#god i love twilight so much i miss herrrr

[uniiiquehecrt]

As much as I do like MLP Season 9 and find it to be a good send off for the show, Cellys retirement bugs me a bit. Like she just got up one day and was all "hey Twi sis and I will be retiring next year! It's all yours now! Kthanksbye!" Like I love ya Tia but couldn't you give Twi a heads up? Poor mare was having a heart attack.

I THINK ABOUT THIS A COMPLETELY NORMAL AMOUNT FRIEND YEAH (i mean... i have you know that but STILL)

I have various ... opinions ... and general thoughts about Celestia and her relationship with Twilight. and while ultimately I think they have a precious sort of mentor/teacher relationship, it's also something that is WILDLY imbalanced. With that power imbalance only really being touched on in season 8, episode 7: "Horse Play". I think there's another one that specifically touches a bit more on Twilight's rose colored glasses of her mentor... but I can't entirely recall which one. Just that, after Twilight's ascension, it DEFINITELY came up more and more frequently.

Unfortunately the show never got to have that 10th season they could have had to round everything out, including wrapping up Twilight's particular arc of overcoming her inferiority complex in comparison to Princess Celestia. I'm not really sure what the reasoning behind mismanaging the episode times like that was exactly, but in the very least they'd ended FiM in a way that was otherwise perfectly sound and appealing to gen 4's audience. (You know, before gen 5 production team decided to bastardize it not even a year out...)

Also, Twilight deserves a different design than a recolor of Celestia's puppet rig. :')

[mild-lunacy]

TFP: to squee or not to squee, that is the question

...well, here we are. I’ve watched it. More like made myself finish it, haha. If not today, then when? So.

I’ll just... be over here, then. Meanwhile, I have some feels about TFP, so here you go if you’re interested.

So yeah. The way it turned out, I ended up watching the Eurus plot on Sunday, and the rest today. Even though I’ve been avoiding fandom pretty hardcore, I haven’t been able to entirely avoid the negativity, so my initial squee has been a bit spoiled. It’s ironic, because I expected S4 to hurt, but I thought fandom would help somewhat (even if it made certain things worse). I expected that it’s likely enough I’d have to avoid fandom altogether after S4, no matter what happened with canon Johnlock, because there were no non-wanky solutions, more or less. Well... at least that prediction came true. Oh man.

Anyway, so my initial PBS watching on Roku stalled out at exactly the moment Mary was saying something about what John and Sherlock ‘could be’. Can you imagine my reaction? That was where my connection died. I was so happy. I knew (I was told) canon Johnlock didn’t happen (I was told after the leak on Saturday! gah!!), but like, I had about 20-30 seconds of disbelieving, if hysterical, bliss, all alone away from the Internet. After the leak, it’s not like I really believed the ep really sucked that much (nothing would convince me that’s possible), but my expectations had still been low. So I was amazed at how much I enjoyed it. I loved the plot of TLD, as I said, but I loved the plot of TFP even more. I always loved the surrealistic touches and stylistic elements of BBC Sherlock, and I love huge, dramatic reveals. I always wanted Mycroft to be hiding some kind of huge secret, which is what attracted me to M-Theory (in part). I love extreme drama and action, I love badass soldier!John, so I loved the whole thing (including the clown, okay). I loved the Eurus plot, really. It’s all a bit tarnished, knowing that apparently most people hated it, but it’s just so delicious. The hidden fortress prison, the forgotten Holmes sister, Victor Trevor (Jesus Christ fandom! several of us totally nailed it!), this exact kind of angst.... as far as a plot resolution, honestly, it’s everything I could’ve desired. Intense! Great acting. Action-packed! Dramatic! I was at the edge of my seat.

So, stuff I loved:

EURUS! I loved Eurus. I know it’s over-the-top (the secret evil sister!) but this is the only worthy successor to Moriarty (whom I love, but let’s face it, he’s a crazy over-the-top guy who rants about shoes). The true appeal of a worthy Big Sherlock Villain is the high drama and the intellectual equal aspect, as well as some emotional mirroring and trauma. You need someone who Sherlock can admire but will also traumatize him hardcore. That’s why Mary as Moriarty never worked for me-- she is so dull in comparison to sparkly, clever Sherlock! But Eurus, on the other hand... now that’s what I call a level up. I love the sheer ballsiness of it. Jesus, the East Wind from HLV is a person. Whoa.

The setting in general-- Sherrinford was a place! It’s a great, genre classic setting from top to bottom, and their arrival (with Mycroft in disguise! oh my god!) was priceless. You can really tell the love of genre infusing the whole thing. Baskerville 2.0, except even better.

‘TELL MY SISTER I’M HERE’ haha

Mycroft as the client! Oh my god, the whole idea is a fantasy come true. He’s much more satisfying in ‘the chair’ than Mary was, ‘cause he actually did tell them (some of) the truth. It was really great. I loved all the Mycroft, and I mean, I don’t even like Mycroft that much. 

‘There’s a place for people like you....’ Oh my god, John. I missed you, John. *sobs*

I even loved the sudden bomb thing. I just love the idea of Mycroft doing legwork and/or having to go all James Bond. Oh man.

Mycroft as the chump, though! haha. That was awesome. I was really creeped out and a bit freaked out, too. And then it just went further and further, until it was just funny. Both creepy and funny-- again, genre classic setting.

Solving the murders in minutes such a great homage to TGG and our old Sherlock, I could cry! The TGG feels were very overt and I felt so nostalgic. Ahhh.

John! John!! The old morally correct-to-the-core John Watson. Gaaaah. Light of my life, fire of my heart! Maybe I’m pathetic (I don’t care) but just seeing John be John and the two of them being partners (FINALLY!!!) made my heart beat faster.

The Dilemmas! Need I say it? Genre classic! haha. I dunno if you enjoy it as much if you’re not a fan of the 50s/60s old mystery/horror shows, but this is some prime Twilight Zone-type psychological angst stuff. And of course, seeing Sherlock emote so much, so intensely, is all I loved about the Mind Palace scene in HLV leveled up.

Mycroft vs John! And the fact that it’s just so inevitable and obvious that Sherlock would choose John, because that was the only solution! And Mycroft trying to make it easier... by mocking John, like that would make it easier for Sherlock to kill him. Aaaah. *claws at the wall* It’s a weird form of emotional intimacy. Seeing them all stripped bare, though particularly Sherlock. Gah. Yes please.

MORIARTY! Oh my god, oh my god, oh, ohhh. Even that little bit of old-school Moriarty flashback, that first glimpse of him at the beach. I nearly squealed. I cried a little. I’m sitting here with a huge doofy grin on my face. I really did miss him. And it really does explain why he’d kill himself, knowing Eurus was his back-up. It makes sense.

REDBEARD! Oh my god, it really was set up, all the way back in TSoT what with ‘remember Redbeard’, all through TAB and everything! I was like, wow. Fandom really saw the Victor thing! Amazing. I really didn’t like non-dog Redbeard, but honestly, it just made sense and so I was happy.

The Molly thing was so intense! Did I mention I love angst? Because I love angst. That was brutal. (*insert evil laugh*) On the other hand, I sort of cringe imagining how could their relationship recover in a normal way after this. Yikes. On the other other hand, I mean, certainly, Sherlock and John have recovered from things that were just as bad and worse, so... I don’t feel too bad. Hurt herrrr! Paaaainnnn. Heartbreak. Loss. DEATH! It’s all good, haha. (With the only exception of death re: John or Sherlock).

Equating John and Victor at the well was so... lovely and right. Even if John is more, I just love the symmetry and it was done so beautifully.

Oh man, Mrs Holmes going all hardass on poor Mycroft. That was great. (Though it does make me wistful that she never did find out about Mary.)

Anyway, I really loved it. It’s like the most over-the-top, deliciously painful caper. All the genre high notes, all the time. While I really enjoyed the crazy ‘cereal killer’ stuff from TLD, this levels it up and then some. I watched it thinking ‘wow, I’m apparently enjoying this way more than I’m supposed to’ at the back of my mind, but the fact is that the Sherrinford stuff is ridiculously fun. I mean, on the one hand, I don’t watch BBC Sherlock for the cases-- I watch it for Sherlock and John. But I’ve always loved the genre, and yeah-- the cases, too. A lot of it’s like, people not getting how over-the-top and pulp the cases always were, though they’ve leveled up in that sense. The very presence of Moriarty, of Baskerville, of Irene Adler the dominatrix-- all that was always pure pulp. Maybe the fact that most ‘casefic’ fanfics just had them pursuing ordinary criminals should’ve clued me in that people weren’t exactly aware of how weird this show is. Anyway, the whole drama was intensely personal, too! It was all about Sherlock’s family history, after all.

Would I prefer it was all about Sherlock and John, ala TSoT and TAB and/or fanfics? Yeah, but... I mean, it’s always about Sherlock and John. I don’t know, the fact that I feel vaguely defensive and uncomfortable after being spoiled as to the lack of canon Johnlock is why I’ve been procrastinating on this. It’s ironic, ‘cause I personally never really expected canon Johnlock in S4 (though who’s listening?) Many people in fandom whose opinion I respect and whose intelligence I admire seemed pretty sure. And there was definitely some heavily suggestive PR, as well as the existence of TAB (though I was hesitant to admit TAB was all but impossible without Johnlock, it was certainly a heavy undercurrent). I’ve definitely expected and hoped for some kind of resolution of certain things I found unclear in the first two eps, in terms of the characterization. Anyway, that’s a heavy burden to place on the last 3 minutes of the show, and there’s definitely no way to really resolve anything in a satisfactory manner in that time. My trepidation has understandably been pretty severe, but I had to know, and so, my first impressions....

Oh my god! ahahahaha. Yeah, I’m so relieved. Oh my god I was so scared I barely made myself watch this. This was terrifying. I was expecting Mary to say god knows what awful yet subtexty thing, to either create or destroy Johnlock, to put some awful stamp on them forever, somehow. I mean, Christ, I was so stressed the past few days. So stressed. I really thought the ep was somehow ruined in the last 3 minutes, though I should’ve known. I should’ve known that if I disagree with everyone on the rest of it, the last bit couldn’t possibly be not to my taste.

Still, I heard that the ending wasn’t simply bad, but also just ambiguous.

No. Yeah, okay, no canon Johnlock. But nothing happened. I mean, obviously I’m disappointed and confused about that, to say the least, but we’re no worse off than before, and better off than anytime other than the end of Series 1, though I suppose they’re not living together (but they haven’t since Series 2). Well, except for the Parentlock (*sigh*) but I’m relatively open to that the same way I was relatively open to Birdy!Mary. I just... don’t think it’s an ambiguous ending, really?

It was just a bit lame ‘cause Amanda’s narration wasn’t remotely natural-sounding (the same sort of issue I had with Mary’s death). Here, you can tell it’s not the writing-- the writing’s fine. It’s definitely Amanda’s acting. She really wasn’t pulling it off too well. She seemed to be somehow using the Narrator voice, which, okay if you’re the narrator, but otherwise... weird. A bit cringey. Not her best acting. Still, it was a narrative epilogue, through and through. Rather than leaving things genuinely open-ended, I thought the narrative (and it was ‘the narrative’, not Mary) said this is their life, and they’re about to live it, same as they always have. It wasn’t even particularly subtle about that. The summary was reductive.

Although Mary said ‘I know what you could become’, that’s not as impactful as similar things Irene and Janine have said. Mary’s definitely not pushing for Johnlock like Irene did; this is closer to being on the same level as Janine, with her knowing the ‘kind of man’ Sherlock is. When she says ‘I know who you really are’, she’s essentially summing up the show on the most surfacey level it has ever been. That’s ‘the story’, the legend of the detective in the funny hat we’ve heard about in TEH and TAB. The bit where Sherlock ‘solves crimes to get high’ is practically a calling card at this point. No revelation there. Even the part about ‘who you really are, it doesn’t matter’ is stuff that we’ve gone over before, although putting it here, at the end, certainly makes it sound like their final word on the matter. Not ambiguous so much as unimportant to the story. That’s their thesis: it doesn’t matter, because ‘it’s all about the legend: the stories, the adventures’. The bit about ‘the last refuge’ even echoes the thing John told Mycroft earlier, which makes it even less like Mary’s voice and more explicitly that of the narrator.

Is that disappointing? Of course it is. But I take it as gloss. Mary says she knows Sherlock, but she doesn’t; we know she canonically idealizes rather than really understands John, and she went along with the ‘psychopath’ thing in HLV, so there’s no reason to pay her too much attention. Of course, she’s elevated by her placement as a framing device and/or narrative voice. The heteronormative voice, even. That’s unfortunate. I don’t pretend to have processed or addressed all of the mixed feelings I have about that. Still, nothing shocking happened, on the characterization front. John’s arc is more or less unresolved, and all these things I said ‘the jury’s out’ on have not been addressed, unless you count that awkward conversation at the end of TLD. That is, he’s ‘not a saint; not a hero’ (ala Sherlock’s proclamation to Magnussen). Instead of giving John a growth arc, he’s just sort of who he is, in the end. ‘It is what it is’; in that sense, while BBC John’s clearly a sign of progress from Conan Doyle and TPLoSH, he still hasn’t had his day in the sun.

The fact is, though, I still love him, and I still love them. And, goddamnit, I can’t help myself: I still love this show.