#i am actually well up for a potential michael redemption arc

[tonydaddingham]

this is a half-finished thought ive had in my head since michael forgot who the metatron was. michael is very clever and seems to pay attention to detail (special example being the job scene where they recognised the childrens' names). then, the miracle on gabriel seemed to falter slightly with them, where they were on the cusp of realising it was in fact Gabriel ("do i know you?" - paraphrased). so why... would they not remember the metatron, but all the other archangels did? what did michael potentially do, that would mean they suddenly don't recognise him?

Something something the way that Crowley introduced himself to Aziraphale the first time they met in the garden and reacted as if they had never met before. Something about him later behaving as if he did actually have those memories of their time in Heaven together and trying to pass it off as being someone different now. Something about Heaven's way of punishing angels that go against the plan by erasing their memories. Something about Crowley seeing Gabriel without his memory and saying "ask him properly." Something about "remember it now" "it hurts, to remember. my head isn't built for that" "I know. Do it anyway"

Something about "I know. Looking at where the furniture isn't"

Something about I know

[nekoshi13]

You know, there's plenty to complain about wasted potential in characters, wasted story lines and the like but my biggest, hugest gripe with this show (beyond the homophobia but that's a different topic) is how much they wasted every archangel that wasn't Lucifer. And even Lucifer got absolutely butchered in season 15!

We met Raphael for so little that I can even think about what could have been done differently with him. Probably seeing more of the civil war in heaven would have helped both Raphael to feel more like an actual character instead of a figure stick placed to be Castiel's antagonist and Cas himself to not look like the asshole the writers tried to make him look like in s6

Gabriel was an amazing character that, like mostly everyone that wasn't Sam and Dean, deserved way more screen time that he got. But even with what we had, bringing him back in s13 to do absolutely nothing more than make Lucifer cry once and then killing him again was an absolute disservice to the archangel that died in the apocalypse facing his brother for the right reasons. He could have stuck around and if they really didn't want to have the power of an archangel on the side of the good guys then keep him depowered and let him process his trauma instead of healing in like 2 seconds

Michael... where do I even begin with Michael? The most powerful archangel, our Dean parallel in the celestial family, the obedient soldier that was still the nicest he could be to his vessels and I don't think he even had half an hour total of screen time. And let's be clear, I am not counting Apocalypse Michael here, this is about our world Michael, OG Michael. For starters we should have seen way more of him than we did. From season 11 onwards there were so many occasions in which the boys could have at least tried to talk to him AND THEY COULD DO IT but they never even tried. I do however love what they did with him and Adam when they finally left the cage, although I would have been the first one cheering them on if they went for revenge I think what they did makes clear just how different and not actually evil was Michael. I hate that even in the season where we know they are out there we barely see him, I would have loved to see more of his conflict about what his father did, seeing him grieve Adam (friendly or romantic, whatever is good for me at this point) and... well, here comes the biggest bad thing they did to him, I would have loved to see him stand up to his father, Michael deserved to do that, he was one of the angels who got most deeply screwed over by Chuck and he deserved to punch him in the face

And while in that topic... Lucifer. Lucifer was the archangel with the best arc, he was a great villain and the fact that the Mark was what made him like is in the first place made him actually sympathetic, when he told Michael he didn't want to fight him, the whole thing with Chuck I'm season 11 and then he realizing he had been played by his father in season 12 and wanting to prove he could do better was great. I loved what looked like a redemption arc for him because besides Michael, he also got incredibly screwed by their father. I hated that he turned on Jack like he did, I wish that whatever confrontation needed to happen at the end of season 13 would have been more out of being scared of AU!Michael and wanting to protect Jack even if he had to do it forcefully. The fact that Nick was somehow alive after his death was strange as fuck and I wish they had explained how exactly after he looked dead in S5 but regardless, the fact that he wanted Lucifer back I think says something about how he interacts with his vessels (when said vessel doesn't drag him back to his cage, I guess, sorry Sam, I love you). But biggest sin against him was how he went right back to Chuck like a dumbass in s15. S12 Lucifer, my beloved, he would never. He deserved to punch Chuck as much as Michael, I wish they had teamed up and punched Chuck together. Bet two archangels fighting god would have charged up Jack faster and would not have been as ridiculous as two humans being beaten up by god and being just mildly hurt at the end, they could still stand...

Anyway, the archangels deserved better, thanks for coming to my tedtalk

[naffeclipse]

I absolutely loved the Christmas fic! I loved the interactions with Y/N and the detectives, I can feel the love between them and it is all very wholesome and perfect for a fic like this. The interactions with Gregory were adorable! Although i did feel a bit worried about papa Freddy getting mad at Y/N for teaching Gregory how to pick locks, im sure he wont find out if Y/N teaches him how to hide the fact too hehe

I was wondering when we get to see Michael again, so i was very glad to see his reappearance! Also the domesticness of showing your lover (or well, lovers) to your family was very cute and i loved every second of it. It was also nice seeing Michael interact with Marionette because to me, it sorta ressembled how Michael also learned how to move past his trauma and be happy with the companionship of a close friend. A direct parallel to Y/N and their situation almost

And of course, I cant finish this comment without mentioning my man Eclipse. Damn, even beyond the grave he still manages to shake my heart in some way or another. The fact he has a tombstone feels very cute, yet, very sad considering all the atrocities he's comitted. The fact his gravestone highlights the fact he was a brother first and formost killed me and made me cry a bit because yeah. He was an unhinged asshole who owned a Mafia and whatnot, but in the end, he was still a brother and he was still their brother despite everything that happened in the end. And something about that just makes me tear up a bunch. Maybe its the reminder that Clip wasnt always a terrible badguy, maybe its the reminder that he always couldve had a potential redemption arc if he just did it. Or maybe its the reminder that his brothers always loved him and remembered him as the kind, caring, protective older brother who was willing to risk himself if it meant giving them both a good future, even when it was clear that their brother was going off into the deep end. They just wanted their brother man

Anyways. Sorry about getting emotional at the end- the Christmas spirit always made me feel a lot more sentimental than usual. But i just wanted you to know that I love your writing and that these characters have been living rent free in my head for months now- (not that im bothered by it of course) and that i just wanted to give an in depth analysis on something i cherished deeply for once. I hope you have a Merry Christmas (or a Happy Holidays in case you dont celebrate Christmas). Cheers!

(Btw, i also wanted to ask where Sun and Moon got all the cash to donate to Michael's shelter. Im not sure whether a Detective's salary can afford what sounds like a lot of cash)

Thank you for reading! Ahaha, I am eating up every line here! I'm glad it was sweet and cute, and ahhh, even emotional! You hit the nail right on the head. They just wanted their brother ;-;

Michael has healed a lot with Charlie's help. They've saved each other a lot over the years, just like how the detectives and Y/N have each other's back. It's a strong bond ♥

That makes my night! Thank you so much for the analysis and ahhh, that's a huge compliment and I cherish it so much ♥ Merry Christmas!

So it was actually Y/N who donated the cash! Not Sun and Moon. Sorry that it's not clear! Their, uh, vigilante 'salary' is more than enough to handle that hehe

[nebulouscoffee]

10, 15, 35, 43 for the Trek ask game?

Thank youuuu and sorry for the late answer! Love these questions <3

10. Which alien pet would you most want for your own?

Honestly I have always been very charmed by Worf's childhood pet domesticated targ (portrayed by Russian wild boar Emmy-Lou😂) - but I would happily adopt a Bajoran hara cat, Cardassian vole, or that cute lizard who climbs over Jadzia on the jungle planet

Anyway look at this lil guy!!!

15. Top 3 favorite alien crewmembers?

Oooh, this is tough. Am I choosing my favs overall, or based on how much I like their alien-ness specifically? If it's the former, then Kira, B'Elanna, and Dax - if it's the latter, then Odo, Worf, and Saru (Discovery). (Deanna and Kes leaving you out Hurt Me but they didn't write you alien enough for the latter list!! Still top 5 favs though <3)

35. A minor character you wish had become a main character?

Okay let's talk about the long-form arc potential both Seska and Suder had. Literally my favourite thing about the Suder episodes is the questions about restorative justice they raise- is there any point in locking a man up after he's sincerely reformed and no longer dangerous? Is it possible to be? Is it fair to the victim's loved ones to give him the right to roam around like nothing happened? What sort of thing could count as "reparations" in Voyager's situation? What if they really had been stranded with him for 75 years? Would he ever have been able to move on from what he did? What sort of hobbies might he take up in his new life? What would it take to win Janeway's trust? Would the victim's friends ever forgive him? Would he rather disembark the ship and start anew somewhere, or remain with his own people? Would he have been able to make new friends? Are you reading this string of questions in Jonathan Frakes's voice too? Would our main characters all have been able to get past his actions? Would it cause disagreements? How would his relationship with Tuvok have progressed? What issues would their getting back to Earth early raise for him? ... Aaaaand then the show decided to give us none of that😂 (well. except for Jonathan Frakes in a brief cameo that is :D) As for Seska I really don't know what they were thinking with her lol. She starts off as such a promising villain- literally the "reveal" in 'State of Flux' gives me chills! And you can actually understand her actions, her unexpected attachments to Chakotay and the crew. Instead of the whole pregnancy subplot (which made no sense) I would've loved to have seen her grow increasingly afraid she'd made a mistake in teaming up with the Kazon, and try to defect back to Voyager - the questions that would raise would be similar to Suder's, though in this case a bit more personal for characters like Chakotay and B'Elanna. Is she for real? Is she just doing this to trick them again? How do the Bajoran crew members feel about this? What would it take for her to win back people's trust? Say she does something messed up again, does she get a third chance? Would she make friends with Seven of Nine; someone she never personally betrayed who is also seeking redemption for past actions? Society if we'd gotten her as a regular character all the way till S7 - like an actually great redemption arc, where she ends up on good terms with a lot of them by the end (sort of like what they did with Garak on DS9) - ahhh the possibilities!!!

43. Order of shows from most to least favorite?

This is hard😅 okay I'm going to tier rank them that's easier!

Fav tier: DS9 (It's the best <3) Second tier: TNG (I can't not put it here this show literally changed my life) & VOY (has wonderful characters and has also become very important to me) Third tier: TOS movies (love them), Discovery (I have developed a nostalgia for it by now. Plus Michael is blorbo!) Fourth tier: TOS, SNW, Enterprise, Lower Decks (shows I've enjoyed but only really seen once so far) and I guess the AOS movies lol (imo 'Beyond' is the best one) Fifth tier: Picard (if it was just the first season it would've been higher! I actually liked that one) & the TNG movies (ugh) (I am yet to see TAS and Prodigy)

[cherubcow]

“Invincible”, Season 1 (2021) Review

Somehow both very cool and very fucking stupid :D

About Created and written primarily by Robert Kirkman (principle writer for The Walking Dead comic and TV show), this Young Adult cartoon basically synthesizes a number of comic book characters (e.g., Superman, Batman, Green Lantern, Hellboy, Wonder Woman, Gambit) and tries to balance their heroism with cynical twists and dark realities. It's an exercise like Brightburn (2019) in that it mirrors existing comic writing all too closely in order to make violent twists. The cool stuff arrives pretty much immediately. You can tell right away that the physics have some level of realism, and it quickly gets serious because of this. The easy comparison would be to The Boys (also by Amazon, also about violent heroes, and also very well-produced). So, if you like The Boys (2019–), you'll probably like Invincible only a little less.

(( Some spoilers but nothing too specific ))

Wrong Focus But, the stupid stuff comes from the same error that the Kick-Ass movie (2010) made: it focuses on the wrong person(s). In Kick-Ass, the error was focusing on.. well.. "Kick-Ass", an irredeemable loser and waste of screen time. Invincible makes the same mistake, focusing on.. well.. "Invincible", a (so far) irredeemable loser and waste of screen time. So, despite its virtues, this show cannot escape that it made the decision to go for the Young Adult viewing demographic. It reminds me of Alita: Battle Angel (2019) in that way too: some very cool adult concepts ruined by the dramatic devices of unrepentant teenage stupidity and irrelevance. I didn't even like that stuff when I was a teenager, though Jordan Catalano gets a pass.

Main Cast and Characters The supporting characters were also very stupid. The most annoying was definitely Amber Bennett (voiced by the otherwise cool Zazie Beetz from Deadpool 2 (2018) and Joker (2019)), 

who is supposed to be attractive somehow to Mark Grayson ("Invincible", voiced by Steven Yeun, who played Glenn on The Walking Dead) 

despite the fact that she constantly judges him, fails to understand him, often fails to give him any kind of benefit of the doubt, and continues to scowl at him and be hurtful towards him even when she has information that should change her outlook towards him. And because she is part of the love triangle shared between herself, Invincible/Mark, and "Atom Eve"/Samantha (voiced by the awesome Gillian Jacobs from Community (2009–2014)), 

audiences simply have to bear with it that Amber's annoying character will be present and wasting time until Mark can realize that Amber is in fact toxic and that Eve actually understands him and can improve him in more positive directions. That love triangle should have been a 20-minute distraction, but I'm guessing that it will eat up a season or two more, especially if the writers become cowardly and fail to change things for fear of messing up a perceived "winning" formula. In my ideal story line, they would skip ahead 10 years, drop the teen drama, the love triangle, and the stupid jokes and have Invincible and Eve paired in defense of Earth, with the main tension being from their worry that the other would be horribly gored in front of them during lethal fights against cosmic enemies ;)

Aside, I am aware of Amber’s motivation for being a bad person, I just think her justification is not based in understanding, empathy, and a regard for the gravity of Invincible’s situation. In a strict political sense, Invincible should not commit a lie of omission by keeping her in the dark about his identity — even if for the “noble lie” reason of protecting her — but in a real sense, he is a fucking teenager who just developed his super powers. For her to pretend that he should reveal his entire identity to her — a potentially transformative and even dangerous decision — after a few months of teenage romance paints an absurd portrait of her mind. It does, however, align her with Omni-Man, because where Omni-Man forces Invincible to become an adult in the fighting sense (pushing with full force early on), Amber forces Invincible to become an emotional adult by getting him to understand that toxic people such as herself need to be given boundaries — and he needs to learn to clearly delineate and communicate his real desires. By knowing that he does not want Amber, people who regiment his free time, or people who do not suit him, for instance, he can realize why Eve was an obvious decision: Eve understands, can make time when they have time, and will let him find his decisions. Part of a coming-of-age story tends to be realizing what one actually wants, and Invincible’s hesitation in telling Amber his identity shows that he does not truly want her. This separates Invincible from, say, Spider-Man, who avoided telling Mary Jane his identity not because he did not want her but because he wanted at all costs to protect her.

The next most annoying character has to be Debbie Grayson (voiced by TV-cancer Sandra Oh and who luckily was not animated to look like the real Sandra Oh and who should have been voiced instead by Bobby Lee due to Lee's successful MadTV parody of Sandra Oh). 

Debbie basically fills the role of Skyler in Breaking Bad, except that Debbie's character tends to be slightly more understanding before her inevitable and toxic Skyler-resentment and undermining behavior. Despite having an 8-episode arc of change, Debbie's character flips too quickly and lacks the empathy and Omni-Man motive-justifying that would make her interesting (the comic's development may vary). For instance, if she refused to believe that Omni-Man meant his own words, that would make her empathetic and perhaps virtuous even if misled, but instead she dropped their "20 years" of understanding after viewing Omni-Man in action, which makes her appear shallow, easily manipulated, and unsympathetic. That was a definite "Young Adult" genre move because it shows immaturity by the writers to break apart a bond of 20 years so quickly. Mediocre teens might accept such a fissure because their lives have not yet seen or may not comprehend that level of time, but adults know that even long-standing and problematic relationships (which, beyond the lie, Omni-Man's and Debbie's was not shown to be) take a lot of time to break — even with lies exposed.

Omni-Man The biggest show strength for me was of course Omni-Man, who in a success of casting was voiced by J.K. Simmons in a kind of reprisal of Simmons' role as Fletcher from Whiplash (2014). 

The Fletcher/Omni-Man parallel shows through their being incredibly harsh but extremely disciplined and principled, forcing people to become beyond even their own ideal selves (this via Omni-Man's tough-love teaching of Invincible — comically, Omni-Man was actually psychologically easier on Invincible than Fletcher was on Whiplash's Andrew character). Despite the show's attempts to villainize Omni-Man, he, like Fletcher and also like Breaking Bad's Walter White, becomes progressively more awesome, eventually representing a Spartan will, an unconquerable drive, and a realistic and martial understanding of a hero's role.

To the show's credit, while it wrote Omni-Man to be outright genocidal and from a culture of eugenicists (again, Spartan), they could not help but admire him and his "violence" and "naked force" (for a Starship Troopers reference), giving him a path to redemption. That redemption comes in part because — despite the show's attempt to be often realistic and violent — its decision to be directed at young adults via dumb jokes, petty relationship drama, the characters’ reckless lack of anonymity and security in their neighborhood (loudly taking off and landing right at the doorstep), and light indy music also made the portrayed violence far less literal. With a less literal violence, the real statement becomes not that Omni-Man really did kill so many people (though he certainly did kill those people within the show's plot) but that he was symbolically capable of terrible violence but could be reformed for good. That's the shortcoming with putting violence under demographic limitations. If it's a PG-13 Godzilla knocking down cities, the deaths in the many fallen skyscrapers don't matter so much (the audience will even forgive Godzilla for mass death if it happens mostly in removed spectacle), whereas if it's Cormac McCarthy envisioning a very realistic fiction, every death rides the edge of true trauma.

By showing light between the real and the symbolic, it is much easier to identify and agree with Omni-Man. For instance, when Robot (voiced by Zachary Quinto of Heroes and the newer Star Trek movies) 

shows too much empathy for the revealed weakness of "Monster Girl" (voiced by Grey Griffin), the audience may have thought, "Pathetic," even before Omni-Man himself said it. And this because Omni-Man knows that true and powerful enemies (including himself) will not hesitate to use ultra-violence against these avenues of weakness. "Invincible" can make his Spider-Man quips while in lethal battles, but he does so while riding the edge of death — something that Omni-Man has to teach Invincible by riding him to the brink of his own.

Other Cast/Characters and Amazon's Hidden Budget It was impressive how many big-name actors were thrown into this — a true hemorrhage of producer funding. Amazon has so far hidden the budget numbers, perhaps because they don't want people to know that the show (like many of its shows) represents a kind of loss-leader to jump-start its entertainment brand.

Aside from those already mentioned, the show borrows a number of actors from The Walking Dead (WD), including.. • Chad L. Coleman ("Martian Man"; "Tyreese" on WD),

• Khary Payton ("Black Samson"; "Ezekiel" on WD),

• Ross Marquand (several characters; "Aaron" on WD)

• Lauren Cohan ("War Woman"; "Maggie" on WD)

• Michael Cudlitz ("Red Rush"; "Abraham" on WD)

• Lennie James ("Darkwing"; "Morgan" on WD)

• Sonequa Martin-Green ("Green Ghost"; "Sasha" on WD) 

There were also connections to Rick and Morty and Community, not just with Gillian Jacobs but also with... • Justin Roiland ("Doug Cheston"), who voices both Rick and Morty in Rick and Morty,

• Jason Mantzoukas ("Rex"),

• Walton Goggins ("Cecil"),

• Chris Diamantopoulos (several characters),

• Clancy Brown ("Damien Darkblood"),

• Kevin Michael Richardson ("Mauler Twins"), and

• Ryan Ridley (writing)

That's a lot of overlap. They even had Michael Dorn from Star Trek: TNG (1987–1994) (there he played Worf) and Reginald VelJohnson from Family Matters (1989–1998) and Die Hard (1988), and even Mark Hamill. Pretty much everyone in the voice cast was significant and known. Maybe Amazon got a discount for COVID since the actors could all do voice-work from home? ;)

Overall Bad that it was for the Young Adult target demo but good for the infrequent adult themes and ultra-violence. Very high production value and a good watch for those who like dark superhero stories. I have heard that the comic gets progressively darker, which fits for Robert Kirkman, so it will likely be worth keeping up with this show.

[redsplash1]

Alright y’all, I was bored and wanted to ignore my hw, so I made a tier list on everyone’s lore and a quick writeup for each placement. Just an fyi this is my opinion and will most likely change as we get more story content, but right now this is where I stand (no arguing please, or at least nothing that’ll result in name calling and such)

But yeah this is something I’ll probably look back on and be like “hmm maybe I was too harsh with my rankings” but rn it’s like 2:30 in the morning so yeah

TW: mention of abuse in Octane’s section

All of it will be under the cut

S Tier

Bloodhound: Maybe I’m biased because I’m a BH main, but imo their lore is the most interesting and nuanced out of everyone’s. From their parents, to their uncle, to Boone, and now their planet, Bloodhound’s backstory, current lore, and character is fantastic and honestly peak writing from Respawn atm.

Wraith: I understand that not everyone loves the “I lost my memory and am now trying to find out who I am” trope, and maybe this is also biased because I’m a complete Wraith simp, but her lore to me is also very unique and well done. The entire Voidwalker cinematic alone is what’s basically putting her in S tier, but I also love how she is the prime definition of “Looks like they can kill you, but is actually a cinnamon roll” instead of your typical edgy girl that coldly pushes everyone away.

A Tier

Horizon: Interstellar but make it Scottish. She has really nice interactions with Mirage and Wattson, and there’s plenty of potential with where her character can go now that Ash is in the picture.

Gibraltar: While his lore isn’t as flashy like the ones in S tier, I still think it’s really good. For one, it’s consistent, and the stuff with Nik and Michael is very bittersweet. I really like how despite the tragedies in his life, like BH, that only made him more determined to do the right thing. 10/10 he’s got your back bruddahs

Mirage: Respawn’s poster boy, so it’s only natural that he gets a shitload of lore. Fortunately, it’s not shit and actually fleshes him out as a character greatly. I also really like the canon sibling relationship he has with Rampart. Now that his dad may or may not force himself into the picture soon, it’s gonna be more character development for Mirage either way.

Borderline

I’ll explain this tier real quick. Basically they’re between A and B; they have the potential to be great, but they’re being held back by a certain something.

--

Bangalore: Pathfinder’s Quest did a really good job fleshing her out, but the love triangle and inconsistent behavior towards Wraith isn’t doing her any favors. It’s a shame, because characters like Anita are really unique and not seen often. I can only hope Respawn realizes that no, love triangles are not the peak writing they think it is.

Loba: Same deal here, that love triangle and her rebounding off Valk is really not doing anything good towards her character. They’re adults, are they not capable of communicating? Like Bangalore, she’s also really unique in the sense that she’s a bisexual woman of color in a video game who is a complete girlboss and inspiration. Respawn stop fucking up your characters please!

B Tier

Revenant: He’s really badass, and his lore is fun, it’s just that the writing is making him look like a complete joke. He gets clowned on every time he’s about to do something cool and it’s honestly kinda sad. If the writing could give him a few kills to his name to actually establish that he’s a threat, I’ll put him up higher.

Octane: If this was fanon Octane, he’d be an automatic S tier. Respawn needs to flesh out his backstory some more, like most of the fanfics do. That one comic where he confronts his dad was 10/10, we just need more of that and actually tackling the effects his father’s abuse had on him. Also the potential history he has with Seer is a good opportunity to explore more of his character, so that’s a good start.

Rampart: Just recently she’s getting lore, and all of it is very good so far. The relationships she has with a lot of the legends are very strong, and the foreshadowing towards Big Sister returning is also a huge plus.

Fuse: The Maggie stuff was honestly really fucking lame (I blame the ingame comics for this), for me what’s really carrying his character rn are the Fusehound interactions. Idrc if it ends up platonic or romantic, all Ik is that there is a lot of potential in fleshing out Fuse as a character either way.

C Tier

Pathfinder: Okay I’m not gonna lie, I have conflicted feelings on Path. He got an entire book to himself dedicated to his own lore, along with a cinematic that gave a visual on what actually happened to his creators, and yet I don’t care for his lore??? Thinking about it, it’s probably because he didn’t really get any character development, he ultimately stayed the same (except that one moment where Revenant screwed with him, but he bounced back literally one chapter later). Also, it honestly looks like his story is over anyway, he just has to find his kid. At least his personality is 10/10 though

Lifeline: Y’all are probably thinking, why is Lifeline here and not Octane + vice versa, isn’t their lore basically the same? It’s because imo Octane has more potential character development atm, and Lifeline doesn’t really have any character interactions that don’t have to do with her childhood friend, so that to me is what’s separating her from Octane. Lol again if this were fanon Lifeline she’d probably be in A tier, borderline S tier.

D Tier

Valkyrie: Literally the first thing that happens to her in the lore is that she gets thrown into a love triangle. I understand that it’s in her character to be flirty and stuff, but a love triangle? Really? Ms. Kairi Imahara deserves sm better than that. Honestly the only reason she’s not in F tier is because I like her personality, along with the Northstar cinematic.

Seer: Tbh, there isn’t a lot we know about Seer. However, what we know about him so far isn’t detrimental and for me the reason he isn’t in F tier. The interactions he has so far have the potential to be explored.

E Tier

Wattson: Man. I wish she wasn’t here, but the fact that almost all her lore involves babysitting two grown men really killed her character for me. Fanon Wattson is a million times more enjoyable to me, Respawn needs to seriously consider giving her independent lore and/or branch out to other characters that aren’t Crypto and Caustic.

Crypto: Same thing, the fact that he’s strictly tied to Wattson and Caustic rn is annoying and stupid. It also doesn’t help that literally nothing about his personal lore has been addressed recently (Mila, clearing his name).

F Tier

Caustic: If he were actually established as a proper villain, he’d be way higher. But no, Respawn wants to play rock paper scissors with this guy; one second he literally wants to gas a city, the next he’s playing nice because “Wattson blackmailed him?” Lol I don’t fucking think so. I’m not saying a redemption arc for Caustic is impossible, it’s just that Respawn did a really shitty job in actually convincing people that he deserves it. And yes, even the whole deal with his mom isn’t doing it for me. Nah fuck this guy sorry y’all, he’d be way better as a villain imo

TLDR: Fanon does it better

[salmonthestoryteller]

Time for some Season 3 Roswell New Mexico spec based on barely existent Spoilers! Yay!

I’m on board with the year time jump, though I hope the rest of the episodes make it feel more like a year than the preview did. Cuz, let’s be honest, the preview kinda felt like: A year has passed and our heroes have done… precisely jack.

Sorry, sorry, it’s just most of the scenes so far don’t feel like a year. It feels like exactly where we left off, just fast forwarding everyone’s health problems. On that note:

Okay, so Max is dying… again. Ngl, kinda disappointed. My bet was on Michael (C’mon we deserve a Max & Izzy would tear down the world for Michael Pod Squad feels moment! Not even getting into the Malex feels of such a plot.). But, it does align with the base book series. (Max nearly dies 3 times in the books. So this means Max only gets to nearly die one more time in the series after this plot. Lol.)

So this brings in the question I have been asking for two seasons: In this version of RNM, is Max the only alien who can heal? Because that isn’t true in the books or the OG series, but in this series we haven’t seen any other alien heal. Even in the flashbacks, neither Nora or Louise seem able to do so. Maybe this season I will finally get an answer to this burning question.

Okay, so Jones spec, book based: My guess is they’re giving Max the plot of Book Series Michael. Which would make Jones Max’s elder brother. We’ve already seen that Jones is on the opposite side of the war than Louise and that Max is connected to him so that was already halfway to assigning Michael’s plot to Max. Seeing as Jones apparently isn’t Max’s father - my original guess - I’m gonna call it and say he’s his brother. Might as well complete the plot hand off, after all.

In this case, they seem to be merging the “Brother from their home planet who is a soldier in the war” and “The Stowaway” into one person. Which would also possibly make Jones the leader of one of the sides of the Civil War.

Ngl, a tiny bit sour about the plot hand off. That was Book Michael’s huge plot. The whole “Not related to Isobel and Max, family turns out to be on the opposite side of the war.” In the book series, though, Michael’s brother (Trevor) was redeemable and the reader actually ended up sympathetic to their side of the civil war. Not seeing that happening with the Max & Jones plot from what we’ve seen. And I definitely don’t see Isobel forming a potential romance with evil Jones (whereas Trevor was written as potentially being her soulmate).

This does leave me a bit floundering on Michael and Izzy’s future plot, seeing as the source material had them heavily tied onto Trevor’s redemption arc - and by giving the plot to Max and merging Trevor and DuPris, it basically erases it. Right now it seems likely that the sum total of their s3 plot is once again “Save Max”, which admittedly was part of their book plot as well - but at least in the books we got “Save Michael”, “Save Maria”, “Save Alex”, “Oops, sorry Adam”; “Save Isobel” between the three “Save Max” plots. And I don’t mean we spent two chapters on it, we spent large chunks of books on these plots. So I’m not thrilled that right now it looks like:

Season One: Murder Mystery (B plot: Save Isobel from alien serum)

Season Two: Save Max (B plot: Lamest Alien Bomb in History.)

Season Three: Save Max x2 (B plot: Murder Mystery?)

Onto the potential Murder Mystery plot:

Seeing as we know Max is dying, and the only thing in relation to this in the preview is Maria saying she sees a coffin - is there a murder mystery at all? Or is this just more of “Save Max”? Current guess: Related to Max. Too soon for the B plot reveal. Won’t be disappointed at all to be proven wrong. I could definitely go for another Murder Mystery.

Random Thoughts:

I’m here for Doctor Alien Expert Kyle - looking forward to Kyle and Max interaction because Kyle is gold. (Dammit, am I about to be turned into a Kyle/Max shipper? More on that after some episodes air.)

Does Maria’s continued use of her powers mean we get Psychic Alien Bounty Hunters? (Roswell High Reference)

Forrest-Alex-Michael Love Triangle - hits the snooze button. Wake me up when Izzy gets a new love interest. (Dudes, she was in like… three love triangles in the books and she’s the one with 0 official romantic prospects. Heresy.)

I demand Graham Green scenes.

Let’s play - Is that Max or is that Mr Jones? Cuz none of us believe Jones is keeping the beard.

Wait, is this a bodyswap plotline? Is Max really Mr Jones all season after whatever he does with his heart (palm print bets?) and Mr Jones is really Max?

[flying-elliska]

i watched star trek discovery s3 ! thoughts !

- no matter what i always feel pushed to be overall positive about disco because of all the stupid whiny fanboys dunking on it because it’s too *diverse* and I think this season did pretty well in that regard and that it’s just very refreshing to have a cast that is just a lot more realistic re:what humans would look like in that era

- s3....i actually really enjoyed overall ? by going to the future, they’re not so stuck between all the older shows, being a prequel and bringing old characters back etc etc. they can explore new territory. And like. I don’t think they handled a lot of the plots as well as they could have. It had this HUGE potential that i don’t think they really made good on, because this series’ writing is just...i don’t know, a bit wack sometimes, like it was written by lots of different people pulling in a different direction. i see what it’s trying to do in terms of sociological and philosophical storytelling, but it’s often a bit too simplistic. but i just...i love these characters, i thought the season’s set up was so interesting, and it was just so much fun. and like...star trek has always been full of cheese and shortcuts and stories that focused more on emotions. it’s not hard scifi. it’s just not. i would like disco to come through with more philosophical/geopolitical episodes sometimes, but that doesn’t mean it’s ‘not star trek’

- Booker is definitely my favorite new character of the season. He’s just so cool ? Like a charming rogue idealist with an enormous cat named Grudge who travels around space to save endangered species ? that is just so new. i’m so tired of cynical rogues, they’re so overdone. but Booker breaks the rules because he CARES. yes. the empath thing is very sexy. the episode with his brother was so interesting. Booker’s the idealist but he left his people behind, while the brother is doing awful things to keep his people from starving to death, and so both their perspectives are understandable, and i love that they came to an understanding. also his chemistry with Michael is great, even though i wish they had taken more time to show us their developping relationship. but the episode when they met is one of my faves. that episode where he helps the slave workers rebel was !!!!! i hope they give him more to do next season apart from “Michael’s boyfriend” but yeah. he’s great.

- i just loved seeing the crew bond!!! so much! they’ve gone through so much together ! i definitely ship jola now. they’re just so cool. i hope we get to know the others in the bridge crew more but i love the bits we got, about them adapting to these crazy new circumstances, and about ‘growing through change’ ; even though i thought some elements like Detmer’s PTSD were dealt with a little bit too fast. I loved seeing Hugh trying to get everyone some mental support and therapy. I loved Tilly taking charge more and more ; and people recognize that even though she is emotional she’s also unfailingly compassionate and brave and those are qualities you want in a leader. ahhhh

- the new future is very interesting. i was afraid they would go too grimdark with the Federation gone, but...they’ve kept it relatively nuanced so that was interesting. seeing the Vulcans and Romulans reunited was quite incredible, and i loved the bit with the trial. and Michael deciding to back off so she wouldn’t risk their fragile unity. and her admiring the fact that Spock’s life work came to fruition. emotions !!!!!

- Michael’s development is...a joy to see. I love Sonequa’s portrayal of her so much. and she’s so pretty lmao. the writing for her character is still a bit all over the place, though. i don’t feel they explained her big changes of mind enough, and i don’t always understand what they are trying to do with her character, sometimes it’s a bit too much of ‘whatever the plot requires’. the series has a tendency to both make her the one who always saves the day a bit too much and to put too big of a burden on her in ways that feel iffy. But i’m still super happy to have her be captain, finally, and can’t wait to see how she grows into the role.

- I thought the Terra Firma episodes were so interesting ; it was fascinating to see how much Georgiou has changed through her time in the Prime universe. Mirror universe characters redemption arc is a Star Trek classic, after all. I am sad to see her gone from Disco but i feel like her next series could potentially be sooooo interesting. i mean, i know the evil promiscuous bisexual cliché is a bit bad, but Michelle Yeoh is just having SO MUCH FUN in the role i kind of forget about it. it’s a bit like ‘nggggh evil queer lady sexy’ thing. and the guardian of forever !!!

- Adira and Grey...now, i do think it was great to introduce a trans guy and a non-binary person and to make them a couple, totally awesome. i am not entirely convinced by their story though, i don’t feel they had a lot to do past their introduction. and the fact that Grey started the series being dead already...i mean they’re probably bring him back somehow but they have a bit too much of a tendency to kill their queer characters already, it’s an issue for me. i liked Stamets and Culber kind of adopting them that was cute but they didn’t do much this season either. i have to say tho, two gay dads telling a trans kid they will ‘help him be seen’ was like awwwwwwww

- i found the ending...a little bit underwhelming. it’s the opposite of s2, where i found the season pretty meh until the ending which i found kind of incredible. this one...the Emerald Chain was a cool villain, but I don’t feel like it materialized enough. i did think it was interesting to ‘tempt’ the Federation, to see how their principles held up ; but the fact that most of their problems with dilithium seem to be solved by the end of the season is a bit...hm, is that all ? similarly, the revelation that Su’kal was at the core of it all...i found the bits in the stimulations kind of fascinating, the theme of the importance of connection, etc. that said, i was hoping the solution to the Burn to be a bit more...Geopolitical. I just miss Deep Space Nine in that regard, they knew how to do political storylines in a way that felt so deeply grounded and complex. In Disco, problems get solved a bit too easily, and so it just feels like everything has less impact.

But overall, this is probably the season i’m most likely to rewatch for fun. the first two are so gritty, and they have made some really stupid story choices. this one is a lot more like a fun space adventure, and honestly that’s not a bad thing. even though next season I really hope they will put some effort into the worldbuilding. because sometimes it feels a little bit like modern storytelling has dumbed star trek down (i feel the movies are responsible in part, but it’s also like a general thing accross the board)

[mittensmorgul]

Hey there! Well, one thing that really makes me so irritated and curious is the fact that in the prophecy Sam was the one who would kill Rowena permanently. But like why tf? Who even write the death books? Chuck? Billie herself? Fate? But why Sam? Why did he have to kill her? Like uhhhhh she was immortal, they were getting closer, being friends, i even see her as part of tfw and them BOOM, she finds out Sam is gonna kill her? Like what's the sense? Do you have a theory about it? 👀

Hi hi!

And oh, golly do I have theories. Too many theories, probably. Mostly because we just don’t know who “writes” Billie’s books. Actually the one thing I’m relatively certain of-- it’s not Billie doing the writing.

Of everything we know about how death and Death and fate work, and how those books themselves work, it’s been a fair assumption up to a point that the books are simply generated by a culmination of an individual’s choices throughout their lifetime. But I still have so many questions about those books.

For example, why is it implied that most people only have one book that rewrites itself if a person’s circumstances drastically change, and yet Dean has an entire shelf of books? Is it because of how much Chuck has directly interfered with his life? Or the fact he’s died and been resurrected so many times? If that’s the case, then why didn’t his “previous life” books disappear to be replaced by a new one? He may have died many times, but he’s still just one person. Why so many books?

That’s not what you asked, but I still think it’s important to understand the full picture of information we do know in order to attempt the best guess possible here. So in that spirit, I’m gonna take another slight detour on my way to attempting to answer.

I’ll start by point to this very, very long post I made about Rowena’s entire character arc on the show, posted December 1, 2019, so before we saw her back in 15.08. It’s on AO3, because it’s far too long for tumblr:

https://archiveofourown.org/works/21641770

I go into a lot of detail on her overall character arc, as well as this very specific storyline. But before I delve into Rowena’s side of this conundrum, I also need to delve into Sam’s...

In a really creepy way, the result of 13.19 was Sam getting to experience a version of “you either have to save him or kill him” that was John’s final declaration to Dean about Sam. Because at the end of 13.19, Rowena took a strange comfort from the entire experience. Knowing that no version of her own death would be at Lucifer’s hand actually helped her deal with her biggest personal fear and horror. It had haunted her, and ruled every choice she’d made up to that point. But here was Sam... kind, understanding Sam who’d given her that page of the spell book to free her power to protect herself... offering her a hand of friendship and help to potentially change her fate? And not just an automatic death sentence? Well, that was something.

Like she told Michael in 14.14:

Rowena: Fate says Sam Winchester's going to off me, which makes dinners a bit awkward, but does give one a certain sense of security.

In a weird way, she trusts Sam. She knows he’s not lurking in the shadows just waiting to kill her, you know? She knows he wouldn’t kill her without a very good reason. And she knows that she’s been doing everything in her power not to deserve killing. To have Sam and Dean Winchester welcome you into the family, and believe you can change your fate is their universe’s equivalent of being blessed. And Rowena has treated it as such.

So... that said, what does it take to actually change one’s fate? What does it take to redeem oneself?

We’ve already seen those books of fate shift over time. I mean, the most blatantly obvious example is from Dean’s books (all of them! well... except for that one Billie gave him) that changed after 14.10. And then we have to assume they all changed AGAIN after 14.14... because Michael was dead and couldn’t use Dean’s vessel to destroy the world anymore.

We also know from another agent associated with death that it’s our human choices that can change our fate, thanks to Lily Sunder in 14.08:

SAM: Fine. Then change it. Let her into Heaven.ANUBIS: I'm an accountant. I don't have that kind of power.SAM: Yeah, right. Like you or-- or God has never made an exception?ANUBIS: That's right. Because God doesn't decide. I don't decide. You do, each of you, your individual choices all tallied up at the precise moment of your death. Keep me here. Try and kill me. It is not going to change Lily Sunder's fate. But it might change yours.

Except... knowing this, knowing her choices had the power to change her fate, gave Lily the power to choose a different fate for herself. Of course she couldn’t know for sure if it would be enough, if her last Good Deed would be enough to tip the scales, but she hoped. And it had changed everything.

LILY: I don't understand. Why am I here?ANUBIS: Hm. Care to try your luck again? [Anubis brings out his abacus again, and measures Lily’s soul. Most of the beads are now white, and rise to the top]ANUBIS: I'm curious. Did you know what doing the spell would cost you? Say hello to your daughter for me.

Doing the spell cost her life, but she had already begun to let go of her very long life. She’d had time to get her revenge and make her peace, and her last act, as her own free choice, had been enough to save her soul. It’s more than she ever could’ve hoped for when she’d set the course of her life more than a hundred years earlier.

And yet, for Rowena, performing the spell that had saved the world from the hell rift caused by Chuck’s temper tantrum hadn’t been enough to redeem her. She’d been just as hopelessly trapped in hell as if she’d never consciously chosen to become better in the first place. Her redemption failed. And I gotta wonder... why?

Rowena’s goal was pure-- save the world with the one spell she knew would work, but that would cost her everything. She didn’t even hesitate. She didn’t stop to wonder if performing this spell and making this sacrifice could redeem her soul. She only cared that Sam would be saved (well... and the world...).

And yet, in working the spell, she literally needed Sam to do the deed, because it wouldn’t have worked without him. She didn’t believe in love enough to sacrifice herself, her love for anything or even the world itself. The only thing she truly believed in enough was the power of the prophecy of her own fate in Billie’s book, which is just nine levels of pain to understand.

This is why her taking the throne of Hell is just... literally the Worst Possible Outcome if it was indeed her final fate on the show. And for the details on why, because I’ve already typed 13k words on the subject and typing them again here feels kinda frustratingly pointless, I’m gonna point back to the very long post on AO3 again. :’D

Does Chuck have any power over what those books say? We just don’t know.

Had Rowena rewritten her own fate before performing that spell, and despite her belief in her actions in 15.03, had her own fate already been rewritten? We just don’t know.

Had Rowena actually earned her redemption, and like so many others who didn’t deserve it, did Chuck banish her soul to Hell as a punishment for flouting his plans? Did he just need her out of the way because like Billie, she meddles? Or gives the Winchesters too big an advantage in solving their problems? Again, we just don’t know.

But I’m still convinced that we haven’t seen the end of her story yet, and so I’m not really gonna speculate beyond this...

[doctordisaster]

Okay, so about the space movie: it is not good. I haven’t come out of a star war feeling this disappointed since the prequels. It’s worse than revenge of the sith. I think it must be better than phantom menace, but I’m not sure. That’s how bad it is: I’d need to rewatch the worst installment in the series to confidently rank the newest.

I’ve seen some people say they enjoyed it in the theater but liked it less the more they thought about it — which was more or less my experience with Solo. That was not my experience this time. I was numbed, bored, or annoyed for most of the movie’s runtime. There are a few good moments, but it is by and large just not fun to watch.

It also appears to have been plotted by an angry mob of reddit incels. Bad fan theories, unwanted redemption arcs, and pointless throwbacks rule the day. Assholes drove Kelly Marie Tran off of Twitter; JJ Abrams drove Kelly Marie Tran out of Star Wars. Every moment of character development from the previous film was actively and loudly reversed. As a matter of fact, every status quo change in this very film was reversed, usually within seconds of screen time. At every point at which the movie ought to have turned right, it turned left.

Below the cut I’m going to list things I liked and things I didn’t. Don’t read it if you want to be surprised by the movie's disappointments live in the theater.

Good things in space movie no. 9:

The little goblin who works on droids is cute

Lando’s scenes are all very nice

Chewie trying to hide in a crowd was funny

Wedge! I love Wedge!

I loved the design of Kylo Ren’s space office

The moment where literally every spaceship that has ever been in a star war shows up. Also the moment where literally every person who has ever played a Jedi speaks a line. These are each a nice gimmick, although I am not sure both should have been used, and certainly not that close together.

I like the moment where Poe and The Female Person Poe Put His Definitely Heterosexual Penis Into At Some Point In The Past have a whole conversation just with their facial expressions. It’s especially impressive because The Female Person Poe Put His Definitely Heterosexual Penis Into At Some Point In The Past is wearing a metal helmet that entirely conceals her face.

The scene where Finn and The Female Person Finn Is Going To Put His Definitely Heterosexual Penis Into At Some Point In The Future bond over the shared elements of their history was very nice.

The scene where force ghost Luke explains that he was wrong to isolate himself from the universe is nowhere near as good as any of Luke and Rey’s scenes in TLJ, but it’s definitely necessary considering how confused some fans seemed to be on this point.

Some of the banter between the main three is quite fun

The scene of young Leia and Luke doing Jedi stuff is lovely and I wanted more of it.

Bad things in movie 9 from outer space:

Everything about Palpatine. Bringing him back is stupid. His plan is stupid. His inexplicable motivations are stupid. The fact that he has apparently just been sitting on his ass for 40 years is really stupid. Not explaining how he survived being thrown down a bottomless pit, exploding, and then the station he was on also exploding is extremely stupid.

Speaking of stupid, Rey Palpatine is the single worst idea that has ever been in any of these films. One of the most obnoxious things about JJ Abrams “mystery boxes” is that the mystery he deems the holy grail of box mysteries and buries deep deep down at the bottom of the mystery box is consistently something obvious and bad and not even slightly clever. There were literally two dumb fan theories for Rey’s parentage — Kenobi and Palpatine — and Palpatine was the one that was dumber.

It’s worse than midiclorians, because now Palpy fucks. Palpy canonically fucks.

Gross.

The only potentially good thing about bringing back Palpy is getting to enjoy Ian McDiarmid’s gloriously campy performance again, but for some goddamn reason they trap him on an empty soundstage lit only by strobes, then color grade everything to pure gray so you can’t fucking see what’s going on.

I get that it’s supposed to be the heart of evil and darkness, but good production design can evoke that without making it impossible to see the actors and unpleasant to look at the frame

Speaking of which, how is this movie so ugly??? There are maybe three visually nice locations and everything else is just hideous. This is a complaint I’d never even consider leveling at a previous star war. Even the shittiest ones were beautiful to look at.

Every Star Destroyer has an onboard death star superlaser now. I started by booing, saw that the superlasers are just a metal cock and balls, and then laughed my ass off through the rest of the supposedly serious scene where it blows up a planet.

The way you kill a star destroyer now is you shoot it in its dick

The only people who will be pleased by this movie are Reylo shippers and that is a horrible thing to be true

The macguffin chase that constitutes the first two thirds of this movie is pointless and boring. I especially loved the multiple times when someone lost a macguffin only to go “oh I forgot I have a spare in the glovebox”

Can we even list all the times something supposedly momentous happened only to be reversed moments later?

chewie dies! wait it was somehow the wrong ship even though they were in the middle of a literal fucking desert and there was no other ship around

The Female Person Poe Put His Definitely Heterosexual Penis Into At Some Point In The Past just got obliterated along with her entire planet by a different penis, this one attached to a star destroyer! oh wait she didn’t. no explanation she just didn’t die.

also the droid gremlin is with her

hux turned spy for the resist— oh wait he’s dead

Rey killed Kylo! But she feels bad so she heals him back

Palpatine just killed Kylo! Oh wait he didn’t. No explanation he just didn’t die, because JJ needed him to immediately reverse another supposedly momentous death.

Kylo smashed the macguffin! we’re doomed oh wait glovebox

Palpatine just electrocuted the entire rebel fleet to death! oh they got better

There’s absolutely no way to get across these waves! Oh wait Rey just... went across them

Well maybe it’s because she has the force and was able to oh wait Finn just went across them too

Well maybe that’s because The Female Person Finn Is Going To Put His Definitely Heterosexual Penis Into At Some Point In The Future is such an expert at navigating the oh wait Kylo is there as well

If only this movie took place in a universe with vehicles that do not touch the ground, we could have skipped this entire stupid subplot

3po makes a massive sacrifice by allowing his memory to be wiped! oh wait he had a backup

I also hate that 3po’s memory wipe is treated, before it happens, with pathos and gravitas, and then the moment he actually loses everything about his life and all his friends, it’s IMMEDIATELY treated as a joke

I love the way Rey is briefly dead but then Kylo goes “oh no!” and uses the last of his life force to bring her back. I wanted her to go “oh no!” and then use the last of her life force to bring him back. And then he’d go “oh no!” and use the last of his life force to

When the emperor dies, they show a montage of star destroyers blowing up elsewhere in the galaxy. Including one over endor? Why did they have a star destroyer over endor. How did the ewoks blow it up? Did they tie a log to one of the other moons and another log to another other moon and then cut the vines and the logs went smoosh

At the start of the movie Palpy promises Kylo his throne and limitless power in exchange for the one thing he wants most desperately in the world, which is for Rey to be dead. Then Rey shows up and Palpy goes “ah good you are here, I need you to kill me so my spirit can transfer to you” as though these demands aren’t utterly contradictory on every level. Then when she refuses he’s like “oh well, I suppose I can suck your and Kylo’s life forces out and rejuvenate myself to rule anew” as though that isn’t vastly preferable to plans A and B from his perspective

why is he in this movie

Having the knights of ren in this movie really justifies Rian Johnson’s choice not to have them in TLJ.

Every time the knights of ren appear, the timpanist bangs out the music cue for the sand people, so I think John Williams just decided that they ARE sand people in different hats.

Remember the eerie moment in TLJ where Rey and Kylo were connected across a vast distance through the force and Rey was in a monsoon and when the connection closed Kylo found some raindrops on his glove? Remember when Luke used a similar ability, without any physical transference, and the strain was so great that it ended his life? Now do you remember when TROS turned that into a totally mundane effortless 3d fax machine so they could pass necklaces and macguffins and lightsabers back and forth constantly, and even have whole physically real saber duels even though the script was too lazy to put them in the same place? Hey that fucking sucked

Remember Rose Tico? JJ doesn’t

The scene of Poe “micro-jumping” the Falcon is awful on so many levels. First of all, it’s just a one-off joke from Guardians of the Galaxy, but played straight for some reason. Second, changing the setting of the chase every few seconds makes the action just as numbing and impossible to follow as Michael Bay’s worst. Third, it makes no sense that the TIEs are following them through the microjumps, and the fact that they can do so makes the microjumps completely pointless. Why are you even microjumping if they can just follow you? Then the characters spend several scenes going on and on about what a big deal microjumps are, only for no one to ever do it or refer to it again.

Rey asks “what was snoke’s deal,” as though reading off a card with questions from our most obnoxious audience members, and Palpy goes “Snoke was my creation” which makes sense, like he trained the guy and equipped him and pulled his strings from the shadows and no, wait, the camera is panning over to a literal Jar O’ Snokes that Palpy just has handy in his empty strobelit soundstage.

I wish the camera had kept panning to show a Jar O’ Phasmas and a Jar O’ Huxes and maybe a Jar O’ Unkar Plutts so that all the characters from TFA could have an Offically Explained Back Story

If he put all the jars in another jar he could have a Jar Jar and the circle would be complete

I liked the part where they were having a lightsaber duel on a pier and the swings got slower and slower and finally they stopped and just kind of stared at each other like “wtf is even the point of this” because that was exactly how I felt at that moment.

tbh that was exactly how I felt for most of the movie

[notmoreflippingelves]

5, 6, 24, 25, for the Valentine shipping meme.

What is your most fluffy + happy ship?

Canon and/or endgames have an unfortunate tendency to turn a lot of my soft, pure ships into sad, “we could’ve had it aaaaallllllll” ships, especially ones that used to be actually canon but were not allowed to be endgame (Jane Villanueva/Michael Cordero. F*ck you Jennie Urmann!) – or which had the potential to end ambiguously/reasonably well –even if they were never going to be canon– until the writers/showrunners decided to ruin everything  by making me actively dislike half of the pairing. (Merlin/Gwen on BBC Merlin. #JusticeForQueenGwennie) 

There’s also the fact that I don’t usually go in for “soft, pure uwu” ships in general,  as I like angst and/or tension to add emotional stakes to my pairings. So if I do get into a ship like that, it’s usually a sign that I’m being baited (a la Jane/Michael) or that there is some really intense angst coming (like Eleanor/Chidi).

Leslie/Ben from Parks and Rec– I guess? Although I was always more into April/Andy, though given April’s gloomy personality I feel weird calling them a “fluffy, happy ship” even if they make each other happy and are overall healthy and stable. 

What is your most angsty ship?

Probably Theon Greyjoy/Jeyne Poole. That’s what happens when shared trauma inflicted by a third party brings two damaged people together. And the fact that Theon’s arc has  extreme “redemption equals death” foreshadowing.

What is one scene you want to see happen for all your ships?

KISS. Even if it’s a joke/distraction/played off as no big deal within the context of the work itself, I like having kisses (esp well-lit ones in visual media) for my ships so that I can make fanworks from them.

Also I am absolutely weak for non-sexual bed sharing trope (though of course I enjoy sexy bedsharing as well naturally). And this shows up a lot in works where there is meant to be romantic/sexual tension between characters and in works where we’re meant to see things as platonic (but I may ship it anyway). And it always delivers the feels.

Is there a ship you wish you didn’t know existed?

I mean… nothing is really coming to mind. There are pairings I don’t ship, there are pairings that squirk me and pairings that confuse me and some pairings that even revulse and disgust me. But I try to  keep them out of sight out of mind –and I usually succeed. And I’m not personally offended by their existence. Assuming that their (and any) shippers/consumers of media are able to properly distinguish between fiction and reality, which –regardless of what antis argue– most people are. 

[dotthings]

WHAT. JUST. HAPPENED.

Jotted notes as I watched. I’m having some feelings.

Right off the top: “Everything means something.” Ohhhh you don’t say. SPN I feel very called out right now. I see you, SPN. I see you.

Sam and Rowena research buddies and posing as worried dog parents, things I didn’t know how much I needed until I had them. They’re adorable.

Oh noes, Rowena is me. Right no soft spot for Jack, you are merely curious. Deny everything.

Jack, it would be a very good idea if you actually told your dads about the coughing up blood thing ASAP instead of not telling them like last time. Let’s try that.

The Dean and Cas quiet scene in the diner is so good. Cas gets Dean to let down those walls by barely breathing on them. Cas’s worry and not just worry, but empathy for Dean is palpable. Cas was always like this with Dean in fact, but there’s even more now and this is after 14.10 which Yockey also wrote that had Cas and Sam wading through the traumas in Dean’s mind and Cas flinching at it, finding it overwhelming. He has been immersed in it, in a way different than maybe he perceived before. Cas has felt sadness for Dean before. But things are on another level with that now.

“It’s what we all say.” “No, Dean.” “It’s on me.” “No, it’s on us.”

Also Dean wanting to have even more scary and honest conversation before Jack got back to the table, this is such a parent thing to do.

“Dean, come on.” Cas’s face plummets a million miles over Dean’s reminder about the grim reality of what may have to happen, “ocean, coffin, done.”

Sam, Dean, Cas, Jack, and Rowena working a case together, I love this. This is a good team-up.

Dean and Cas FBI-ing around together delights me. I like when SPN shows them working together, we don’t get it nearly often enough. Not just the emotionally intense Dean and Cas stuff, I really love how they are out in the field. We got some of that in The Spear.

“I see you standing alone” hahaha ok I laughed for a second and snarkily jotted down “CAS ERASURE” oh wait it’s just that the villain can’t see angels, ok.

“Maybe you’re not his type.” Yes but Cas is your type, Dean.

Jack posing as an actual (fake) puppy.

“That’s a very on-brand me thing to do.” “Well, thank you.”

Sam is SO PLEASED WITH HIMSELF haha jkdlajfl;asjg;ldajfd. Sam and Rowena. 

I really enjoyed the small gracenote of Maggie as Sam’s deputy while he’s in the field and Sam checking on his people and while these characters weren’t intended as, and weren’t developed, in a way to inspire deep attachment, now I’m a little sad. Sam cared. And they formed a community with each other and Maggie was likeable and had some potential if SPN spent more time with her.

Jack defending his dads is one of my vulnerable points. Jack offered to burn part of his soul for Dean in 14.10. He attacked a werewolf for Sam in 14.09. He gets all pissy and protective defending Cas here. And then Jack starts falling apart being scared to lose Dean. 

Well. That image of Sam and Cas carrying limp Dean between them is going to haunt me. Team Free Will brotop forever.

“I still can’t heal him.” So Cas kept trying to heal Dean, over and over, during that car ride back to the bunker, and couldn’t. I’M FINE THIS IS FINE. 

We have a specific to plural again. Jack starts that conversation with Cas specifically terrified at losing Dean and then it widens to “I can’t think about losing him or Sam or you.” 

Cas doesn’t believe they’ll lose Dean, not over a head injury. “When Dean wakes up, and he will wake up.” There’s other stuff that terrifies Cas. Cas “no Dean please don’t get in that box we’ll find another way there’s always hope” Winchester also isn’t that philosophical about losing Dean or Sam. But Jack is freaking out. And Cas has thought about this. He has obviously given this a lot of thought. He has probably thought about this while he doesn’t sleep in that bunker he now lives in like one of the family. When everyone else is asleep, Cas has thought about the fact that he’s an immortal cosmic being who will outlive his human family. I AM NOT OKAY. 

This is one major function of Jack’s character, he’s an excellent mirror for Team Free Will--he goes through the steps they go through--and he’s also a sounding board. These talks Cas has with Jack particuarly, are Cas vocalizing things about himself, about his own feelings, solidifying insights he maybe only half-understood before or hadn’t said out loud before. His own self-worth, his awareness of being needed by Sam and Dean for his own sake not for his powers, his awareness that he has a family that is there for him, that’s all been conveyed via Cas reassuring Jack. It’s about Cas and it’s about Team Free Will and those relationships as much as it’s about Cas being a dad. 

Now I’m going to be thinking about Cas thinking about outliving his human family for DAYS. Thanks so much, Yockey.

I’m just going to not!think about that like I’m going to not!think about Cas trying to heal Dean over and over, trying to get him to wake up, and failing. Nope.

Of course Dean blames himself. Of course he does. He doesn’t blame himself because he allowed Sam, with some nudges from Cas, to talk him into trying a less fatalistic solution to their problems, he blames himself because “I let my guard down.” DEAN YOU WERE KNOCKED UNCONSCIOUS AFTER YOU WERE SLAMMED INTO A WALL, SWEETIE. MY SELF-BLAMING PEACH. DEAN. PLEASE.

Coffin, ocean, done -- still not the solution. It was fatalistic. It was Dean accepting fate written for him on a page. It was also right to want to protect others and protect the world. I highly doubt SPN is going for a “see what happens when you defy fate, let that be a lesson to you neener” message because no, SPN is about free will and defining your own fate, choosing your own destiny, deciding who you are going to be as a person. That attempt to find a less self-destructive, fatalistic solution to Michael sure did bite them all in the ass very quickly though, that’s brutal, SPN. Nobody in TFW was in a frame of mind going “eh who cares, screw the world, we’ll risk it.” All of them--Sam included--really believed in hope and in some other solution that wouldn’t risk the world while saving Dean. 

“I’ll kill everyone in this bunker. Everyone you care about. And you do care about them, no matter what you tell them, no matter what you tell yourself.”

*shrieks* PLOT TWIST

So Rowena says yes to Michael to save the people she cares about, just as Dean did. We been knew, Rowena had a soft spot for Team Free Will. She mocked Crowley for it and Cas for it. But we been knew for a while. I love her dynamics with this family and now she’s part of it. This is a character who has earned a redemption arc over time, and Rowena is a wonderful, complex grey-area sort-of villain who is getting more towards the not-villain side. (Meta for Buffy fans -- she’s an Anya, spiked with some...Spike, y/y?). Ruthie Connell is always brilliant and now they let her let loose even further. She rocked this episode.

Did Jack just...consume...Michael? He ate an archangel’s grace. Destroying the essence of the archangel. The grace must have restored his powers, but it seems like he’s going to be soulless AND powered up beyond what he was when he was powered before, and nephilim are more powerful than archangels. So...there was an alternative to putting Dean in a coffin in the bottom of the ocean but erm whoops now they have even more problems.  Team Free Will: “FML.”

S14 continues to be about family and the construction and formation of it outside default/traditional mores and I am here for it. Also Steven Yockey keeps knocking it out of the park. 

[mavrustheunskooled]

Why is Bare: A Pop Opera not as super popular as Dear Evan Hansen or Be More Chill? The fandom loves LGBT rep (which Bare has) and the songs are amazing and I think B:APO is actually superior to both of those. Thoughts? I mean the musical fandom tends to try to find LGBT characters even when they aren't stated, so why do you think Bare is not as popular?

this is a very interesting question and I am hopefully going to do it justice by analyzing Fandom, Musical Writing, and Many Other Things I’m Super Passionate About

the short: many factors and a lot of luck

the unnecessarily long: 

(opening disclaimer: I love dear evan hansen and be more chill, and I’m not upset that they’re popular musicals because I feel that they’re popular for a reason. anything that sounds like an insult in the following response isn’t such because I truly enjoy both of those musicals a lot) 

(another disclaimer: spoilers for bare, DEH, and BMC, also mentions of homophobia) 

on paper, bare seems like the exact sort of musical that would be popular. bare the musical (cursed as it is) has a cast of super popular actors like Barrett Wilbert Weed, Gerard Canonico, Taylor Trensch, Alice Lee, Alex Wyse, a high quality bootleg exists of the 2013 LA cast, it’s got LGBT+ rep, complex women characters… and yet it’s got a tiny fan base. Why? 

first let’s look at why dear evan hansen and be more chill are popular. I’m more well versed in bmc, so let’s look at its history (disclaimer: I’m estimating dates but this is roughly the timeline) 

the original bmc run was in 2015 I believe. they recorded a soundtrack, everything was fine, and they closed. in 2017, people began discovering the soundtrack in hoards. specifically, they were discovering one song: Michael in the bathroom. that’s even how I learned about the show- I heard that song and had to look up the rest of the soundtrack. and in February of 2019, they’ll start previews on broadway because the fandom was revived 

why this song? I think a ton of fame comes from talent, yes, but also from luck. I think bmc was lucky that Michael in the bathroom, a great song, was discovered as the great song that it is. I also think the fame came because that song is super relatable. as someone with pretty bad anxiety, that song really touched me because I’ve definitely spent parties hiding in the bathroom and avoiding everyone and wishing I was dead because I’m so overwhelmed with anxiety. it’s relatable, so people flocked to it. 

this made me pause to think “what is bare’s hook song” my first thought was a quiet night at home if we want a song in the same vein as MITB, but that song isn’t as hype as MITB (and fandoms don’t care about fem characters as much as it cares about masc characters). my next thought was are you there because I think it’s a bop and a relatable “pls someone help” kind of song, but I don’t know which song everyone could relate to as much as everyone could relate to MITB 

and speaking of relatable content- that’s where the DEH connection comes in. dear evan hansen is similarly relatable, although it takes that to an extreme given what Evan does as a result of his anxiety. Michael and Evan are relatable characters, even if you don’t condone everything they do (and if you condone everything Evan does, we have much to talk about)

but doesn’t bare have relatable characters?? absolutely !! there’s Peter, a closeted gay kid who wants to come out, and Jason, someone who acts tough but is secretly very insecure, and Nadia, with her body image issues, and Ivy, who people won’t take seriously because they’ve decided they already know her, and so many other complex characters. so why are they left behind? 

let’s look at bare’s history: 

bare was originally written in the 90s (I want to say 1999, but I could be wrong) the performance most people consider the quintessential bare performance was in 2004 with Michael Arden, John Hill, Jenna Leigh Green, etc. 

if you compare this to DEH and BMC, the first issue is clear. DEH was hugely popular around 2016. BMC began to grow in popularity in 2017. these are very, very new shows. 20 years doesn’t sound like a lot, but in our current age where time seems to pass so quickly which each new fad, bare seems like an older musical, and a lot of people aren’t the biggest fan of older musicals. and they don’t have to be !! but it’s a personal preference of some people that could affect how they view bare as a potential musical to be a fan of 

in terms of the music of bare, it’s definitely catchy, but it’s not like a pop song. (again, no shade at DEH and BMC because those aren’t jukebox musicals or anything). bare is simply not as easy to listen to as DEH and BMC are in my opinion (and it’s not the most complicated thing ever either, but holy cow its lyrics are smart and I have to throw that in here) 

now let’s look at reasons why people may not want to watch bare. while it is great that it has canon gay characters, compelling women characters, and is very cleverly written it also has issues that can be turn-offs to people. this includes: 

-bury your gays

-gay-guy-cheats-on-boyfriend-with-girl trope 

-gay-guy-gets-outed trope 

-and potentially other homophobic tropes

I’m not shaming bare for perpetuating these tropes because it was written 20 years ago, and lgbt+ people are allowed to enjoy media in spite of its perpetuation of negative tropes, but for some people these things are enough to turn them away. and I don’t blame them! I watched bare the musical before I watched bare a pop opera, and when Jason I died I closed out of YouTube without finishing the show because I was so Sick of bury your gays. 

I am aware that there are reasons Jason died at the end of bare (they’re making a statement about how homophobia kills, particularly how homophobic religious people can have an awful affect on young religious gay people), but there comes a time when “reasons for a gay character to die” is just too much. sometimes, you just want the gay character to live, and I completely respect that notion because I felt the exact same way when I watched bare the musical. I remember when I first watched bare the musical I wrote a thread about how as a Romeo and Juliet adaptation, bare follows some things closely (like death at the end) while avoiding other extremes (Romeo running off to another country) and I thus felt the death was unnecessary. if someone else feels similarly about being sick of gay characters dying, they have every right to not want to watch bare 

that’s enough on why someone might not want to watch bare. let’s get back to bare vs DEH and BMC 

I also think a big aspect of fandoms is shipping. the fetishization of MLM (and consequently ignoring fem characters completely, along with focusing solely on white men for their shipping and ignoring men of color) is a huge problem in fandoms that I could talk about forever, but for the sake of this response, I’ll keep it a bit shorter 

DEH and BMC profit heavily off of shipping in terms of gaining popularity. people love Evan x Connor (and other ships but that’s the main one I see), and people love Jeremy x Michael (and others). so why then do people not care about bare, a show with a canon relationship between 2 basic white men, which is their ultimate goal? 

I think people like the idea of these mlm ships more than canon content. if there’s canon, it’s harder for them to make a variety of ships because it feels like everything else has to rotate around the canon without touching it (which is where the bare fandom gets Matt x Lucas because they’re the closest they have to 2 basic men- I can write my criticism of them another time though) 

I’ve also seen posts saying that things with canon lgbt+ characters sometimes have smaller fandoms because there is no need for lgbt+ theorizing- it’s right there, and if you want lgbt+ content, watch the thing. I don’t necessarily agree with this for myself (I’ll reblog every pilgrim’s hands gifset I see) but I can definitely see how other people might think this way 

failing to hype up stuff with lgbt+ characters can have a negative impact. BMC is the prime example of how a show can be revived by its passionate fan base. if people aren’t talking about bare, it’s not going to spread like other shows do 

this is kind of all over the place but anyway- I want to talk about characters more. one thing DEH and BMC have are great, complex characters that are very easy to boil down to a fandom’s favorite stereotypes. I am absolutely not saying DEH and BMC have simple characters because I think all of them have layers; however, fandoms do love to go “this is precious cinnamon roll who can do no wrong and this is evil awful terrible irredeemable person” and it’s a bit difficult to do that with bare. 

you can say Peter is your perfect son, but he does try to force Jason out before he’s ready. you can say Ivy is the evil seductress trying to tear apart your gay babies, but I will physically fight you. there aren’t any black-and-white good or bad bare characters (except Father Flynn- hate him), which doesn’t fit in line with the way fandoms function. sweeping generalizations about the current state of society based on the internet are exhausting and bad, but we do live in an age where everything must either be perfect or evil, and you can’t do that with bare. no one “did nothing wrong uwu” and that’s what fandoms Want 

(note: they will excuse wrong actions, such as everything wrong Connor Murphy has ever done, if the character is played by a mildly attractive guy they want to ship with another mildly attractive guy) 

another point that I don’t have fully fleshed out thoughts on enough to devote too much time to is the integration of parents into the shows. in both DEH and BMC, the parents get redemption arcs. in bare, Claire does say she love Peter at the end, but she’s much less of a sympathetic character than Mr. Heere or Heidi (that’s her name right- Evan’s mom) or the Murphys. when I was younger, I wasn’t allowed to watch anything that painted parents, or adults in general, in a negative light, but maybe that’s not a universal experience 

this is getting way too long and it probably has more thought put into it than what was necessary, so I’ll try to close this quickly 

I think, first off, that DEH and BMC completely deserve the hype that they have received. they’ve got compelling stories, interesting characters, and fantastic soundtracks. I also think that luck factors heavily into them getting what they deserve. there are plenty of great shows, like bare and the boy who danced on air and spies are forever and probably more that I’m not thinking of, that have great music and characters and story that, out of sheer chance, don’t get the chance they should have been given. there is no bulleted list someone can follow and at the end they’ll be on broadway with an armful of tonys; is the luck of the draw, and bare has not been afforded that chance 

I’ll end with some reasons why anyone who happened to read this but might not be a bare fan should listen to or watch bare: 

- it is an amazingly clever show; every time I watch it or listen to it, I realize another moment of foreshadowing or a line I originally brushed off was actually very significant or there’s another recurring motif/theme in the music 

- it’s full of bops (go listen to you and I or are you there or portrait of a girl) 

- canon gay characters in a canon gay relationship 

- 3 dimensional fem characters that actively criticize stereotypes 

- it’s about a religious gay boy who grapples with his religion and his sexuality and how those two things can coexist 

- it is Very Very Good

in conclusion: bare is very good and deserves attention xx

[gdwessel]

Wrestle Kingdom 13 - 1/4/2019; Ibushi Concussed; G1 Climax 29 Begins in Dallas, WK14 Will Be 2 Nights

Today is The Day. Wrestle Kingdom 13. You can watch it on NJPWWorld in Japanese or English. You can pay $35 on FITE TV for the same. You can wait until later tonight and watch a 2-hour version (continued the next 2 weeks) on AXS TV. Whatever the case, you can see it.

Wrestle Kingdom 13 - January 4, 2019, Tokyo Dome (NJPWWorld, FITE TV, AXS TV on tape delay)

NEVER Openweight  6-Man Tag Team Championship #1 Contenders Gauntlet Match: Togi Makabe, Toru Yano [CHAOS] & Ryusuke Taguchi d. Yuji Nagata, Jeff Cobb [FREE] & David Finlay Jr. and Hirooki Goto, Trent Beretta & Chuck Taylor [CHAOS] and Minoru Suzuki, Lance Archer & Davey Boy Smith Jr. [SZKG] and Adam Page, Yujiro Takahashi & Marty Scurll [The Elite] Order of Eliminations - Finlay > Yujiro, Schoolboy, 4:39 - Finlay > Taylor, Schoolboy, 7:30 - KES > Finlay, Killer Bomb, 2:44 - Yano > Smith, Schoolboy, 8:09

NEVER Openweight Championship: Will Ospreay [CHAOS] d. Kota Ibushi [FREE] © (Stormbreaker, 18:13) - Ibushi fails his 1st defense - Ospreay is the 23rd champion

IWGP Junior Heavyweight Tag Team Championship 3-Way Match: BUSHI & Shingo Takagi [Los Ingobernables] d. Yoshinobu Kanemaru & El Desperado [SZKG] © and SHO & YOH [CHAOS] (Takagi > SHO, Last of the Dragon, 6:50) - Kanemaru/Desperado fail their 5th defense - BUSHI/Takagi are the 58th champions

RevPro Undisputed British Heavyweight Championship: Zack Sabre Jr. [SZKG] d. Tomohiro Ishii [CHAOS] © (Hurrah! Another Year, Surely This One Will Be Better Than The Last; The Inexorable March Of Progress Will Lead Us All To Happiness, 11:53) - Ishii fails his ? defense - Sabre is the 21st champion

IWGP Heavyweight Tag Team Championship 3-Way Match:  EVIL & SANADA [Los Ingobernables] d. Tama Tonga & Tanga Loa [Bullet Club] © and Matt & Nick Jackson [The Elite] (SANADA > Matt, Rounding Body Press, 10:15) - GOD fail their 1st defense - EVIL/SANADA are the 82nd champions

IWGP US Heavyweight Championship: Juice Robinson d. Cody Rhodes [The Elite] © (Pulp Friction, 9:02) - Cody fails his 1st defense - Juice is the 5th champion

IWGP Junior Heavyweight Championship: Taiji Ishimori [Bullet Club] d. KUSHIDA ©  (Bloody Cross, 11:17) - KUSHIDA fails his 1st defense - Ishimori is the 83rd champion

Jay White [Bullet Club] d. Kazuchika Okada [CHAOS] (Blade Runner, 14:18)

IWGP Intercontinental Championship No-DQ Match: Tetsuya Naito [Los Ingobernables] d. Chris Jericho [FREE] © (Destino, 22:35) - Jericho fails his 2nd defense - Naito is the 20th champion

IWGP Heavyweight Championship: Hiroshi Tanahashi d. Kenny Omega [The Elite] © (High Fly Flow, 39:13) - Omega fails his 4th defense - Tanahashi is the 67th champion

Hoo boy, a lot to break down here.

Every single title changed hands during this show, including the IWGP Heavyweight Championship. The last time that belt changed hands at a January 4 Tokyo Dome show was Wrestle Kingdom V on 1/4/2011, by, how about that, Hiroshi Tanahashi, beating Satoshi Kojima. Eight years since then, including last year's controversial retaining by Kazuchika Okada over Tetsuya Naito that some people are still salty about. So, essentially, the entire Bushiroad era. The (frankly piss-poor) reign of Kenny Omega as IWGP champion is at an end, and the rest of the Elite (including Kota Ibushi) are title-less as well. So let the speculation about Omega and All Elite Wrestling begin in full force. It will be interesting to see which direction he goes in either way. For his part, Tanahashi is now an 8-time IWGP Heavyweight Champion, cementing himself with the record number of reigns. (The next closest is Tatsumi Fujinami at 6.)

Los Ingobernables all hold titles now as well, barring Hiromu, of course, being out injured and all. CHAOS holds one title, as does Bullet Club, who lost one and gained one. The Seikigun hold two, after Tanahashi and Juice won their matches, however lost one with KUSHIDA.

Tetsuya Naito regains the title he hates over Jericho in a brutal brawl, taking full advantage of the No-DQ stipulation,and with it, begins his redemption story, having to come to terms with the IC belt to finally truly move beyond it. Really interested in seeing how his 2019 will go.

Jay White winning over Okada is interesting. It redeems White for having a poor re-debut at WK12 last year, and sets up a continuing feud with the two. Kazuchika Okada having his redemption arc is going to be a major part of 2019 creatively, I think, as will Naito as stated above, and eventually the two will collide. Okada does not take a hit here. It only sets him up to be stronger in the end. And hey, the Longboys are gone, so we have the Rainmaker back!

Shock of shocks, neither of the three-way tag matches ended with the reigning champions being pinned. The junior tag match was REAL short. (So were many of the matches today) Three-ways are stupid and are there to a) not make the champions do the job b) cover up for a bloated roster. Perhaps with the Elite moving away from NJPW this will be minimized in future. But let's face it, now we'll get rematches with the previous champions v. the current ones coming up real soon.

Juice regains the US belt, and writes Cody Rhodes out of NJPW. Trent Beretta challenged Juice post-show. That'll be good. Hopefully they can do right by Juice this time. They made him look like an absolute star at G1 Special in San Francisco, and then proceeded to squander and ruin that the rest of 2018. ZSJ regaining the RevPro title is about what I expected. Now he can take the belt home to England. Yes, that is the na.me of that finisher

That... was a nasty looking elbow Kota took. Ibushi has been reported as being concussed, and that stretcher job was legit. NJPW says the concussion is not severe. Will Ospreay is trying to be in characer gloating about it, because he is a dipshit. Who knows what Ibushi's future is in this AEW era. He's been a freelancer this entire time, so if he too were to leave NJPW (again) so be it. I really think he has the potential to be a drawing IWGP champion, but that's up to him. He did decline a WWE contract after all (as did Sabre). His is the bigger question mark looming than Omega's, if I'm honest.

The mixed Seikigun/CHAOS team of Makabe/Yano/Taguchi won the pre-show gauntlet match, so will most likely challenge for the NEVER Openweight Comedy 6-Man Tag Team titles tomorrow at New Year Dash!!. Yuji Nagata filled in for the injured *spits* Michael Elgin, and made the match actually watchable now, because fuck Michael Elgin. The Most Violent Players still being a thing makes me think there really is going to be a unit shakeup coming soon. We already saw it with Jay White and Gedo earlier in 2018, and the continued CHAOS/Seikigun teamups point that way too.

All in all, a really good show that was weak on paper but in practice did really well. The attendance was announced as 38,162, up from 34,995 for last year's, but not as much of a jump (Nearly +10K last year from WK11). It's also the highest attendance listed since Bushiroad started using actual numbers rather than papered, which was 36,000 in 2015 for WK9. So as critical as I've been of Kenny Omega as champion, using the Meltzer Standard for attendance, it looks like Kenny was, in fact, a decent draw as champion, even if creative and match quality was the shits. Online, it seems that there were some issues during the show on NJPWWorld, for which apologies have been doled out.

The attendance is an interesting issue. Bushiroad owner Takaaki Kidani has said for years that he wanted Wrestle Kingdom 14 to be the sell-out show at the Dome, as it falls on a Saturday...

As part of today's show, upcoming big events were announced for the coming year, and the biggest one of these was the announcement that WK14 will be, in fact, a 2-day event, on 1/4 and 1/5/2020, both Saturday and Sunday. Not sure how that is going to work out for selling out the Dome in 2020. In fact it might dilute the attendance by splitting it. It's an interesting conundrum, and we'll see if NJPW has the momentum to sell out just one, if not both, of those dates this time next year.

Other major show dates were announced, some we already knew (if you look at the Upcoming NJPW Events post from 2 days ago). There is a mega-card announced for 4/20/2019 at Aichi Prefectural Gymnasium, without a name given, but no word on Sakura Genesis, so I'm wondering if there will even be one this year. Wrestling Dontaku 2019 is a two-day event in Fukuoka, much like last year's edition.

This year's Best of the Super Juniors 26 Final will be held on 6/5/2019 at Tokyo Ryogoku Kokugikan, which is great, finally giving the Final the prestige it deserves with such a massive venue to hold it in. A mere 4 days later, we go back to Osaka-Jo Hall for Dominion 6.9 in Osaka-Jo Hall on, oddly enough, 6/9/2019.

G1 Climax 29 will begin and end in interesting fashion. This year's tournament will actually begin in the USA, on 7/6/2019 at the American Airlines Center in Dallas, TX, making this the only time G1 Climax matches have been held outside of Japan. As for the ending, following the success of last year's Finals at Tokyo Nippon Budokan, which was due to necessity of renovations happening at Ryogoku, they are going back this year from 8/10 - 8/12/2019 for this year's G1 Finals as well.

The last one to be announced is a solo date in London, on 8/31/2019 at The Copper Box, located in Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, Hackney Wick. This is the place where feuding YouTubers Joe Weller and KSI held a boxing match. I am sure there will be RevPro involvement in this show.

That's it. That's all I got. New Year Dash!! is tomorrow but they never announce the card for it ahead of time. Hope everyone enjoyed WK13, and we start a good year in New Japan Pro Wrestling.

[eisforeidolon]

The thing is, I liked season eleven after finding nine and particularly ten overall mediocre and forgettable with some decent stuff mixed in.  I actually really liked the whole idea of Amara with the show making mythology of its own, and I liked the actress that played her.  The only real problem was that they should have done more to show rather than tell us how great of a threat she was, but they even did a pretty decent job of showing her as a consistent presence across the season.  I loved that they tried to inject some actual stakes into the Winchesters life and death merry-go-round again with quasi-antagonist Billie and the Empty, and I thought a lot of the MotW episodes were really good. If the overall storyarc was a bit rushed and messy, and it had an unfortunate Lucifer tumor in the middle of it, well, it was the transition season.  When the conflict ended with not the big confrontation but a big family reunion, I was so pleased and I had high hopes that SPN might be going back from a fun show to one that was more qualitatively good.  

Starting season twelve, there was a lot of talk about dialing things back and having the Winchesters have to deal with a purely human enemy.  That was a great fucking idea.  Mary was back so the show had a whole new emotional dynamic to explore between the two Winchesters separately and together with her, and how they dealt with her as an actual person.  Again, that was interesting new territory to explore.  Except ...

All the potential of Mary was wasted in her taking off immediately; the only way she could have been less invested in the Winchesters' lives was if she turned full villain – and at least that would have been unquestionably deliberate and not just incompetent writers inflicting their cardboard version of a “strong female character” on the audience. By the time we reached the end of the season I felt there was no reason to brainwash her except to pretend she was still “good”, I could easily see the Mary they gave us all season locking Sam and Dean away to die without it.   Meanwhile, the BmoL were in turns either so hyper-competent and prepared it was unbelievable or so incompetent and unprepared it was also unbelievable.  Which was at least not as terrible as the climax, where the writers had Sam and the disposable hunter gang zoom past a fundamental moral horizon that has always been emphasized as important on the show (not killing humans on purpose) without even seeming to fucking notice.  So much for having to deal with a human enemy being any different than the same old same old crap!  It only got worse with Lucifer hanging on like a bad smell in a way that turned into a cringe-y abortion-skirting death-is-worth-it-for-my-baby-even-if-it's-evil storyline with another bonus consequence-less Cas betrayal of the Winchesters.  That in retrospect the writers were such juvenile pissbabies as to write a Cas death they intended to take back immediately to overshadow Crowley's permanent one only leaves even more of a sour taste on the season.  Still, there were some great moments in decent episodes and there had been some good ideas to start with – and the whole AU world was promising!  I didn't have much interest in Jack, but what happens in the season finale has so little bearing on where the next season will necessarily go these days it wasn't enough to tune out.  

Which brings us to season thirteen. They tried to sell helpless woobie Jack way too hard, but the casting department did them a good turn with Calvert and it actually kind of worked.  The Scooby crossover was pretty fun.  Unfortunately, they fucking ruined the Empty – both in terms of whatever the hell Misha was doing while whoever was directing was apparently in some kind of coma and in terms of it utterly ruining bringing peril for the main characters back into the show.  Beyond that, it felt like they wasted half the season on the spin-off  where the usually more coherent and enjoyable MotW episodes would have been – which instead of at least being about Jody and Donna, was a whole new cast of cardboard teen stereotypes whose abilities and interpersonal bonds were so awesome like Sam and Dean's!!!  Even without any training or having known each other for more than five minutes!  Yeesh.  The rest was split between making Lucifer even more of a joke (possibly at least partially on purpose this time, which actually makes it worse in a way), flubbing all the potential of the AU universe by giving it no depth or real history in favor of all the random fanservice AU versions of dead characters they could squeeze in, ruining Gabriel's actual redemption arc because ???, and a wee bit of Jack & the Winchesters and Rowena & the Winchesters that was actually enjoyable.  Oh, and all that crap with Asmodeus which was so forgettable I almost literally forgot it happened just now.  Setting up for the finale?  Heaven is falling, oh noes! I don't care. AU!Michael is coming! I don't care.  The season hasn't bothered to take the time to actually give me any reason to, and the only thing this show needs less of than more brother lying plots is yet another angel-centric snorefest.  Stick a fork in that shit, you nerfed it good at least six seasons back.

I've always found the seasons more enjoyable watched in a binge, and maybe on a rewatch (if I actually get up the interest to do one this year) I'll remember there were actually some good parts in there I liked.  At this point, though, it feels like too long since I genuinely enjoyed anything in the distracted clusterfuck of half-assed recycled plots and I'm not sure tuning in next season is the right choice for me, even though I expected to be in 'til the end.  I am sort of interested in the idea of Jensen playing a different character – but I have no faith that the so-called surprise reveal of the character will not be either the most predictable possible entity (an idea I've always hated), the most ridiculously out-of-nowhere soap “twist” the writers hit with a dart, or both.  Not to mention the intrinsic conflict between the show having adequate Dean time and having the character last more than another disappointing three episodes that go basically nowhere. 

[orionsangel86]

13x07 - Watching Notes - Lucifer, Colonel Sanders, Soap Opera story lines and one very grumpy angel of the lord... it must be a Bucklemming episode!

Since it’s a Bucklemming episode, and I have been seriously behind in getting my episode reviews completed, I thought I would instead just write out my thoughts and reactions to the episode whilst watching for the first time. Usually I don’t do this until I’ve watched an episode a few times but what better way to try to process a Bucklemming Episode than to stop and start and write some stuff down? If anything it may help me understand it a bit better.

My full watching notes and reactions to the episode along with my meta thoughts on it are under the cut. It gets pretty long as it took me over 3 hours to watch the whole thing on Friday evening! It’s taken me until now to actually complete the edit and add some pics to show particularly interesting moments. 

The first thing I did on Friday morning was ask a couple of the guys I talk to regularly what to expect from this episode without giving me any spoilers, I always want to check if I should prepare myself for anything problematic or generally horrible. Thankfully I was told that unlike the majority of Bucklemming episodes this one has nothing rapey in it! Yay! Oh how low the bar is already set!

Other than that, @tinkdw and @margarittet told me that it was so bad it was funny, but that there were some stand out scenes.

I felt somewhat prepared. My expectations were buried deep underground as I prepared myself for the worst. I’m glad I did as I didn’t hate it as much as I thought I would. Full notes/review under the cut...

THEN

Asmodeus, Lucifer and Mary, Asmodeus’ plans.

Michael taking Lucifer. 

So the set up is that its gonna be all about Lucifer and Asmodeus. No surprises there. Bucklemming love their pantomime villains. 

Jack noooooo!

I still don’t understand why he hurt them before he flapped off. It seems so silly that he did that after he used the exact same ability to accidentally kill the security guard. But blaaah that was last episode moving on.

Starting with Lucifer giving a monologue. *grits teeth* It’s really hard to enjoy anything when you actually despise the sound of this guys voice.

*sigh*

All these pretty stock filler shots are quite nice, probably a major contrast between our world and whatever Michael did to the AU.

Ok so it IS Michael reading Lucifer’s thoughts. He wants our world. Because of course he does. Look how pretty those shots were. (Noted Richard is directing this so I expect a very pretty episode regardless of how absurd the script is)

I think @amwritingmeta may be right that Michael is gonna be the real big bad and the scary guy this season. I mean someone needs to be because Asmodeus is a laughable pantomime villain. So I am enjoying this. Give me more of Michael and less of Asmodeus. That is far better.

(we were talking about how I miss the old style villains, the Alistair's and Azazel's and Lilith's were truly scary and awesome to watch in action. Asmodeus in 13x02 just made me cringe so I was praying for a truly terrifying villain this season and Annelie said she hopes Michael takes that role. So I’m rooting for him to be horrifying) 

Oh look classic Bucklemming love their torture scenes. Even if it is Lucifer so I don’t care (Can’t he just stay in that hanging Iron Maiden for good?)

Yup Michael is evil. I like it.

Interesting shot of Lucifer hanging behind the statue of Christ on the cross. That is… well its ironic in a way but also potential foreshadowing. If they give Lucifer a redemption arc I swear to god I am gonna be so fucking mad you will never stop hearing about it. Lucifer cannot be compared to Jesus in any way shape or form. Just NO. Look I’m not religious here but I hate this character and after what he did to Sam he deserves nothing but an agonising death. I will not accept a Lucifer redemption arc.

Okay rant over. Moving on.

Dean has a tiny tea cup. I just wanted to point that out… do they always have tiny teacups? I thought that they were manly men who don’t drink out of tiny cups!

(EDIT: In HINDSIGHT THE TINY TEACUPS FORESHADOW KETCH AND HIS POSH TEA DRINKING)

Okay so what is so great about this scene between Sam and Dean is that it is the total opposite to the scenes we are used to when the missing person is Cas. The fact that it is SAM that is super worried and DEAN that is doing the consoling is just so refreshing and it speaks VOLUMES about the way they each feel about Jack and Cas respectively. Sam developed a bond with the kid. It’s really nice. I hope that is developed.

I know that everyone already talked about the promo scene for ages whilst I was out the other night and only caught glimpses, but I love that Dean is finally using singular terms. He is not talking about him AND Sam here and Cas knew that immediately.

“Sorry darling, my family hate you. You can’t come with me”

That is basically what this moment is. They are such husbands.

The fact that he let Cas go though with just a “Don’t do anything stupid” I mean I wasn’t expecting that because I thought Dean would be far more worried and controlling but again it is nice to see him letting go of his control issues. He trusts Cas, and he accepted Cas’s reasons for going alone (which for once made perfect sense) so I am actually okay with this.

So wait, whilst Cas is looking for Jack and we have Michael/Lucifer stuff in AU world, Sam and Dean are gonna go hunt witch killers? That’s…. okay then…. I’m not sure I understand Bucklemming’s reasons for that but maybe it will make sense later. (who am I kidding from what I have been told nothing makes sense this episode and I just have to go with it – fine. The two main characters aren’t even getting in on the main plot. Whatever. *shrug*)

Oh god Asmodeus you are not scary and your weird purring is dumb.

“I have news of the Jack”

The Jack? Ok now I’m laughing. What?!?

Asmodeus that is some serious manspreading you are doing there. Stop that. I can see your bulge and it is not sexy you evil Colonel Sanders.

(Edit - Dean validating this fandom reaction to Asmodeus later is rather therapeutic - at least bucklemming are aware their OC is STUPID but poking fun at him does not make them seem clever)

Tbh this whole conversation comes across as stupid. I can’t take any of these scenes seriously I’m just laughing and trying not to cringe.

A hunter on the pay roll? Well that is definitely gonna come up later. What happened to the Winchester leadership strategy from last season? I thought they got all the hunters rallied up and on side?

Back to apocalypse world and hey Mary got mentioned. Where IS she?

No DON’T wail on Mary for a while. Does this mean that Michael has her locked up too? I hope he’s not torturing her. Urgh that would suck.

I like the light shining through the cross towards Michael. Very nice shot again. It frames Michael as being this holy and righteous character... actually they did that before:

In the first scene they also had light shining from behind him. I like how this is basically a subversion of a classic story telling trick in film making where the good character/ hero is the one bathed in light to symbolically portray him as pure and honest and trustworthy (like an angel) but this time around Michael IS an angel with his holy light, but it is anything but good. 

Anyway...

Whenever Lucifer talks I switch off. It’s not very good for meta purposes.

Why is his shirt so sparkling white? How is this possible in a alternate universe? This makes no sense logically in this world. Symbolically though it is a sign of purity, cleanliness, goodness... all things we should totally not be associating with Lucifer so this is interesting. Redemption arc. *oh yay* >.>

So Michael has already been exploring opening alternate universes eh? Well, that once again opens up future storylines I suppose. Nice set up, Bucklemming got all the foundation stuff didn’t they?

Hey Kevin! You look terrible. Score a point for Bucklemming for actually bringing BACK one of the characters they brutally killed off.

Ok so with Kevin comes the Angel tablet and another spell that requires angel grace? Talk about a big call back. I smell another possible story foundation.

Wow so Lucifer gets his grace taken almost the exact same way Cas did, to be used in a spell the same way Cas’s was, in a season where they both act as father to a Nephilim son, and apparently team up this episode too? It’s almost like they want to make the audience see a mirror here or something?

Lucifer being a Cas mirror makes me extremely uncomfortable. Trust bucklemming to try to compare my most beloved character with my most hated character. I hate them a little bit more now.

The call backs to season 8 ARE interesting though. Kevin himself is going to through the audience right back to that season, so is the angel tablet, now this with the grace stealing. We are supposed to connect the two. 

Obviously the big themes of season 8 were the toxic codependency, the angel’s fall, Cas’s brainwashing at Naomi’s hands and Destiel. Hmmmm...

Winchesters on their witch hunt. How is this relevant to the story?

KETCH?!?

SAME SAM.

My reaction was the same as the Winchesters. I’m getting whiplash in this episode already and I’m only 10 minutes in. They better have a good excuse for why Ketch is alive.

Hello Witch Daniella. “I know you don’t like witches but I also know you help people who are in trouble”.

This was a good line. Because it’s something that encourages the reading (that some people still refuse to see) that the Winchesters don’t work with absolutes here. There are always shades of grey. Their primary goal is always to help people before they kill things. 

Also a call back to last seasons following the Ketch reveal. Ketch who sees in black and white against the Winchesters who try to focus on the “saving people” part of the tagline first.

Again with the whiplash. Lucifer is giving Kevin a lecture like he’s a good parent. All this Lucifer being right and good is making me nauseaus. It’s almost like Bucklemming are hoping to get #dadifer trending on twitter. (I sincerely hope this didn’t happen)

“Michael is a monster, pure evil”

Way to force the exposition down the audiences throats. I get it. Lucifer is the one we are supposed to root for. Sorry you irritating horned hamsters, it ain’t happening. (I should mention that Horned Hamsters is courtesy of @margarittet which I find way too funny so stole from her *love you*)

Kevin called our world “paradise world” which again, I find very interesting especially in terms of what Cas was brainwashed into thinking by Jack. Cas babe, I think you were tricked – unintentionally mind, but still. Never believe in paradise. Ever.

Welp so that explains one worry we had anyway. Lucifer got back to our world so Cas doesn’t get stuck in the AU at least. So where the hell is Mary? Is Mary not in this episode? See I really need to pay attention to the cast names at the start OTHER than Misha Collins. 

Why is Lucifer wearing a wedding ring? Who’d he marry? Or has he always wore a ring since Nick? Is this just something I have chosen to not see ever in all of Lucifer’s episodes? If so that is purely a sign of me getting old and looking for rings whenever I see men on instinct now. Jesus Saz...

Lucifer you have no grace. You can’t blow people up anymore. Also that was another call back to Cas in 9x01. WHY are they trying to make Lucifer like CAS? STOP IT!!

“My ex husband is Lucifer” Okay I’ll give them that I liked that.

More torture up close. To be expected.

Oh god I can’t with these Asmodeus scenes. I’m sorry but they are awful. All I do is laugh and cringe.

Back to the random witch case that makes no sense and oh yay, more violence and this time against women! Bucklemmings favourite thing!

(I’m sorry I did warn you that this would be a running commentary on my thoughts so its gonna get wanky)

More whiplash and now a shout out to Rowena! We knew she was coming back at some point so it’s good to finally get a story in place for her.

Tying Rowena to Ketch though is possibly tying the BMOL to the Grand Coven which is what we WANTED FOR SEASON 12 so I hope we get that. Even though I still don’t see how Ketch can possibly be alive and at this point I hope it is hilariously unbelievable and idiotic in classic bucklemming fashion because I am enjoying this so far for its absurdity.

Who the hell is this? Ketch’s evil/less evil twin??!

Holy. Fuck.

(I have had to pause and laugh out loud for about five minutes)

I swear to god that I typed that before it was said in the show. I did not just add it in later. I can’t stop laughing.

So is Supernatural now Day’s of Our Lives?!

Oh god. Bucklemming. When Dabb finally fires you maybe you will be able to get work on an American Soap Opera.

Tell me we aren’t actually getting an evil twin plot? (good twin? Just as bad as the first twin? Who fucking knows. Or cares. Wow.)

I mean, Tink was right when she said it was so bad it was laughable. I didn’t think I’d actually laugh out loud but there we go.

I pressed play and Dean says “Do I look stupid to you?”

Bucklemming this is your entire audience right now.

I did like Dean’s little “Woo” there.

So Ketch has a less evil twin brother who failed Kendricks and went to become a paid for hunter. Okay. Sounds fake but okay. I don’t know whether to keep up my suspicion and go with Dean’s gut or to actually just accept that Bucklemming are legitimately this lazy with their writing. what is real?

“Isn’t that’s what we hunters do? Kill the bad thing”

I like this because it is in opposition to what Daniella said earlier. There is a silent question being asked there: “What is it that Sam and Dean actually do?” Is their primary role to protect? Or to destroy? Again it feels like the set up of a much bigger story arc and theme.

Also it’s the kind of thing that KETCH would say. 

“I don’t care how good this story looks, I ain’t buying it” Dean you keep saying my thoughts. I don’t know how to take that. Do Bucklemming just accept that their audience is gonna hate their stuff now? Why are they reading my mind and putting my thoughts in Dean’s mouth! ARGH! It’s giving me a headache.

“There’s Ripley’s Believe it or Not Weird, and then there’s weird that’s just straight up bull” Soooo like every other episode of Supernatural versus episodes written by Bucklemming? Yeah thanks for reading my mind again Dean. Hahahaha!

I kinda feel like there is an undercurrent of self deprecation in the writing here. Like Bucklemming are poking fun at their own absurdity. I’m not sure how comfortable I feel with them being self aware - it’s like they are finally starting to consider how the fandom may react and are playing with that through the characters... are Bucklemming being... smart here? o_O

Dean not buying it though is the classic clue. Dean is always right. So maybe Ketch is just lying. I mean, come on. I really hope we don’t get an evil twin plot because this is so stupid. Dean is always right. That is like rule 1 of SPN. Please don’t screw this up. 

I feel like there is a bit of a mirror going on here.

Sam sitting opposite Ketch no.2, mirroring his position, talking about how he admires his brother, wanted to be like him.

“like you I understood my brothers issues and why he did what he did”

This sentence has a dual meaning because of the way he phrases it with the “like you”. We can read it as Ketch no 2 talking purely about his brother and Sam’s understanding of him, but there is also a reading there where he could be talking about BOTH their brothers and their issues. That was in fact what I heard on first watch.

Sam understands his brother’s issues. That’s what I took from that. Whilst that could mean a bazillion and one things about Dean, there is only one theme that has been constant this season so far and Sam always seemed to not quite understand, or at least not voice any real understanding. Here it is textualised that he does. Interesting.

I mean also the fact that this guy is defending Ketch makes me again think that he is just Ketch and this evil twin stuff is bullshit because I don’t even want to believe Bucklemming would be that lazy with their writing.

The fact that Dean was mirrored to Ketch last season as well, to then talk about regret opens up a whole can of worms about Dean’s own regrets and guilt and what he still carries around with him. This whole conversation has honestly been the most interesting so far this episode because it just seems to be laying foundations for more excellent therapy and development for the Winchesters. In a season that is supposed to be exploring the themes of parenthood and of lost fathers, well… that is something that perks me right up.

YAY CAS I WONDERED WHERE YOU GOT TO!

Wait so let me get this straight. The angels are going extinct (makes sense since they keep killing them) and they think that Jack has the power to create more angels? Like God?

My face is pretty much the same as Cas’s right now.

Shout out to Metatron and the fall. Hmmm they are proper trying to remind us of season 8 in this episode. I wonder why…

Can I just say though, I know it’s not ACTUALLY what they are implying, but the idea of Jack being enslaved so he can create new angels has so many icky connotations to it. I mean this is basically what they are saying right? That they want Jack to be their angel breeder? I mean I GET that such a thing doesn’t actually involve any biological acts of reproduction here since angels aren’t BORN but the concept is still icky to me. It’s icky enough to get my ick factor going and I swear guys I’m not TRYING to find faults with this episode but urgh. Bucklemming. Always have to have SOMETHING icky in there. I thought Daniella’s description of what Ketch No. 2 did to her was icky enough.

“He belongs to all of us”. Dude. He is not a possession.

Hey at least Cas was able to hold his own against three angels there. That was pretty good. Seriously though the fighting choreography is amazing this season.

Lucifer saves Cas by majorly pea-cocking and I have several things to comment on:

“What are you doing back in this world?” “What are you doing alive?” “It’s complicated” “Same here”

I already enjoy it. God I love Cas. I like this exchange. I can already tell that he is going to make the rest of Lucifer’s scenes far more bareable for me to watch.

Cas’s angry face is awesome. Look at angry Cas! Stab him already!

And also:

“Woah Cowboy”

BAHAHAHAHA! Yeah Cas is officially a cowboy and this makes me very happy.

Also, I picked up on this earlier but now it is super obvious to me. The super white shirt with a tan coat. 

I mean it couldn’t be more obvious if they tried. Jack was dressed practically the same way a few episodes ago. Lucifer is not only another Cas mirror himself, but also therefore a symbol of goodness. I hate that. This redemption arc and framing Lucifer as the good guy thing is really driving me mad.

Lucifer wants to save the world… Oh please.

I just gotta stop for a minute and appreciate how pretty Cas is here. Look at him. Bask in his beauty with me for a moment. He looks SO GOOD compared to the last few seasons. They were proper trying to make him look tired and downtrodden and weak these past few seasons because of his depression arc and it is SO REFRESHING to see him look so hot and badass again. I missed you Cas. You sexy thing you...

Okay moving on...

Cas and Lucifer sitting in a bar with Kingdom beer looming overhead. Kingdom beer is Dean’s heavenly beer, so I find it interesting that it is over Lucifer. I hope someone metas this properly as beer signs have never been my forte.

“The last time we were together you killed me”

“The last time we were together you stabbed me”

“Oh I’m sorry”

I love sassy Cassie here. I’ll give Bucklemming this, I am enjoying their dialogue.

“Instead of the butt of heavens joke”

“I am not the…”

Oh Cas honey, they all think you are in love with a Winchester and regularly boning him against heavens rules so yeah, you are certainly the butt of their jokes!

(This is an edit and not notes from my first watch but look at the way the light shines on Cas. This is very much the same as it was with Sam and Dean in 13x02 where the light has the effect of prison bars. We theorised at the end of 13x02 that the prison bar lighting on the boys was symbolic of their emotional prison, where they were both still repressing their true emotions at the time. This time the prison bar lighting is much more ominous. Cas will be imprisoned by episode end. Interestingly the lighting doesn’t shine on Lucifer which leads me to speculate that Lucifer will escape from Asmodeus’ prison and leave Cas behind - which will piss me off but I can’t see any other reason why the prison bar lighting would only be on Cas and not on Lucifer too. Nevertheless it is another interesting way to use lighting and cinematography to portray foreshadowing.)

“I need to talk to Sam and Dean”

*head bang* lol

“Jack. Your sons name is Jack” Yeah you tell him Cas! 

“Oh my dad” oh dear. They keep on using that now. I swear it started in fandom. 

Anyway I love Cas being so grumpy and resistant to this, even though I kind of feel like Cas wouldn’t even hear Lucifer out. It feels too much like they are trying to reignite the Cas/Crowley dynamic and I think Cas would really be far more wary of Lucifer - don’t get me wrong Misha does a great job of portraying Cas’s hesitance and suspicion but I don’t see why he would even hear him out really. This all feels like another way that Bucklemming are trying to push for the audience to root for Lucifer - which so far has been one (of many) major gripes about this episode.

The Winchesters are officially the new Bobby. Lots of phones for different places! Its nice to see stuff in canon that we have head canoned for a while. 

“evil colonel sanders” DEAN STOP READING MY MIND (I scrolled back up and yep I totally used this exact phrase - wow Bucklemming are so fandom aware now its scary)

“Yes I would like to see you too, sooner the better”

“smooth was never your strong suit”

Lol Dean senses something was wrong because Cas came on too strong for him. What even WAS that Cas? Was he actually trying to hide his real conversation with Lucifer by being all clingy with his husband?! WHAT?

Okay so backing up and considering this for a moment though, of all the things Cas could have said there, let alone maybe just telling Dean that he was with Lucifer and saying “Fuck you Lucifer I do what I want” because WHY would he have hid the phone call from Lucifer in the first place? But then to say something like THAT leading Lucifer to just think he was being a needy husband well. I dunno what to even make of it. 

But Dean immediately knew something was wrong because of Cas being over needy. Poor thing thinking Cas coming on too strong is actually a call for help... argh these two are so annoying.  

“You did tell him not to do anything stupid”

“Right and when’s the last time that’s worked?”

Oh Dean.

Now I REALLY think something is gonna go wrong. Dean is always right…

Urgh Asmodeus.

Of course Asmodeus wants to keep hell. That wasn’t exactly a shocker. 

“this new version seems a little more screwable” Really Bucklemming? REALLY? Stop trying to make Lucifer into the good guy. Stop trying to make him sexy. He is NOT screwable. He is abominable. I will fight this arc with every ounce of my meta being. Urgh. I don’t even care that this was supposed to be a funny joke for the fans. Go AWAY. 

Ten bucks says people are now shipping Asmodifer. *shudders*

@elizabethrobertajones​ is this a contender for #worstshipontheshow? Or does that title still belong to Crowlatron?

The bar was called “Nick’s bar”. Ha. Ha. *slow clap*

Why do these demons have angel blades? When did this become a thing?

I am loving the fight scenes this season. Very epic. Oh look Ketch No. 2 escaped and is helping them.

“If you’d done the prescribed cavity search you’d have found it” haha oh lovely. Lets hope he meant his mouth. Though Ketch always seemed to rather enjoy Dean’s attention... I have no doubt he’d enjoy any ‘cavity searching’ from Dean.

Maybe THAT is the worst ship on the show?

“What’s become of your angel?” I am pretty sure this is actual Ketch if he is already calling Cas ‘your angel’ to Dean. How would the new guy know to pick up on the subtext between them otherwise? He hasn’t even seen the eye sex yet!

BINGO! Actual Ketch it is. 

(that explains how he knew about “your angel” then lol)

Heh. I guess the soap opera evil twin story was too terrible for even Bucklemming to use. It was the classic Rowena revive potion instead. That actually makes sense now and I should have been smarter with that one. How else would Ketch have actually survived. Why else would he have wanted Rowena? I guess that’s how Rowena is alive too then. If that spell just needs recharging then Rowena recovered from whatever Lucifer did to her. I’m looking forward to her return that’s for sure. 

I wonder if Eileen also had a revive spell... 

They better bring her back too. :(

See as I suspected, Dean was right again. We should always trust Dean. When Dean says something feels off he is right about it. He knows. Dean didn’t believe Ketch’s evil twin story for one second. It’s interesting because that story would have almost fooled me if it weren’t for Dean being so insistent that it was bullshit. 

Okay that “Hello Dean” was so wrong it’s weird because it’s Misha’s voice but he was able to say it in a way that was so WRONG. Just like Lucifer in 11x14. Impressive.

(Also I love how everyone in all of existence knows about the famous “Hello Dean” It seriously is Castiel’s catchphrase and the fact that angels and demons know this in universe is glorious.)

I had to listen back to Asmodeus playing Cas on the phone again a few times and wow. It’s scarily cold. Dean should totally know that something was up there. I’ll be rather disappointed with him if he doesn’t figure it out like straight away. 

So Cas is in a cage and Ketch is back and working with Asmodeus now? Huh. I guess at least Cas being in a cage is a better way of getting rid of him for a few episodes than having him off on some hypocritical mission for heaven or god forbid “riverboat gambling” again.

I also guess this means that Ketch was the “Hunter on the payroll” at the beginning of the episode.

That wasn’t as terrible as I was expecting... huh. I am oddly surprised and pleased at that. What do ya know.

Final thoughts

Watching this whilst writing out my thoughts actually really helped. I was able to process my thoughts instead of getting major whiplash from too much happening too quickly. It ended up being far more palatable for me. (My second watch actually bored me to tears except for Cas’s scenes so there you go - I think I would have been far more negative than I was had I watched it straight through first time around). It was definitely too much crammed in as usual for Bucklemming, and the instance in the plot to make Lucifer a ‘good’ guy is driving me around the bend. The Ketch stuff was completely nonsensical and I am 100% opposed to him being back (the one character I would have been perfectly happy with staying dead completely). 

I can’t take evil colonel sanders seriously at all. Now I have watched him in 2 episodes I can’t help but cringe whenever he is on screen. Its worse than pantomime villain, its pantomime villain in an amateur primary school production bad. I’m sorry guys, but just nope. Even the on screen jokes about him from Dean couldn’t lighten a terrible stereotypical villain created by seriously lazy writing. 

Michael is actually pretty horrifying though and I am looking forward to what will happen there. I think he is the actual villain to root for and I hope he disintegrates Asmodeus in a puff of smoke. I am extremely annoyed that Mary wasn’t in the episode though. They could have given us something more than we got. I liked Kevin’s return and what he said about choice and paradise, though I feel he is vastly different from our Kevin in how broken he seems to be. No fighting spirit. It just shows Michael’s cruelty in the subtext and makes him even more intriguing for me.

I loved every Cas scene. Of course. Even when Lucifer doesn’t shut up Cas was perfect. He was so handsome in this episode too! In my opinion, Cas made this episode. For once Bucklemming didn’t write him grossly out of character so I’ll give them kudos for that. He did well, and he was interesting and funny and his constant exasperation and suspicion and Lucifer was spot on. He was me. Though if he was truly me I would have just stabbed Lucifer in the face. Pfft. 

So Lucifer. This was totally Lucifer’s episode. He held the most screen time and pushed the story forward. I am of course extremely biased because I despise both the character and the actor who plays him so I found it very difficult to maintain focus on anything he said, but one thing that seems certain is that he has been set up for a redemption arc. I am furious about this. I hate that they are dressing him as a Cas mirror (yes I know that Lucifer has been a dark Cas mirror since season 5) and setting him up to “save the world” and I hope that Dabb takes a far more intelligent path here and turns this story on its head. Obviously Lucifer still has selfish ambitions. ‘Fixing’ Jack so he doesn’t “favour the mother” being the one interesting point he made where he didn’t seem like the good guy. The rest of the time he was just trying to convince Cas to help him stop Michael which at a surface level seems like a really honorable heroic thing to do, especially since Michael is being framed as a really bad and villainous character. I guess time will tell what happens with this. Hopefully other writers will have their own take on Lucifer’s story and we’ll see more of his totally evil and abhorrent side in future episodes because honestly, Lucifer playing the hero makes me physically sick. 

I’m disappointed the Winchesters had so little to do. Especially Sam, he is such a reactive character right now and its pissing me off that he is so sidelined whilst his abuser and tormentor for years gets to stand in the spotlight. It upsets me that the show writers don’t consider these things. Sam needs a central role in this season and I’ll be pissed if he doesn’t get it. Obviously from an objective meta analysis viewpoint I can see WHY Sam wasn’t so integral to this episode, and I did find his sincerity and hope in Ketch’s lie being the truth interesting. Sam is so desperate to find the GOOD in the world right now and this seems to be clouding his judgement. I will be very interested to see how Sam reacts to Lucifer wanting Cas’s help. 

All in all it wasn’t the WORST Bucklemming episode, but it was pretty stupid and cringeworthy throughout. I’m just happy they didn’t totally butcher Cas and made him act in an idiotic way. Though I think they could have made him MORE resistant and not try to portray them as a comedy duo. Hopefully from this we will get some interesting stuff with Asmodeus pretending to be Cas for Dean like a repeat of 11x11 so fingers crossed for that.

I also genuinely hope we get some Cas in the coming episodes and not a massive gap until we see him again. It makes no sense in my opinion to have this story move forward without Cas and Lucifer since the entire mytharc plot right now appears to revolve around them. I guess we will just have to wait and see. Bring on episode 13x08.