#he said he died of loneliness etc etc. establishing that he was gone

[scribbling-dragon]

im gonna be thinking about the implications of joel’s video for a long time now. why did he have to do this to me ;-;

[twdmusicboxmystery]

AK’s Script Notes and Why I Love Them!

Okay, I’ve gotten some questions about this the past week and people asking me to post about it. This actually came out before last Sunday’s episode, so I’m sorry it’s taken me so long to address it. (Life is crazy and all that jive.)

So some of Angela Kang’s notes came out from episode 1. Unfortunately, they’ve lit a fire under a certain dark ship who are now on a mission, and I know people are a little disturbed by it.

So, for anyone who hasn’t seen it, what surfaced were AK’s notes on the scene they released as a sneak peek for episode 1. The one where Daryl and Carol are talking and he says Ezekiel is corny, but he’s happy for her, etc.

I want to start by saying that my FB group actually talked about this scene and reached several conclusions long before AK’s notes came out. Because it was a sneak peek for the premiere, we had this scene broken down, analyzed to death and had practically written dissertations on it before it even aired. (Hehe.)

And I remember us specifically talking about whether there was a jealous factor involved. We decided that there was, but not in the way most people would think. We thought Daryl WAS jealous of Carol and Ezekiel, but not because he’s in love with Carol and wants her to be with him. Obviously. It’s because he’s jealous of what they have. He’s lonely and has never found happiness with a romantic partner.

I think some of his bitterness about Ezekiel’s “corniness” comes from the fact that Daryl never got to have this with Beth. I can see his thought process being a little bit spiteful like, “How come THIS guy who’s so corny gets this happiness and I don’t?”

So again, my group figured all this out before episode 1 aired. In it’s purest form, his jealousy is really more about Beth than Carol. And, perhaps even more to the point, about himself and his own loneliness. At this point, he’s seen SO many couples around him in the people he cares about: Glaggie, Richonne, Rosita/Abraham, Sashraham, Tara/Denise, Aaron/Eric, and now Carzekiel. I’m sure it’s on his mind a lot.

So these notes of AK’s surfaced and one word that people are zeroing in on is “Jealousy.” Naturally, it has a certain shipping fandom screaming from the rooftops that “C@ryl is endgame.” You just have to understand that they’re misinterpreting her notes

While it doesn’t define what she means by jealousy, that didn’t bother any of us because we already knew that and what it meant. If you break down the scene in conjunction with both Daryl’s and Carol’s long-term arcs, its very apparent what the jealousy refers to.

But if you want more proof, check out the word next to jealous that those shippers are completely ignoring and just pretending isn’t there:

Saudade. 

Saudade is a word that exists in Portuguese and Galicican, but doesn’t have a direct translation into English. As you can see from Angela’s notes, it means “a feeling of nostalgia or melancholy; longing for someone or something you love that’s gone.

THIS is what Daryl is feeling in this scene. And he’s never lost Carol. She’s never been gone (although she has tried to abandon him a few times). I know the shippers are trying to say it means he’s lost his chance to be with her or some such nonsense, but think about what’s been said in the show.

Then @bluesandbeth sent me THIS LINK, which describes what saudade means. Look at what is written here, guys. Everything about it screams Beth and nothing in here sounds remotely like Carol’s arc or character:

“…a deep emotional state of nostalgic or profound melancholic longing for an absent something or someone that one loves…the object of longing might never return…”

“Stronger forms of saudade might be felt toward people and things whose whereabouts are unknown, such as a lost lover, or a family member who has gone missing, moved away, separated, or died.”

Beth anyone? Missing girl theme, anyone? Carol has never fit ANY of these descriptions. But it goes on:

“Saudade was once described as ‘the love that remains’ after someone is gone.” 

“…the recollection of feelings, experiences, places or events that once brought excitement, pleasure, well-being, which now triggers the senses and makes one live again. (emphasis mine). It can be described as emptiness, like someone…that should be there in a particular moment is missing, and the individual feels this absence.”

See what I mean? For me, this is absolute confirmation from AK that Daryl is still thinking about Beth and it’s her loss still making him sad. (Thank you, Angela!)

Furthermore, in terms of basic logic, they would not send something like this out to fans (apparently it was part of the TWD drop box) that would have spoilers in it. So that ship saying this came out to hint that Caryl is about to go canon is kinda ridiculous. They wouldn’t be that obvious or put spoilers in the drop box.

I believe they included this to give us insight into Daryl’s loneliness. They wanted us to understand how Daryl is feeling during this scene. (Naturally some people are twisting it around to fit their own theories.) With that in mind, let’s look at some of these other notes because they really are fascinating.

Starting at the top, Angela’s notes say, (next to the line where Carol puts out his cigarette and says, “These things’ll kill you.”

“Want the sense of shared history between them, honest in a way they can’t be with anyone else; it’s 2 a.m. after the bar closed down, sitting on the hood of a car.”

So establishing their history and the fact that they’re BFFs. We already know all that, but AK was noting that she really wanted it to come through in the scene, which I think it did.

Below that from “snore fancy” through “corny” it says:

“Daryl – buried jealousy of Zeke but knows he’s not a bad guy. – King persona so counter to Daryl’s personality.”

It’s that last part that’s super-interesting to me. I already addressed the jealousy, but it specifically says that Daryl has the opposite of a king’s persona. Yeah, I could go off on volumes of tangents about this. I won’t, but here’s a few things to consider:

1. Daryl doesn’t consider himself a king. He considers himself something between humble subject and not-deserving-of-anything.

2. Maybe some of his jealousy/bitterness stems from the fact that he IS so opposite of Zeke. Like he thinks he’s undeserving BECAUSE he’s not at all like that.

3. It also goes to show that he and Carol both need someone as a romantic partner that is utterly unlike them. We’ve said it a million times: these two are ridiculously similar. That’s why they’r besties. But also why they wouldn’t make good romantic partners. They both have way too much of a predilection toward falling into darkness. Beth may not have a “king persona” (though we all know she’s the Queen of Diamonds) but her personality is VERY similar to Zeke’s, which is why she’s good for Daryl and Ezekiel is good for Carol.

Okay, you get the idea. Let’s move on.

Next, Carol’s line about how after what she went through with Ed, corny is really nice, is circled. Angela’s note says, “the heart of the deal for Carol – she’s probably never said this to anyone else.”

So once again, she can talk to Daryl about things she doesn’t talk to anyone else about. But I like that AK calls this the “heart” of the scene for Carol. This tells us a lot about the relationship from Carol’s side. She’s telling us why she’s with Zeke, why she wants to be with him, why she values his love so much. And Daryl understands not only because he knows her first husband abused her, but because he’s been the object of abuse himself. So he gets it. (Which is what it says one line down in the script: Daryl nods. He gets it.)

Finally, the part where Daryl says he’s glad and happy for her and she deserves it, AK’s note says:

“Vulnerable; heart of Daryl’s problem…wants things to be…they were but they’re not and he’s struggling with that.”

This is something Daryl’s says later to Rick in episode 1: he wants things to go back to how they were in the beginning with just their small group. He’s nostalgic for the prison and the fulfillment he felt there, but obviously, “you can’t go back.”

So yeah. That’s about all I have to say about this. Don’t let other shippers freak you out. They’re gonna say what they’re gonna say, and believe what they’re gonna believe and that’s their right. Keep in mind, they said the same thing about 5x06, because it was about Daryl and Carol running around Atlanta together. Nothing. They said it about their cabin scenes in 7x10. Nope. It won’t be any more true now than at any other time they’ve said it. The show, the show runners, and the actors have told us again and again that Carol and Daryl’s relationship is platonic.

In fact…okay this is a different ship and I’m sorry to mix them, but I was glancing back through Asks that I answered prior to 9x01 airing, and I received and answered a LOT of worried Anons about the Darsita ship. The Darsita shippers were really laying it on thick at that time about how that ship would go canon this season. 

Again, I’m a ship and let ship sort of person, but all their theories have already been pretty much disproved. We don’t know what will happen the rest of the season, of course, but we already know Rosita is with FG and spoilers tell us she’ll cheat on him…but not with Daryl. So please don’t let the shippers freak you out.

Yes, we’re shippers too and I’m sure they say similar things to this about us, but we’re also the only ones I know of that pay attention to actual symbolism in the show and listen closely to what tptb and others involved in the production actually tell us.

And then there’s that shot of Beth lying beside Daryl in Rick’s hallucination in 9x05. Just saying. ;D

[darkwinterchild]

Fix-it: Laurel and Thea’s season 2 storylines

Season 2 was good, but there’s still a lot I’d like to change about it, not necessarily to make it better in itself but to better set up the scene for the following seasons - for the show’s original 5 years story. So, for example, I think they should have given Laurel’s addiction storyline to Thea.

At the start of season 2, Thea was actually in a good place: while her brother was gone, she took over his club and was doing a great job managing it, she was having fun with her boyfriend even if she was annoyed at his recklessness, and she seemed overall stronger and more fulfilled than she’d ever been. Moira was in prison, Laurel in a bad place mentally, Oliver had to leave Starling just to cope, but Thea was thriving.

I don’t think it was the most natural place to take her character after the events season 1:

(Long post about Thea and Laurel under the cut.)

At the end of season 1, Thea lost everything again. She didn’t even have the time to process her step-father leaving them before the Undertaking happened. It turned out 1) her mother was part of a plot to drop a city on the destitutes, her boyfriend included; 2) her father was murdered by his own best friend, and her mother knew about it all this time; 3) Malcolm Merlyn, Tommy’s father and a friend of the family since long before she was even born, was evil and betrayed them. She used to let him into their house without thinking about it whenever he wanted (heck, she used to go to his house from time to time), and she just never knew. Imagine the trust issues: one parental figure died, one left, and the two others were secretly mass-murderers, plus apparently the ones behind the murder of the first and the abduction of the second for 6 long months. Also, this means that they were also responsible for her brother’s 5 years in hell. Oh and, they killed Robert but he was probably in on the shady shit too. Take into consideration that she already thought her mother was a liar and a cheater before she knew all of this - she used to be sure she was having an affair with Merlyn before her father died and after Walter was kidnapped.

She was right there that day, in the middle of the earthquake. She saw building collapsing, and panicked people running around for their lives.

Tommy died. He’d been around all her life, always joking and smiling, pulling stupid pranks with her brother. She used to have a crush on him. He was someone she could always count on, the one person who didn’t lie to her, and he died (“Please don’t hate me.” “Never. Never.”).

Her actual brother? He left right after the quake, unable to deal with losing his best friend. Basically abandoned her too. 

So that makes it the second time in her life Thea had to deal with losing a parent and a brother all on her own.

She didn’t just lose her family that day. She also kind of lost the privilege that came with the Queen name. Their company was used to create a device that killed half a thousand people. Both Robert and Moira Queen, the patriarch and matriarch, were part of this plot at some point. So for that reason, I think Thea taking over a nightclub in the Glades (!!!) was stupid. You can’t make me believe she wouldn’t have been a target for retaliation (it makes no sense that they waited until the start of season 2, conveniently just after Oliver came back, to take their revenge). Thea should have never even stepped foot near the area without several bodyguards around to protect her - and even then she wouldn’t have been safe.

Honestly, it’s even hard to believe that a nightclub would have been a good business around the Glades after such a catastrophe (were people really in a mood for partying?), let alone a nightclub owned by the family responsible for said catastrophe. 504 people died. Imagine the number of people who lost someone, the number of people who were injured or crippled for life, the number of people who’ll never be able to get over the trauma, the number of people who lost their home, their livelihood, etc.

Her old school friends probably weren’t that kin on hanging with her after what happened.

So at this point the only thing she had left, apart from her giant, empty mansion and happy pictures of the family members who all left her or betrayed her in one way or another, the one thing she had left was Roy. And Roy spent all his time picking fights in the terrible mess that was left of the Glades after the quake, trying to take up the Hood’s mantle. She must have been scared all the time that one day he’d end up dead.

Now remember that she was already established as a substance user in season 1. She was in pain for a long time, and turned to drugs to make it go away. After the Vertigo storyline, she just stopped, and it never became a problem again.

She wasn’t even out of high-school yet when the Undertaking happened.

For all these reasons, I think that if the writers wanted to explore an addiction storyline, the character to do it with should have been Thea. I don’t want to say it’s unrealistic that she’d be in a good place after everything that happened but… yeah I do find it a bit hard to believe. I mean, remember this story about the son of that businessman who committed embezzlement killing himself? It just puts what Thea had to go through in perspective. It was an extremely difficult situation, and it feels almost cheapening it to show her being all fine.

It wasn’t even the best choice taking into consideration what they had planned to do with her. Her storyline in season 2 showed her being mostly fine managing the club until she learned Malcolm Merlyn was her father in episode 18 (iirc). Then she lost her mother before they had the time to properly reconcile, and eventually left with Malcolm during the siege after he saved her life (and after she learned everybody else was lying to her).

I don’t actually think it’s terrible, just that it would have been better and made more sense if Thea was already going through a hard time before learning about her parentage. It would add weight to her breakdown, which seemed almost an overreaction the way they wrote it. It would add weight to her feelings of loneliness and explain why she latched on Malcolm when he protected her and saw strength in her during the siege. And it would add weight to her recovery. When Oliver saw her again in season 3, he was surprised by how much stronger she looked - that would have worked even better if she was given Laurel’s addiction storyline. Season 2 could have been Thea’s crucible before her transformation into Speedy. Plus how quickly and strongly she got attached to her biological father, despite everything he’d done before, would make so much more sense if he was the one who helped her get over drugs, by teaching her another way to cope (with physical and mental training - yk, his LoA philosophy: turning her pain into strength instead of trying to escape it).

So, if Thea gets Laurel’s addiction, what can be done with Laurel in season 2? Honestly, I think she should have started her journey as Black Canary right there:

It would have made so much more sense to have Laurel get to the streets after the Undertaking than in season 3, imo. Think about who Laurel was: in season 1, she was presented as a champion of the people. She dedicated herself to fighting the corrupt elite to defend the disadvantaged. She fought for those Adam Hunt cheated, for Emily Nocenti, for Peter Declan, and so many others. She was probably the most dedicated lawyer at CNRI. She talked about how she had to make sacrifices to help it survive, because she truly believed in the cause. We see in episode 15 that there was a lot of people in the Glades that she knew personally because she helped them on their case. “If we can’t win a class action suit against a man who swindled hundreds of people out of their homes and life savings, then we’re not fit to call ourselves a legal aid office.” - this is Dinah Laurel Lance, always trying to save the world. So my question is: where was this woman at the start of season 2? CNRI was destroyed, but would that really have kept her from fighting tooth and nails to help the people she’d been protecting for years now? Would she really have given up on them in their worst hour, the times during which they needed her the most? Right after the corrupt elite of this city - the people against whom she’d been at war - tried (and kinda managed) to utterly destroy them? Laurel almost died to save some files during the quake, because these files represented hope for these people - hope for justice in an unjust world - and Laurel was ready to risk everything to protect that hope.

So yeah, I think her place in season 2 was down in the Glades doing everything she can for those who lost everything that night, not in the DA’s office. And since the Glades were a mess and people were being attacked left and right by people too hurt to care or scumbags who saw the destruction and misery as new opportunities, and since the Hood was nowhere to be seen for a few months after the Undertaking, I think this should have been the beginnings of the Black Canary. Laurel was a badass in season 1, this was the time to put these self-defense lessons and her anger to good use.

Plus her being reckless and not caring if she gets hurt would fit with her feelings of guilt after Tommy’s death - that it should have been her.

I would have loved a Roy/Laurel team-up.

More than a storyline with Roy, I would have enjoyed a storyline between her and Moira. I always loved their scene in 1x20, when Moira told Laurel she liked who her son was when he was around her. After the Undertaking, I think Laurel was one of people with the most right to feel betrayed, because she worked in the Glades, and all this time Moira was planning to drop a building on her too. Even if she planned on making sure Laurel wouldn’t be at CNRI when it happened, she was still going to kill her friends and colleagues, plus all these people Laurel made it her life mission to defend. All along, Moira was the enemy CNRI was fighting against. So there could have been legitimate anger here, and it could have been the source of interesting, compelling tension between her and Oliver (drama done right: when there is two people in conflict and you can see were both are coming from, there is no right and wrong, and you just hope they can find some way to reconcile). I think it could have been a great scene if Laurel, after being furious at Moira for like half a season, found a way to understand and forgive her (maybe after being forced to make a difficult choice to save someone she loved herself?). It would be amazing for Moira to get that from Laurel.

While I’m at it, another thing I didn’t really like about Laurel’s early season 2 storyline was her blaming the Hood for Tommy’s death. The Hood tried to save Tommy. I know they tried to explain Laurel’s anger as displaced guilt, but I think it would have made more sense if she blamed Oliver, not the Hood, because he clearly knew something was going on before the Undertaking but said nothing, because she didn’t know where he was when it was happening and the world was literally collapsing all around her. because he left her after the tragedy, and because she feels like she betrayed Tommy when she slept with him that night. If she had to be angry at one of them, Oliver was the logical choice. Then she could have forgiven him when she realized the one she truly blamed wasn’t him but herself, like in the show. It could have been a sweeter reconciliation since she knows Ollie and can tell him she’s sorry face to face.

Re: the addiction storyline, the thing is, Laurel lost Tommy in the Undertaking, but she still had her friends and her father. 6 years before that, when Laurel lost her boyfriend and her sister while they were cheating on her, it didn’t drove her towards drugs. She was her dad’s rock when he hit rock bottom and her parents divorced. So compared to Thea, I feel like she’s definitely not the obvious choice.

As to where Sara fits into all of this: after learning who her sister really was, Laurel could ask Sara to train her. That way we really would have the Canary passing on her mantle to the Black Canary. We could see Laurel progress during the story, and then during the siege, instead of being the damsel in distress like always, we could have a sort of inversion of season 1: Laurel is the one who comes to save a man she loves. Maybe Oliver is stuck or knocked out after a badass fight scene against Mirakuru soldiers, there’s still one standing, and Laurel shows up and manages to take him on using her wits and newfound skills? Maybe a specific move we saw Sara teach her a few episodes before. That would have been dope. It would have been a cool parallel to the previous season finale when Tommy died for her, and a sort of redemption w/ her feelings of guilt in the first eps of season 2: this time she saved the guy, and she can finally feel worthy of Tommy’s sacrifice.

Any thoughts?

[prixmiumarchive]

The Parabatai Oath

This may not be news to some of you, but my friend who brought me into the Shadowhunters fandom was unaware and thought it was really cool, so I wanted to write a brief meta post about it. (Thanks, @thethirteenthhouse!)

I should note that I am pretty much a show-only fan (full disclosure view expressed here) so I am only going by that portrayal. One can infer from the Shadowhunters television series that it is going with a worldview that posits that multiple mythologies are real, including one of a Judeo-Christian flavor. The notion of Nephilim is something that is borrowed and extrapolated from the Bible/Torah, etc. Given that, I think it’s fair to assert that Biblical mythology has a place in this world that is pretty solid.

Which brings me to the Parabatai Oath. I was watching 02x03 with thethirteenthhouse and when Jace began to recite the Parabatai Oath, I started to think... this is really... really familiar. And then it hit me.

Cut for length.

The Parabatai Oath is lifted straight out of the Book of Ruth, which is to my knowledge from both Jewish and Christian scripture. My perspective is a Christian one, so if anyone with a more Jewish background wants to jump in and counter my understanding of this passage from my religious background with the way it is viewed from another background, feel free, but I wanted to give a background ans summary for any who might be interested.

A summary of the Book of Ruth (colored by my own perspective) is that it is the story of one of Jesus’s ancestors who was a foreigner to Israel. It tells us that there was a woman named Naomi (later Mara) who had gone to a country called Moab with her husband and two sons. They established a life there and settled down to form permanent roots. Eventually, Naomi’s husband died and left her two sons. The two sons married women of Moab and they continued to live there about ten years. Eventually, both sons die as well while Naomi is yet living, leaving her two daughters-in-law widowed. 

While in grief, Naomi decides that she will return to the land of Israel because she has heard that the Lord has blessed Israel with a good growing season and an abundance of food. One of the ways Israel’s social system at the time was set up to care for the poor was a rule that employed grain harvesters were not allowed to pick up any grain they mistakenly dropped or which fell from whatever vessel they were putting the grain in. Any grain which fell to the ground was free for the impoverished. I assume, then, that even though Naomi was an older woman (or at least middle-aged) her plan was that at least there she would not starve. And yeah, it sucks, but basically the expectation was that most women did not have jobs or professions sufficient to fully support themselves, even if they were capable of some trade. 

Anyway, Naomi’s daughters-in-law pack up to go with her, widowed as they are. And she tells them to go back home even though she loves them because she cannot provide a good life for them. Presumably, they had effectively become her daughters through marriage to her sons, but she had no more male relatives. In this largely patriarchal society, male relatives were not only empowered to but were (at least ideally) obligated to care for their female relatives. This might include sisters, nieces, widowed mothers, and so on. It was heavily reliant on the practice of levirate marriage, however. This is a practice where if a woman’s  husband dies without leaving her a male heir, she is obliged to marry her brother-in-law of nearest suitable station and age (even in cases where it may cause polygamy to my understanding) basically forming a social contract, if not a conventional marriage, where he is supposed to take care of her and attempt to give her a male heir. Then, presumably help care for that male heir, his son, until he is old enough to take on the male responsibility for taking care of hims mom or something like that. And I know, I know, this is gross to any modern feminist sensibilities we have, but bear with me.

The above circumstances explain why socially and economically it was pretty impractical and a mutual burden to take on for Naomi and her daughters-in-law to stay together, even though they were very much family-by-marriage in some sense. Naomi tells her daughters-in-law that whatever their sense of obligation to and love for her, they should return to their home and their families and gods because she cannot hope to provide them with future husbands, or a surrogate father, or anything like that. Orpah (not Oprah) agrees and lovingly tells her mother-in-law farewell.

Ruth, however, cannot stand it. She clearly has a deep bond with Naomi that she refuses to break, whatever the consequences. She loves her absolutely and would forfeit and forsake anything for her. I’ve seen a handful of arguments that this is an example of wlw or sapphic love, and while I’m not here with an axe to grind, I would argue instead that we see a bond that is every bit as strong and deep as a romantic one but which is different in quality. (On the other hand, I would 100% argue that it’s really, really hard to read David and Jonathan as bros, but I recorded their narrative here a long time ago.)

In Shadowhunters, it is said that parabatai being in love with each other is not a good thing. It is my understanding that it is because it would place an undue strain on the bond that is already so powerful and produce dark magic or something, but ask thethirteenthhouse to explain that to me again. So, I would argue that Ruth and Naomi’s bond is the Type for this kind of bond, drawn from the mythology from which the Angel and other things are drawn. Basically, it is a love that supersedes practical reason or practical intent -- it has nothing to do with practical companionship, with romantic love and a cessation of loneliness, with procreation (in the case of people who can procreate together). Instead, I would posit, the parabatai bond is the equally beautiful, altogether more rare bond that forgoes practicality. It promises nothing in return for itself except the fierceness of its own commitment. It is a commitment and love that, while it may strengthen the bearers at times, seems more liability than benefit in a lot of other ways. I would just point to Alec’s straining and suffering when he has been at odds with or looking for Alec as an example. Mutual,committed romantic love is a series of implied promises made to another person that, hopefully, hold that person up, in exchange for those same or similar promises and support and a gratification of longing for that person. It would seem that being a parabatai comes with none of those stipulations or fringe benefits (though I am certainly not belittling them). Being a parabtai is a promise of oneself and oneself alone. Being a parabatai has need of a person as a consequence as much as a prerequisite for the commitment and continuation of that relationship. Being a parabatai would seem, to me, to be a kind of commitment and connection that calls for and promises nothing except you and me against whatever should oppose us and that alone and that is enough.

And so, I leave you with the Parabatai Oath (also known as Ruth 1:16-17):

16 And Ruth said: “Entreat me not to leave thee, or to return from following after thee; for whither thou goest, I will go, and where thou lodgest, I will lodge. Thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God.

17 Where thou diest will I die, and there will I be buried; the Lord do so to me, and more also, if aught but death part thee and me.”

And the Parabatai Oath adds: “The Angel do so to me, and more also, if aught but death part thee and me.”