beginning (which lead to one of my proudest tumblr-moments to date in form of this post!) which did ease us into the concept of Bucky-boy being a member of the Diaz family! So it is canon now?!

One thing I wanna point out about the school scene in the end in regards to this is that little boy’s question. Sure they used it as transition to calling Christopher his good luck charm but, uhm, why did they have Buck ask about it in the beginning then? Why have this sort of unnecessary callback to the beginning of the episode unless they want us to remember Buck?

Something to ponder for the next week, I think.

Also the episode sort of reinforced my believe that we don’t really have to worry about Ana Flores. Sure, this scene was also a chance for Eddie to redeem himself in front of a teacher he screamed at just a few weeks prior but the only interaction they had was her asking that question at the end and Eddie hardly looked at her.

(Also, if they really wanted to reinforce Eddie being interested in her, they could have had Carla make a dig about it in the beginning, even with Christopher there, but they didn’t, which to me confirms that they don’t really know what to do with her yet.)

At least Ryan was finally taking his shirt off again, I know that’s like catnip for ya’ll.

Episode 3.16:

One thing that really confuses me is how many people seem to think this episode points out only how important romantic relationship are and I don’t see that?

I mean, I see that it’s one of the points that is being made but I don’t think it’s the only possible reading of this episode.

To me it was about connection and family more than anything.

It begins actually with Eddie (the person most connected to Buck) being the first person to decline Buck’s invite, not in favour of spending time with a romantic partner, but because he has a prior commitment with his son! (And several other people, including, but not limited to, at least 2 other nine year olds. For Eddies sake I hope less than 5 or that Carla is around because he is a single father and children unionise by nature.)

And it continues with Buck by forming a connection to Red and then bonding with Maddie.

And can I just say, before we delve more into all of this, how proud I am of Evan „Buck“ Buckley after this episode? Just look at him!

This is Buck at his lowest, lower even than during the lawsuit, because back then he had something to fight against, which he doesn’t have here. Because he can’t stop other people from leaving him (that is the whole point of the episode after all) and what does he do? Instead of going full on Buck 1.0 and just finding the nearest interested person to form a meaningless physical connection with to substitute for the lacking emotional intimacy he craves so much, he goes to a bar alone and befriends an old man. And spends the rest of the episode bonding with him. And bonding with his sister. And addressing his issues, both with his sister and his family. That is huge!

(Which is why I’ve decided him not wanting to date? Symptom of his deeper issues, yes, but also a sign of growth.)

And I’ve seen some people on my dash talk about how, compared to most other 911 episodes, this episode has a fairly bleak ending, which one I agree with, two think is actually a theme with Buck centric episodes, but three don’t actually mind / think is a bad thing? It’s fairly realistic after all.

To get personal one second: I remember being a very idealistic 20-year old intern working in the foster system five years ago and my mentor, who was less than 10 years older than me but fairly badass teaching me something that technically is a well known proverb but that I, a idealistic 20-year old, had not actually understood until I worked there and saw it myself: manchmal muss man den Karren an die Wand fahren  - translation: sometimes you have to let the trolley drive into the wall, which means sometimes you have to let things play out till it’s natural end before you can help. Or to use an english proverb: Sometimes you have to hit rock bottom.

And this is what I’m thinking - no, hoping - is happening here. Because, look, you don’t just solve like 20 or more years of abandonment issues in one episode and considering what a big part of Buck’s character from the moment we met him they have been, that would have been unsatisfying to watch anyways!
What we need right now, in terms of Buck’s storyline is catharsis. A cleansing. Buck needs to get to his worst (which I think he did or he will, once he talks to Abby) before he can begin to get better, can begin to heal, can begin to learn that he is not alone. And that is not a bad thing!

And yes, I know our boy is suffering and we along with him because we all love Evan Buckley to death but sometimes you gotta let things break so you can fix them instead of just putting tapes over the holes you see (haha, see what I did there?).

As for the episode, here we go:

I wanna start with something else real quick which is Hen’s subplot which I found important. Because they addressed that hey, she went through a trauma not to long ago as well and maybe she is not as okay with it as we thought?

Also it shows Bobby’s double standard again, but then I think he would have reacted differently if the guy had died and it was evident Hen realised she should never pull a stunt like that again. And maybe I’m giving Bobby a bit to much credit right now. Urgh.

I do wanna say, while Chimney seemed fine at the end with what went down we did see his reaction in the next episode and honestly he is mad, it’s just that Hen is his best friend and Chimney lives on the principle of forgive and forget so there.

Now I do really like the rope rescue scene because it was badass and also because Eddie seems so done in the beginning and Bobby just looks at him like: well, he’s not doing it alone and he’s probably not gonna cut his rope!

(Also notice how Eddie cut his rope willingly but Buck’s was cut for him? What does that mean? - For reals, I may see the connection but I can’t yet make out the meaning.)

But I did appreciate Hen’s comments about them being their best guys a lot! I kind of want an episode like they used to do on Star Trek were they focus on background characters and give us the way everyone probably sees Buddie as some kind of superhuman supermen who pull the craziest stunts and somehow make it!
And now, let’s get into Evan!

First of, I now Cindy was meant as a parallel to Abby but I also think to Ali because Abby didn’t leave because she couldn’t handle the fear but Ali did. So there, a sort of Ali Martin mention! Thanks for listening, Tim.

But of course with everything else Cindy is quite the parallel to Abby from the way she just left and Red never really got closure, just like Buck.

What is interesting though is that Red, different to Buck, doesn’t want closure. He wants to remember the good times and imagine what could have been. (This could of course be due to the fact that his life is about to end.)

Buck on the other hand side really craves closure, and look, I know when we first learned she is definitely coming back I was really unhappy about that, but since then we learned they run into each other which makes it fine to me. Because I thought we’d have another instance of Buck running after Abby for validation and I did not want that. But he’s not actually running after her, it’s just a coincidence so I’m happy for him getting a chance to have closure, finally.

And this is were I think the episode proofs that it’s not about romantic love as the only way to be fulfilled, first because after talking about Abby Buck asks „Do you think I’m lonely?“ which is not about romance at all (had they wanted to make it about love it would have been: „Do you think I’ll find love again?“ or something). Also the conclusion of this episode is Maddie telling Buck he is different to Red because he has her (and in general those scenes between them, yes, they were also about Abby because she was another person Buck has been left by but just like they mention a best friend in terms of people Maddie left behind it is not about the romantic aspect, it is about people he loves in general), because he has a sister and she won’t leave him again - so there, familial love! The pinky swear! The importance of family. (see 3.11)

Also had it really been about love you know what would have happened since then? We’d have seen Buck calling Abby! Maddie would have said something about Buck still being young and having time to meet someone! Instead Abby and Buck run into each other by accident and Maddie makes a pinky swear to never leave again, so yeah, I just think sometimes we need to wait for how stuff plays out before we judge.

Now of course I wanna mention the pool scene as well.

Firstly, I know we already traced a lot of what Buck says at the end back to Eddie and the grocery store but did ya’ll here Chimney say: „Seems like your making this about yourself“ and Bobby implying the same thing, so yeah, I wonder if it was them quoting Eddie or if this is what everyone is supposed to be thinking or if it was just a setup for the breakdown at the end.

Also let’s talk about Eddie real quick here, because I found it really weird that they didn’t reference his platoon from Afghanistan here? Like they could have easily have him say „I’m not in the army anymore but I still talk to my old platoon.“, especially since we MET them one episode before. So either they didn’t think of that, they wanted to reinforce the fear Buck has or Eddie may just be as lonely as Buck?

(Guess which way I’m leaning?)

(Look, children are great but they are no substitute for friends and adult conversation, just saying!)

But I love how hard Mr. Stoic and emotionally unavailable tries to reassure Buck, tries to be there for him. And also did ya’ll notice how, once Eddie speaks for the first time Buck’s focus never strays from him. Hen and Chimney and Bobby talk as well but it seems as if Buck never looked away from Eddie. (Which, definitely get that, he looked good here.) Also how Buck stresses the “That better not happen to us“ - man, what conversation could he be referencing? Man, I wish I had memorised this show by now so I could tell you about two scenes that happened in 3A between Buddie where the topic of us was emphasised a lot but alas I don’t and I can’t.

What the pool scene also proofs once more is that the 118 just like an actual family has a lot of communication issues because Hen and Chimney not being in contact with Tommy or so is a completely different situation but because of their bad communication they don’t realise that this is something they need to explain to Buck because they think this is about Red.

Bobby doesn’t get it either tbh.

But we all know who does, look, I said it about 3.03 and I’ll say it now: Eddie knows Buck. Eddie understands Buck. And Eddie is on the path of realising that Buck needs him to say the actual words and not just let his actions speak!
And my my if all of this pays off I will be one happy camper! (Hums Rihanna “We found love in a hopeless place”)

On a sidenote I hate that Red pegged Buck as a hothead because he really really isn’t! He’s just excitable and sometimes struggles with expressing himself and that frustrates him!

Also I never noticed the apartment had an outside area? did we know this? There is a grill?

Also really would love to see Gigi / Dana Strattford again, I liked her, she’s pretty! (But not like to date one of my guys, Tim, kay?)

(Also whats Officer Williams up to these days? Asking for … a friend?)

And to round this episode up: Oliver still looked so sick at times and they put a lot more makeup on him than they normally do? Usually you can see the slight scaring on his face but this episode you couldn’t but you could see the tears / snot mixing with all the makeup when he was crying and honestly, not his best look! (He still makes it work, though! Just saying, I miss 1.02 / 3.02 / 3.03 Buck, I know these episodes hurt but visually they are peak!)

Episode 3.17:

Was that episode amazing? Yes.

Am I still cackling about Oliver Stark having too much leg? Yes.

Did I love the Frank mention with all my heart? Yes.

Was Michael’s meet cute in an elevator less gay than any Buddie scene we got so far specifically any in 2.01 also known as their meet-ugly? That was a rhetorical question, you guys.

As for that comment I wouldn’t put too much stock into it. I mean, if you’re a single guy and you get invited out to fifth wheel at a double date with your sister and her boyfriend and his best friend and her wife, no matter how close you are, you will feel awkward so of course you invite the other single guy who happens to be your best friend who happens to be part of the friendgroup AND the team you’re working with making this a definite team/family/work - outing.

That being said: it took me 23h to come up with a reasonable explanation for this comment and I did scream at my laptop and pause the episode after it was made and I have been thinking “Buddie” confirmed about 100 times since then!

Also, they just spent a shit ton of time together, right? Like, if Buck’s there than so is Eddie and if Eddie is there than so is Buck and I’m clowning and not calm anymore!

Maybe “Buck invites Eddie” can be our always?

In other news this episode has absolutely no relevance for anything, but I love it deeply.

And we made it you guys! It was slower going but it worked!

Thank you to everyone who read so far and thank you to everyone who has been liking and reblogging and commenting! I don’t think I’ll ever be able to express how much this means to me!

(Also please keep doing that! I too am an excitable puppy looking for validation!)

Now, to tag:

@angelcamael, @greyhello, @ipleiade, @the-family-we-choose-118 @chimbuckleys @sevensoulmates

[apollodankaciyorum]

if its okay can i ask you a question about turkey/people from turkey, its the term 'racializated' used there? its something uhm that is taked into consideration there? let me explain you, im from argentina, my mom is a black brazilian women and my dad just like i dont know 70% of my class is what people from usa for example call 'brown' latinos, like dilan for example of skam es, i and many poc people call those people instead of 'brown', 'racializated' many of them feel and me included tbh+ 1/

+feel the term is not really correct or many friends feel uncomfortable with it so they rated 'racializated', im not sure if you speak spanish there is this person @/haluami they is a indigenous person who wrote very good texts about this topic there is one about racializated people, and basically society put you down because of your skin color, traits, and / or ethnicity, so i can't help but wonder if thats the case of yousef, but im not turkish so i understand concepts change+ 2/

+depends on the country, culture, etc i understand all of that, so i have a lot of doubts because i dont want to break the privacy of course of the actor of yousef but i wonder if the character 'take' stuff about him or if they are statments in the show itself, i dont know, the poc term itself have some stuff people agree or not, its all a very complicated situation i still believe the show treatment to non-white males is bad i dont know but i will hear and see others opinion the 'white washing'

...

well first of all, I want to say that I’m not an expert on these issues, but I also think that I can answer your questions to some extent, at least I will try my best. and I hope I don’t offend anyone, please call me out if I do so (that’s for my fellow citizens of turkey) so here I go: (sorry it turned out to be so long)

1- I haven’t heard the term “racialization” before, so I looked it up and I realized that I know what that is, just I wasn't familiar with its name. From what I get, it means ascribing stereotypes on people about their races. So if that’s what you mean, then sure, we have this in turkey unfortunately. but i’m not an expert on sociology and other sciences regarding this topic, so any other Turkish person could heard this term, just not me.

2- Turkey is an ethnically rich country, I don't know if you know the historical developments but this is the shortest way to address this, we have a lot of different cultures here, but not as much as the times before the WW1. Nowadays, there are Turkish, Kurdish, Armenian, a small amount of Rum (orthodox christians whose descendants are from the Byzantine Empire), Laz (similarly their descendants are from the Pontus Rum Empire which was located in the northern region of Turkey, but they are mostly Turkish nationalist muslims rn) people and other small communities of different cultures. well I'm rambling lol :))))

3-well some of these people accept these “racialized” prejudices when they are not offensive (from what I get at least) for example some of Laz people accept that most of the Laz people have some familiar facial features or some Kurdish people joke about how their uncle/aunt is younger than them due to their family structure etc. but mostly this racialization occurs in an offensive way like calling Kurdish people terrorists (bc of PKK, a Kurdish (terrorist) military group -- this is a way too controversial topic, so I won’t be mentioning this again, I don’t want to talk about this, sorry) or denying Armenian Genocide (again, this is a controversial topic too and interestingly recent although this issue regards the events during and after WW1) so to answer your question, yes there is racialization in turkey.

4- about yousef: well I watched sana season on February 2019 so I can’t remember all the details about him being from Turkey. I just remember he went to Turkey at the end of the season and I kinda remember that he wasn’t a muslim although his family practiced Islam, but I’m not so sure so I’ll just assume I remember correctly. 

5- Yousef isn’t a man of color. there are darker skinned Turkish people for sure but having a lighter skinned Turkish actor to play a Turkish character is NOT white washing. because there are lighter skinned Turkish people too. I don’t really know what comes to mind when you (I mean non-Turkish people) think about a Turkish person, but from my perspective, I can’t really draw an average Turkish person for you. there are caucasian looking Turkish people, there are mongloid looking Turkish people, heck there are afro-Turkish people too. So, yep Yousef is not white-washed. He’s not even white. AND I certainly call that he’s too white to be considered as moc. but I’m not an expert, just an ordinary Turkish woman. 

6- Most recently, Turkish youth tend to leave practicing Islam and instead become atheist or deist or agnostic. I can guess why, though I’m not sure if I should say it but you can search it from google, pretty sure you can find the answer :) So, Yousef being an atheist/not Muslim is a really good rep for Turkish youth bc I’m sure that most people assume Turkish people are %99.9 faithful muslims.

7- However, I can assure you that Yousef does not reflect any racialization happening in Turkey. I wouldn’t want a Norwegian internet show talking about these issues too, but I would really like if Druck (German SKAM) dwelled upon these issues since there is a big Turkish community (I’m talking about a near million in number, maybe more) and there are huge issues of/regarding Turkish people that could be reflected in national tv, and I would like to see a more politically active/woke Turkish character (in a Jonas sense) in Druck (because since 2012-2013, the amounts of politically active youth is increasing more than ever, bc what’s happening rn in Turkey -again, you can just take a look in Turkish news- ) but assuming from the appearance of Ismail Inci (new gen Druck character) this is not the case, one can only hope for deeper (by deep, I mean not just this goofy guy who only talks about kebab or girls or Turkish/German rap) Turkish characters though :(

8- I don’t know much about the actor but he sounded fluent in Norwegian so I can assume that 1) he was born in Norway or 2) they moved to Norway when he was younger. and from that, I can guess that he’s not familiar to racialization as much as a Turkish person living in Turkey and that could be the huge reason why Julie and the crew didn’t give Yousef a chance to dwell upon these. 

9- and I know I told you this, but if someone else tries to read this whole thing, Yousef is not the Turkish version of the name, it’s Yusuf (both u’s are read staccato) and I don’t know why his name is Yousef instead of Yusuf.  

wow, I didn’t expect this to be a giant, but I hope I answered your questions. and I’m not a Spanish speaker (although I want to learn but my only source is Duolingo bc I'm broke) I won’t be able to follow your blog recommendation. I’m really sorry for taking this long and writing this long. Thanks for seeking knowledge about us though, it’s not something I usually encounter with and it felt validating and good. So thank you too! Have a nice day (or night? it’s nighttime here)

[girlobsessed21]

My thoughts on The 100 7x05

Hey, guys,

Sorry for not doing any comments on the last two episodes. I’ve been a little busy and I struggled to connect to the show, so it hindered my enjoyment, but it’s all better now. Liked episode 4 and 5 was even better, jampacked with info and it answered a lot of questions.

Welcome to Bardo

Badass Octavia is da bomb (people don’t say that anymore, right?). When she was captured in episode two, I thought she had lost her fighting spirit, but it’s back, bitches. Well, until she runs into an invisible wall trying to escape. She’s captured and transported to M-cap (whatever that means). Then we get a welcome little flashback to Lincoln but it’s obvious that Bellamy would be the hand reaching out. He’s her rock, like she’s expressed many times.

Unlike John Murphy who is not quite a friend, or family and definitely not a lover. Introducing so many new characters in the final season of a show is never a good idea, because this is the time to wrap up all the stories of the existing ones, but come on, who cannot love Levitt. Even when he first meets Octavia, he doesn’t want to hurt her. Jason, you better not harm one hair on this precious little puppy’s head!

As he binges The 100 through Octavia’s eyes, he starts rooting for her, and he actually gives a damn, unlike most people on this show. He understands her strengths and weaknesses and he makes her see it too. “You’re a warrior to be sure, but your heart is pure.” Wow, what an honest and beautiful line. (Scroll down for my shipping comments.)

So is O and Hope’s fleeting little reunion. It’s amazing to experience this deep loving side of Octavia after her darkness. She’s truly one of the most diverse and developed characters on the series. Now Hope and her resilience is quickly making it to the top as well.

While Hope is trying to send her back home, we learn that memory loss is due to the time dilation. One quick note on this, it’s not linear, there’s no easy equation to calculate it unless you’re Stephen Hawking or Einstein. I don’t think it’s constant either. 10 years on Skyring = 11 days on Bardo = a few minutes on Sanctum. In the current time, 5 years on Skyring = 1 day on Sanctum = 7 days on Bardo. So, it’s clear that the planets are moving, and other factors are playing into the phenomenon. It’s more important to understand the time relative to each planet.

Levitt was the one who tattooed Hope’s code onto O’s back, also the one who planted the note into Hope’s arm. Indeed the kind of man you want on the inside, he even accepts a blow to the face as thank you.

Sheep-ish?

Thirty minutes on the clock and the trio gets led to a congregation to praise the shepherd. I never thought it was Anders, I do, however think it might be Cadogan. The Bordoan’s built the underground forest because they destroyed their planet. Ugh, what’s new? The shepherd herded his sheep from earth to Bardo via the stone. Cadogan and his second dawn cult?

Back to Clarke. So, after last episode I thought ‘the key to winning the last war’ line was an artifice for luring Clarke to disciples, but now it’s clearly true. They’ve located the key and they will win the last war. Levitt was interested in Clarke surviving the City of Light with the flame in her head, they probably assume she still has it. Cadogan burned Becca alive. Could it be because of the flame? Is this all because of that damn little chip that can’t seem to die?

Bellamy is not dead, I repeat, Bellamy is not dead! I believe that memory could be staged or implanted for a reason. Also, there’s no body, he jumped through the bridge. In the promo photos, he wears a ring but his actions towards Octavia seem a little cold and generic. On first watch, I thought it was bad acting but if he was programmed to do this, it makes sense.

Note the sequence of events. Octavia returned 7 days ago and was asked to talk her brother down, but we don’t see the actual scene. Instead we’re shown a memory. They could have implanted it to make her vulnerable and perhaps more susceptible to the procedure. I don’t know, but this theory could lead to Robot-sheep!Bellamy on Nakara, where he’ll encounter Clarke and the gang.

I have to be honest, I really don’t like this character arc for Bellamy. It’s unoriginal and a mime of Peeta’s storyline in Mockingjay. Sorry, but so far it feels like the writers were so over the show, they just wanted to get it done. And that attitude really bleeds into one’s creative concepts. I could be completely wrong, in fact, I hope I am.

Echo spins a Finn

My word, I lost the love of my life once, but I sure didn’t kill anyone. When Echo received that vision of Roan, I was hoping for some progression on her individual arc, they’ve made me care about her, and now we get the opposite. Why? One thing I have to admit, a killer performance from Tasya Teles! No pun intended.

Look, this show hasn’t explored Bellamy and Echo’s relationship enough to make her murder believable. It was the exact same thing with Finn. I wasn’t invested in Finn and Clarke’s connection, so his actions of killing a grounder tribe was more repulsive than understandable. Sure, Echo loves Bellamy and her sole purpose is to save him, but I’ve never truly witnessed their love for each other. They had one or two intimate scenes which cannot compel a deed like this. And in the process, she screwed Hope and Diyoza.

Anyway, I don’t think there’s any coming back from it. She murdered an innocent person in cold blood. That’s sure to open a door to the dark side.  Just look at Octavia after killing Pike and her actions were justified by jus drein jus daun.

Say Sanctum three times slowly and it sounds like… Sanctum

Blind faith

Look, I’m just gonna come out and say this song is getting old. Every episode featuring Sanctum is the exact same thing with different lines. Can we please move on from it, already? Yes, we know the COG want Russel dead, and the adjusters will go to extreme lengths to free Russel and the prisoners are background noise.

I did appreciate Nelson stepping in to try and save the girl, though. Still doesn’t save the fact that it’s repetitive. The Sanctum plotline is really struggling to take shape and I hope it happens soon. Dramatic eyeroll.

At least in the drought of a desert, you can always count on Murphy. “…I say we live and let die.” Typical cockroach line, right, but it’s ironic when he’s the one to step up, even if it is for Emori. Under the magnifying glass it’s the exact same plot as episode 1 and 3. He hesitates to take action, and eventually becomes the hero.

I mean, he saved that poor kid from being burned alive. Can you imagine sacrificing your own child in such a horrific away? Cults are beyond whacked, and, unfortunately, it’s reality that cult members are so blinded by their faith that they do not see rhyme or reason.

How did Murphy fail that test? I didn’t. When Trey named the four pillars, I thought, isn’t rejoice one of them? Surely, a cockroach would have smelled that trap a mile away.

Indra the great

Can we just give a massive round of applause to Adina Porter!!! That powerhouse walk vibrates strength and majesty, damn, she should be a false god, I wouldn’t dare threaten her with or without an army.

Three little words was all it took for her to recognize evil. “There’s a spider on your shoulder.” Smooth. Too bad she can’t kill him. Why not, how many of the faithful are left to cause an uproar? Wonkru doesn’t know it’s Sheidheda, they won’t care, the COG will fall in line and the prisoners will be happy as long as they get their compound. Sorry, I don’t get it and I don’t understand why she doesn’t tell anyone.  Someone please explain?

Granted, JR Bourne as Russel is way better, but I still don’t understand his actions. I hope they explore and explain him more, because he still feels flat unless he knows something of this final war. I’m hoping these two storylines align soon since it’s really driving a wedge between me and my love for the show.

Shipwreck

I’ll start with the easy stuff, Murphy, Emori and the perfect dress gets a heart eye emoji from me. They are so damn cute this season, can they please live happily ever after in the palace?

Octabriel vs Levittavia

Now, I enjoy Levitt fangirling over Octavia. I feel like he has a deep sense of her through her memories. If I have to root for an underdeveloped relationship, it will have to be one where the characters share thoughts and experiences even if it is through a sick, sci-fi procedure.

On the other hand, Gabriel and Octavia have immense chemistry, two seconds of them together bends my mouth into an “Aah, cute” pout. This will also add some approval and representation for mixed racial relationships.

I really don’t mind either way as long as they make me care through showing and not telling.

Bellarke

So, if my theory is correct, and Bellamy does end up on Nakara, Bellarke will encounter each other quite soon. Bellamy won’t be himself though, but he might pretend to be Bellamy to win Clarke’s co-operation. Is there hope for Bellarke yet?

Echo is now trotting a dangerous path and Bellamy might be pledged to a cause, so I doubt there will be a happy ending for Becho. Since 7x01 I’ve been thinking that the writers might want to develop something between Clarke and Gaia but if they are separated, is there enough time? Guess we’ll see.

This monster of a review is finally done… If you read through everything, you deserve a gold star! Let me know what you think, till we meet again…

[trombonesinspace]

Typhoid Mary: feminist femme fatale?

“Season 4 was going to be Typhoid Mary, Alice Eve [who played the role in Iron Fist], we were doing a kind of...I had a much different version of her than what Raven [Metzner] had done in Iron Fist. I was kind of rebooting what she was going to be like, and we were going to do a, you know, kind of a warped love story/murder mystery kind of femme fatale, but kind of a modern-day, feminist version of it, as opposed to kind of the older, sexist kind of femme fatale archetype.”

-Erik Oleson, in conversation with Steven DeKnight, SaveDaredevilCon 

As I said yesterday, I have some thoughts about this! If you want some opinions nobody asked for, about a storyline that may never come to pass, you’ve come to the right place! Let’s dive in.

A femme fatale is a character type with quite a history, that can take various forms. She is always an attractive woman who brings ruin to the man who gets involved with her. But sometimes she is deliberately manipulative, while sometimes she is more a victim of circumstances. She may be evil, or she may be sympathetic/tragic. But whatever her moral alignment, she has two defining traits: sexual allure, and some form of negative consequences for the hero as a result of his involvement with her.

A woman who schemes against the hero, and succeeds in harming him, but without using feminine wiles? Not a femme fatale. The Marvel TV universe has featured several examples on different shows: Madame Gao, Mariah Dillard, Alexandra. And, ironically, the version of Typhoid Mary who appeared in Iron Fist. (We’ll get there.)

A sexy woman who tries to manipulate/damage the hero, but fails? Also not a femme fatale. I wish I could give some examples, but sadly I can’t think of any, in dramas at least. Our current media culture loves a sexy manipulator, no writer ever seems to introduce one into a dramatic story without making her succeed in her schemes, to some extent at least.

Which is unfortunate, from my perspective, because I loathe sexy manipulators. It’s a character type I really dislike, whenever I encounter her. As soon as she shows up, I know the hero is going to fall for her bullshit like a chump, and I’m going to end up respecting him less as a result. I could try to unpack my feelings about this a bit more, but that would probably make a post all on its own, so for now I’ll leave it at that.

This doesn’t mean I hate all femmes fatales—it really depends on her motivation and her behavior. If she isn’t trying to harm the hero, and it happens due to circumstances, then I might like the character, but the story becomes a tragedy. Which is not necessarily bad. Just, you know. Tragic.

Anyway! Let’s talk about Typhoid Mary.

Mary Walker is a woman with Dissociative Identity Disorder (multiple personalities), and high-level combat skills. In the comics, she is also a mutant with mental powers. She appeared in the Daredevil comics starting in 1988.

In this original version, her personality fragmented due to childhood abuse, leading her to vow as an adult that no man would ever hurt her again. Her personalities are: Mary, who is timid and gentle; Typhoid, who is adventurous, lusty, and violent; and Bloody Mary, who is even more violent, sadistic, and hates all men.

Mary becomes romantically involved with Matt Murdock, who is cheating on his girlfriend, Karen Page, to be with her. At the same time, Typhoid is trying to ruin him, having been hired to do so by the Kingpin. Matt can’t tell they’re the same woman, because when she switches personalities all her bio signs change (voice, scent, heartbeat, etc) so much that he can’t recognize her. (Uh, sure.) She may also be using some of her mutant powers to confuse his senses. I haven’t read the comics, I’m relying here on what I could learn from the internet.

Eventually Typhoid drops him off a bridge, but then Mary finds him and gets him to a hospital, saving him. Karen is with him when he wakes up, but he breaks her heart by calling out for Mary.

This storyline...does not thrill me. As I said, I haven’t read it, but comics writing about mental illness is generally neither nuanced nor accurate, and comics writing about women circa 1988 is also not great, by today’s standards. And comics Matt’s disastrous love life is legendary—cheating on your girlfriend is bad, Matt! Don’t do it! 

I have, however, watched season 2 of Iron Fist, where we get a different version. This Mary Walker is a US army veteran, special ops, who was captured by the Sokovian military. Her personality fragmented due to the brutal abuse she received from her captors for nearly two years, until she finally escaped. She got a medical discharge from the army after being diagnosed with Dissociative Identity Disorder.

Her personalities are: Mary, who is innocent and naive; and Walker, who is a ruthless, coolly efficient mercenary-for-hire. The existence of a third, ultraviolent personality, previously unknown to either Mary or Walker, is revealed near the end of the season. 

Mary meets and befriends Danny Rand, while Walker is hired by his enemies to stalk him, and eventually capture him so they can steal his Iron Fist powers from him. She later changes sides, getting hired to bring down Davos, the season’s main villain, by Joy Meachum, his former ally.

There are clear parallels to the Daredevil comics storyline, albeit in less extreme form—Mary befriends the hero, but isn’t romantically involved with him; her more violent personality works against him and fights him, but doesn’t try to destroy him. 

I enjoyed this version of the character more than I expected to, for a couple of reasons. For one, she is never the out of control, “crazy” stereotype of a person with mental illness. Both Mary and Walker are more-or-less functional adults, managing to live a strange hybrid life, aware of each other’s existence even though they don’t share memories.

But what I especially like is that she isn’t sexualized, at all. It’s incredibly rare, in my experience, to see a young, female antagonist opposing a male hero, and not have her be sexy. Older women are exempt from this obligation (see my list of examples above), but the young ones always vamp it up, and I am so tired of it. I am not opposed to sexy women, but I am very opposed to the requirement that all women must be sexy. (Unless they’re old.) Male antagonists aren’t required to be alluring, so why should women be? (Yes, I know why. I just don’t like it.)

There’s also a lot of potential YIKES in sexualizing a woman with a severe mental illness, which was caused by (among other things) repeated sexual violence. Could it be done in a way that isn’t super problematic? It’s possible, sure. Am I assuming that most television writers would give the subject the respect it deserves? NOPE! 

I’m really glad they chose to just not go there. Walker is extremely good at what she does, takes no shit from anyone, and (almost) never gets riled up. After everything she’s been through, nothing in her present life has the power to faze her, and none of the men around her have the power to intimidate her. It’s pretty great!

She isn’t the least bit coy or seductive, and, equally refreshing, none of the men try to sexualize her or hit on her. Everyone Walker talks to knows she is a highly skilled professional, and they treat her accordingly. Or, when someone does disrespect her, it’s never gendered as far as I can remember, and it stops as soon as she calmly states what she’s going to do to him if it doesn’t.

As for Mary, although she has a more feminine appearance than Walker (hair down and loose, makeup), she is also not sexualized. Her friendship with Danny, who is in an established relationship with Colleen Wing, is platonic, and no one else tries to hit on her that I remember.

So this is the version of Typhoid Mary that Erik Oleson was going to reboot, into a femme fatale. Only, you know. A feminist one. 

I...have some questions. What does that even mean? What does feminism mean to Erik Oleson? Let’s be real, the idea of a woman becoming an ultraviolent, sadistic man-hater as a result of sexual trauma would have been seen as feminist in some circles, back in 1988 when that version was written. So what, exactly, did he have in mind?

As I said before, sexual allure is a necessary component of a femme fatale. So she was definitely gonna be sexy. And you know now how I feel about sexy female antagonists. As for the “warped love story” part...Matt wouldn’t be cheating on Karen, since they aren’t together (please, for the love of mercy, don’t have them get together right before he meets Mary, we did that once and I do NOT want to see it again), but I am still not a fan of Matt/Mary as a couple.

Her Dissociative Identity Disorder raises some serious issues around consent, and even if the show chose to ignore that, there’s still the issue of past sexual trauma. Unless Oleson’s reworking of the character was going to include a completely different back story, a Matt/Mary relationship would mean Matt unknowingly having sex with a woman who has suffered brutal sexual abuse in her past. Not to mention, having sex with her that only one part of her personality actually wants.

Is it possible for someone with Mary’s past trauma and present mental illness to have a positive sexual relationship? In reality, of course! In the hands of writers with only a layman’s knowledge of psychology, on a show that loves to torment its hero, I wouldn’t bet on it. How do you suppose our poster boy for Catholic guilt would react when he inevitably finds out the truth?

Plus, aside from any issues around Mary herself, Matt starting a relationship with anyone other than the handful of people who already know his secret identity, means a whole new round of Matt lying to someone he cares about. Does anyone really want to see that? I know I don’t. Sure, maybe he’d tell her eventually, but how long would they have to date before he decided to trust her with the truth?

I’m not opposed to the Mary Walker from Iron Fist appearing in Daredevil, if the writers could come up with a new story for her (i.e, don’t just have her repeat all the same plot beats with Matt that she already did with Danny). But bringing her in as a femme fatale really doesn’t sit well with me. We’ve already seen Matt in an ultimately destructive relationship with a sexy, violent, morally grey woman. I really don’t want to watch Round 2: now with multiple personalities!

Of course, maybe we never will. The quote at the beginning of this post is from just a couple of weeks ago (July 25 2020), so Erik Oleson still seems to think it’s a fine idea. But obviously we don’t know yet if there will ever be a season 4, or who the show runner will be if there is. He may never get to make the story he was planning.

So yes, I realize I’m merely speculating about a completely theoretical story that may never happen. But I wanted to write this anyway. I had a strong “ugh, no” reaction to the idea of a feminist femme fatale Typhoid Mary, and I wanted to go deeper and pick apart my reasons for not liking the idea.

To the three of you who have read this all the way through to the end (this post is nearly 2000 words, yikes), thank you for indulging me! These are, as always, my own opinions, and YMMV. 

[ninastarkov]

Ahsoka and the clones:

Rex and Ahsoka edition

Part 2

Hey guys! This is the third post in a series about Ahsoka’s relationship with the clones (here’s the one on ahsoka and the clones, minus Rex and ahsoka). I talk about what we know in canon/what’s reasonably predicted off that, what the fandom has decided, and my own takes.

It might make more sense to read my part 1 post before this one, for an analysis of their friendship in the movie through season 3! On this one I’ll go through seasons 4, 5 and 7, though obviously season 7 will have the most. Anyway, here we go!

Referencing my last post, I see them as going from mentor-student to friends and equals to family. I’ve established them as equals by the end of season 3–Ahsoka has grown a lot from that snippy 14 year old padawan, and Rex has grown to trust her. By the end of season 7 I see them as found family (i’m sorry found family is just. my favorite.)

Season 4

Ok, Ahsoka and Rex pretty much don’t interact AT ALL in season 4. But...umbara. Though Ahsoka isn’t actually present for umbara, her (and anakin’s) influence on the 501st, and the contrast between them and krell, is clear to see. I think his relationship with Anakin has just as much of an impact with what happened on umbara, but since this post is about Rex and ahsoka i’m not going to focus on Anakin.

Also WOW umbara is long but I like the points I made so get ready:

Rex has spent the whole war under Anakin, and most of it under Ahsoka. Anakin can get angry and Ahsoka can be immature especially early on and they’re both headstrong idiots sometimes, but they’re good people who care deeply for their troops. Krell is everything Anakin and Ahsoka are not. The relationship that Rex has with them is part of what makes it so hard for him to go against Krell (the other, probably bigger part being his conditioning into seeing Jedi as authority figures to always follow). Ahsoka has shown that she’s willing to die for them, with the geonosis mission, and that she mourns their deaths, with ryloth. And while not explicitly shown in canon, most of us agree that she tries to connect with her troops. Krell shares none of these traits that Rex has gotten used to seeing in his Jedi. Rex believes that the Jedi are good, and trusts them to make hard decisions to get to victory. Krell breaks this trust, and I have to think that this would have long-term consequences on his relationships with Jedi in general, and Anakin and ahsoka specifically. We aren’t shown the aftermath of umbara in the show (which is one of my biggest complaints but,, off topic), but we can’t expect such a fundamental break in trust to not have its effect on all of the 501st and their Jedi. I would say that Ahsoka probably had to build up a lot of trust (that had previously existed between them) with Rex again after umbara. And since their relationship in the show doesn’t seem to change much afterward, I could guess that Ahsoka spent a lot of time trying to help Rex and the 501st cope and trust their Jedi again (also, I’ve read some fics about ahsoka helping the troopers through the aftermath of umbara and now I believe that had to have happened for their relationship to return to what it was before).

So, at least in my opinion, after umbara Rex is less likely to place complete trust in ahsoka (though he probably hates that he can’t). Also, remember me talking about them being equals by now? Yeah, another thing Krell breaks. Ahsoka sees Rex as an equal, though technically she outranks him. She looks past the rank and sees the person (the person with more experience than her). Krell is, again, the opposite. He literally sees clones as fundamentally inferior to himself, and that dehumanization that Rex faced had to have had an effect on his own self-worth. Being constantly degraded by a figure that Rex thinks he’s supposed to see as an authority to follow, probably means that afterward his own sense of self-worth would have gone down significantly—nevermind the guilt he feels over waiting to take action against Krell. So, though Ahsoka still sees Rex as an equal, it’s complicated for Rex. For one, he’s lost trust in the Jedi, so the respect towards ahsoka purely because of her Jedi status is diminished. On the other hand, I think his opinion of himself has gone down. It’s a complicated dynamic, now. However, by this point in the war, I really think that Rex and ahsoka see each other as family (I see Ahsoka’s family including Rex and some of the older 501st like Jesse and Kix and anyone can Fight Me On This but ANYWAY). As fellow soldiers or even friends, I think the trust between them would have been permanently damaged. But as family, Rex knows ahsoka, knows that even though he’s lost some faith in the Jedi, she will never be like Krell, or even other Jedi like Quinlan Vos who aren’t literally evil but aren’t good towards the clones either. And on Ahsoka’s side, she’s going to do anything she can to help her family through the aftermath of umbara, even as a Jedi.

I think most of the aftermath is resolved between umbara and Onderon, but zygerria was. there. Rex and obi wan were slaves for an unknown amount of time. This part hurts, but I would guess that in Rex’s time there he was forced to confront some hard truths about the role of the clones in the war. They’re all proud to fight for the republic, but that doesn’t change the fact that they don’t have a choice. I think this also sets the stage for that big conversation between Rex and ahsoka after maul is captured in season 7 (“we clones have mixed feelings about the war”), where they discuss their own feelings about the war and how it’s affected them. (Also I know that most of what I just said is about Rex and not really ahsoka, but his changing viewpoints are really important in their dynamic).

Season 5

By Onderon, I think Rex and Ahsoka’s relationship is mostly back to normal (equals), and any trust lost has been repaired (not counting Rex’s permanent disillusionment(?) with the Jedi). It’s literally only them plus Anakin and obi wan oh the mission, and it seems like they’re having a good time (as much as you can in a war zone). I point out Onderon because it’s the last time they’re together before the Wrong Jedi arc.

And now...the wrong Jedi. Hearing that Ahsoka killed clones during her escape HAD to have shaken Rex. A lot. There was definitely a moment where he thought back to umbara and Krell. But Rex also chased ahsoka outside the prison, and saw that she did nothing to harm the people coming after her—in fact, went out of her way to avoid it. I think Rex was definitely struggling with himself here—his experiences with Krell would have him believe that ahsoka is capable of this, but his bond with her would have him think the opposite. Overall, in my opinion there was a moment when Rex believed it to be true (due to umbara), but I think he would have rejected the idea relatively quickly because he knows ahsoka (they’re FAMILY and she wouldn’t hurt his brothers!).

Then ahsoka is cleared but leaves the Jedi. Leaves the 501st. I don’t think that she talks to Rex or any Jedi after she leaves the temple, which means she’s out of contact for months. Rex gets a second hand account of what happened through Anakin, and knowing anakin’s anger and pain over the situation, I can’t imagine he wanted to talk about it much. So Rex probably gets told that ahsoka was cleared but isn’t coming back. (Honestly I really don’t know how this would go down but i’m leaning towards an angry Anakin giving as little explanation as possible because he doesn’t want to talk about it). Add this to what I talked about in my first post on ahsoka and the clones, how maul gleans from Jesse that the Jedi abandoned her—meaning this was Jesse’s view of what happened—this probably means that her family in the 501st blamed the council for abandoning her and didn’t blame her for leaving. This also fits with the welcome she recieves in season 7. So even though Ahsoka left, Rex still holds the same respect for her (or more, even), and still considers her family. And even though ahsoka felt she had to leave the Jedi, I doubt she ever blamed the troopers for coming after her, so she still sees Rex as family.

Season 7

Skipped season six since...no ahsoka, obviously. Just keep in mind Fives’ arc (😭😭). Also, Anakin changes. He’s still a good person, a good general, but i’m assuming Rex notices he’s more angry and a little more distant than before. They all miss their favorite padawan commander :((

NOW, Old Friends Not Forgotten:

the LOOK on Ahsoka’s face when she sees all the troopers with their helmets painted...*single tear*. Rex looks so happy to see her, and of course ahsoka is glad to see him too, but there’s clearly a large part of her that’s shocked she’s getting such a warm welcome. I think she was worried that the Rex and the troopers would think she abandoned them (and a part of herself thinks that as well). But obviously, Rex doesn’t feel that way (“you don’t have to call me commander anymore” “ok, commander”). And the helmet paint!! You can tell Rex is worried she won’t like it bc he says something like “oh the paint job is a bit messy but we hope we got the point across.” But of course ahsoka understands they’re trying to honor her, and is grateful. AND! Armor painting is such an important way for all the clones to show their individuality, and they gave that up for her (even if Rex and Jesse went back to their original paint). And back to that little moment where he calls her commander—ahsoka says “you don’t have to call me commander anymore.” I think this was her guilt at leaving showing itself, and hints to us that she thinks she’s not worthy of that title. This may be more of a stretch, but she didn’t say “i’m not a commander anymore,” she said “you don’t have to call me commander anymore.” Maybe there’s some larger guilt about her role in a republic that doesn’t care for the ones that fight and die for it. Also a stretch but I think this alludes to the fact that they see each other as equals—though technically ahsoka was a commander and Rex a captain, they were a team. Now that Ahsoka’s no longer part of the GAR, Rex doesn’t have to call her commander, doesn’t have to keep to the strict rules of authority. Instead he can have her back as a friend, as family. And when Rex calls her commander anyway, it shows his continued respect for her, not because he has to respect her as a superior and Jedi, but because she’s earned his respect through her actions.

And MOST IMPORTANTLY, Rex smiles more in this one episode than probably the entire rest of the show combined?!? We get the small happy moments, when Ahsoka doesn’t need a jetpack and races Rex to the ground (and he LAUGHS—i’m pretty sure that the only time Rex has actually laughed was in the movie in response to ahsoka, and in that ep). And once they reach mandalore, “some things never change”—they’ve returned immediately to their old dynamic. Honestly I think that one line sums up a lot of their relationship in season 7 and afterward, all the way to rebels. They may spend a lot of time apart (15 YEARS WHY), but they will always be family—that will never change.

This part is based on a picture from the ep I saw once, never to be found again (and I tried looking through the old friends ep but I can’t find the shot where you can see this), but i’m pretty sure there’s one moment in one of the episodes where you can see tally marks on Ahsoka’s bracers. She HAD to have picked that up from Rex, idk I just thought it was a nice thing to point out (unless I’m remembering the image wrong lol in that case ignore this paragraph).

Next, after Ahsoka meets with the council and doesn’t tell them about what Maul said about Anakin. Rex calls her out on it, and she doesn’t give a reason why she didn’t, but we can all guess. Anakin is probably the person she is closest to, and is the reason that she didn’t believe Maul’s claims. She probably didn’t want to tell anyone about what Maul said, because she would never believe Anakin would fall (😭). But she told Rex. This is a HUGE example of how much she trusts him, because she trusted him with this terrible information about her closest family. The only other person she had planned to talk to was Anakin, obviously. Yes, part of the reason why she didn’t tell the council was because she knew they could be...less than sensible...at times when they suspected a Jedi of using the dark side, like with her farce of a trial. (Sidenote, when Mace calls ahsoka “citizen” and Rex makes a face lol). I just. This is probably one of my favorite moments with them of the whole show? The amount of trust Ahsoka has to have in Rex to tell him that Anakin is being groomed to be a Sith Lord. I want to connect this back to all those years ago on Maridun(?) with aayla and Bly, when she trusts Rex to stay behind with injured Anakin while she goes with everyone else to find help. Ahsoka has trusted Rex with Anakin from basically the beginning, and such a long time of trust is necessary for her to tell him about Maul’s words.

Ok, now we have what you’ve been dreading waiting for...Shattered. Right before the Horrible Moment, Ahsoka gets a sort-of vision about what’s up in coruscant with Anakin and palpatine—and her immediate reaction is to run to Rex to tell him about it. Again, TRUST. There’s not even a second thought about whether to tell him or not, showing that Rex is the one person she feels she can always confide in. Of course, she doesn’t get to tell him.

First off, there were two things that saved ahsoka. One was her bond with Rex, that bought her time to react, which is what I’ll talk about. The other was Rex’s knowledge of what happened to fives and the chips. I’m not going to discuss that much in this post but just disclaimer that I view that as just as important in her survival (I think @gffa made a post on these two things which I wholly agree with and i’m sorry if i’m wrong and it was someone else that made that post!!)

Anyway. After the original Wrinkly Old Man tells Rex to execute the order, Rex is able to fight it for long enough to buy Ahsoka time to prepare, and give her the information that will save both of their lives (“Find him...Fives!”). You can see that he’s fighting so hard against the order, though in the end it wins out. He turns to face Ahsoka and he’s CRYING!!! I don’t have much analysis here because what happens in the show really says it all—ahsoka is his family, he doesn’t want to kill her. But once the chip takes over, Rex is gone.

On Ahsoka’s end, of course she knows something’s up. She knows Rex would never try to kill her, even if he was ordered to. That one line she says to Maul when she sets him free says everything about how lost she is (the clones turned against me. Even Rex.”). The latter statement isn’t meant for maul, since of course he doesn’t know much about Rex or their friendship (besides what he may have gotten from Jesse). This is all ahsoka trying to figure out what the hell was happening—because she could believe the clones turned against her, maybe. After her trial, after Brain Invaders, it’s probably easier to. But even Rex. Going back to what I said about the wrong Jedi arc, I think that Rex believed ahsoka to be innocent. Even in that arc, Rex was on her side. But this time, he wasn’t.

And then ahsoka finds out about fives and the chips. The holo of her that one of the droids plays to Rex before they knock him out makes me so sad. Ahsoka had to know that the Rex that was under the order wouldn’t listen to what she was saying in the holo, so i’m thinking that (besides a distraction) her words were meant for Rex to remember after the removed his chip—one more reassurance that it wasn’t his fault.

And here’s my thoughts on the chanting “I am one with the force and the force is with me,” as they try to find the chip in Rex’s head. Ahsoka had to have created some kind of connection between them for him to be saying these words with her—while unconscious AND still under the order. I know next to nothing about force bonds and the technical stuff, but it seems that a likely explanation for the chanting together is that some kind of connection was created between them in the force. Into the world of wild speculation, this could mean that Rex is more force sensitive than the average guy? Even if it was a temporary connection, it would make sense that Rex would have to feel the force somehow in order to connect with ahsoka to say the mantra. (Not sure I actually believe this but...putting it out there)

Once his chip gets removed and Ahsoka asks if he’s okay, Rex calls her “kid” again. I point this out because it’s definitely been a while since he’s called her anything but commander—probably out of a place of respect. But his first instinct after the chip is out is to call her “kid.” This was partially for reassurance that he’s back, because a Rex still affected by the chip wouldn’t call her kid. I also want to say though, that his first instinct is to call her kid, not commander, because he sees her as family first. And then when he has to tell her that every single clone is chipped, he calls her ahsoka (I think for the first time ever??). They’re far, far beyond their normal roles as captain and commander, and this reflects that. I also wonder if Rex realizes that ahsoka would hate to be called commander right now, after being forced to hurt the troops she has always tried to protect.

Aaaaand then they try to escape only to find the hangar filled with all the troopers, Jesse leading them. Ouch. Rex cries AGAIN (can any of us handle it? no.). He tells ahsoka that all of the clones, his brothers, only care about killing them—they don’t care if they die trying. Rex sounds so angry in this moment and for a second ahsoka looks surprised, but then she realizes how Rex is feeling and they have a Sad Moment when she takes his helmet off. There’s a moment when he visibly deflates as ahsoka seems to realize what he’s really feeling. And yeah, he turns away once his helmet is off, but he let her take his helmet off and see him cry. I feel like Rex has always been the person that’s strong for others, and doesn’t like to show his own vulnerability. Throughout the show he’s always been a steadying presence for others, whether it’s with ahsoka or fives or someone else. Even on umbara, he doesn’t let himself fall apart. But he lets ahsoka see that here. In his relationships with others, Rex almost always has to be the authority, the one who keeps calm in the face of everything. But with him and ahsoka, they can be equals—they can show their uncertainty and sadness. The only other person we see Rex really be honest with like this is Cody, in the bad batch arc when Rex talks about how he’s watched so many brothers die, and Cody says “it’s hard being the one that survives.” Cody and Ahsoka are the only people that have seen this side of Rex, because he trusts them more than anyone, and feels he doesn’t always have to be strong in front of them.

Then ahsoka says “you’re a good soldier, Rex.” I can’t NOT connect this to “good soldiers follow orders,” and Fives’ death. I don’t think ahsoka knows all about the “good soldiers follow orders,” but she knows Rex. She knows that Rex has always tried to be the good soldier, has been taught that following orders is everything, but has also grown so much over the course of the war (from meeting Cut to going through umbara to watching fives die). He’s grown into a person that realizes sometimes he has to make his own decisions, even if that doesn’t fit with the orders he’s been given. She gives him the reassurance that, despite everything, he’s still the person that he wants to be. Ahsoka sees through the anger he puts up, because of course he doesn’t want to kill his brothers, but it isn’t them anymore and what else are they supposed to do?

Once they are forced to fight the rest of the troopers in the hangar, it’s obvious that ahsoka and Rex work well together. Not much to say specifically, but the teamwork? the coordination? we love to see it (but also hate to see it bc o u c h).

Now we get back to trust (it always comes back to trust). Once they find the y-wing to escape on, Rex tells ahsoka to “get me over there” and just. Runs and jumps into thin air? Of course ahsoka gives him a boost with the force and he gets on the y-wing, but we know that Rex doesn’t like heights. It’s been a running joke through the show for other people to throw Rex in the air (geonosis? bad batch MULTIPLE TIMES lol), but it’s always without him asking and he Does Not Appreciate. This time he TELLS ahsoka to throw him over there and doesn’t even hesitate to jump. If Ahsoka hadn’t caught him he would have fallen to his death, and yet he trusts her so much that he does it anyway. He doesn’t even wait for a response from her after he tells her to throw him over there! Now, I don’t know if Rex is actually scared of heights or not, but if he is then this shows even more trust between them. He trusts her with his life completely, and probably vice versa.

And now we get to the end. Ahsoka and Rex buried all of the troopers they could find, because they’re family and it wasn’t their fault and they deserved better and agshdkjskjdh. At this point, they don’t know what’s happened in the rest of the galaxy, but Ahsoka’s felt the death in the force and they probably fear the worst. They are the only family they have left. We end with them about to get on the y wing and probably go to figure out what’s happened. Ahsoka stands at the graves and Rex sees her from beside the ship. There are no words, but they are united by the family they’ve lost.

Personally I find it really hard to believe they would have separated right after that, and i’m not sure what’s canon anymore with the ahsoka novel and when it starts, but whatever. Fitting (ish) with the ahsoka novel, they eventually realized that it wasn’t safe for either of them to stay together and had to say goodbye. I like a headcanon by someone on here (just lmk who you are and I’ll tag!!) about how ahsoka and Rex eventually find Wolffe and Gregor, but wolffe is badly affected by Ahsoka’s presence and so she makes the decision to leave. No matter what actually happened though, they stayed family, even apart. When they meet again in Rebels it’s so sweet!! They’ve both come so far from who they were at the start of the Clone Wars. In the beginning, Ahsoka saw Rex as a sort of mentor and quickly gained a lot of respect for him. Rex, in turn, was at first unsure about ahsoka but changed his mind fast. Ahsoka grows into the best Commander she can be by the end of season 3, and by this point they each see each other as equals. Though Ahsoka is commander and Rex captain, she respects his experience and cares about him as a friend, and maybe even family. By seasons 4 and 5 they see each other as family, after Ahsoka was there in the aftermath of umbara and Rex trusted her in the wrong Jedi. Even though ahsoka left, she never blamed the troopers for what she went through. And when she returns in season 7 she sees all of her family again, just for a moment, until it all comes crashing down and she and Rex are all each other has left. Over the three years of the war, Ahsoka and Rex was one of the friendships that wasn’t broken by betrayal or breach in trust. They had each other’s backs and grew to trust each other with their lives, and that didn’t change even after the war ended.

WOW that was long—I got carried away and went a lot into their individual characterization as well. Sorry if the conclusion was a bit dramatic, I wanted to wrap it up meaningfully. Let me know what you like and agree/disagree with, and hope you found this interesting!

[popculturebuffet]

Loud House Reviews: The Loudest Thanksgiving

It’s almost Thanksgiving! And a vastly diffrent one than in recent memory: Most of us are slimming down family gatherings to just whose in our house, you know because theirs a pandemic going on and it’s not worth risking your life for it. To those either guilting their families into it or doing so because MAGa or some such I only have this to say. 

Speaking of Black Friday i’ts spread over a week and it’s cyber deals mean I got a ton of graphic novels for a dollar a piece and my christmas shopping almost done. So in other words, boo Maga, yay safe and responsible captalisim.  But while the holiday may be diffrent, as well as the pseudo holiday attached that spawned a wonderful musical and many many injuries, one thing stays the same; Holiday Episodes. And despite being the less popular of the three holidays, Thanksgiving still produced tons of great holiday episodes and specials. And with everything being so busy I simply didn’t put too much thought into what to do for Turkey Day.. well okay the day proper i’m going to eat, spend time with family and watch a bunch of mystery science theater 3000, stay the course even in these troubling times, just with only the 4 other people who live in my house. But in terms of episodes I thought i had nothing.. then I started actually thinking on it and what do you know I have three things I want to do for the holiday, though one might wait till next year, and possibly a fourth. But given my workload currently, i’m not one to back away from a challenge, so welcome to a three or four course meal of reviews. First course: The Loud House thanksgiving special, the loudest thanksgiving.  I originally wasn’t going to do this one, mostly because due to my large workload and constant battle with procastination, I keep having to push back the latest episode review, and I have to do that one soon, as there’s a new episode in december and a christmas episode i’ve put off watching for far too long , as I INTENDED to watch eleven louds a leapin for every chirstmas up till now and never got to it before the season was over.  But just like elven louds.. Nick forced my hand.. and by that I mean the SPINOFF got a thanksgiving episode that’s also a sequel in some fashion to this episode. If I wanted to cover that episode this thanksgiving or the next I had to at least watch the original. And frankly, this close to the holiday there was no reason not to review it. So with that out of the way. 

Let’s Get At Er. This is The Loudest Thanksgiving... after the break

The Loudest Thanksgiving takes place during season 3, and still pre-casagrandes spinoff launch despite the christmas special taking place earlier. This is actually easy to explain: The Loud House runs on Comic Strip time... i.e. the characters don’t age unless the writers decide they do. But while the spinoff was in motion at this point, it was still a season off airing wise, and ill advised raitings stunt mini series wise, so in order to keep the Casagrandes fresh in people’s minds presumably, they did a crossover that at this point wasn’t a crossover but now technically is because the show exists but this existed before the show. 

It’s just a show, and I should really just relax. Point is this is a pre-crossover crossover, the two families meet for the first time, the man already said pitter patter, let’s get back at er.  So we open with Flip serving as our magical snowman narrator and regaling us with the tale of steven. Every compastionate can you imagine it... and i’m fucking with you, it’s of course abotu that time the louds and the casagrandes tried having thanksgiving together. 

We then cut to Lori and Bobby being all cute, as usual, and both talking over the phone as each show off their thanksgivings to each other and the enusing family shenanigans. On Lori’s side Lynn is wearing baggy pants so she dosen’t miss the game or the meal by going to the bathroom.. because that’s how pissing yourself works. Look if your going to do something that gross, stupid and broish just woman up and wear an adult diaper. The twins are guarding Lynn sr and the food, poorly, and Lisa has invented a Gravy Squriting robot. I can only see this ending one way. 

Yeah those single function robots really get useless once the exestnetial crisis kicks in. 

On the casagrandes side, Rosa is likewise guarding her kitchen, Frida is painting and Hector plans to sernade eveyrone because Hector is the best and you all should know that. Even with the recent Bobby Abuse he’s still awesome. As for the Mercado, CJ and Ronnie Anne are running the annual canned food drive because CJ is better than the best and should really be used more often.  Both wish they could be there.. and both honestly talk about possibly spending thanksgiving with each other and just one of their family. It’s not a wild proposition: Both are going to college soon, both are in a longterm relationship.. they plan to get married down the line for now. If things hold they will eventually have to figure this out. Of course rather than fate let them figure this out themselves, Hector overhears on Bobby’s end and Lincoln, whose busy A Clock Work Oranging himself so he can stay awake during dinner, overhears on Loris, leading to an emergency family meeting for both sides.  Both families are worried their prospective teenager going to another house of their longterm significant other for one year will mean they get all the holidays. Having never had a relationship last long enough to worry about this, I don’t quite get it as in my experince watching couples juggle this.. they usually just alternate years, spoilers the solution the episode goes with, or trade off christmas and thanksgiving, both fair solutions. Buuut as much as this bothered me at first the more I thought about it the more it actually made sense: People.. aren’t always rational and won’t always do the smart or correct thing, especially when it comes to their children. And with Lori leaving college and the casagrandes being togehter for thanksgiving for the first time in about 5 years, with both ronnie anne and her mom not having had a proper one in some time due to her mom needing to work thanksgiving, presumibly because of the eternal curse of gravy chugging contests, they have valid emotional reasons to go a bit nuts and do some irrational and assholish things. They just don’t want to loose their big sister and big brother, and that’s fair. It may not be at all accurate but it’s fair. 

So thus began the great Guilt Off of 2018. ON the Loud side they START with a fairly soft pitch, the twins simply offer her food early, and she takes it because honestly I would too. Then again, i’d also take free food in just about any situation, so i’m not really a good gage for this. As long as it’s not poision i’ll probably eat it if it’s free. The next two are a little.. less subtle, with the kids talking about Lori’s roll in the annual thanksgiving skit.. which I’m assuming is soley for Lynn Sr. as no one else seems to be going to their thanksgiving. Which granted theirs valid explinations for why their neighbors didn’t go, the mcbrides and mr grouse have their own families and while Mr Grouse rarely gets to see his, he now has neighborly friends after the last holiday special happy to help. But Pop Pop.. makes no sense as his girlfriend, the only plausable reason he wouldn’t be there, was said to not have much family in her debut. So he’s just.. absent from thanksgiving for no reason. Thena gain we later find out this play is movie length, so maybe he was just trying to escape that which in that case, who can blame him. Rita almost reigns things back in with the mother’s trump card: parental guilt. Almost. She then almost crushes lori’s hand but it’s funny enough.  At the Casagrandes, their opening move is largely the same only Rosa wins in terms of execution, cooking up some of bobby’s faviorites to specificially target him. Frida paints him into a painting, again the Casagrandes win his one in terms of effort. They do tie in the last bit, as Maria and Ronnie Anne try the same sort of guilt slining with the same bone crushing.  Eventually both teens get fed up with the next bit; For Lori, Lucy gives her a long overdramatic poem about an empty chair which is easily tied with one bit later for best bit of hte episode.. which granted when I can only think of two or three gags that really made me laugh...

Bobby likewise gets Hector telling the story about a realitvie not going to thanksgiving. Both get angry.. which for Lori, isn’t all that suprising, if entirely warranted. For Bobby though? It’s like pissing off a dolphin. IT’s hard to do and very much not something you want to actually pull of. Both families are forced to admit they eavesdropped, and are incredibly worried about this whole situation, with Lynn Sr selling lincoln up the river for telling them... this man’s capacity for selling out his children is as awe insprising as it is truly pathetic. 

So the two teens go back to their rooms to figure something out and come upon a reasonable solution: just have one of the families host and both come to it. That’s more than fair. But given we still have a full special to pad out, both families are still treating this like a competion: while the louds win the coin toss, both sides are determined to win thanksgiving. IT’s far from the most insane contest i’ve seen this month, x of swords was happening and i’ve seen a russian yank a goblin out of the demonic alligator skin he was using as a puppet. And we don’t know for sure Arrakoa and Krakoa didn’t have a trial over a baby turkey being adorable as one of the challenges. Other challenges included getting drunk, an eating contest, telling someone to murder a kitten and a wedding, all of this is actual stuff that happened in this recent crossover, I have made up nothing. 

So after the break and Flip realizing oh shit the audience is back, the war begins. The Louds are preparing for war, with Lola putting out a picture of herself instead of bobby and laurie because of course.. still not a half bad gag. The Casagrandes arrive and in in a passive agressive move that was already done a year before this special by Brooklyn Nine Nine and better, brought their own food.. though the roast pig is a nice and unique touch. Points for that.  And this.. is where the special gets tedious. Yeah while the IDEA of this episode was really good and I was excited to cover it in practice it’s just similar gags on both sides done for both halves: The first being “let’s guilt them into staying” and the second being “Let’s one up each other” with only two bits really working: Frieda having a painting and the louds annual skit.  And the skit is because it raises a LOT of questions: Why is it 90 minutes, who played the adorable turkey in the years between babies? Was it just whoever was youngest? Who wrote this? Who is this for besides Lynn Sr and Pop Pop? Who all has sat through this thing at some point? Is that why the mcbrides don’t come over for thanksgiving? It’s just.. fantastic is what i’m saying.  

But otherwise this part is just the family trying to one up each other with food, or toasts, or song, before devolving into a big fight. What makes it not work is.. there isn’t a lot of personality there. You have these two big, plentiful, intresting casts, even at this stage with the Casagrandes far less established and fleshed out. And instead of finding interesting ways for them to play off one another meeting for the first time, and to use that to also flesh the characters out more for the inevitable spinoff, it’s just 

For most of the second half. Thankfully it DOES manage to bring things around as after things degenerate into a food fight, the families decide to just ASK the two of them where they want to go.. and find them entirely missing.  It then turns out, in a nice twist, this is where Flip came in. Since his place is the only place open 24/7 and 365, barring fishing season, Bobby and Lori fled here to flee their insane families.. who then follow them there because Carlos and Lisa have them chipped. I was suprised at first Carlos had a tracker on bobby but honestly, i’ts just common sense. The man is like a golden retriver in a man’s body. Here’s an artists interpretation

Both families breifly bicker before Lori and Bobby announce their starting their own family thankgiving with blackjack, and hookers. They really shouldn’t of let Flip in on the brainstorming session. Both families don’t want that, and apologize, admitting they just didn’t want to loose them and both genuinely offering to let the other have them next year. Flip, who despite having a “pay for my colonoscopy jar” with a picture of his ass on it, is somehow the voice of reason and just suggests trading thanksgivings every year, everyone accepts, and we do get a genuinely heartwarming ending of both sides gathering everything for a gas station thanksgiving. Honestly reminds me of king of the hill’s airport episode, but in a very good way and still unique enough circumstances to work.Also Flip, of all people, donates the cans needed to finish the can drive.. granted i’m not sure if they WANT any of that meat, but hey, he meant well and it made me really like the character.  We get a heartwearming duet between hector and luna and sono the whole family and we’re out. 

Final Thoughts: This was disapointing. I’ve listed most of my complaints already, but overall it wasted a good premise of two families coming together, and even the feud parts could’ve been funnier. As it is it’s just.. ehhhhhhhhhh. It has some good parts, and bobby is an angel here on earth as always. But the whole just feels padded. Like this was SUPPOSED to just be 11 minutes, got bumped up, and thus here we are. It’s not the worst Loud House has done, i’ve seen and heard of muccch worse, but for a holiday special it just feels stale and i’ve seen way better thanksgiving specials. And i’ll be getting to that.  If there’s an episode of a cartoon you’d like me to cover, just pop in my ask box or dms and you can comission a review for 5 bucks a piece. Discounts on bulk, 15 for movies. Until then , happy thanksgiving.