#i can't believe how much i like s11

[my-mt-heart]

Idk how to say this but I am not as bothered about whatever is going to transpire between Daryl and Isabelle (bcoz for one thing - we know what is going to happen in the end- and for another - I honestly believe that the male execs are not at all confident abt their vision for these two as they would like to be and the whole thing would prolly boil down to ambiguity and ultimately- it will fall upon the viewers to dissect how Daryl feels - the Caryl fandom especially is really adept at reading into storylines - even stupid ones) None of this is good by any means. It cheapens the integrity of all the characters involved. It blatantly insults and reduces female characters - I believe that Isabelle deserves better. That a story should hold space for multiple female characters. Also - I am worried about putting the fate and the story of one the best female characters on TV (Carol) in the hands of someone who has proven that he can't be trusted to handle them with care. Reading S2 reviews - I am sort of reassured that Carol is treated well enough in the story - which I believe - has a LOT to do with Melissa McBride's input. Going forward - it is going to be more difficult bcoz once we have dealt with old traumas - we do need to evolve these characters and make sure they don't stay stagnant. I don't believe Zabel has the chops to do that.

sorry for that rant. I am just really frustrated.

What I worry about is the way all of this bts stuff amongst the male execs is going to impact the Caryl dynamic. Whatever the antis may think - and while McReedus has insane chemistry - I do believe that the romantic energy is generated between them by a lot of their acting choices (bcoz the underlying story is teasing a romance). What happens to all that when a romance is completely off the table? When AMC has been pushing this friendship narrative down our throats in a very evident bid to do damage control - the insecure/defensive promo that we have been getting last few weeks is proof enough that Caryl was always more than friends?

The problems were already glaringly obvious from the very beginning. the fact that Melissa isn't billed equally for a season where she is proclaimed to be the major focus? It is not even about Caryl going canon for me anymore. I love Melissa and Carol way too much for me to give up yet but I treasure the Caryl bond primarily bcoz they have always been each other's everything. it is truly a bond that evades definition. Both Carol and Daryl doesn't have what they have with each other with anyone. THAT IS A CANON FACT. I don't think I can watch that dynamic that I treasure so much being butchered - s11 was painful enough - I can't go through all of that and more again.

Going to watch s2 and then my further commitment will depend entirely upon how the characters are treated and their dynamic is portrayed?

It sucks that I am dreading watching Carol and Daryl back together on screen.

been here just for a few months but the way AMC has been fumbling with this promo - have you guys always experienced this whiplash or is it a new thing?

I’m going to include big spoilers in my response, so proceed with caution ⚠️

I respect your opinion, but I disagree with you on the point about Daryl’s and Isabelle’s arc. It seems like the male EPs (Zabel, Nicotero, Gimple) are overly confident that an explicit romance between their male hero and a younger blonde nun who accused Daryl of being like his abusive father just for trying to go home to his family will attract a larger male audience and they aren’t sparing any feelings with it because we aren’t their ideal audience anyway. To them, we’re just a bunch of “hysterical” shippers whose POV’s don’t matter and we can just take their crumbs. AMC is a bit more complicated, but I’ll get to them later.

Daryl and the nun kiss in 202, so there’s little to no room for us to dissect how Daryl is feeling. Isabelle’s death is the furthest thing from a relief because 1) it reduces her character down to man pain like you said and 2) from what I’m gathering, it completely overshadows Caryl’s reunion and then their entire arc. We get another hug that does absolutely nothing to elevate their relationship and then Carol has to face that Daryl didn’t need her to rescue him because he found a new family and become his emotionally supportive friend to help him through his grief of a lost love interest he’s known for a few months. It almost feels like it’s going to be a retread of Beth’s death, only worse. We know how Greg Nicotero views both of those relationships and to be blunt, the man needs to stop projecting his creepy fetishes onto Daryl and making it our problem 🤢

The way the story is framed, it’s not even about Caryl at all. They’re the relationship we’re the most invested in and yet all the emotional weight is given to a highly problematic relationship that developed over a dozen ish short episodes (compared to Caryl’s decade+ of emotional depth) and it’s all for nothing too. Zabel just resets Daryl like the hokey network procedural writer he is. And Caryl fans are rewarded for their years-long loyalty by getting more ambiguous subtext to analyze? Really?

I think you’re spot on about Melissa though. The reason she’s the bright spot of the season, the reason Carol’s individual arc feels true, and her spiritual connection to Daryl stays alive is because Melissa influenced all of that. She’s shown us time and time again that she understands her character so deeply and respects her fans. It really breaks my heart because I think she had a beautiful story in mind for Carol and she deserves all the support in the world, but as I’ve said many times, if damage is done to the character who has been written as her soulmate for over a decade, damage is also done to her. And I can’t watch that. I can’t watch the destruction of my favorite characters and my favorite relationship and put money in AMC’s pockets for gaslighting me. Retconning Caryl’s relationship into a platonic friendship is their way of protecting themselves from backlash. “Daryl isn’t emotionally cheating because he and Carol have always been besties?” “We didn’t mislead you. We told you they were friends, so you dumb shippers are doing this to yourselves. Please watch our slop anyways ✌️” They’re even trying to shift responsibility to Melissa by making her answer the shipping questions despite the fact that it’s Daryl’s arc throwing a wrench in everything and I expect that to continue at NYCC/Palyfest. It’s completely unethical and it’s backfiring.

Zabel cannot write for Daryl and Carol. He keeps showing us that he doesn’t understand their bond nor does he value it. A couple of the reviews mentioned it felt like Carol was shoehorned into certain aspects of the story, which tracks with what I already knew—that he and the other EPs think she’s hindering the story they want to tell about men doing manly things. That’s why they try so hard to challenge her significance to Daryl’s story and that is not going to change just because they’re moving to another location. Somebody like that should not have power to decide her trajectory. Fuck whatever he has planned for S3. I don’t want it. I still want Caryl and I still want to see them get the stories they deserve, but that’s only going to happen if we get a new showrunner who respects them and respects their fans. In case it needs to be said, Gimple is not that guy either (he can fake his enthusiasm on SM all he wants 🖕🖕🖕). A complete rebranding of the show to something that honors the characters and gives Melissa her dues (equal billing, title, etc) is the only way I’m tuning in now🤷🏻‍♀️ I don’t have the emotional capacity to sit through S2, but I will be here, speaking up, to make sure Melissa gets all the necessary praise and those assholes can’t blame her if the show tanks.

I’ve only been here a few years and there’s been a lot of turn over at AMC even just in that time (I kid you not, all of our problems can be traced back to Josh Sapan leaving. He loved Caryl and Melissa). That being said, I cannot for the life of me understand why any of the guys over there (even the misogynistic ones) would approve of the Daryl/Isabelle arc after the PR disaster that Leah caused not even that long ago and at least for that, the arc tied back to romantic Caryl and we weren’t subjected to any uncomfortable physical intimacy. Why the fuck would they make the same mistake? Why the fuck do they have to spend more time cleaning up messes than avoiding the mess altogether at every fucking opportunity they had (and they had a lot). I just don’t get it. And I’m so tired of taking the abuse.

[emeryhiro]

Hi! Thanks so much for your epsiode breakdowns of the book of carol! I had a couple of questions for you about episode 1. No worries if you can't answer though!

1 - after watching, do you feel more or less confident about caryl going canon? Or about the same?

2- if you had to use three words to describe the ep, what would they be?

3- if you had to use three emojis to describe your fave scene, what would they be?

4- was there anything you didn't like about the ep?

5- do you think ep 6 is going to be the best episode of walking dead anything ever?

Thanks so much!!

Hey Anon!

You're so welcome 🩵 and thank you for the interesting questions 😊 I apologise in advance because my response for Q1 is going to be a little long and slightly ranty.

1 - When I compare how I felt about it in the last 10+ years to how I feel about it now after watching episode 1, I would say I definitely feel more confident that we're heading for Caryl canon. AMC indeed had plenty of opportunities to give us canon before (but obviously never did); however, the setup now is the best it's ever been. From a storytelling perspective, I believe the way Episode 1 set up Carol on her journey to find Daryl is the perfect lead-up for canon. And S02EP1 made 3 things very evident to me:

Finding Daryl is Carol's number one priority, and she'd do anything to get him back

Daryl would never be truly happy without her, and he can't stop thinking about her and how she's doing without him.

The longer they're apart, the more mentally and emotionally unstable they become.

I'm aware there are some people who think that after watching episode 1, the new season's story is not going to be the one we want for Caryl. To those people, I want to ask: Did we watch the same episode?🤣 'Cause I didn't see a single anti-Caryl thing in the episode I watched.

I'll dive into my opinion on the timing of canon a little more as well:

If Caryl had gone canon on the main show, I'm sure we would have all been so happy, but it's all going to be so much more rewarding after the tension that has now been built with Daryl after season one and Carol in season 2 (so far). With all the time they've spent apart, they have started to experience the real fear of never seeing each other again or knowing if the other is even alive.

I think this was the plan all along. The initial spin-off idea was for Carol and Daryl to leave the group and join everyone again later in the show. That opportunity to leave the group and what they experienced in that time away would have been their plan to get to that level of tension where canon was the most satisfying.

When it was decided that the TWD would end with s11, they knew they had to hold off on canon until the spinoff because there was no way they had enough screen time left to get through the character development they needed for Caryl or the opportunity to build tension the way they envisioned it.

I'm happy they waited because getting a rushed canon would've been led up to by moments that we've already seen and experienced by the characters many times before (and never previously led to canon) would not have done Caryl justice.

Unfortunately, the pattern that we consistently saw in the flagship show was that as soon the group settled somewhere (Prison, Alexandira, Commonwealth) and got into some sense of normalcy, Daryl and Carol were automatically pulled apart by circumstances and responsibilities, and barely end up getting any time together. Carol even spoke to Maggie about this in S11EP21. That's who Daryl and Carol are; they never put themselves or their wants/needs first. So, for canon to happen and to make sense, they needed to be taken away from everyone else, given their own journey and time together, without the distraction of their obligations to others.

Carol and Daryl are my favourite characters in all of fiction. I ultimately want them to be cared for and get the happiness they deserve. Some might strongly disagree with me on this, but I think if, after this point, they still don't give us canon, then it'd be because Norman and Melissa didn't want it. I'll stand by my previous comments on this; Norman and Melissa are being heard by the writers, and to me, their character arcs have their input written all over them. If they want Caryl to be canon (which I strongly believe they do), then it will be, and if they don't, then it won't be, because I don't think there's anything else holding that back anymore.

2 - EMOTIONAL, unhinged, and nostalgic

3 - 💥🛩️🌅 - I'm curious to know how you interpret these and if the people I attended the premiere with would agree ( @celtic-crossbow @maggie-atwood )

4 - I strongly disliked how the people at the nest (i.e. Isabelle & Losang) treated Daryl. We saw them constantly emotionally manipulate him in season 1, and I was still seeing that in S02EP1; however, what made it a little better this time was that Daryl was clearly sick of it all. He looked ready to wrap things up, resolve the Nest's conflicts as soon as possible, and start heading home.

5 - Idk... someone should ask Norman. I wish he'd share his thoughts on episode 6 🤣 (Yes, I do! To me, the whole season is gonna be the best season of twd anything ever because it's all about Carol and Daryl)

Thanks again for the interesting questions; they were a lot of fun for me to answer, and I hope I've answered them well. Please feel free to lmk if you have any others ♡♡♡

[ruinedsam]

op ur post about post-cage sam with stockholm syndrome has changed my life how do u see that manifesting in sam. how does he feel about it. ur wise words. i want to know what u think.

Anon, this is such a lovely ask, I don't know if you'll ever see this but I'm really sorry this took me more than three months to answer 🙈🙈

I think Sam, no matter what scenario, would and does feel deeply, deeply ashamed for any kind of attachement or connection to Lucifer.

Anyway I think there are many different ways to stockholm syndrome!Sam:

S6B: Sam feels like there's something missing. He doesn't know what it is, but there's a deep ache within him. It's not for Dean. God, he wishes it was Dean. And the shame of that tastes like bile: that Dean is not enough for Sam. That he wants something else. He thinks of Ruby and the demon blood. He thinks about Jess dying on the ceiling. Wanting things has never worked out well for him. He wishes he knew what he was yearning for - . Then Castiel breaks his wall and Sam remembers - bits and pieces, but it is enough. Oh, he thinks, of course it is you.

S7: When Sam starts hallucinating, Lucifer doesn't threaten him. He tries to make Sam believe he's still in the cage, but it's not to hurt Sam. He's understanding, almost apologetic. I know you miss Dean, but he's not here. You're with me. He's pointing out lucky escapes, making pointed remarks about the events of S6+7 (Purgatory, Eve, Leviathans...does all this not seem absurd to you?), the state of his and Dean's relationship (I don't know why you do this to yourself, Sam. Why do you imagine Dean treating you like this? The brother who trusted you to defeat me, who stood by you just as my brother did not...). Sam tries to dismiss everything he says, yet sometimes as he lies in bed at night after a long, tense, depressing day, Dean long since lulled to sleep with the help of whisky, he can't help but wish Hallucifer was right and none of this was real. And sometimes Lucifer hits a particular apt point and Sam spends days staring at Dean, looking for signs that can tell him if he's real or not. Sometimes - sometimes Lucifer feels much more real than Dean.

S11-13: There's something very compelling (to me) about Sam remembering exactly what Lucifer did to him in hell and hating him for it and yet being drawn to him. After all the time in the cage together he knows Lucifer - too well. He knows how he thinks, how he sees the world, what motivates him, how he feels about everything he does. Lucifer's mindset is as familiar to him as if it was his own. The certainty of his own experiences of suffering from Lucifer's hands vs the certainity of Lucifer's righteousness in making him suffer. And Lucifer knows exactly what Sam feels and of course wants to exploit it. Needless to say in this scenario Jack would explicitly be Lucifer's attempt to babytrap Sam...

[dollsome-does-tumblr]

some more thoughts on the x-files: perihelion novel by claudia gray, which i zoomed through ravenously! tl;dr -- if you are searching for msr healing after the terrible s11 finale, you should read this and bask in its profoundly healing glow. you're welcome!

spoilers--

so, i had nooooo idea this existed until reddit told me the day before yesterday, and then my hoopla app actually had it, so i could get it INSTANTLY! it was like a dream come true!! the stars aligned for me! i honestly might read it again now.

i really love how this takes all the awfulness of the truly awful s11 finale and says, "okay, let's dive in and grapple with what this emotional reality would really be like. let's frickin' process." scully's pregnant in her 50s! their son is dead and apparently wasn't their son at all, instead the product of medical rape! you can so tell that this is written with the wisdom and insight of a woman writer's perspective, in a way that most of this show struggled profoundly with even in the 2010s (and it was so extra glaring and painful in the 2010s). it really dives into the repeated loss of bodily autonomy that scully experienced throughout the show, and how she grapples with that as she moves into this surreal experience of being pregnant again. it's just such an achingly astute portrayal of scully and how she tries to bury things and be sensible and keep moving forward and how at a certain point that's not tenable anymore. it felt like getting to be with her again in the best way. she also gets a female friend (ilu, dr. karen jones)!!!! which i adore!!!

i can see the hokey side of the whole 'scully now has powers that control electricity!' plot twist, but i have to say, as someone who feels sooooo ragey over everything scully went through, there's something so cathartic on a metaphorical level of scully's repressed feelings literally exploding the world around her. yeah! ⚡

you can tell this is written by someone who's a deep fan of the show and is intimately familiar with it (fanfic writing skills, what what! i distantly remember this author's fic from the days of yore!!) and especially with everything mulder and scully have gone through emotionally, which is so rewarding to read. i think the canon of the show itself kinda forgot some stuff, or didn't find it worth diving into, so it's so great to get that more fandom-oriented perspective that's really aware of the significance of the events of canon and how they would pile up on each other and create such a lasting impact. also, thank u for making mulder and scully kiss some more. long game! <3

both mulder's and scully's voices are absolutely perfect, both in conversation and narration, and their chemistry shines off the page. it really feels like being with them again. i don't have quite as much to say about mulder, since this is first & foremost scully's time to shine to me, but i think it captures his humor and disillusionment and general perspective so well, and the way he grapples with his sense of purpose. and there are just some really delightful mulder zingers in here, which are essential to my well-being.

domestic mulder and scully who are sort of a couple again but sort of keeping their distance is just such a delicious state to get to hang out in, and seeing them start to work through their trauma and get closer is so sublime!!! i just felt so fond of them, and i love how this captures both their fun, affectionate banter and their more serious, painful issues. this story really digs into their full relationship history in such a deep and thoughtful way. it's all there! they finally have sex in a motel shower! nature is healing!!! i can't believe i can buy this at a bookstore and hold it in my hands!!

i also love how this keeps in the style of the show with the extremely earnest philosophical voiceover-style monologuing from mulder and scully. it's truly just an essential part of the show's style and i love that it's here too.

(and scully writing diary entries and then tearing them up into tiny pieces and putting them in the incinerator!!! girl!!!! <3)

even if i'm obviously here for the shippy stuff first & foremost, i enjoyed the plot stuff. i like how this has a misogynistic serial killer plot, and it winds up that the guy doing it is just sort of small and horrible and easily defeated -- that felt so validating after having recently watched just, like, so many episodes about gross men killing women. the new mytharc is also fun enough that i would absolutely enjoy a multi-book series of mulder and scully dealing with it!

absolutely love the suggestions that mulder IS william's dad and that william is not dead. (and skinner's not dead either!) take that, s11 finale!!!!!! your evils are not insurmountable!

i wasn't familiar with the word "perihelion" so when it's revealed what its relevance is, i was sooooo in my feelings. now that's what i call emotional payoff!

oh my gosh they've got a baby girl on the way. 🥹🥹🥹 and now i really want to meet herrrrrrrrr. pls let this become the series it's so clearly setting up. 🙏

p.s. absolutely loved that we got a "SCULLAAAAY!" or two. it had to happen. <3

this book rules!

[taddymason]

Hi again Taddy,

I can’t stop thinking about your Jay dad au 😅 and in one of your asks you said that Kaida introduces Jay to the Starfarer comics. That got me thinking, how would Lloyd react to seeing Jay bond with Kaida??? Would it make him reminisce over when he was being raised by Jay and the other’s. Would he think about he and Jay aren’t as close as they were when he was younger? Especially since Jay and Lloyd don’t interact much as the seasons progress???

I'm a firm believer Lloyd and Jay deserve more screentime! They barely interact in the new seasons and should be gremlins together!

While their relationship is obviously different from Jay and Kaida's because with him Jay acts more like an older brother than a father, there are several parallels I like to make with both characters. Like it was Jay who taught Lloyd the lesson of learning to control and guide his power and then he does the same thing again with Kaida.

Of course, Lloyd and Kaida's elements are not the same, as one has to do with create pure energy and the other with controlling souls, but I like the idea that Jay might be able to teach them both since all three possess elements that are quite wild and unpredictable so they require absolute control to dominate them.

In DR, Lloyd would initially feel frustrated and sad that his brother not only does not want to interact with them, but he also has no interest in returning to his old life. It's not the same as when he tried to get Zane to remember him in S11 because this time it's not that Jay is being controlled or possessed, he simply can't and won't remember them due to his denial of the past.

And obviously things are much more complicated because Kaida is there too and Lloyd knows what it's like to hold on to the only family you have. So it's not as simple as telling them that they can trust them. So Lightning Pin they are going to have some friction with each other (particularly the whole thing about Jay and Kaida having a habit of believing that killing is the only way to get rid of an enemy in contrast to Lloyd who believes that all life is valuable)

But yeah, I am going to touch a lot on the topic of how each ninja reacts to Kaida's presence, but especially Lloyd since his reaction as a leader and he is the only one on the team who sees Jay as his older brother (while the others see him as his younger brother) is going to be very interesting

[adidegmez]

spn s11 spoilers

s11 ep1(out of the darkness, into the fire)

crowley isnt dead he cant be. yes he is still alive. old dean is back. i love him he might be tough but he is sweet carina and kind and funny… sam is sick. baby has the mark!!and the darkness which makes sense.

s11 ep2(form and void)

A demon(king of hell) came for exorcism, perfect. poor jenna i liked her. im glad sam find the cure. cas will be better, hopefully.

s11 ep3(the bad seed)

Rowena is very short compared to Sam. Actually, everyone is much shorter than Sam, but I don't know, the height difference between the two is too much. Next to Sam, I would be like Rowena. he is too tall. Cas survived, finally.

s11 ep4(baby)

baby. baby is their home. baby is their happy place. i love seeing them happy. i needed seeing them happy, it was nice. john! werepire, i love dean so much. i would want to ride baby. if dean knew what she did he couldve killed her. this ep made me feel like i was with them in the baby. He shot the sheriff's deputy. ghoulpire:). The baby suffered as much as Dean and Sam. i thought we would see Chuck.

s11 ep5(thin lizzie)

finn wolfhard. I've never seen anything with him in it before but I know he's in Stanger Things and Ghostbusters. I didn't know we'd see him here. Len is a good guy. what happened to crowley?

s11 ep6(our little world)

cowley became an uncle but he acts like a father. dean and crowley they were bff's(in crowleys eyes). i hope they could still be friends. why didnt sam kill demons?

s11 ep7(plush)

i love donna. Sam is right to be afraid of clowns, by the way. is Charlie really dead? i still cant believe she is dead.

s11 ep8(just my imagination)

i knew about sully (because i saw spoilers,again). i thought this ep was going to be funny. and dean blames himself, again. dean is the best big brother. i kmow sam is dealing with something but all i can think about is dean. lucifer is coming, god isnt. The boys never found complete peace. They probably won't be able to access it until they die. I really want them to be happy but it seems impossible. Sometimes they have small happiness but it is not enough.

s11 ep9(o brother where art thou?)

amara finally became the darkness. if lucifer is in the cage where is michael/adam. hi luci. lucifer might be the most terrifying thing in this Show(especially in this episode). Dean should go to Sam as soon as possible. Did Rowena cast the spell wrong on purpose? Dean has to be there if Sam is going to say yes to Lucifer. If God comes, he will deserve every bad thing that happens to him. How many times was the world destroyed? He did not interfere with anything. he still doesn't interfere. Amara may be a little right, her brother betrayed her after all. Of course, there are parts where Lucifer is right. It's better if he doesn't come from now on. Where and what was he doing all this time?

s11 ep10(the devil in the details)

voicemail was funny. well, lucifer is not that terrifying now. but in cage he was. im not sure the darkness is the bad guy. i knew cas would be the vessel to lucifer someday but i didnt know it was today. wow. cas will be back(hopefully). rowena is dead im not upset. she really hates crowley. i hope lucifer can beat the darkness.

s11 ep11(into te mystic)

They had an deal but never followed it. But once Sam complied. Why? I still can't understand this. Dean was in purgatory. If he was in heaven, I would understand, sam would say Dean is in a good place and leave it, but Dean was in purgatory and suffered a lot. Why didn't Sam save him? dean is the vulnerable one. the darkness threw him off balance. and cas(lucifer) misha is so good. and jensen and dean he is georgeous. I can't take my eyes off him, most of the time I just look at Dean in every scene he is in. There are 4 seasons left and I want to see as much of him as possible.

s11 ep12(don't you forget about me)

jody and alex they deserved to be happy and they found eachother and now they are happy. and claire. dean and his love for food. claire is like a sister to winchesters, they are hilarious together. I miss the old plate, I still can't get used to the new one. I can't even say it's new anymore, but KAZ 2Y5 was different, idk. It was used for about 2 seasons, but I liked it more.

s11 ep13(love hurts)

dean has a death wish. what is he doing. why is he risking his life for others? well thats because this is who he is. still i want him safe. i didnt think dean would tell the truth to sam.

s11 ep14(the vessel)

i still cant believe Charlie is dead. misha is amazing. im scared. lucifer makes me anxious. well, at leat they kearned about lucifer. boys went through so much they still suffer, when can we just see them happy? i want cas back.

s11 ep15(beyond the mat)

dean was deppesed at the home but when he is on case, he is in a completely different mode. he sure knows how to hide his feelings. he does this perfect. Still, it makes me happy to see him happy. i love dean so much. sometimes he acts like a little boy(These scenes are one of my favorite scenes). i dont trust the demon who helped crowley. im glad he is out but i think lucifer wanted him out. did crowley really believed her? he looks disappointed. well, in the end he got away. dean:). The good characters on this show have all done something bad at least at some point in their lives. but they always tried to fix it. And that's what I love about this show.

s11 ep16(safe house)

i missed the old guys(They'd definitely be mad at me if they heard me call them old). i loved them so much. Why did the woman hide the scar on her daughter's leg and didn't tell the Winchesters? its really nice to see bobby and rufus again. dean is bobby, and sam is rufus it fits. sam and dean, of course they are bobby's boys. Dean was very confident that he would win rock paper scissors. but he still lost. Both of their facial expressions were perfect. dean is soft with kids. I love this side of him so much. i know winchesters will be safe, they'll beat the monsters but what if they cant this time. I assume bobby and dean saw each other since they were out of time in the nest. I'm glad bobby and dean were able to see each other again.

s11 ep17(red meat)

When we jumped to 48 hours ago, I thought we would only continue with that time. This time they chose a different narrative style. and i liked it. im gonna kill corbin. he killed sam. he cant be dead i know but still he killed him, well mabe he is dead, but he will come back. they always do. sheriff shot dean. sam how are you alive? i knew he wouldnt die that easy but dean checked he thought he was dead. how is he alive? i thought dean would try to contact crowley or even lucifer. wow sam was amazing. He killed 3 werewolves despite being seriously injured. and ran. dean didnt talked about billie because he knew sam would kill him for that. winchesters really do anything for the other one(exvcept one time sam didnt and i really cant undertstand why).

s11 ep18(hell's angel)

Why did Crowley kill that man? ruth conell! i knew we would see rowena again. but she is with the darkness. misha is amazing. lucifer is funny. Jimmy carries a demon, an angel and the devil inside him. he is really strong. of course you'll bring cas home. he'll come back. he has to.

s11 ep19(the chitters)

i thought jessie saved his brother in 19.. . at first i thought they were dean and sam. i think dean thought about john. when he was talking about revenge. I have many things to say about John, but I'm lazy right now. I can only say that I still don't hate John right now, I see that people in the fandom hate him a lot. revenge broke him. But he still tried to do good things for Dean and Sam. Most of the time he couldn't make it happen, but he tried and wanted it to happen. And I think that's enough not to hate him for now at least.

s11 ep20(don't call me shurley)

hi Chuck:) . i knew he would be god someday. but i don't know if he was God from the beginning or if God took his body in later times. i thought he would come in later seasons. i didnt think he would come this season. He spills beer on his shirt and irons it. perfect dean, perfect. metatron was good then power corrupted him. now whe is trying to convince god to save people. he is right. i think i like him more than chuck(god). Was Chuck just an act from the beginning? This is what I can understand from here. Metatron defends humanity. I guess he always loved humanity. especially their work. Was Sam having the amulet from the beginning?!! i dont know what to think about chuck. He could have done so much, he could have prevented so many bad things, but he didn't. only now intervened When there is no hope left. and again dean and sam was suffering. they almost died again. i think metatron saved the earth.

s11 ep21(all in the family)

kevin!!!!! the pain in deans eyes… donnt cofuse me with your dad … at least john winchester tried to protect his kids. Chuck did nothing and He still wouldn't have done anything if it wasn't for Metatron. He would let everything disappear. Did Chuck's hand shake when Sam was talking about Amara fog, or was it just me? yes, the mutant Ninja turtle:). i love dean so much. i know i say this a lot but these scenes make me so happy. I wish Dean treated Chuck the way Percy Jackson treated Zeus. There is Poseidon to protect Percy, but no one can save Dean from Chuck (except Amara, but Dean prefers Chuck to Amara), so he tries to show respect. rip metatron. he sacrificed himself for the universe. i knew Chuck would save them. Because who else could save them? father son Reunion.

s11 ep22(we happy few)

Chuck and lucifer I can't stop laughing. Chuck know his son well. boys dont know what to do. I think the Winchesters are reviewing their lives right now. From simple monster hunting, they fell into the middle of the drama between God and Lucifer. lucifer is a teenager. Of course, Crowley is trying to take advantage of the situation. Chuck is acting like a mom. The apology scene is so good, especially the part where Dean and Sam explain the apology is my favorite. lucifer is happy now. he got his apology. Of course Sam is trying to sacrifice himself. It was going to be either Dean or Sam anyway, but since Amara and Dean had a bond, this job was left to Sam. i dont think ucifer s permanently dead. he'll retur probably. did she just kill god?! what happened to crowley? Did he only hit Amara once? i cant think anyone that could save them now.

s11 ep23(alpha and omega)

carry on gains more and more meaning every season. i love it so much. cas is back! cas is their brother and i like it. Did only the Man of Letter members in America die? Are there still other members in other countries? Dean's imitation of Rowena was very good and funny. amara is just confused. her brother betrayed her because of who she is. this really feels like the end. i know its not but still it was never like this. this Show is always about family, especially siblings. there is always dean and sam then Michael and lucifer now god and the darkness. its really beautiful. i like this ending. i knew mary was coming back(i saw spoilers, again) and i know that this isnt good. she should've stayed dead(like dean and sam remebered her). sam isnt dead. he cant be. Charlie didnt come back i still cant believe she is dead. I don't think I will ever believe it. even mary retuned why cant she.

[queermania]

I have a real question that I promise I'm not trying to start shit. Just really wanna know your thoughts. Do you think Jensen wants them to make destiel canon or Dean queer?

ummmm.... maybe? my honest answer is that i don't know. i have a lot of different thoughts that add up to a certain conclusion but it ultimately means nothing because i don't know him and i have no idea what he's thinking about anything.

my general speculation (based on nothing but vibes and an unnecessarily large wealth of spn knowledge) is that if kripke had come to him some time during the first three seasons and said, "hey we wanna make dean [insert flavor of queer here]" jensen would've been like "cool, boss, just tell me what you need me to do."

(after s3, i think the only flavor of queer that was even remotely an option was bisexual so that's what i'm using from here on out. however, i do still believe in my heart that dean is gay, for the record <3)

i think if any of the show runners or writers tried to make dean explicitly bisexual (with or without the inclusion of destiel) during s4 through about s10, jensen would've done it because he's a professional, but i also think he would've pushed back on it at least a little, for a variety of reasons.

i think starting around s11 all the way to the finale, he would've been fully on board with explicitly canon destiel, if the writers made that call.

and then that brings us to now and what happens going forward, because that's the real question. i do still believe that if it's out of his control, he will do whatever the people in charge want him to do. but i don't think that particular decision is out of his control anymore. so?

so what i know is that in the past he's said that dean is straight and that destiel isn't a thing, canonically. and he's never said the opposite (outside of the whole "it's a story and it can be whatever you want it to be" type rhetoric).

however. i also know that he was fully on board with the confession and that he was trying to get the rights to supernatural before it was even over because he already knew he wasn't satisfied with the way it was going to end. that tells me that he's always fully planned on the confession being resolved in some way. there are, broadly speaking, only two ways to resolve it:

1. dean doesn't reciprocate.

2. dean does reciprocate.

the thing i'm stuck on is: what does the show even look like going forward if dean doesn't reciprocate? i can't imagine jensen thinks that would go over well. i am generally of the opinion that our part of the fandom vastly overestimates how much of the audience we actually make up, but i just don't believe that after all of this *gestures broadly at the last however many years* he could possibly think that's satisfying. because what happens? dean says "thanks but no thanks" and then... they just pretend like it never happened? dean gets a female love interest? cas stays in heaven as an angel with jack and dean goes back to earth and has a human life without the family he chose over his father? what is the point of it all?

like, i just don't see a way to go forward without dean reciprocating that doesn't feel empty and unsatisfying and depressing for everybody (apart from another relatively small faction of the audience who are going to be unhappy with literally anything that isn't just sam and dean and nobody else anyway).

not to mention, there's no way jensen's not aware of the cultural impact of destiel and the confession at this point.

also, jensen suffers from terminal dean-girlism. he wants that germophobe to be happy. all roads lead to a certain conclusion. but again, i don't actually know.

(also just to be clear i believe dean already is subtextually queer and destiel is reciprocated and nothing you say will change that for me because i watched the show. i have the receipts.)

[zmediaoutlet]

Happy WW! I have to pick your brain about established relationship wincest, because I agree it has a lot of untapped potential. Like, other the years how much does “brotherly-ness” go down, and “romantic partner-ness” go up? When was The Moment that they realized there really wasn’t going to be another outside relationship, that it could be them until the end? On the flip side, with canon, how much does Sam wonder "it could have been different with us"? Bc thinking about Dean II makes me so sad!

happy wincest wednesday!! (we enjoy wincest on all the days, it's fine)

So -- I'm taking a slightly different tack at this, but I think that with a lot of married/long-term romantic partners, the sibling-ness goes up a lot over time. Once you're out of the fresh lovey-dovey stage when flowers stop puking out of the beloved's eyes every time you look at them, it's like -- okay, so you have a long-form relationship with this person where you know a ton of their background and secrets; you've been together long enough that you act like each other in certain ways and share lots of in-jokes and common language; you find each other irritating in some ways but also fun in others, and you tease each other about some stuff and joke about some stuff and some stuff you just have to ignore/roll your eyes about for the sake of the house (unless you're those shitty siblings who insist on picking fights about every little thing). And like... that's Sam and Dean.

Now, adding in actual romance of course makes it different, but the thing is that they're starting pre-equipped with all of the intimacy and long-worn grooves of knowing each other that a married couple doesn't get until they've been married twenty years -- but Sam and Dean have that already! In the new-relationship era I can obv see a jitteriness destabilizing them some -- let's imagine for the sake of argument that they aren't hatefucking to start and instead it's a relatively nice coming-together (and coming, together) -- and so maybe there's a little period where they kind of don't know what to do with each other. But then Sam still farts in the car after a burrito and Dean still sings warbly and off key in the shower and they know each other, so the fact that they're also learning about each other's dicks can't wreck all that history. And, honestly, on the "romance" side of things -- while they maybe can be softer with each other, show a more tender side, get the benefit of lowered-barriers that pillow talk etc might bring -- I absolutely 100% cannot see them, like, "dating." Sam's not gonna pull Dean's chair out at a fancy restaurant they've inexplicably gone to, and Dean's not going to ask Sam to go on the ferris wheel except as a joke. They're going to keep doing the things they always did, because they are brothers and they aren't somehow awkwardly shoving that relationship into a romcom box -- they're gonna go on a hunt and to a pie fest and to the movies, and they'll act just like they always did, but maybe with handjobs after. That's what makes it *interesting* that it's an incestuous relationship, you know?

As far as The Moment -- that obviously depends on how you're writing the incesty bits, but in honest to g canon I think it's at very different speeds. Honestly, I think Dean's there about midway through s1, but it's obviously cemented after the thing with Lisa blows up (with the caveat that I'm not sure he believes Sam can feel the same until s10); for Sam, I think it takes until s11, really, because he's always looked outward -- asking Dean if he ever considers anything else, and then not arguing when Dean blows off the question -- and really sitting there in his life like, yeah. Yeah, I think this could be it. And it feels like a peaceful realization, and that point, and not the curse he might've considered it in s1 or 3 or 9.

(Sorry, I can't quite parse the last question w/r/t Dean II etc, but hopefully that's enough wincest to be going on with.)

[gardenerian]

Idk if you’ve said something about this already but what do you think about the Gallavich fight in S10E08? How do you feel about Ian’s broken leg?

oh wheeew, you know, i don't know if i have talked about this much? but boy howdy, do i have plenty of thoughts.

so like. okay. i get it? i get it. it's so fucking painful for both of them. ian has been trying to protect mickey from day one - the job for his parole in s2, trying to stop frank from getting popped, keeping him on the straight and narrow (mostly) in s11. so getting married to keep him out of jail? easy.

meanwhile, mickey is having the same conversation. so while the concept is not new to him, he's surprised ian would actually suggest it. to him, he it's a crappy reason to get married. it's not romantic, it's not grand and beautiful like they deserve. but in trying to keep each other safe, it's one of the more romantic things i've ever heard. still, he wants ian to propose to him, not to this problem. and that is so valid!!! after everything they have been through, this isn't how he saw their married life starting - if he ever really let himself go there at all.

i do think ian believes it to his core when he says that this is not the only reason they'd be getting married - just like i think he believes it when he gets in the car to go to mexico. he loves mickey, he wants to be with mickey. but in this case, the drive to do it now and like this is absolutely to protect him. and the decision really isn't that hard, like he says.

but when that factor of keeping mickey out of prison is taken out of the equation, i think ian gets a little whiplash? like oh holy shit we almost just did that??? over the course of a day??? so while mickey is up and ready to go, having gone all in - as he often does - ian is suddenly faced with the reality that the only thing mickey is getting out of this is HIM. and it freaks him the fuck out.

ian picks up the pen and i think every unresolved insecurity hits him all at once. and honestly? even if he handled it poorly, and i do believe he did, taking a moment to cool down and check in was probably a good idea. now that they don't have to rush it, is this how they want to do it? is this really what mickey wants? can ian even give it to him? they deserve the time to answer these questions, ya know? and whereas mickey might be willing to figure it out as they go, we know ian doesn't quite trust that he can do that. this changes a bit, but in the moment i think he just couldn't see past it.

so what drives me insane about this fight is that he does try to talk, even if he says a million wrong things in a row. but even if ian wants to talk, mickey is well within his rights not to hear him. he's well within his rights to get out of this immediate situation that is hurting him. ian IS hurting him, and it's important to acknowledge that.

BUT. i do not like the way people respond to ian saying "i just wanna know how you feel" because. agh. YES mickey has shown his love time and again, and ian has felt it time and again.... but when it comes to things like this, sometimes you just need to hear it. and then hear it again. with minds like ours, it can be hard to just trust our own experience or understanding, ESPECIALLY in emotionally charged moments when things already feel warped and scary. he needed time to sort through it all. once he was in, HE WAS IN. we know this!

so for ian to stand there like that, asking for what he needs... and wanting to talk about it..... only to be hit in the fucking face? gross. i hate it. it's fucking terrible. and again, mickey is WELL within his rights to leave ian standing there. he's well within his rights to say FUCK YOU and rage and stomp and let ian know exactly how he feels. i honestly think ian kinda deserved that. mickey doesn't owe him emotional clarity or work in that moment. mickey feels like he's only worth marrying because he can't keep himself out of trouble, and that's gotta be a shitty fucking feeling after everything. he feels like ian led him on, and he's valid to feel that way, even if i think even ian couldn't see the path he was taking. but really. ian did let him down.

but like. he didn't have to hit him. i don't know how you look at the face of someone you were just willing to MARRY and then do that? i know they needed to write cam's broken leg into the storyline, but honestly fuck that. it would have been just as easy for ian to break his leg falling while trying to run after mickey. and then? mickey easily could have been like "well here's your phone call 911 SEE YA" or even "hey i called 911 okay SEE YA" or perhaps "okay i brought you to the ER in this cab now SEE YA"

so.... like i said, i get it. the conflict is true to character. it's HORRIBLE to see, but it does make sense. i would personally restructure the entire 10th season to give this storyline more breathing space. but yeah. this where i lean heavily on fix-it fics lol 😇

[my-mt-heart]

The current state of the spinoff right now has nothing to do with what Melissa wants or doesn't want and I do not appreciate her being used as a strategy for Norman, AMC, and the three stooges to evade responsibility. I don't know what happens next, but whatever it is, it is on them. For prioritizing their own needs over the core audience. For mishandling the characters/relationship the core audience is invested in. For constantly gaslighting everyone and refusing to deliver the payoff so many people have been waiting for. For not fixing the problem when they had the chance.

Yes, I am sad because this is supposed to be Melissa's time to shine. Yes, I really do want to support her because if anyone on this show has earned the support, it's her. If anyone is going to be worth watching in S2, it's her. If anyone's input is going to make a difference, it's hers. I do think she was excited to show the impact that Sophia's death had on Carol, but that doesn't mean she's getting everything she wants and it doesn't mean fans have to sit through relentless nunbaiting and a retconned bond between Daryl and Carol similar to S11 (I can only assume at this point that's what we're getting). I will not do that. Platonic Caryl is inorganic to me, and speaks more to TPTB's ageism/misogyny than it does about anyone's creative input. Daryl being torn between Carol and French characters he's only known for a few months is just fucking ridiculous. Period. It doesn't mean that I don't want to be here anymore or that I don't care about the characters or about Melissa. It just means I won't put money in AMC's pockets for awful decisions, like letting Zabel and Nicotero run amuck, like shoving "BESTEST OF BEST FRIENDS" down my throat, like forcing their nun fetish on me, like turning Daryl into every other generic male hero there is. If TPTB show they value Melissa/Carol as much as Norman/Daryl, if she and Norman get equal billing, if Carol's name is included in the title, if Daryl and Carol are allowed the romantic beats that their story in the flagship show set up, then I'm all in. In the meantime, for those who asked, my plan is this:

I am going to watch the premiere because I've heard enough reliable testimonies about the heavy Carol focus, the lack of nunbaiting, Carol's determination to find Daryl, and Daryl's desperation to get home for me to assume it's worth it. I will review the episode and show Melissa my support. I will go no further as soon as I hear any of that starts to change, which I expect will happen rather quickly, but I will keep speaking up where AMC can see it so they understand what's working and what's not. If Melissa's fans keep speaking up, reminding AMC how much they value her and how much they detest some of Zabel's other choices, then AMC can't try to blame her if numbers are low or assume we'll settle for whatever inappropriate writing choices Zabel throws at us if Melissa does bring the numbers up, and I do believe she's the only one who can.

I have nothing to say about S3 and beyond because the only way I'm on board is if AMC somehow manages not to ruin Caryl's story in S2 and hires a showrunner who can do these characters justice. Hint: it's not Zabel, it's not Gimple, and it's not anybody who's ever worked for them.

[galaxybooper00]

Ninjago Rambling

Okay okay so we know the merge is also known as the coalescence By definition, it is the joining or merging of elements to form one mass or whole. What if. What if it is exactly that? The elements become far too unstable causing coalescence to happen?. That's why the first spinjitzu master made the golden weapons. To hold the element but that wasn't enough. So he then decided to make elemental masters that had the ability to withstand the elements' powers. But that wasn't enough either. He foresaw the coalescence due to the elements not being stabilized enough so he had to make the dragon cores out of pure elemental power to be able to stop the coalescence. That's why you have to use elemental power to close the merge quake. It would also explain how elements can be divided among several vessels or/and hosts. Ex: Nya, Nyad, amulets of Wojira. At least explains for the elements of creation and water and wind because I do HC the elements of creation to be the most powerful. One cannot handle it's raw power alone. So if the coalescence happened due to the elements not being stabilized enough how did it happen aka DR? Much like in Crystalized, several events caused the reaction. However, we can't assume FSM wasn't going to be aware of the events for at least in S1 and S2. To get to the prophecized battle between the Green Ninja and the Dark Lord, we had to get through S1. The events that might have caused the coalescence need to be after S2. In regards to that, I'm going back to the four elements of creation since they seem to be the most important.

1st event to trigger the coalescence would def be in S3 when Zane dies. It began to snow during Zane's funeral/rememberance. Although it's a sweet gesture I think this can be connected to the effects of Ragnork. Where it is said the first sign of Ragnork is Fimbulwinter which is three winters happen without a summer.

2nd event is when Zane and Cole (and if Jay also lost his elemental powers but I forgot) loses their elemental powers to Chen during S4 aka Tournament of Elements. Yes, many elemental holders lose their powers during S4 but I want to stay mostly focused on the four elements of creation. These elements are what FSM used to create Ninjago and several other realms. if they are indeed that powerful, then surely they would be the triggers to the Merge.

3rd event is in regards to Morro. Indeed he does not host one of the four elements of creation, however, I believe the elements of Wind and Water are the first two elements created by the instability of the four elements of creation. They are both powerful and ancient. I believe this would be the 3rd event because Morro had died but the element didn't move on to someone else. This error would def be a trigger

4th event is when Kai losing his elemental powers in S11 aka SoFS. Although it is not completely taken away from him as we learn throughout the season, it is still bad. Without a proper host, the element cannot be stable.

5th event is S14 aka Seabound. I don't think Wojira was meant to be awaken and thus another elemental master of water wasn't supposed to sacrifice themselves to merge with the ocean and save the day. Although it is not like the other events, I do believe it would be another trigger.

6th event is S15 aka Crystalized when Nya is stripped of her elemental powers. Again, going back to the idea that yes, she doesn't wield one of the elements of creation BUT the elements of Wind and Water are ancient enough and I believe second in importance. She does regain her element in time like Kai but the trigger still happened regardless. Because again, without a proper host, the element is unstable. Wu was not prepared for the coalescence because not all these events were meant to happen. Some were meant to happen but not all of them. By the time Wu realized the signs of the coalescence aka the Merge was to happen, it was too late Spoilers in regards to Dragons Rising below: It would also explain why FSM put the Dragon Cores in supposedly separate realms. Because he didn't see another coalescence to happen again. If he did, I'm sure he would have put them in Ninjago where the elemental masters are from. He left the realm crystal in Ninjago, he left the Golden Weapons of Spinjitzu in Ninjago, he left his staff in Ninjago. If he truly knew what was going to happen, he would be smart and keep the Dragon Cores in Ninjago. But he didn't. This means there have to be some events/triggers that he believed would never happen.

[lifeforms]

something really special about lana, to me, is that she's Unspeakably Entrenched In the whole ... comic worldview of people having destinies. she can't get away from it, first because of what happened to her and then later because of her enmeshment with clark and lex. like, even before anything went south there, they were both obsessed (very much in their own ways, of course) with knowing they'd be important. and the thing is both of them already knew that they would be. it was never a real question, in that sense: lex's wealth and clark's abilities literally guaranteed it. the only unknown was, obviously, what they'd do with the power they had.

and she just... didn't have any of that. she's been WORRIED about it for way longer than either of them --- simultaneously trying to prove that she's more than That Little Girl and that she's worth the space she takes up (while not entirely believing that herself, survivor's guilt being such an eternal theme here) --- but lana's never had anything even resembling a guarantee that she'd be anything special™. she works her ass off in pretty much every conceivable sense. constantly. her whole life. and the thing is, she's not even doing any of it with a concrete end goal. she doesn't care about fame or money or being the best at anything. she just wants to be a part of something! she wants to know she did what she could, where she could. she wants to feel like she belongs somewhere. she wants to give back to the town that raised her. and, you know, as Resident Major Depression, she wants --- more than anything in the world --- to know, really know in her heart, that it's worth the effort she puts in. that she's gonna be okay and that maybe she won't even hate it.

so, anyway, what happens, after 7+ years of constant torment / existential angst / consistent character development in All The Areas, is this: some guys from the future show up to stop some drama from going down. naturally, they're like, "oh my god, it's superman! it's really him!" and clark gets a bit caught up in the implications of everything (i mean, of course he does, he's like 22 years old). and they're talking to lana, you know, hinting around about how She has a Destiny, too. even going out of their way to be like, "your importance has nothing to do with these men, btw, we all just think you're REALLY cool".

and she just... walks away. she doesn't let them tell her anything. she basically decides it's not important, when actually given the choice, if it would change the way she lives her life. if it would cause her to play to some perceived notion of how she's 'meant' to be. and i think a lot of that is, yeah, she's seen firsthand and longterm what that kind of pressure does to a person --- any person! --- but i also think a lot of it is just that she's... not quite Gotten Excited About Living, but that she's started to see the potential in it. she's getting to know herself removed from her relationships (romantic or not) for the literal first time and she's kind of like, "hey, this girl makes some good points". it's a big deal for her. it's a huge deal for her. it's actually the best ending i could have asked for for her. and there's a lot of narrative pollution from the obligatory Tragic Cl*na Ending, but --- other than that mess of priorities --- i actually really do think the writers felt that, too. like, i think they're genuinely proud of her and generally in tune with her and want to see her thrive. the s11 comics did VERY MUCH have her go off to murder child abusers / be a literal human shield for endangered kids and then end on this interaction (with lois) (i do not think that was accidental lmao).

idk i just think she's neat. i like her. in a way, she really is The Hometown Hero of [my necks of] dc comi/cs. i think she should be allowed to unapologetically do crimes onscreen, too but. i guess we can't have it all 🥺

[addictedtostorytelling]

Thank you for your thoughtful answer about Abby Fisher! You sort of answered this in your original response, but if you wouldn't mind elaborating, how would you have written an arc like that? In canon, we see Sara connect to so many victims/survivors in a way that impacts her own mental wellbeing, and I am wondering what it might look like if that connection was maybe drawn out longer than the arc of one episode, especially because the Abby plot has all the holes you pointed out.

hi, anon!

unsurprisingly, my answer got away from me here, so in case you don't want to read this whole monstrosity, the tl;dr version is:

i'd move the storyline up, making both sara and the kid older when it took place. i'd also show their relationship develop in real time as opposed to inserting it into previously established narrative as a retcon. from there, i'd change certain details to make it more feasible that sara and the kid could stay in contact. finally, i'd put different kinds of narrative pressure on sara to make her more willing and able to open up to the kid regarding her own past.

much, much longer version after the "keep reading," if you're interested.

__

so to start off here, let's discuss the background specs for this potential arc:

as mentioned in the previous post, i'm convinced this storyline would actually work better and be more viable if it were to take place with an older sara who had already "come out the other side" on her s4/s5 story arc and achieved some stability and healing in her life.

i just can't really see her being prepared to adopt a mentorship role for a vulnerable child probably any earlier than s6.

that said, i also think the most ideal time for the story to unfold would be sometime after her breakdown in s8/s9, as well.

for me, the real sweet spot with her would probably be in the s10/s11 range, when she is happy, settled, stable, and thriving (and also has some free time on her hands because grissom is living abroad).

i'm likewise of the opinion that the story itself would work better if we saw sara's bond with the kid in question develop in real time, as opposed to being told about its development long after the fact (and being asked to believe that sara has maintained this really significant and even life-changing relationship for the past ten years that we have nevertheless known nothing about until present).

along those same lines, i also think the storyline would work better if the kid in question were older than five years-old when sara actually bonded with them.

the kid can still be around early elementary school-age (between 5 and 8 years-old) during the commission of the original crime that puts them into contact with csi, but when sara finally gets to know them and adopts that mentorship role in their life, they should be older, between 15 and 18 years-old.

though i don't actually believe sara is bad with small children—again, i am the one writing a sprawling geek!baby au right now—i think the fact that she thinks she is bad with small children would make her reluctant to try to befriend one (see, for example, her protestations to grissom about taking care of brenda collins in episode 01x07 "blood drops").

that so, i tend to suppose she would have an easier time dropping her guard and bonding with a somewhat older foster child in the preteen to teen age group than she would with a literal kindergartener.

i also think that her dynamic with an older kid would just plain be more interesting than one with a younger kid (because older kids can be held morally and intellectually accountable in ways younger kids can't).

as for the kid's foster situation, i think that whereas episode 15x12 "dead woods" has abby fisher in a relatively new placement with foster parents who don't know her as well as sara supposedly does, in this scenario, it would work better to say that the kid had been in the current placement for several years and that their foster parents know them well.

since sara seemingly never experienced that kind of long-term stability in a single placement herself—according to her conversation with glynnis in episode 05x10 "no humans involved," she bounced around a lot—she might end up being a little bit weird and flighty about the kid's situation in an "i'm not quite sure how to relate" type of way that would make this whole scenario more interesting.

so then thinking of the scenario itself:

let's imagine this story as a three-episode arc (which i'm going to title the "memoriae sacrum" arc).

like i said in my other post, i'm not 100% married to the "foster kid realizes, ten years ex post facto, that their father was not in fact a murderer" storyline (particularly as i find it somewhat ham-fisted), but for the purposes of this thought exercise, we can more or less stick to those bare bones.

that said, one element from the original storyline we're definitely not going to retain is the part where they retconned the nature of sara's father's abuse from what we had always known it to be in earlier seasons.

episode 1

in real life, gary dourdan became a persona non grata at cbs after he left csi under unpleasant circumstances back in 2008—hence the reason why tptb at the show never brought warrick back even in flashback in any subsequent seasons.

that so, if these were "real episodes," there'd probably be no way to swing an appearance from him.

however, let's imagine this arc more like a fic, where we can play around with what characters we want.

so let's say that back in 2000 or 2001 or so, sara and warrick work an apparent murder-suicide case together wherein a father seemingly kills his wife and eldest child and severely wounds his youngest child, shooting them*, before dispatching of himself.

* i don't really think the gender of the kid would matter, so imagine what you like here. this kid can still be abby fisher or it could be anyone else. i'm going to use they/them pronouns in reference to the kid to leave the possibilities open.

whereas in the original case, the killings took place at a mountain campsite, let's say, in this one, they happen inside the family home (which makes them even more similar to sara's own family tragedy and also adds to the circumstantial evidence suggesting the father is the cuprit).

at this time, sara is still a csi level ii, so warrick, at csi level iii, is the actual lead on the case.

the youngest child's injuries are profound. however, when they do eventually come-to enough, warrick is able to interview them.

(sara plays no part in the interviews by her own choosing and never interacts with the kid herself at any point during the investigation.)

unfortunately, the kid is unable to provide any kind of useful information to warrick, as, at this time, they are very young and the situation is so traumatic that they simply can't recall much. they also may have sustained injuries during the attack which impact their cognitive abilities/memory*.

* whereas in episode 15x12 "dead woods," abby fisher is rather improbably shown to survive a close-range gunshot to the head with no long-term impact to her cognitive abilities, i think it'd be more realistic for injury to either be entirely noncerebral in nature or to result in some actual traumatic brain injury symptoms.

warrick being warrick bonds with the child pretty immediately—seriously: one of the joys of the early seasons is watching warrick interact with kids, like when he used to babysit lindsey willows or when he interviews suzy in episode 07x10 "loco motives"—and, as is often his wont with child victims of the crimes he investigates, gives his contact information to them and/or their new social worker, telling them to get in touch with him again in case they ever remember anything and/or even just want to talk about the case with him when they're older and interested in learning the facts.

however, in the absence of any testimony from the child which might suggest differently, the evidence in the case does seem to (more or less) indicate the father's guilt.

since the father is dead along with the rest of the family, there's no one to arrest, so, in consultation with grissom, warrick closes the case—a decision sara has no real reason to question at the time.

particularly as, even back then, as would be shown in the flashback scenes, the case does squeeg her out and somewhat trigger her, given its likeness to her own family history, and she feels like the sooner she can move on from it, the better.

fast forward to ten years later, to 2010 or 2011 (i.e., s10 or s11).

at this point, said surviving child, now an older teenager, appears in the lobby of the crime lab one morning at the tail end of the graveyard shift, requesting to see warrick.

of course, by this time, warrick is dead, so once it's determined what the kid wants—which is apparently to discuss their family's case—sara is summoned to meet with them, as she was the other investigator back in 2000/2001.

and let's say the detective on the case was ray o'riley, who is also, by 2010/2011, canonically deceased, so he's not available, either.

sara is, initially, shown to be uncomfortable at this prospect, citing the fact that she's not warrick and doesn't "have a way with kids" like he used to. however, since she is the only csi still working at the lab who has any direct knowledge of the case and its details—grissom signed off on it as supervisor back in the day, but of course he's no longer on staff—she's pushed into taking the meeting, never mind her objections.

here, i'm picturing ecklie being like, "come on, sidle, just deal with this. it was your case."

she initially tries to be very formal with the kid, but it should be clear to the audience that she's wildly uncomfortable and masking.

however, while her going line is that she's "just not good with kids," between the flashbacks and the real-time scenes, the true source of her discomfiture quickly becomes apparent: namely, the whole "orphan whose one parent killed the other in front of them" likeness between her and this kid in particular.

at first, she assumes the kid has come to the lab because, now that they are old enough, they want to hear the full details on their family's case, as per warrick's offer to them back in 2000/2001 (of which sara is aware because warrick wrote it on the business card he gave to the kid and/or their social worker back in the day).

however, to her great surprise, the kid corrects her: they've actually come to provide new testimony in their family's case, based on some newly retrieved memories of theirs.

much like in canon, they would explain that something had recently caused them to remember details about the murder they were unable to remember previously—and these details contradict the notion that their father was the murderer.

however, let's say that in this version of the story, this recollection on their part happens under even more dubious circumstances than the ones in abby fisher's case, like while the kid is under hypnosis or experimenting with hallucinogenic mushrooms or undergoing a controversial form of therapy or the like.

much as in canon, sara is skeptical, believing the kid simply wants to "rewrite their family history" (an impulse she understands but doesn't necessarily condone).

let's say unlike in canon: the thing that draws sara to this kid even more than just the similarities between their respective family histories is their personality.

honestly? the kid is whip-smart and well-spoken but also angry and rough around the edges; blunt and a little bit awkward, etc.

they match sara pretty much toe-to-toe during this interview, countering her every argument.

when sara tries to let them down gently and tell them that in the absence of any new physical evidence, there's no reason for the crime lab to reopen what seems to have been an open-and-shut case, they get in her face, citing (obviously researched) precedents re: the legitimacy of their chosen memory recovery techniques to her in an attempt to change her mind.

with all of their tenacity, it's hard not to be reminded of her younger self.

but in that resemblance, it's also hard for her not to think of how she operated as a young csi: that tendency she had to "chase rabbits" and let her feelings get in the way of her professional judgment.

she remembers how often she used to be disappointed back then; how she'd get her heart hung up on certain outcomes and then have it shattered when they didn't pan out.

let's say—again, since we're pretending we can get whatever "guest stars" we want here—that after sara goes home for the day, this dilemma is one she talks to grissom (on one of his visits to the states) about, explaining to him that for as much as this kid may want her to start digging, it's possible they may not like what she finds if she does, and she'd hate to cause them even more pain.

she opens up to him: she knows what it feels like to be this kid.

maybe she even admits that when she surreptitiously searched through her mom's legal files back in 2004 (see episode 05x10 "no humans involved"), she was hoping to find not "exonerating" information, per se—as her mother's guilt was never really in question—but at least some new context that might have helped her to better understand or come to terms with her mother's actions, or at least to fill in some of the blanks in her memories.

so she gets the impulse, you know?

(of course, she notes, she never did find any previously unknown information to contextualize her mother's crime. there's nothing that could ever really ameliorate "abused schizophrenic wife brutally stabs alcoholic abuser husband to death in his sleep," is there? the whole situation was just as awful and senseless as she always remembered.)

now, she wonders what her role is here as the adult: to play the realist and put her foot down, telling the kid there is no probative evidence to suggest their father's innocence; or to actually listen to the kid and reopen the investigation (because she understands how often kids—and especially foster kids—tend to have their thoughts and feelings discounted and she doesn't intend to be one of those grownups who just brushes off everything a kid says simply because they are a kid)?

at this point, grissom gives her a nudge: asks her when she looked through her mother's files what she felt when she discovered that there was no "hidden context" and things were always just as bleak and awful as she'd always known they were.

her realization: she accepted it.

was disappointed, but accepted it.

because at least then she knew for sure, you know?

and with that determination, sara decides to reopen the case, securing permission from catherine (who is at this time her supervisor) to do so, albeit perhaps more in a "well, i guess i can't really stop you" way than an "i fully support you in this endeavor" one.

she also enlists greg to help her—or rather, he volunteers because he remembers running dna on the original case back in the day, recalling some unknown exemplar collected from the crime scene he couldn't find a match to then and wanting to follow up on it now that codis is a more fully-developed technology.

the next morning, when the kid once again turns up at the lab, sara gives them the news that she's officially reopening the case, though she makes sure to stress: she's not promising them anything.

even with that caution, the kid still lights up.

for the first time, sara sees them smile—and on the one hand, it obviously terrifies her, having all this kid's hopes rest on her, but on the other, she also can't help but feel somewhat exhilarated, offering this kid at least a chance at an outcome she never had available to herself.

episode 2

this episode marks the beginning of sara's investigation in earnest.

the physical evidence in the original case is both limited and ambiguous in nature.

there were no signs of breaking and entering at the house.

the family members were shot with a gun belonging to the kid's father, and his prints were found on the weapon, which was recovered from next to his body, right where one would expect to find it had he dropped it after committing suicide.

however, there was also a pair of microfiber gloves found next to the father's body, which, while roughly the same size as his hands, were not ones the kid recognizes as belonging to their father.

sara and warrick's going theory at the time was that he had worn the gloves to shoot his family members but then taken them off to shoot himself, though they couldn't figure out why he would have done so, given that he didn't necessarily need to conceal his identity as the killer, his intention always being to commit suicide in the end.

inside the gloves, there is one unsmudged print. however, it is seemingly unrecoverable, due to the nature of the fabric.

the mystery dna greg couldn't match back in 2000/2001 comes from a sweaty handprint on a door handle to a part of the house seemingly out of the way of the murders; it doesn't belong to any of the family members, though it's unknown as of yet to whom it does belong or if it is even probative.

there is also circumstantial evidence to suggest that the kid's father may have been experiencing financial troubles at the time of the murders and that the kid's mother may have been having an affair back then, as well, of which her husband had perhaps recently become aware.

there was nothing at the scene to indicate anyone in the family struggled with assailants prior to their deaths, and both the mother and elder sibling were covered over with blankets, indicating remorse on the part of their killer.

meanwhile, the kid's "recovered memory" suggests that the man who came into their bedroom that night had some distinguishing physical characteristic that their father didn't have.

in episode 15x12 "dead woods," abby fisher's memory centers on a distinctive smell, and maybe the same thing could be the case here, though there might also be some other difference instead; i don't suppose this point really matters much, in terms of the overall story arc.

sara decides to run everything from the top, grissom-style (see episode 01x12 "fahrenheit 932").

of course, in this scenario, the added "warrick of it all" would throw a new wrinkle into the whole operation, as she would be sifting through his old work, potentially looking to overturn it.

imagine: once word gets out that sara is revisiting this case, nick becomes upset with her for distrusting warrick's original determination, feeling as if she is just being contrary and maybe even taking advantage of the fact that warrick isn't around to defend his own conclusions anymore.

and for what?

all because some weirdo (possibly drugged-up) teenager dreamt up a pseudo-memory ten years after the fact?

of course, given his ignorance of sara's past, nick doesn't understand sara's sense of personal connection with (and obligation to) this kid—and especially not because sara is trying with all her might to repress her own feelings and memories and "remain objective" on this case, not allowing her own trauma to color either her investigation OR her interactions with the kid.

—speaking of whom.

the kid turns up again at the lab for what is now a third morning in a row to check on sara's progress.

whereas in all of their previous encounters, the kid has had this somewhat surly attitude—think sara fending off grissom's inquiries about her "diversions" in episode 01x16 "too tough to die"—now, they are starting to come out of their shell.

while it's not a total transformation just yet (much like sara, this kid has been burned a lot and is fairly "slow to warm up"), they are becoming gradually more animated and expressing curiosity about sara and greg's investigative activities.

while it's clear they're trying not to get their hopes up too much—per sara's caution—it's also clear they're not fully succeeding in that trying.

more and more, they're becoming invested.

—and so is sara, who, despite her general trepidations about being "bad with kids," finds herself getting along with this one, especially as she starts to see their personality emerge out from behind that façade of jadedness, and especially as the kid starts to speak somewhat more freely about what their life in foster care has been like for the last ten years.

though sara lets on nothing to the kid regarding her own time in the system, we as the audience should be able to tell: the instability and uncertainty of "living with strangers," of always being the "odd kid out," is something she can very much relate to, and she feels for this kid.

deeply.

unfortunately, the gods of forensics don't seem to be on their side: it seems like whatever new investigative avenues sara and greg develop all eventually terminate in dead ends.

the mystery dna isn't in codis.

the details from the kid's memories are hard to get a fix on.

as the episode goes on, sara's stress grows.

she's still fielding passive-aggression from nick, who resents her taking on the case in the first place, and she is also starting to feel pressure from catherine and/or ecklie, who are annoyed with her for continually tying up department resources (including both herself and greg) as she pursues admittedly flimsy leads in a ten year-old solved case.

worse: the more time she spends with the kid, the harder she's finding it to keep her personal feelings out of the case AND out of her interactions with them.

despite her best efforts, she's getting her heartstrings tangled up in the investigation and in them.

she's also thinking about memories from her own past that she hasn't allowed herself to think about for a long time, and she's, frankly, worse for the wear for it.

after a hard shift fraught with disappointment for both her and the kid, she goes home to grissom, and we get a cuddling in bed scene where she admits, somewhat tearfully, to him that there is still so much she doesn't know about what happened between her parents; so much she can't remember either because it all happened when she was still so young or else because she's repressed it.

memory can be a fickle thing, grissom muses, and she agrees.

tells him she doesn't remember when her mom first got sick or why she (seemingly) never received treatment. doesn't remember when her father's abuse started. doesn't remember why her mother never tried to leave or if she perhaps did but maybe somehow failed. she can't recall what, if anything, precipitated the murder—if her dad's abuse of her mom had recently gotten worse or if her mom just finally after so many years snapped or if her mom's delusions perhaps had become stronger or more violent in nature.

she admits: there is so much about that night she has actively tried to forget and so much she is terrified she will someday be triggered to, against her will, remember.

worried about her, grissom wonders if maybe she should hand this case over to greg, but she tells him she feels she owes it to the kid to keep going, at least until she can definitively say whether or not their father was involved in the murders (regardless of if they ever identify any other potential suspects outside of him).

resolved, sara returns to work the next night.

however, as she starts to dig into the case again, she still isn't coming up with anything to challenge the original narrative.

at a team meeting, nick (who, remember, is the assistant supervisor on grave shift at this point) motions for her and greg to shelve the case, as active/current cases have been piling up in the meanwhile "and warrick already solved this one ten years ago anyway." sara pleads to be allowed to continue her investigation, and catherine compromises by pulling greg off the case while allowing sara to continue to work it solo. she also presents sara with a hard deadline: if she hasn't come up with anything probative by the end of the week, then she's got to drop the whole thing and move onto something new.

the kid appears—like clockwork—the next morning and, upon sara's dismal report, practically begs her to keep going, pushing her to dig deeper, to try just one more thing, please, please.

it's here where, overwhelmed by facing so much opposition on all sides, triggered, mixed-up, and half-defeated, sara finally snaps at the kid—says something harsh about how you can't rewrite history just because you want to; tells them that they have to learn to accept the fact that their father was a bad man, and there's nothing anyone can do to change that reality.

at this point, for the first time, the kid—who, until now, has been very tough and even recalcitrant—breaks.

starts crying.

and sara immediately feels awful.

apologizes—and, in an attempt to extend an olive branch—admits (in her awkward but heartfelt sara way) that she was maybe talking more about herself and her father than she was about them and theirs.

slowly, hesitantly, she tells the kid an abridged version of her story, enough that they also can see the similarities between their experience and sara's and know that she understands where they're coming from.

earnestly, she tells them: she wishes more than anything in the world that she could tell them for sure that their father was innocent and that she could find "the real killer" and lock them away.

but the truth, she says, is that that answer may not be the right one, however attractive it may seem.

she gets real with the kid: without more details, there's starting to be nowhere left to go in this case.

the kid offers to try more of the memory recovery technique—i.e., the hypnosis or the shrooms or the therapy—to help in the effort.

but sara tells them: memory is unreliable, and that technique is unproven.

better to stick to science.

she vows, for now, to keep going.

the kid is grateful to her, expressing that they feel like she "just gets it."

cut to the final shot of the episode: sara appearing super conflicted—honored, on the one hand, to have won this kid's trust, rare commodity that it is; but terrified, on the other, that she is still ultimately going to end up letting them down, which is the absolute last thing in the world she wants to do.

episode 3

insert sara wracking her brain to come up with one last avenue of potential investigation here.

eventually, she comes back to the latent print in the microfiber glove—one piece of evidence that was never run back in 2000/2001.

she thinks the print could be the key to unlocking this case now.

however, recovery will be nearly impossible using traditional collection methods.

even with mandy's help, there's no clear answer as to how to lift the print off of the microfiber without destroying it and while still maintaining all its ridge detail.

as the end of the work week is rapidly approaching, sara fears her time to investigate may well run out before she can derive a solution to her problem. not only does she feel like she's letting the kid down but also in a weird way warrick, who she knows would have done everything in his power to get to the truth, were he still around to run this investigation instead of her.

but just as she is about to succumb to total despair, who should approach her but nick, offering up a memory of his own?

—namely, a technique warrick taught him back in the day that might be applicable to her problem.

cue both nick and sara doing their best warrick impersonations: "i can pull a fingerprint off the air!"

of course, there's no guarantee warrick's technique will work, and it could still result in the destruction of the print. however, it is the best option sara has yet encountered.

so, when the foster kid appears at the lab the next morning, sara poses the choice to them: do they want her to take this one-in-a-million chance (knowing that it could well destroy the only remaining physical evidence that might possibly exonerate their father in the process of so doing) or do they perhaps want to hold off in the hopes that technology will eventually advance to the point where the print will be recoverable by some other, less invasive means sometime in the eventual future?

though they are nervous about the prospect, the kid ultimately decides to take the chance.

so sara pulls the print and is successful in so doing. however, she also destroys the surface from which she pulled the print as she collects it, meaning that the print now only exists in digital facsimile form.

mandy then runs the print, and eventually she determines: it doesn't belong to the kid's father.

its existence strongly suggests that another person was on scene during the commission of the murders and that they handled the murder weapon.

unfortunately, there are no hits on this mystery person's identity.

all of these determinations are made during the night, while the kid isn't at the lab, and sara knows that the next morning, she's going to have to tell the kid: while there's a possibility—and even a good one—that their father isn't to blame for the murders, as of yet, there is no empirical way to definitely prove as much, much less to find out who the real killer is.

and there may not ever be.

however, sara doesn't get the chance to tell the kid anything, because they don't turn up at the lab the next morning.

instead, their foster parent does.

come to find out, the kid had been lying to their foster parents, claiming they were going to early-morning "sat prep" and then beelining for the lab instead.

after one of the kid's friends accidentally let it slip to the foster parents that the kid had never actually attended any of the prep sessions, yesterday morning, the foster parents had trailed the kid to the lab. after the kid got home, they then confronted them.

now, upon discovering what the kid was up to, they have become concerned about the kid's level of investment in the case, fearing they are setting themselves up for a major letdown.

the foster parent explains the situation to sara.

apparently, after their family's murders, the kid bounced around in the system for years. during this time, they experienced all sorts of behavioral problems. earned a reputation with the dcfs as a "problem child."

the foster parent and their spouse were kind of a last-ditch solution; the only ones willing to take the kid in anymore.

it took them a while, but they were eventually able to earn the kid's trust and stabilize them.

now, after four or five years of living in their home, the kid is finally on an upswing: doing well in school, enjoying a social life, and just really thriving for the first time since the murders.

however, given the kid's obvious emotional investment in this case, their foster parent is worried that if they don't get the results they want, they might not be equipped to handle to the disappointment and could suffer a major backslide, right at a time when they're getting ready to "launch." the foster parent doesn't want to see them get derailed or "sacrifice their future for the past."

unaware that sara knows this fact all too well for herself, the foster parent explains: the stats on most "graduates" of the foster system are abysmal, so the best chance this foster kid has is to buckle down and study for the sat, get good grades, and attend college.

"that's their pathway out."

the foster parent has now come to sara in order to ascertain whether or not there is actually any hope that the kid will get the answer that they want, all said and done.

when sara explains the somewhat ambiguous outcome with the print, the foster parent decides not to tell the kid and asks sara for help in thinking up some way to "put the kid off the scent" for the time being, at least until they're emotionally prepared to hear potentially disappointing news.

though conflicted, sara suggests that the foster parent could perhaps tell the kid that she'd sent the print off to the fbi for further analysis and that it might be "in process" for a while (months or even years), and the foster parent thanks her for the idea, assuring her it's in the kid's best interest.

they also tell her: she shouldn't expect to see the kid back at the crime lab anytime soon, as it's probably not the best place for a teenager (and especially a traumatized teenager) to be hanging out before school everyday.

though sara outwardly expresses support for this decision, it's clear she's not 100% sold on the notion that concealing the truth is the best course of action here. she is also obviously devastated that she won't even get to say goodbye to this kid.

after her encounter with the foster parent, greg quickly sniffs out sara's upset, which she blames on the fact that she regrets not being able to get the kid a more straightforward answer.

however, he intuits: she's also sad because, despite all her protestations about not liking children, she's actually gotten attached to the kid, and now she's not going to see them again; she is going to miss them.

though he expects sara to resist this assertion, she surprises him by admitting he's right.

cut to a time jump.

the next morning.

and who should turn up at the lab but the kid, having snuck out on their foster parents yet again?

like sara, this kid has the uncanny ability to detect bullshit, and they're not buying the whole "fbi" story that their foster parents tried to sell them. they want to hear the truth from sara herself about her findings, even if it hurts, they say.

please.

at first, sara is reluctant to defy the kid's foster parents' wishes. she is also scared of sending the kid on a downward spiral and fucking up their life.

but then she realizes: she knows for herself how hard not knowing can be.

so she reaches deep inside herself, sits the kid down, and presents them with the truth in the best, most honest way she can think to, even though it's not altogether positive.

she admits: she can't tell them for certain that their father is innocent, though there's at least a chance he is. she also can't tell them who besides their father might potentially be to blame, though perhaps there is someone out there.

maybe, she conjectures, the databases will eventually kick out a match to that print or the dna that at the moment doesn't exist in their datasets; maybe technology will improve enough to someday fill in some of those blanks.

she'll absolutely keep trying, running the evidence periodically to see if anything turns up.

but in the meanwhile, there's no answer.

and there's also a chance that there will never be one.

on instinct, she confesses to the kid: she's never been certain if her mother habitually kept the knife she stabbed her father with under the pillow and pulled it out "in the heat of the moment" to defend herself OR if she had, in an act of premeditation, fetched it from downstairs after he fell asleep that night.

back when she was a kid, the detectives who worked her father's case had asked her, but she couldn't tell them.

and now she's never going to know.

"i keep trying to remember," she says, "the knife block in our kitchen. if there was an empty slot. if i heard her go back down the stairs and then up again. but i can't. that memory is just gone."

she's sorry, she says, she can't give the kid the answer they wanted.

but.

you can live with it.

there are ways to live with it.

someday, she promises, the kid will make other memories that their brain will allow them to retain; happy ones. they'll still carry the memories of their family with them, too. but they'll grow around the grief. have new experiences. give and receive love.

the kid ends up crying then, sobbing, totally unguarded and childlike, that they miss their family, and sara hugs them and says she knows, she knows.

cut to the end of the episode.

the kid's foster parents have come to pick them up from the lab.

they're apologetic to sara that the kid was "bothering her," but she tells them she doesn't mind. she also explains: she told the kid the truth, and they took it well.

"kids are more resilient than you think," she offers.

the foster parents agree.

they start to take the kid home, gently chastising them, on the way out the door, that now that they've skipped sat prep for a week, they're going to have to enroll in another session and take the course over again.

on hearing this statement, sara pipes up, "i could maybe help with that—if you want." stumblingly, she explains that she got a near-perfect score on the sat and attended harvard at age sixteen. "out of foster care," she adds.

and so it is that sara becomes this kid's tutor.

i imagine from this point, though the main storyline would be concluded, we (as the audience) would still see periodic evidence that sara was indeed keeping up with this kid and continuing to meet with them fairly regularly.

there could in time be other storylines for them.

if we want to go the tamer route:

maybe something to do with sara struggling to balance her work responsibilities with her new mentorship role.

alternatively or additionally, maybe her supporting the kid as they deal with some complicated feelings after their current foster parents propose adopting them.

on the one hand, they want to say yes, because they love their foster family and crave that sense of belonging. on the other hand, it feels like a betrayal to their bio family in some way, especially since they're so close to "aging out" anyhow.

maybe the kid meeting grissom and developing a relationship with him, too.

maybe the kid doing some kind of volunteer work or internship connected to the lab to help with their college applications, with sara supervising.

maybe them, with sara's help, starting a forensics club at their high school.

if we want to go the angstier route:

perhaps the kid still occasionally struggles. gets involved with substance abuse or has serious behavioral problems. ends up in trouble with the law, to the point that sara is obliged to confront them.

alternatively, maybe the kid has to unexpectedly move placements, and when they do, they confront sara: ask her why, if she supposedly cares so much, she doesn't offer to foster or adopt them herself. after all, aren't they close? doesn't she get it?

and who knows? maybe sara actually considers the possibility or even decides to go for it. has to broach the topic with grissom. reevaluate their lifestyle. could be an interesting development for both of them.

if we want to go the super angsty route:

turns out, the kid's dad didn't kill their family, and the real killer has somehow realized that the kid survived and the case has been reopened and that sara is periodically checking into it. maybe the killer then targets the kid, knowing they are the only person who could potentially identify them. maybe the kid is in real danger, and it's up to sara to catch the killer before they come to harm.

in any case, i'd definitely want to see more of sara interacting with this kid, building a real relationship with them over time—one that fit with her core characterization and didn't attempt to make her into something she wasn't.

excepting a scenario in which she did actually choose to foster or adopt this kid, i'd like her to toe that line, being a friend and supportive adult but not trying to fill the role of "mom."

i'd like to see her friendship with this kid challenge her in productive character ways and be consistently depicted, to the point where it was easy to believe that this bond was an important and regular part of her life.

anyway.

there would be other ways to write the whole thing than with this "memoriae sacrum" version, certainly.

but that's at least one way i could see the premise of "sara befriends a foster kid" working better than the option we're offered in canon.

thanks for the question! please feel welcome to send another any time.

[twdmusicboxmystery]

More of the Twin or Duality Theory with Isabel/Leah/Beth

@twdmusicboxmystery

So, I woke up with something of a new theory in my head. Let's say, just for kicks, that Daryl does end up having a relationship with Isabelle. I'm not any more convinced that's going to happen than either of you are, but humor me. If he does, CLEARLY it's just going to be another Leah. Not something long term or soulmate like.

So, I was thinking about how we always said Leah was both a mirror opposite and a parallel to Beth. And then there's this idea of Isabelle being Beth's symbolic "twin."

We've also talked about how the Leah storyline was originally going to play out much differently (we think) but CoVid changed everything and they had to shuffle things around, right? I remember saying once that I thought originally they would air the Leah storyline AFTER revealing Beth, and that would have changed the whole feel of it. Daryl would have been having this slightly toxic relationship with Leah, while fans already knew Beth was out there. But obviously it didn't play out that way.

So, I was thinking that maybe originally Leah was going to be Beth's symbolic, functional twin, but when everything happened, things got pushed back and rearranged, etc., they scrapped that idea, at least in its first iteration. Obviously, Leah still had a million shades of Beth in her (and Carol too) but she became more of a forerunner than a side-by-side symbolic twin.

See, one thing I always thought and know I said a few times is that I think we're going to need to see Beth and her symbolic twin at the same time. In all the other dualities, they've been on screen together. Lizzie and Mica. Carol and Alpha. Rick and the Gov. Glenn and Nicholas. More recently, Max and Shira.

So, it just never made sense to me that if Leah was Beth's twin, she would die before Beth was even revealed. But again, now I'm wondering if originally the plan was to have them play out together, but that got scrapped bc of Covid, and now they've created Isabelle to take on the role of Beth's dualistic other half.

All I'm saying is that, if so, it would make sense for the question of romance to be there. It doesn't mean Daryl has to take her up on it--I agree that doing another exact storyline like Leah's feels really redundant--but she might offer it to him.

And given what happened with Leah, he might even be thinking that he screwed that up, so maybe he should give this woman a shot, but something about it still just won't feel right to him. Because, you know, Beth. Anyway, that's pretty much it. I still think, no matter how it all plays out, that it's leading to Beth. Just some thoughts I woke up with this morning. ;D

@wdway

It certainly could go that way. I see your logic in this scenario. For myself though I have come more and more to believe that Leah at least in FM was more about Daryl and Carol. He has such mixed up feelings about Carol and Beth. These two women that he loves in different ways.

In the end I feel that in s11 by the time Leah tried to kill Maggie she was much more of a ruthless Carol figure. I think the good he saw in Leah was always him wanting to see Beth in her but she really wasn't Beth or completely Carol but he saw the best and the worst of the two women.

And maybe that is what I'm leaning towards after reading what you wrote. Leah represented the combination of Carol and Beth but ended up being more about Carol maybe Isabelle will be more about Beth. It makes more sense in my head than the way I explained it.

I got the DVD for s11 yesterday. One of the reasons prefer watching the DVD is because my control system for when I'm watching it on AMC+ or now on Netflix has like a two second delay in stopping when I hit the button which drives me crazy. I can't move frame by frame like I used to.

I'm going through and catching some things and I was looking at the little running what I have always called the Beth blur and in this season there's 3 images. A main largest a second smaller and now a third image across the bottom. That's the shot above. When I read what you wrote, @twdmusicboxmystery, it made me wonder if this could possibly stand for the three, Beth, Leah and Isabelle. I don't know just random thoughts.

Another thought is that if that's true about the 3 then that gives us a rule of 3. Just as I believe Daryl will lose Beth a third time to complete the rule of 3. More random thoughts.

@galadrieljones:

Interesting for sure. I know back when 11a originally aired, I wondered if Beth would show up and kill Leah, like how Alice wins the chess game in Through the Looking Glass. She takes the Red Queen, which wakes the Red King, and the game ends, and she wakes up. I wouldn’t be surprised if they shared screentime because of the “twinning” thing.

Here’s a slight variation I was thinking of, given what we know about Isabelle. She is a nun. Or, she’s something like that. We see her wearing a habit in one of the leaked photos, and a light colored hood in some photos Norman has posted from filming.

If she is indeed a nun, this could be building toward a madonna-whore duality of women. Whore is a strong word, but that’s just the name of the trope. Leah fulfills the “whore” aspect, as she checks a lot of boxes here. Independent (in an antisocial manner), selfish, mean, mercenary. There’s also that hint of sexuality between them. She tries to separate him from his family. She is violent. She follows a cult leader, and is therefore susceptible to idolatry.

Meanwhile, Isabelle is a nun. That’s much of what we know about her, other than her appearance: blond hair, blue eyes. She’s pretty in a very “clean” and clear way. We see her nursing Daryl back to health in her habit. She is the Madonna, or the pure aspect of femininity. This could suggest she is asexual, or that there is no sexuality between them. It’s pure, platonic, untainted. She will be independent but in a self-assured way, self-motivated kind of way, not anti-social. Unlike Leah, who is a mercenary, and morally dubious/indifferent/loyal only to herself, Isabelle will be unflinchingly loyal to a cause, to God, to something greater than herself.

Remember Daryl in Rendition, when he tells Pope that he only believes “in himself” now, and how Pope tells him that’s too bad. Daryl’s been supremely messed up by Leah. So Isabelle will balance the scales that have been tipped in Daryl’s psychology, by Leah.

Leah may have soured Daryl on women, or strangers, the prospect of “good people,” which Beth introduces him to in season 4. Isabelle will restore his faith in people, and in women (the divine feminine), which will open him up, make him amenable to romance once again.

I don’t believe they’ll have a romantic relationship, not if she’s a nun. But she genuinely looks a little like Beth, and this will remind him of Beth, and of the more loving, nurturing parts of humanity that Beth represents in his psychology. These parts may have been buried away a little after seeing his ex-girlfriend trying to kill Beth’s sister, forcing him to kill her.

I also had this thought. If Daryl is gravely injured, or unconscious, and he wakes up to Isabelle leaning over him. The way she looks, he might at first hallucinate that he’s seeing Beth, dressed as a nun, hence the strained look on his face in the leaked photo, like he’s afraid. I even wondered if maybe the habit was a hallucination. Maybe she’s wearing a hood, and he hallucinates that he’s seeing a habit. But there’s nothing to suggest that, other than the fact that Daryl has hallucinated before.

In either case, the last time he thought he saw Beth, it was Leah in Rendition. She was in all black, wearing a terrifying mask. Now, we have another Beth look-alike, not in a creepy mask, but in a habit. So we have weight on both sides of the scale now: the mercenary and the nun.

Ideally, then, Beth would be a sort of balance between them. She’s a warrior, but she’s not indifferent. She’s loyal, but she’s not a nun. She’s sexual, but not a whore. She can be a romantic partner but also just, a partner, a best friend, a confidant. She sees the best in people, but when she sees a wolf in her flock, she will not hesitate to kill it.

I think this goes back to the yin and yang theory, that every force has an equal but opposing force necessary to balance the scales. Leah is dark, Isabelle is light. Beth is the yin and yang of them both.

@twdmusicboxmystery

I love all our theories, Gals!

@galadrieljones

Me too!! Here’s hoping we get some actual info soon!

[dazaislefttoe]

BSD EP5 S11 was kinda rushed, guys

----

imma lowkey summarize from a post i saw on pin

the antagonists they've been fighting since like S3 or so are just.. dead now??

they should've been around for so much longer

i can't believe fyodor *and* fukuchi would die that easily

straying off topic but did y'all see the look of sadness and betrayal on teruko's face? she makes me so sad i love her

back on topic xo

this ep felt so rushed

after everyone got over the adrenaline rush from seeing skk and sskk come back, i feel like we all collectively just.. ignored how fast everything went?

especially at the end. after you end something that felt quick, the worst thing you could do is put a time skip because that just makes it faster. ik bones did that to hype everyone up for the next season but omg bro.

also, where is everyone at???? the side characters just fucking evaporated after prison arc started.

[codenamesailordarillium]

The silliness of destroying the Dalek's casing with the microwave parts is pretty on brand for this show and I appreciate it for that reason, and also Ryan's dad jumping into action to suggest it in the first place.

And okay. I will admit, the stupid murder squid possessing Ryan's dad & Ryan having to save him got me teary-eyed. I've reached that point of adulthood where I get emotional over imperfect parents who try making it up to their adult children who realize they never stop needing or wanting them, even despite all the prior disappointment.

I feel like I've got a few apparently several things I want to say about s11 as a whole that I think I'm just gonna tack onto this post ..

So, I made the decision out of nowhere sometime during the past week to start catching up on all the eps I've been putting off from Jodie's era. Might be a misguided attempt to get up to speed for the 60th, but I've honestly done pretty decent enough. Thus far, I've basically finished off all the eps before we get to parts that I know are gonna piss me off. I think if there was any season/series of DW with Jodie that I was ever gonna have the potential to love, it would need to be this one.

I didn't really tho .. love it, that is. Like, I liked it just fine. Overall, I can say it was okay. Not bad by any means, but not giving me the same blood-pumping excitement I used to get from watching DW. I'm not tryna knock on it for no reason, it just didn't quite hit the spot for me like I really hoped it might. There's no one particular reason that I can zero in on as to why.

I feel like I do see some of the criticisms people were making back when it first aired. Namely character-wise. I guess the overarching arc of both the season and the New Year's special was the family conflict between Graham & Ryan along with the grief of Grace's death hanging over them. I really liked certain parts of it, like Grace's 'ghost' haunting Graham in the giant spider episode? I believe? But yeah, that. I kinda wish there'd been more of that during the season, I thought it was gonna connect to the fake mirror!Grace from the frog episode, but I guess not.

But obviously, given that there's so much of a focus on that particular family dynamic, it unfortunately leaves Yaz kinda getting the shaft. Yeah she gets her own whole episode to explore her own background, but the impact it has kind of seems to be contained to that one ep. There honestly could've been some potential for the Doctor to get caught for timey wimey shenanigans happening to her companion's family there. I really thought Umbreen was gonna have a moment to reveal to Yaz that she recognized her as being the same "long lost relative" that showed up on the day of her (first) wedding. We see the rest of her immediate family the next episode, and Yaz's mother is brought along for part of the adventure, so the way they might've reacted to it could've been a fun & interesting thing to get into.

(Also, just for the record, Demons of the Punjab was probably my fave ep of the season and Umbreen Yaz's nani actually means a lot to me; closely followed by Rosa.)

Maybe that's where s11 falls a little short for me. The fact that there are these plot threads just sort of built in but don't seem to get expanded upon. And I could be wrong, maybe some of it does in fact come up in s12 or 13/Flux. And of course, because I am myself, I can't help but see all the places in the story where there was a prominent space-haired shaped hole and how fun that could've been.

I don't really want to delve into it until later whenever I start watching s13/Flux, but the whole exploration of 13 having a potential queer relationship is um, certainly not really given any sort of room to grow in this season, or like exist at all tbh. I obviously refer to the absence of the wife she's literally already gay married to and would have been ready to go, but I'll also briefly touch on my thoughts regarding, well, y'know, the ship that's most popular for 13's era.

People are allowed to ship whatever they want regardless of reason, but nothing about the dynamic in s11 really spoke to me as being particularly indicative of romantic feelings on either side of the equation. And while that's what I'd prefer to an extent, I do think it bears some consideration why the first female iteration of the Doctor is no longer being lusted after by people occasionally, especially the girlies, and that there don't seem to be any/as many instances of kisses or the like that they would receive plenty of back when they presented as a man. Characters falling in love with the Doctor & expressing their attraction has been a staple of the show, technically even since Classic Who when 1 drank hot cocoa & accidentally got engaged. (Even Basil got snogged, if aggressively, by Missy, then proceeded to, much more gently, return the favor. And gazed witheringly at River's lips - yes, it still counts fight me.)

I guess since we are sort of skirting some of the nuances and issues of gender that 13's regeneration brought along, you could say they might've been concerned about depicting what potentially looked like harassment or assault of a female character. Which, I get, but there are ways of doing it without going that far. I'm also aware that people might not have trusted Chibby to be able to depict that well & thus prefer that he kinda just ignored it entirely. At this point, it is what it is, Jodie's no longer the Doctor, so the best I can hope for anyway is her getting to snog her wife in extended universe materials.

I think that's about it for my thoughts on s11. I'mma really have to gird my loins for s12 and the potential (proverbial?) headaches it's gonna cause me. That being said, I still want to see it for myself, if nothing else than to formulate all the ways I'll have to headcanon myself to death to reconcile with the parts of the story I still might vibe with a little.