#i kinda ship misty with nat

[ladyknight-of-hearts]

Im gonna stop watching yellowjackets for now bc if i watch one episode from my phone my battery drains a bit faster than usual but.. theres always tomorrow

ALSO WHY IS SHE SO WEIRDLY SO HILARIOUS LIKE IK SHE UNHINGED BUT I LIKE HER OK

[igelmanz]

My thoughts on Misty and Walter

I never knew I needed Elijah Wood and Christina Ricci as a duo but I love them. Misty and Walter work so well together. Him being just as weird as her, having the same interests ect. like... they're just such a good team. BUT... I just feel like something's off about him. I feel like he's either gonna end up betraying Misty or she'll end up killing him for some reason. I don't know if I ship them necessarily but I definitely enjoy their dynamic and Walter as a character, I just have a bad feeling about him. I hope I'm wrong tho. Maybe it's just me wanting to see Misty with someone, anyone really, who treats her well, someone she can relate to. I still want to see her with Nat but I don't think we're gonna get that so I hope Walter doesn't turn out to be awful.

I kinda love them together actually. Look how similarly they act! I loved this part of ep 4

They are weirdly adorable. Definitely some of my favorite oddballs.

[bratspike]

I feel the exactttt same way about mistynat, there's just nothing there from nat's side. I've been worrying a bit that they might give them more of a focus in season 3 since it'll presumably feature misty grieving and they like to echo the two timelines, plus maybe to try justify pairing them in s1. I reaaaally hope not though because nat's relationships with lottie and travis are so much more interesting (and arguably do way more for her character). lol sorry to vent, I just see a lot of mistynat on here as a nat girl and it just leaves me kinda ??? but no hate to the shippers of course, I get the concept, just doesn't work for me I guess

im genuinely terrified for s3 for that very reason lol. like if it becomes Misty Guilt season i will check out completely. i love natlottietravis and think they're the strongest part of 96 and i am also a bit concerned they're going to shoehorn misty in there. like i really don't mind people shipping it or having their own thoughts but i can see the writers pulling a jeff and seeing the reaction and then making it bigger than they originally intended, which is my fear

i do think that my brand of nat girlitude just makes it really hard for me to fit misty in there at all because i'm like no I Know Her. natalie thinks about travis and lottie and that's it to me

[rappaccini]

big catchall yellowjackets s2 thoughts post

tldr: season 2 has a great takeoff, hits some turbulence, and ends in a a potentially disastrous crash landing. eps 1-8: soar in places but shaky in others. ep 9: thanks i hate it!

according to conventional season progression, season 1/act i is the act of establishment. s1 of yj was incredible on that front. we really sink our teeth into all the characters and the plotlines. great questions are teased.

s2 is the act of conflict. this is the one where we dive into what the story's about. i still think they did a great job on that front-- rational vs supernatural, with the girls' descent into cannibalism, into hunting each other, into embracing lottie's cult mindset and natalie's rebellion against it.

but then ep 9 kinda fucks it. the biggest offending elements are things that could work in the right context, but i don't think that was it.

i think the fandom went rancid on fan theories and are now descending into aggressive positivity/negativity infighting. glad i decided not to get involved. esp given how this ended

since nobody reads these, i'll say the truth: season 2 was by no means a bad season (though it certainly has a bad finale), but it was definitely weaker than s1. the show isn't off the rails, but it bit off more than it can chew, and now it’s choking. there are now massive cracks in the foundation. s3 is the do or die to fix this... and i don't think they will.

alright so yj went in one episode from my favorite show currently airing, that i tell everyone to watch and make a social event out of every week with my friends..... to a show that i will recommend to no one bc i don't want them to get let down as hard as i was. when s3 comes out i'll wait for all the episodes to air, read some spoilers and ask some friends what they think before deciding to get back into, and if it gets canned before that happens... honestly, i'd be fine with that.

positives

the first act of cannibalism was perfect.

shauna and lottie. loved watching shauna's paranoia melting into total deference. both of them lost a best friend they had major gay vibes with, who really kept their worst impulses in check. i always felt it would be... right, for them to link up and form a codependent bond as a result. hopefully this is the start of that. (not to mention that the shaman needs her butcher) i'm the only person who ships shottie. so be it.

misty and crystal's friendship

the individual arcs of nat, travis, shauna, taissa... until the end

fleshing out akilah and mari. they're now at the tier lottie and van were in s1.

the development of lottie's cult taking time to coalesce

the stillbirth of shauna's baby was handled great

callie becoming a much more well rounded character. thank god. for a show about teens, we can't neglect the one in the present.

jeff knowing all shauna's sins, telling himself he's fine with it, but then having to contend with them firsthand and faltering? excellent.

the girls all losing their grip on reality by ep 8.

shauna butchering javi. incredible scene. love the buildup and the gore aftermath. love her hiding her face as she does it.

card pull theory confirmed. seems an appropriate way to start the cannibal sacrifice ritual. lots of fun variations to keep it fresh-- (quarry falls off a cliff, quarry is beaten/stabbed to death, quarry gets away, quarry kills her hunter, quarry makes an alliance ahead of time with one of her hunters to kill someone else for her, subtly rigged card pull, obviously rigged card pull, the group killing the one girl who won't participate, 'fuck the card pull, let's kill the other team instead of one of our own')

cave theory confirmed. good. we need a separate place for the second group to go, and now we have it. but idk who the fuck would join the second clan after ben burned the cabin down.

the cabin burning down kills it. it burning is a good thing, an important step in the group being further encroached into the wild, just feels like it happened way too soon and bc of the wrong person. more later.

negatives

more on this later but... Poor Lottie. fuck off. she was the villain s1 set up until she suddenly got switched up between seasons.

walter why. dude's just a plot device to get shauna off for killing adam and give misty a love interest she doesn't need. to the fans who hate travis, why do that when walter's right here? he's the Real unnecessary annoying boyfriend character.

crystal's body vanishing went nowhere. i like that she dies in the way she does, don't like that it goes nowhere.

so cabin guy doesn’t matter I guess

so javi's friend went nowhere

so the man with no eyes went nowhere

sure, we need to keep mysteries for later, but there's 'saving a resolution for later' and there's 'just dropping a question after it's raised' -- that's what the show did. you have to answer some questions before you raise new ones.

so that scene where travis died.... wasn't filmed weirdly and filled with inconsistencies bc the writers were implying that lottie was lying. it was literally just inconsistent and weird. hate it!!!

the cops. what even..... and kevyn dies but pedostasche LIVED?????

i'm cool with adam's murder being investigated. i just don't think it should've happened this fast. it's been One Day. and the entire resolution happened so quickly. the writers just tied it off and threw it away.

in general the women’s plot lines lack momentum. they spin their wheels till they reunite at the compound, then have a clip show until it’s time to commit mass suicide for some reason.

jeff never actually confronting real shauna about her repressed feral side.

'we conveniently forgot things' ..... no. lottie did on acct of the electroshock. none of the others should have. this feels like the writers trying to justify the continuity errors and sudden reframing of lottie as Misunderstood Reluctant Prophet.

'travis never believed in lottie' except he did and we don't even see him lose faith. another inconsistency (no, this can't be 'nat not understanding travis' because dude, she's his best friend, lover and the most important person in his life.)

all of episode 9.

ben burning down the cabin. i think he'd do it, but he isn't the best arsonist for the job (more on that below)... also are we not doing 'two warring clans' anymore? because who the fuck would join ben's after he did this?

massive missed opportunity for nat and travis to like. talk. alone. about what happened with javi. there's no resolution with that.

nat doesn't even really have a moment where she breaks down over it. she just goes numb, then participates in javi's butchering as if she weren't trying to save him only hours ago, with no indication of a changed mindset.

lottie becoming fully passive. what a letdown. she went from the character with the most potential as of the end of s1 to a wad of wet tissue paper.

nat becoming the leader.... seems heavily implied she's the antler queen, not to mention all the promo has been screaming 'come find out who aq is tonight!' so it sure looks like it.... no this doesn't make sense. it's ooc for her to accept this role and lottie's influence. it just does not gel with what we've seen of her so far.

it 100% feels like the writers, after spelling out lottie as the leader of the wilderness cult in s1 (that slow build of her embracing her delusions, attributing it to divine powers, seizing control of the girls as jackie loses power for good, starting the sacrificing, "who the fuck is lottie matthews" being a question meant to make us afraid), decided they wanted a Big Twist and decided to cram it in here to surprise Reddit. more on this later.

the only way i can see this working is 'each season, we get a new queen. s1 was jackie, s2 was lottie, s3 will be nat, s4(/5 if they get that far) will be tai/shauna. and each season shows each queen's affect on the group, how her power wanes, and how she's deposed and replaced.'

HOWEVER: nat accepting leadership FROM lottie? no.

and what the hell was all that heavy foreshadowing that Only Lottie would be it.

the pacing of the adult plot felt so off and i couldn't even tell if they were hunting lottie or shauna by the time the hunt got started. the resolution of the adam plot was so sloppy. no resolution for anything with taissa. van sure was There. did lottie poison all her followers or not.

nat's death. i'm cool with nat dying in s2. yellowjackets is shauna's story before anyone else's-- she's our protagonist. nat was (WAS... i guess) the one voice of reason, and responsible for the girls' survival, and lottie the voice that guides the girls into self destruction. if lottie's way of thinking is going to overcome the women in the present, that means nat can't counteract it. therefore, nat must die, and s2/s4 (the Season of Conflict or the Season of Emotional Lows) are the right times. s2 is better bc it inspires the characters to get more active earlier in the story.

but dude. not like THAT????

i still don't know if nat bought lottie's story about travis or not. i still don't know if nat started to truebelieve the cult shit. i still can't tell if nat was in on killing lottie or decided to help hunt shauna. she just... goes with no closure on any of those questions

i'm cool with her sacrificing herself for lisa. good parallel to failing to save javi.

but 'i dove in front of lisa to save her from.... misty quigley, who is smaller than me, who is running at her very slowly with a tiny needle that she jabs through my many many layers of thick clothing, and it contains a poison that kills me instantly' ....... is so dumb.

making it all about ~misty losing her bestie~ ......... nat never even referred to misty as her bestie. the filming doesn't seem to make it seem like misty's overselling it. the show seems to genuinely think in that moment that they're best friends.

oh my god that was for the fandom wasn't it.

nat's dying hallucination. what was that. 'i was dead the whole time so i should accept my death now' what. also why does she see lottie in her vision and not travis?

the finale left me full of doubt abt the future of the show. now i don’t trust the writers to do a good job anymore. bad place to be in.

the cracks:

1. inconsistent characterization

example: akilah. her being played by a totally different actress doesn't count. that couldn't be helped. i'm talking about how akilah goes from being a true believer of lottie's to 'i never bought into it, i'm just riding the fence' without a moment of acknowledgment that her faith faded... and then it doesn't even go anywhere bc she instantly follows lottie's lead and swears fealty to nat

example: shauna. she has a special bond with javi that totally evaporates in s2. it's fine if it breaks down, you just need to acknowledge in-show that it did. have javi approach shauna, probably during her labor, and be rejected.

big example: nat. why the hell would she agree to stay in the cabin and become the girls' leader. she was never particularly close to them, they just tried to murder her, she doesn't trust lottie's bs and she isn't the leader type. it just feels like the writers wanted a twist.

BIG example: lottie matthews. see below.

2. pacing and timeline confusion. you mean the adult plot all happened one week away from s1? dude. tell us immediately, not in episode six. do you know how many gripes about taissa being a senator who never goes to senate and abandoned sammy at school for days we could have avoided.

not to mention ep 9 switching from night to day to night in MINUTES.

the adults conveniently forgetting things about their time in the woods... oh, it's so the writers can retcon the hell out of it and claim 'unreliable narrator', I see

the drag of the adult timeline

in the past, the slowburn was the right move. shauna's labor and the first hunt arrived at the exact right times. but the characters just kind of ebb and flow through the season-- nat'll be super important for three episodes, then sit in the background for three, then she pops up again. that kind of shit. like, javi literally sat in the corner for shauna's birth. dude was Not There. what the hell. no one comments on ben being missing in ep 8 or 9

ben. his hallucinations were great, but did we really need four of them?

3. redshirts. i get that covid made this necessary in s1, but in s2 we're starting to have a problem. crystal was fantastic, but gen and melissa don't have distinct personalities. they don't have interests or hobbies. they just say lines that could be interchangeable. they're like the mari and akilah of s2, except at least we could tell mari and akilah's personalities apart.

there are three yellowjacket girls who have yet to be cast. hopefully they have personalities and the writers put real effort into building them and genlissa out.

otherwise when they're all eaten, it won't feel important.

crystal proves it's possible to do. so do it. fast.

4. fandom

the cast and writers are way too online. they should not be on reddit, reading fan theories or sharing their favorites in public. they should not be in these spaces.

it feels like misty's now the fandom interpretation of her (but straight), that taivan were softened to appeal to their popularity, that lottie especially was retconned into a well intentioned character and nat into the leader of the cult as a way to Stay Ahead Of The Fans.

even the alanis morrisette cover of the theme that keep playing feel like the writers are like 'look at us! we're a famous show now!'

at this rate they’ll make akilah pit girl

...'no one guessed the ending yet!' say the cast and writers............ yeah. because no one imagined how bad of an idea it would be.

the consequences:

1. if we can't rely on the characters to be consistent between seasons, how can we get excited about watching them grow, if they might be totally different people or jump out of their projected arcs for shock value/bigger appeal?

2. how can we care about the adult timeline at this point. and as for the teens, s3's gotta cover spring-summer-fall. if they do a 3-ep act for each like they did this season, that's a lot of time to cover.

3. if genlissa still have no distinguishing characteristics, and the redshirts follow in their footsteps, how will we care when they're the bulk of who's killed off next season and in s4? (bc gen and mari should be getting a ticket to s4 to keep pit girl intrigue alive)

4. if the cast and writers are consumed with giving the people what they want (shocking twists! surprise, lottie isn't the ringleader even though s1 very carefully built up to revealing her as it. she's just misunderstood!) how are they going to stay faithful to what the story needs. can we even trust their instincts anymore?

as for the characters, best execution to worst:

the greats—

SHAUNA

the only arc that feels great start to end. as befits the protagonist.

her issues with her daughter are fully fleshed out and so visceral. everything with the pregnancy is great.

trying to cling to jackie after her death? loved that.

being the one who starts the cannibalism? loved that.

formally becoming the butcher? loved that

initially being a skeptic/fearful of lottie, and succumbing to blind worship after her stillbirth trauma? makes sense. dynamic and fascinating. her rejecting the hunt in the present when she joined in the past? good shit.

as much as i HATE antler queen nat, shauna being petty that she didn't get picked as lottie's favorite felt right.

and modern shauna trying to cling to a normal that's quickly dissolving? Good Shit

looping jeff and callie in here: also great. callie learning more about her fucked up family, jeff being stagnant but still allowed to display hidden depths as we learn he does genuinely Know All Of It, the awakening of violence in callie as shauna's traumas are passed on to her... and the way lottie latches onto that and gets creepy about it? yes please.

MARI

love mari being a hater, and keeping up her role as cook

love mari descending into fanaticism.

love mari breaking down when no one can see her. alexa barajas killed this role

mari is a social opportunist. misty is an antisocial one. mari understands how group hierarchy works and how to climb it, but has no skills to offer. misty doesn't, but has the skills. looking forward to see how this plays out going forward.

mari is the front runner for pit girl and it should still be her— two contenders are no names, one is gen, who has no personality or arc yet. mari finally having her opportunism catch up to her and her blind faith used against her is a fitting end.

AKILAH

love expanding her character and giving her more scenes with tai.

love her backstory about her sister and nephew, rachel, and wanting to keep studying.

love the nugget subplot

love her introducing a third party of 'idk if this cult shit is real, but i like having friends'. wish we got more insight into how she arrived at this conclusion since in s1 she is very much a lottie minion

feels like she’s coming to represent compromise: fine, ill become a cannibal, but im keeping my hope of escape alive. fine, i’ll go to woods church but just for the people. fine, i'll hunt nat but please can we not let javi drown.

but then it went nowhere.

idk man it felt like they were preparing akilah for a defection to nat's faction but then all that never happens

CRYSTAL

proof the writers can make the extras distinct and vibrant while still serving an efficient story purpose.

she was a minor character for five episodes but she's such a standout. great performance. great use of her. great writing

she came in, gave misty the origin of her theatre hobby and her ability to manipulate, and peaced out. a side char at her best.

JAVI

represents innocence. he had to die to mark the start of the ruthlessness. fantastic execution.

love his contribution of the cave mystery

love his connection to nat and travis

just don't love how he does nothing for all of ep 6

mixed bag—

TRAVIS

my boy. loved his arc. until ep 9.

it was important for him to try the lottiecult out, so that way when he disowns it it feels more dynamic.

except then he never... disowns it.

so what's all nat's 'travis never believed that' stuff. is the disowning still coming, or did the writers Kinda Forget.

mvp of episode 8

then in ep 9 he just... accepts that he has to eat his brother and stay with the girls who murdered them. bare minimum i was hoping for him to take off with ben (and nat) as a step towards being a more active character.

now he's right back to sitting in a corner.

my hot take is that the fandom hates him in the exact same way fandoms of mostly-male ensembles hate the one underwritten female character who's there to be a love interest. they demonize her every action, refuse to examine her situation with empathy, and insist her relationship with the fan fave bad boy is toxic/she's unworthy of him, so they can mentally break him up with her and ship him with the same-sex chars he has interesting dynamics with, but in a watered-down shallowed-out fluffed-up version of the relationship they originally had.

also, i find the idea that shauna and tai (two women who are toxic to their partners)'s insistence that natravis were toxic is rooted in them being angry that travis and nat resisted the cult groupthink together; we're not the bad ones, they are. i'm still disappointed that didn't happen.

wish he got to develop a connection with coach a la tai and akilah’s bond. coulda been great.

anyway.

NATALIE

becoming increasingly isolated as she clings to rationality while the others descend into woods woo woo madness? loved that.

her friendship with ben isolating her even more from these girls who never liked her in the first place? loved that.

a complex arc with travis regarding javi? loved that.

her bond with lisa is sweet. her attempts to deprogram her? loved that.

the entire first hunt was fantastic.

what was that ending. what the fuck.

wilderness cult queen nat doesn't make sense. see the above reasons why. feels like this is just here to shock us. and i'm shocked... that it's this stupid. her being A Queen i'm fine with-- just not the one leading the exact cult that JUST TRIED TO MURDER HER and DROWNED HER BOYFRIEND'S BROTHER.

i'm cool with nat being singled out as a leader by lottie.

but the only way it'd work for me is if nat rejects the crown, runs for the woods, and sticks with ben. then you can have future drama where lottie's cult descends further into madness, and nat blames herself for not staying and taking control. and a queen-in-exile vibe that makes her especially alluring to the girls as an alternative to lottie

hopefully we'll get that if she's deposed. if. if.

again, her dying? i'm cool with it. like that? hell no.

so travis's extremely suspicious death was a Convenient Accident and poor lottie is innocent in all of it? fuuuuck off.

so lottie stalking natalie long enough to know exactly when she was in danger of suicide is just... not mentioned? fuck off.

(so the bank lady being stalked by lottie.... goes nowhere? fuck off)

so nat really did drink the kool aid, fall under lottie's spell, and get killed for it while blaming herself and insisting she's been dead since the crash. fuck offffff.

uhhh—

MISTY

watching her learn that through acting she can manipulate the girls was great.

revealing her opportunism during the javi hunt and springing into action to assert 'lottie's will' over the others bc it raises her status? great.

loved her toxic theater girl psychosexual friendship with crystal. the way it ends felt earned and natural... mostly.

though honestly i think she needed to push her off that cliff. i worry that the writers are softening her up to appeal to the misty fandom

do the writers and actors know if misty is misunderstood or coldblooded? i can't tell anymore.

100% think the framing of nat's death is for the mistynat stans

walter why

TAI

past tai starting out a skeptic and succumbing to belief because of the baby's loss? love it.

teen tai leading the hunt is great.

her relationship with van is great but i get the vibe that it was softened to appeal to the shippers. the big conflict between them re lottie never really erupted.

so zero answers about what's going on with her split personality in the present huh

biggest victim of the bad timing in the present.

sammy is still waiting for someone to pick him up from school

VAN

her being alive in the present is a big ? to me. feels like a massive oversight that she wasn't mentioned in s1. reeks of 'we didn't plan this'

still kinda wish she weren’t in the present

the business was in character though, and her seemingly being more attracted to tai's shadow self than tai herself? intriguing. can we make that actually go somewhere though? with payoff?

but her getting increasingly vicious in the past was great.

however i feel like she was held back specifically to make taivan soft moments for the fans. van's big struggle needs to be tai or lottie, and it seems like they deliberately avoided making her choose.

i get the vibe that mari's crazy devotion was meant to be van's, but they swapped it bc taivan softness trumped all

van having cancer never has any payoff. at this point i kinda hope it gets her. or that she died in the woods

GENLISSA

they were there

they feel like one hive mind. like the poor man's mari-akilah

their designs are great but idk a thing about them

the tiny details: melissa participates in the hunt while gen stays to pin down travis, melissa reads magazines over and over, the girls seem to be genuine friends, the girls prepare natalie for her hunt instead of lottie, yet are wilderness true believers... all that feels like it's incidental, after ep 9.

THE EXTRAS

didn't do anything mindmeltingly bad.

but dude you have to fast track their characterization.

gen and mari shouldn't die until s4 so the pitgirl mystery is still somewhat intact, meaning that we've gotta frontload the deaths with redshirts. gonna be tough to care if we've never even heard them speak.

we've seen the writers flesh out crystal. we know they can do it.... so do it, dude.

please god no—

BEN

said elsewhere: the pacing of his arc is So Off.

starting the season with him mapping the valley, and ending with him using that knowledge to find the tree cave? great payoff.

him sinking into depression after watching the girls become cannibals was great. took too long to wake up.

benching himself during the birth was infuriating. dude, you are the only adult, you are the health teacher, you were these girls' coach for months if not years before the crash. get the fuck up and help this teenager through her labor.

and burning down the cabin... no. it doesn't seem like his act to make.

at this point i can't imagine anyone joining his faction, so why is he even still alive

also how is this fucker gonna survive. he can't hunt. he can't walk. he's the wilderness's most wanted. he has no one who'll do that for him.

LOTTIE

the retconning of this character from all-but-confirmed leader of the group to 'nope it's nat!', from bloodthirsty wannabe queen bee finding her confidence in the wild and finally unleashing it to 'oh dear i didn't mean for you girls to take it this far'.... i think this killed the show. or at least gave it a serious stab wound that's going to kill it unless they do a Lot of heavy lifting in s3 to repair it, which is unlikely.

Poor Lottie is one of the big fandom consensuses. oh don't we feel so sorry for assuming she's the big bad when she was nothing but a victim all along! she didn't do anything, she was gaslit and manipulated! ~all she wants to do is help~

and now the writers seem to be backing it, with how s2 shakes out.

in s1 lottie is something of a foil to jackie: both are affluent girls, only children. but lottie's family ignores her while jackie's spoils her. lottie is medicated and hidden away, jackie is indulged everything. lottie and jackie both have a capacity for being deeply mean-spirited, but jackie has the confidence to be the queen bee, while lottie hovers in the background. as jackie falls apart in the woods, lottie starts to feel freer. she starts talking back and snapping at the girls more, she (unhealthily) embraces her 'visions' (delusions) thanks to laura lee as jackie's friendship with shauna evaporates, she finds some kind of faith in a new order as jackie loses hers in the old one. the loss of the laura lee-lottie, shauna-jackie gay as hell friendships marks disaster and a transfer in the girls' social order.

they are very much meant to be compared to each other. and lottie is to be understood as a tragic character sinking deeper into delusions because she just wants to feel special for the first time.

yes, lottie is not evil. she's anxious, needs reassurance from others, and initially very hesitant about her hallucintions/visions.

BUT.

she is not a victim. she is not the manipulated, misunderstood sweet girl who only has good intentions.

... literally the first thing lottie does when she's in control of the girls is pick up a weapon, whip them into a rabid frenzy and lead them to humiliate jackie (aka the highest-ranked girl, who lottie is now challenging for leadership), take her sexual partner, and when said partner rejects them, they assault, hunt and try to sacrifice him.

yes, she's under the influence of shroomberry booze and sad about laura lee dying... but dude. just imagine if charlotte were charlie and travis were tanya. would you really be saying 'oh charlie didn't mean to get half a dozen boys to sexually assault tanya, strip her naked, chase her, tie her down and try to murder her when she rejected him, he was just drunk and sad'

all the shrooms did was remove everyone's inhibitions: natalie becomes happier, giggly, and acts from her heart to patch things up with travis. ben comes out and tells misty to fuck off. misty tries to fuck ben. shauna lashes out at jackie. van lets go of her scar shame..... and lottie does That.

yes, the other girls do That too. akilah, mari, van, taissa, shauna, probably-melissa-but-who-knows-they-never-bring-it-up all participate. but lottie is the one who starts it, by taking them to the cabin with the stated intent of taking something away from jackie forcibly, by starting the attack on jackie and the assault on travis, by telling the girls to think of him as a stag and leading the chase, by handing shauna a knife and telling her to kill him when they have him tied down.

when lottie has no inhibitions, she seeks power over her peers, and uses manipulation and violence to get and keep it.

then on day two lottie shows no signs of remorse, only slight embarrassment (it reads as 'sulky teenager upset that she got caught doing something bad', not 'oh god what have i done'), and goes right into sacrificing a bear heart and 'shed the blood, my beautiful friends. and let the darkness set us free'

where the fuck did that girl go.

at this rate there better be some entity at play, bc that's the only way to excuse lottie's 180 back to passivity.

if they wanted a story about lottie being a tragic prophet figure, having her well-meant words and intentions twisted despite only wanting to help, then you probably should make sure her intentions are actually well-meant. because of doomcoming, the tone was set to expect the worst. and then it was walked back with no on-screen change of heart.

if you'd done that, if lottie had addressed doomcoming and mentioned that she's regretful and doesn't want things to go down that road again, then lottie's arc would be about trying to control her worse impulses (her mean streak, her hunger for validation, her desire to punish the girls who threaten her power, her interest in possessing travis, her bloodlust, her ability to use her empathy for the other girls to manipulate them into becoming their worst selves, her belief that she's Chosen, the woods Picked Her, don't you see, she's not crazy, she's Special) as the girls keep persuading her to give into them, before ultimately succumbing to the role of tragic villain

just because lottie wants to help doesn't mean she can, and she won't accept it, because in the wilderness, the girls listen to her and validate her illness instead of ignoring her and shutting it up like her parents did.

the group wants lottie's validation and easy answers, they need nat's realism and heart.

that would mirror her adult plotline well-- lottie is trying, again, to have her cake and eat it too. she wants to be important, and loved, and eco-friendly, and a healer, but she also wants that rolex, and that specific smoothie (and if she doesn't get it she'll litter that eco-friendly cup and straw without a second thought), and total control over her followers and all their money and attention.

the (stalking and) kidnapping of nat/convergence of the yellowjackets just sets her back down that path towards cannibal shamanhood.

sure, give her electroshock to repress the memories. i like that angle. but the point needs to be that because of (murdering travis, she needs to have killed travis, come on) nat's presence setting her off, all those electroshock-repressed memories are returning....

just like in the past, lottie is faced with the same question: the girl you are deep down has always been repressed, and now she's starting to emerge, and it feels so good to finally become yourself... but what if that girl is dangerous? what if she's malicious?

lottie having doubts about her visions is important. but her fully succumbing to 'oh dear me i hate that everyone's taking my words and twisting them' just makes her a passive character.

poor lottie might be more likable, but she's so much less compelling. i hate this regression with all my heart. the idea of future episodes with passive, woe is me lottie makes me not want to watch them.

the crowning jewel of this is when she says 'nah i'm not in charge, nat is'

girl. are you kidding me.

top of my head season doctoring:

adult timeline. far more general bc it seems much harder to tie up.

immediately establish in the adult timeline how long it's been since s1.

no walter.

pair misty up with kevyn instead. misty reports nat missing, he takes it personally, they go on a buddy cop adventure where kevyn learns a lot about the wilderness years. and misty tries, again, to make a friend. this woman is a citizen detective, you know she'd love to hang out with a real one and play with his badge.

as for kevyn, i get the sense that his goth to cop pipeline was triggered by the crash. watching his best friend/first love vanish, and then the rescue efforts totally fail to find her and then give up, then learning if they'd just kept looking they could have saved her sooner? probably a pretty formative experience.

*scribbles walter out of the poster, draws kevyn in his place* fixed it!

no notes on shauna's arc, just on the pacing: wait a few episodes before the cops get on her tail. if it's only been a few days, no way are they gonna figure it out that fast. spend the first third of the season dealing with the aftermath, the second third with the cops appearing in their lives, the final third with them on the ropes. with kevyn partnered with misty, just have her and callie deal with creepercop alone.

taissa's series arc seems to be about control. her continuing to spiral as the other emerges is good. her fleeing to seek out van... honestly idk about that-- i don't like how van is just conveniently in society but never mentioned in s1, even though she clearly had relationships with the girls for a while afterwards. i'd find it more interesting if the other can find van but taissa can't. and have the other creep around the compound too.

in general, more emotional impact regarding simone and sammy? tai just ditches them. just give her some kind of closure for simone and sammy by the end?

give van more of a consistent arc-- leaping right back into lottie's shit like an addict into an old fix bc she wants her cancer cured

yes, keep lottie's initial intentions ambiguous. but slowly reveal her manipulative side over the season, and make the mask-off moment one where we see doomcoming lottie's return. think of how creepy she is with callie. more of that.

give nat closure abt travis. what was she right about? how did he die?

how he died: lottie killed him to get the gang back together. she misses her delusions and her specialness, and knew if she killed travis, she'd destabilize nat and make the others come running.

let nat remain skeptical of lottie to the end, instead of swinging back and forth between 'i don't trust you' and kool aid chugging

... did lottie poison her entire cult or not? i'm in favor of the mass suicide option. she doesn't need her placeholder cult anymore, now that she has the original one back. time to clean house and give It such a big sacrifice that It can never ignore them again.

is tai now on team cult? tbh i'd prefer if she were. more intriguing, and a bigger threat for s2 if shauna, who's just broken out of the groupthink, might find herself alone against the others. killing biscuit got her that senate seat and a reunion with van, what more could she gain?

(misty could go either way, i think. true opportunist.)

i'm 50/50 on kevyn dying. if he does, absolutely not by drinking an obviously suspicious drink given to him by a cult member. have him enter the line of fire during the hunt or something.

if he doesn't, he could be a good ally for the women down the line, so in my head i'd keep him.

regardless at least let him talk to nat. they mean a lot to each other. fuckin wild that he never realizes she's on the compound, or gets to ask her abt her involvement in the adam martin case.

pedostache dies no matter what. let callie shed blood— let the violence of the mother visit itself upon the daughter. let callie kill this gross fuckwad when he tracks shauna to the compound.

the yellowjackets frame lottie for adam's murder. kevyn can be a key part in this— he’s protective of nat and enough seeds could be planted re lottie being dangerous and wanting to lure the women back into her influence— he could swing the investigation in a way that implicates her and protects shauna.

but instead of lottie being back in the asylum, send her on the run. no repetitive return to the ward, more opportunities for conflict in s3.

if nat's gotta die, make the scenario less stupid. connect it more to lottie, her antagonist, instead of misty and a little needle. and let her see travis in her dying moments. it's literally all she wants.

anyway with nat dead, now the women are alone with lottie, who is on the loose, fascinated by callie, and pissed at them. they have to be the ones to resist her influence now without anyone coming to help them.

specifically, shauna's potentially all on her own, with tai and van on team wilderness and misty a wildcard, as winter in the adult timeline sets in.

teen timeline:

bring back the flashbacks showing the chars’ backstories. we kind of have ben this season. show us travis, akilah, mari, crystal, van.

even kevyn and jeff could be a good insight into the day everyone realized the plane went missing. what was that like for the friends the girls left behind?

give gen and melissa some distinguishing characteristics. like, make them a couple instead of friends. give them distinct hobbies and skillsets. build on the crumbs of melissa as a mini-van who does manual work, gen as a mini-shauna who does camp work. sow some tension: melissa is pro-wilderness cult (acknowledge that she was involved in lottie's doomcoming hazing), but gen isn't. or the reverse. or have them flip positions. give them something.

begin the season with lottie walking back her behavior because of doomcoming guilt... but have her give in now and then to those impulses; she's angry that not everyone believes her/calls her crazy like her parents did.... then she gets worried about what the consequences of that anger are as she realizes the girls aren't listening to her requests to settle down, and prefer her when she's at her worst.

specifically, lottie is more antagonistic towards nat, and has to warm up to her throughout the season as she also loses confidence in her ability to lead.

when lottie participates in the hunt contest, she's the one who refuses the gun and gains some respect for nat in the aftermath

in ep 6, give javi a moment where he tries to comfort shauna and is rejected. closure on their former friendship.

in ep 6, ben gets off his ass and out of his hallucination and helps deliver the baby, but it still dies.

recontextualize ben's total alienation from the group and suicide attempt in 7 as the girls totally losing respect for him after the baby doesn't survive, and ben being guilty enough to try cliff diving.

lottie offering herself to shauna in 7 is great. keep that.

8 is great. keep it all.

as for 9....

i like lottie having an 'uh what the fuck' moment when she realizes what everyone did on her behalf.

have the girls acknowledge that ben's fucking missing? why does no one bring it up?

can ben find crystal's body? so we know how he's gonna survive the winter? closure??? please???

give a few girls-- akilah most of all, moments of hesitation.

i like natalie rejecting ben's offer to run away together. the guilt feels right. she Would feel obligated to stay.

this is where travis comes in. how the fuck does he decide to stay with these girls after they make him eat his brother's RAW HEART?

he should still eat it. important moment of teen girl peer pressure taken to its most terrifying extreme.

lottie announcing nat as Chosen By The Wilderness... it feels in character for lottie to think this (and want to pawn off responsibility after getting more and more uncertain about it), but out of character that nat would accept it.

how about this: lottie wants nat to get over her skepticism and get in line with the rest of the girls. surely this Sign from The Wilderness will do it. and because lottie is freaking out about how the girls keep doing crazy shit on her behalf, she wants someone else to take responsibility.

so she picks natalie. now you're in charge. you deal with it. your cross to bear. come see how hard it is to get these girls in line.

natalie rejects it. she runs outside, and travis follows her because...

nat and travis need time to talk about javi alone. travis needs to know what happened beyond 'the wilderness chose' and nat needs to let her worries out. let's hear travis's end of why he believed in the lottiecult: he wanted to fit in with the group, he was terrified of dying, of javi dying, and wanted an easy answer. but now he knows there aren't any.

might be a good time for that anti-suicide pact we know they make (bc what's gonna make you want to kill yourself more than being indirectly responsible for your boyfriend's little brother's death, or being forced to eat your little brother's raw heart by his killers) and for travis to reaffirm what he says in 208: tell nat she is a good person right when she needs it the most.

they run into ben, who's been stealing supplies and watching them. they decide to leave together-- travis is On Board right way, nat now has enough faith in herself to go.

nat and travis are so angry at the group for killing javi, for forcing travis to go along with it, for trying to pawn off responsibility on nat, that they set the fire.

it's part pragmatism (we need supplies and the gun, which they won't part with, so let's distract them while we get what we need), part rage and grief (we hate them for what they did and want revenge), part desperation (lets take out as many as we can because after we leave we will be hunted).

and it’s important for the team rational faction to be as morally gray as team supernatural. attempting a mass burning of their former friends and leaving them for dead feels both appropriate given their personalities and the situation, and drags them off the moral high ground.

lottie crowns the queen of her rival faction, thus legitimizing her power and making her a favorable alternative for her followers to desert her for, which some certainly will...

... but nat starts the war between the girl clans, and makes the cult's situation far more dire by destroying their shelter and supplies, thus driving them further into madness.

the conflict between them and their groups is a snake eating its tail.

(+ Why Don’t They Leave When The Snow Clears Up: one faction has accepted they’ll live in the woods forever, the other won’t abandon a one-legged member who can’t make the trek… and is committed to hunting down or converting the former group first.)

at this point, i'd have akilah and at least one redshirt spot them, follow, and ask to join. payoff for akilah's quiet disagreement with lottie, an opportunity for a new character to get some spotlight immediately in s3 a la crystal, purpose for nat as an alternative to lottie for the other girls, and the start of the two factions.

end on the girls watching the cabin burn down. specifically on lottie —who tried to reign in her worst instincts all season and stop the girls from going feral— deciding that trying to resist those impulses was a mistake. she chooses to completely give in to their (and her) worst desires. the wilderness punished her for doubting it and showing weakness, for giving up power and crowning a false queen. she won’t do that again.

...... ugh. i'm getting incoherent. i'll probably discuss this more somewhere else some other time.

[cblgblog]

Is Comic!Peggy a nazi/hydra? Or in general a bad person? I'm a Peggy fan who hasn't read the comics and idk if what people are saying is true or not these days 1

No. As usual, people are cherry picking things/haven't read the comics themselves because they're too lazy/don't care about anything that doesn't serve their own agenda.

 So when they brought comic! Peggy back in the last couple years, they basically revealed that she'd been doing a riff on what both Nat and Sharon have done in the MCU. What I mean by that is that she was on the same side as Steve--the non-Nazi side--they both wanted the same bad guys dealt with, but they were essentially doing different assignments, without Steve knowing. It's like in Cap 2 after the ship when Nat's like, I did my thing. I just had another objective that you didn't have.

 So, as per the most recent run, Peggy’s revealed to have been part of a group called the Daughters of Liberty. Secret thing that’s been around the whole time, supposedly, we just never knew about it because the writer of this particular run hadn’t made it up yet. Essentially, it’s yet another secret organization meant to protect the world, that’s been here all along, with members including Peggy, Sharon, Sue Richards of the Fantastic Four, Misty Knight…a lot of badass Marvel women were secretly in this thing, okay? Including ‘It was Agatha all along’ Harkness, because comics are weird. Peggy was recruited into this thing, she did not start it, but she did recruit Sharon later.

 Anyway, during the war, she and Steve did their whole punching Nazis thing, but she was also tasked with getting close to him/generally making sure that this new super weapon man was on their side and trustworthy. So again, kinda what Nat did in Iron man 2, kinda what Sharon did in Cap 2 when she was watching him from across the hall.

 She was never a Nazi. She was never Hydra. She was working towards the same basic goals as Steve, they were just working for different people, essentially. So yeah, she lied by omission, and behaved somewhat shadily, but that’s, you know, kinda what spies do. And there’s no indication her feelings for him weren’t genuine. She never says that, Steve never says that. He’s annoyed that he wasn’t in the know, but generally speaking, he’s just happy she’s not dead, and they end the run on good terms, even though Sharon is his main love interest in the books.

So yeah, there’s a lot of bitching about oh, she’s a liar, she made Sharon a liar, everyone lied to Steve, these horrible bitch women. Which, fine, but it’s nothing that hasn’t been covered in the MCU to an extent already/nothing to the infinite number of times Nick Fury has also parceled out information selectively, comics and MCU both.

 She was never Hydra. She was never pro-Nazi. Steve was, in the comics, that one time none of us like to talk about because fuck you Nick Spencer, but she wasn’t. She lied by omission, but she didn’t fabricate feelings for Steve or use him for her own gain, and when it was all done with, Steve came away mildly annoyed and that’s about it. The run still ends with Steve, Peggy, Sharon and Bucky all chilling and having a beer together.

 She was a spy. She was written like a spy, she did some shady spy things, and that’s about all you can take from that run. Unless you’re a semi-illiterate Peggy anti, obviously.

[babygirl-diaz]

Hello !! it's your friendly Sam Wilson Anon !!

As you know by now, Sam Wilson is my favorite character in the comics and in the MCU. Sam has so many wonderful ships and some iconic friendships. So, my question is: What are your favorite Sam Wilson ships/friendships ?

My favorite romantic Sam Wilson ships are: Sam/Misty, Sam/Sharon, Sam/Bucky, Sam/Nat, Sam/Leila Taylor, Sam/T'challa and Sam/Happiness.

My favorite Sam Wilson friendships are: Sam and Sarah, Sam and Riley, Sam and Steve, Sam and Rhodey, Sam and Torres, Sam and Scott, Sam and Blade, Sam and Wanda and Sam and Luke Cage.

Thank You so much. Let's fill the Sam Wilson tags with love and good vibes !! (Please feel free to send this to others who also love Sam Wilson 🙂 )

Sorry for the late reply anon!

My favorite Sam ships are first and foremost Sam/Happiness and then Sam/Bucky, Sam/Steve, Sam/Nat, Sam/Joaquin. I've also read Sam/Erik Kilmonger fics which I really really loved. And I somehow also kinda ship Sam/Monica.

As for Sam friendships, I love Sam and T'Challa, Sam and Rhodey, Sam and Wanda, Sam and Misty, Sam and Luke, and of course Sam and Riley. I think Sam and Matt Murdock could make good friends too and Sam and Jessica Jones could make interesting friends.

[wenellyb]

Hey what do you think about sam and Bucky's potential love interests in cap 4? Like this thought has been on my mind lately and I came up with some answers. For sam i'd say 1)Bucky(of course he would be my first choice) 2)Sharon (I know that many people would disagree on this but frankly I think this is the best one we've got. I know that she is kinda a villain right now but sam can help her redeem herself like clint to nat. And sam and sharon are already friends and it's not like they're gonna introduce a new character and make her/him a love interest in the same movie.) For Bucky it'd be 1)Sam (ofc they are like made for each other) and 2) Sarah . Cause no one can deal with his dumb white ass except the Wilson siblings. And i know that my first choices are probably never gonna come true all with Disney's homophobic shit but i am still gonna keep my fingers crossed.🤞 PS : I am really sorry my rambling...

Hi Anon!!!

Never apologize for rambling lol. Great question, thanks for the ask. Here are my thoughts about love interests for both Sam and Bucky. I have to admit I was more inspired by Sam lol.

For Sam:

1) Bucky: I agree that Bucky would be a great choice as a love interest for Sam, the storyline is already great and they would be epic together. Unfortunately mark my words when I say that the fandom would be awful about it, with people creeping from other MCU fandoms I will not name to celebrate all the canon bi-Bucky headcanons they have and brush Sam to the side completely even though having a gay or bi Captain America would be the greatest news ever.

So in a perfect world Bucky, like you just said, but the fandom is far from perfect, so in practice, anybody but Bucky maybe...?

2) Misty. I know there is more a chance of us having Sam with an original female character that Misty, but I would give all my gold to have Sam x Misty relationship. I don't know how it would work out with the contracts and licensing and everything, but if there's a relationship I want to see in the MCU it's that one. Ever since I heard about Sam's character being involved with Misty in the comics I have been obsessed with the relationship and if it would happen in the MCU, wow. The potential, the storyline, the Power Couple, the everything.

3) Torres: Joaquin Torres and Sam Wilson spend half of the time they're together flirting. And I mean flirting. Not talking, not discussing. Flirting.

Their couple is just THERE... it's there, just add a heart emoji to each other contact's on the other's phone, write boyfriend and you already have a couple.

4) Sharon: I completely agree with you about the potential for Sam x Sharon and I would be here for their relationship. As you said, they're already friends and have a close relationship. I wish we had seen more flirting between Sharon and Sam, in the show. I mean we did see Sharon flirting, checking him out and complementing Sam but Sam wasn't exactly receptive. I really feel like a relationship between Sam and Sharon would work out great, even more with the reveal that Sharon is the Power Broker. I feel like I'm the only one who likes Sharon as the Power Broker, but the potential for drama and interesting storylines is much better like this. And Captain America, falling in love with a villain who then changes their ways because they fell in love back and can't stay a villain, because of ..love. Sign me Up.

For Bucky:

 I've already thought about it and it's a little bit complicated regarding Bucky, because expect Sam, Sarah and Leah, he doesn't really interact with a lot of characters (in a flirtatious way I mean), so the shipping potential is harder to see.

1. Sam. Of course

2.Sarah: I could really see a Sarah x Bucky storyline, besides the writer said that they already had that storyline planned out so it would work out great. They have already had plently of flirting and bonding moments so the ground work has already been set for a storyline in the future movies.

[marvellfashion]

11?

Hi anon!

11. Favourite ship?

I kinda don’t ship, either I root for the couples they gives us or don’t but I guess my favorite couples are Bucky & Nat, Billy & Teddy, Peter & MJ, Luke & Jess, Julio and Shatterstar and Sam & Misty... so literally everyone I’m a ROMANTIC 💁🏻‍♀️

Marvel Comics Ask Meme

[jq37]

The Report Card – Fantasy High Sophomore Year Ep 15

Love Wins!

Welcome to an insanely chaotic episode of Fantasy High--even by the very high standards of this show.  How chaotic you may ask? Well, the first thing that happens is that Bill Seacaster point blank shoots Gilear to death for being in a relationship with Hilariel. Full dead. He is full dead. Strangely, his plan to bring him back as a janky devil does not do much to comfort Fig. Imagine that.

Bill’s pirates are looting the Bottomless Pit (Gorthalax’s domain in Hell) and Vraz orders Fig to make them stop. When she instead orders Vraz to eat her ass, Vraz nullifies all warlock deals Gorthalax made and brings none other than Johnny Spells (and his greaser pals) to join the fight!

Really, this fight is insane and it’s better served by a highlight real than a play by play so I’m just gonna give you some bullets:

All the PCs rolled super low initiative this fight which really kinda screwed them. Like Fabian was down to 16 HP one point and it was like, “Lol, this is the end of round 1.” YIKES.

A big part of this fight was just surviving long enough to get to the second level of hell and rescue Riz’s dad which I think was probably good for morale because the thought of this fight dragging on for more than a couple of rounds exhausts me. 

Fabian rolls off against Johnny right off the bat for the Hangman’s loyalty and Fabian wins with a 25 (and by coming out the gate with the word ENSLAVED which isn’t the word *I* would have used but a 25 is a 25 I guess).

He also has to contend with fighting Allistair who has a massive hole in his head filled with fire from Wicklaw eating his brain. It seems like Chungledown Bim is in hell too based on how Allistair keeps saying he’s gonna get him so he can shit in Fabian’s mouth. Of course, Fabian gets the better of him, but not before he deals out a fair bit of damage. 

Adaine uses an Arcane Hand plus her portent roll to just whole-ass throw Johnny off the ship. Like, he gets back up but it’s so funny to instead of fighting an enemy to just throw him off a set piece (see eg: Bloodkeep ep2).

Kristen Revivifies Gilear and Bill, the mercurial sunuvabitch is like, “We love the same woman! I just want her happy!” and gives him a gun. Kristen immediately is like, “Bro, you need to hide,” and Gorgug protects him while he does so (in a sarcophagus that has a 50/50 shot of being launched as ammo). 

Penelope shows up to the fight, eyes all black, wearing a shredded prom dress, and with shards of silver embedded in her forehead like a crown. Dayne and Daybreak also join the fight as messed up Harvestmen! It’s a veritable Smash Bros lineup of people the Bad Kids have killed!

Adaine and Fabian are christened the “Posh Squad” which is important to me, not to the fight. 

Adaine gets to counterspell a counterspell from Penelope, one of the sexiest things you can do in D&D.

Fabian declares toxic masculinity dead. Shortly afterward, he makes Brennan eat a die when Daybreak tries to Frighten Fabian, a condition he is immune to due to his eyepatch I gather based on the table reaction. 

Daybreak’s punishment in hell is a complete lack of self-awareness of why he’s there. He still thinks he should be sipping Mai-Tai’s in corn heaven with Helio while Kristen and Ragh are attacking him with gay spit (their words, not mine). Gay spit and, also, a ton of radiant and thunder damage.

Ragh gets some emotional catharsis by getting to body Dayne before Gorgug decapitates him. Very important step in the stages of grief. Decapitating the source of said grief. 

Penelope gets Sparta-kicked off the edge of the boat by Fabian after Ayda dispels her protective globe and Riz shoots Daybreak again for old times sake. Unfortunately, Penelope Misty Steps back up and Daybreak is hurt but not killed. Ayda does a cool Dr. Strange teleportation thing and does a bunch of damage to both of them. Fabian finishes off Penelope with a sheet/sword combo and between Booming Blade and a Psionic Blast (does she have this ability as a Bard or as a Warlock? Relatedly, when she felt something leave her was that her Warlock deal being nullified or was she feeling the deals leave her since she is sort of the temporary Gorthalax?) Fig destroys Daybreak. Johnny just falls off the ship with no PC intervention because he sucks. 

Bill also falls off the ship but Fig (with an assist from Gorgug) saves him and steals a scroll from Vraz on the way back up. By the by, earlier in the fight, she also had Baby Invisbly steal a random item from her. 

Anyway, as they reach the end of the end of the fight, Bill loads Riz into a canon (!) and shoots him into the city, hopefully towards his dad (to the distress of his party). He crashes through the window in a familiar looking building and, when he finds a hallway that he’s pretty sure leads to his dad, he goes towards it. 

He sees a familiar light coming out of a doorway (the interrogation room light) and a doorway next to it that is slightly open with steel thrones in it. There’s a two-way mirror between the two rooms and if he goes into the open one, he can see who is in with his dad. After checking for illusions and finding none, he stealthily walks in and sees, in the other room, his dad with a hulking pit fiend (30 ft tall, winged, almost dragon-y devil).

The pit fiend is questioning Pok about any regrets he had in life and Pok answers very uncharacteristically from the man we saw in the video saying he had nothing but high hopes for baby Riz. He says he had no regrets, his job was just a job, and that he only had a kid because Sklonda wanted one before going into a snarling goblin rage. The pit fiend smiles at that and says that Pok has promise so they won’t create a lemure out of him (a lemure is a weak, blobby devil). Two devils in the room with them whip him unconscious and then leave the room to go send more people to deal with Bill.

Riz Misty Steps into the room and does a self-imposed Wisdom check to steady himself after what he just heard--Nat 20 baby. Then, he opens his Briefcase of Holding, ready to scoop his dad into it when, the two lesser devils open the door and catch him in the act. But Riz persists in the scooping. They try to grapple him and he rolls a Nat 1 to avoid it. He *still* tries to get him dad. But then he notices, his gun is missing.

BLAM. The devils heads are blown clean off. He turns and he sees his dad has taken the gun--his gun originally--and shot the devils. Pok, who is amazed that Riz is there and no longer feigning apathy for the situation asks for an extraction into an earpiece, causing a halo to appear over his head and a beam of holy light to come down like a tractor beam.

“Wait,” says Riz. “You’re an undercover angel?”

“You got it, kid.”

Murph goes feral. The table goes feral. I go feral. What a way to end an episode!  

And now for an all-Dad round of superlatives:

Detention

Bill Seacaster for KILLING GILEAR 

I feel like I shouldn’t have to explain myself here. 

Honor Roll

Pok Gukgak for Officially Joining the Fantasy Fathers of the Year Club

Here either. 

I will, however, add a Hell Yeah!

Random Thoughts

If you haven’t seen it yet, the trailer for S5 of Dimension 20 just dropped and I won’t spoil it but, from the looks of it, it is gonna be a doozy.  

“Do not metagame with my freaking Dad!” Oh to have the support of an NPC Emily Axford has decided to imprint upon.

Gorgug: It’s been one year. We’re sophomores. 

“We support you as a DM and as your friend but also you’re our enemy.”

I think it’s very interesting that with just a little space and time from his dad, Fabian is finally having the proper reactions to his dad doing what I will charitably call shenanigans.

The level of distress and outrage from Emily when Gilear got shot was just *chef’s kiss*. I aspire to create an NPC that provokes that level of reaction from one of my players. Similar energy in a different direction from Ally when Daybreak attacked Tracker.    

“Adaine, the jocks are being feisty! Get out of there!”

Vraz calls Fig “the Faithless” as her devil title and she insists on instead being called, “the InFaethable”. I wanna know how long Emily’s been sitting on that one or whether she came up with it on the spot. 

Fabian upon seeing Johnny: Fuck off dude. I have too much going on right now. 

Brennan being the eternal DM mood: How do I get out of this?

Very wild how little time has passed since Leviathan. Like, Fabian’s had this whole arc and grown so much but, like, OF COURSE Allistair still wants to murder him! It’s been like two days. 

“I want to crumple up Gilear like a wrapper.”

A seven is a Murph 10.

The very specific way Brennan does foley for sword fighting (“Clang! Cling! Clang!”) is so funny to me. 

Cannot overstate how much of a power move it was for Kristen to go, “I’ve been PRAYING FOR YOU,” at Daybreak and knock him on his ass. 

I feel like I bring this up all the time but I love when Brennan is counting dice for a ton of damage and all the PCs are BSing reasons that it’s not a big deal like, “He’s just getting D4s,” or “Well I should get advantage for the reason just made up,” with everyone else fully playing along. ”

Allistair Ash, man. He is fascinating to me. I am so curious about what Brennan had planned for him originally because I feel like we barely scratched the surface before things took a TURN. He had two little moments in this ep that made my heart break for him a little: (1) When he says to Fabian, “If I die, I just come back a little bit worse but, if you die, you’re stuck down here with me.” and (2) when Fabian kills him and Bill grabs his soul and is like, “You know it’s gonna cost you X gold to revive you,” and he sighs and says, “Put it on my tab I suppose.” Like, I know he spent all ep trying to kill Fabian but I can’t help but be like, poor guy. He just has this pathos in his haplessness. I’m surprised Fabian didn’t make more of an effort to connect with him instead of being like, kind of like, “I will throw hands if I must.” Talking is a free action my dude. Anyway, I would love to see Brennan’s DM notes for this guy.   

Lou was really doing some expert D&D with all the second winding and bonus actioning and burning spell slots for extra damage he was doing. He was like, “My initiative is trash so I have to do approximately a million damage per turn.”

Lol at Ayda asking if it’s weird to talk about sex stuff in front of friends in a group that involves both Kristen and Adaine. 

Fig wishing she could do something cool in front of Ayda as if Ayda didn’t try to flood Hell on her behalf last week. My girl. You’ve already locked that down.

Not really an issue that’s we’ll run across during the run of FH but tieflings live 20-40 years longer than humans according to the official D&D lore. So lets say Fig lives to be 120 years old. And let’s say she sticks with her high school girlfriend and marries her. It’s possible they die at around the same time and then Ayda has to Deal With That in her next life but that’s not what I’m interested in. What happens if you’re a full elderly woman and your partner phoenixes into a child? What are the ethics of that? How do you deal with that? Chronomancy?

The horrified, “Love wins!” from Daybreak.

 Is there a reason the viewing room Riz was in had thrones in it or is Hell just very about the ~aesthetic~

Every time a DM asks for a HP total, my entire being clenches in prep for a Power Word Kill. 

“I’m gonna need a Dexter--”/”Counterspell.”

“You guys murdered me too but we hashed it out.”

I totally forgot that the Bad Kids lied that Ragh had shat his pants until the moment Adaine was saying it this episode. Freshman Year was WILD.

Also, just wanna take a second to talk about the elevation of Ragh from this side-note bully to a fully fledged, likeable character with depth and and an arc and gay spit. D&D is crazy. 

Summoning Boggy via Bloody Mary is such a delightful image. 

So, Kalina is the one that led Riz down the path that led to him finding out Pok is an Undercover Angel (!!!), which means one of three things: (1) She knew but miscalculated hard, (2) she didn’t know and made a different but also big miscalculation, (3) she did know and she’s doing some kind of 4-D chess thing we don’t know about yet. 

Ayda hitting Fabian with a portent and then swooping in and saving Adaine. So clutch. What a good NPC to befriend.

Speaking of, I think we all kinda figured, but Brennan officially said on Twitter or the Discord (I don’t remember which) that Ayda is autistic. Like, I was pretty sure but I didn’t wanna assume.

Lol at the absolute lack of respect Kalvaxus got in this episode. 

Pok as an Undercover Angel is SO GOOD. Like, I didn’t think he was really bad for a second but I never could have guessed he was an UNDERCOVER ANGEL. That’s such a dope combination of words. Undercover Angel (which my computer keeps trying to correct to undercover agent which isn’t wrong to be fair). Man. I love this. I love this for me and I love this for Riz. Riz deserves this. After so much crap in his life and so many mind games from Kalina and all this turmoil, he deserves to know that not only is his dad a good person who loved/loves him, he’s SO good that he’s an ANGEL and he was such a good spy in life he still is a secret agent in death. God, what a reveal. I can’t believe Riz got Spy Kids-ed TWICE by the same parent. Can’t wait to hear what exactly is going on with him.

Wait, what’s goblin heaven like? Which god is sanctioning this? Who is he working for exactly?

This episode, Kristen and Gorgug rolled 1 Nat 20 each, while Riz, Fabian, and Brennan each got 2. On the flipside, Adaine got 2 Nat 1’s, Fig and Fabian each rolled 1 that was cancelled, and Riz rolled 1 (in addition, Murph rolled two more which were lair actions and one of which was cancelled by a luck point so they don’t really count but it was very funny so I wanted to note it).

[othersidelines]

so you stan sharon now? i mean i don’t mind her i just hope they don’t ruin her character by reducing her to just a love interest again, and i kinda ship sambucky so i don’t want their relationship sidelined for a romantic subplot, sharon deserves to be a badass without having her whole identity tied to a man and being nothing but a plaything for another guy and being made useless again i mean endgame proved she’s just a second class peggy

i ship both sam and bucky with each other and with misty and nat so sharon wouldn’t be my first thought, however shipping it’s the least important thing in superhero movies/series/comics for me personally, i’m only here for the action scenes and stackie content but if they pair one of them with sharon i won’t mind, she has great relationships with both in the comics and if it’s well written, in character and makes them happy then what’s the problem? but at least on bucky’s part, marvel hates him so i’m barely expecting dialogue let alone a romantic subplot for him but if for some miracle he gets a decent plot, i don’t think sam and bucky’s relationship can get sidelined, it’s literally the falcon and the winter soldier show and it was made purely because of anthony and sebastian’s chemistry so i don’t really get what’s the issue here? 

as for sharon, she was one of the most underrated characters in the mcu, she has 7 minutes of screen time, was dusted offscreen, emily got really shitty treatment by two of her co-workers and marvel execs, and steggy stans harassed her on twitter for years, people ignored the badass stuff she did in favour of hyper fixating on her relationship with steve rogers, so instead of saying, you know what? i hope emily gets a better work environment this time, that sharon gets more screen time and action scenes or character development or meaningful relationships or that her long history from the comics gets honoured? nope, the most important thing for some people it’s that she doesn’t get to see sam or bucky’s dicks? i don’t know what’s more annoying, outright hate or fake concern, also yeah endgame was great for peggy, i love my female characters with no one single character trait or dialogue, that’ll show them!

side note: romantic relationships don’t ruin a female character, shitty writing does that, a well written character can have love and still be an amazing character, romantic subplots didn’t screw with the women in the mcu, markus and mcfeely, the russos, feige, and whedon did that, or are you going to tell me mera is useless, or nakia had her whole identity tied to a man? or that diana prince was reduced to a love interest????

[usagi-zakura]

Today on Adventure League

...I almost lost my favorite kobold...

I’m tired of referring to everyone simply as race and class (it got confusing since some also overlap) so I’m just gonna use their actual character names.... except for one who only wanted to be refereed to as “child.” (She is the party’s youngest...at least by race... Dott is younger at 10, but she considers herself middle-aged, and gets rather offended when people call her young.)

Child- Tiefling bard  Shaumar- Human Bard Wind- Tabaxi Cleric Tara- Human Paladin Cat- Elf monk (reason for a bit of confusion since the DM would frequently refer to the tabaxi as simply “cat” before she came along). Dott- My Kobold Ranger/Rogue Ttod- my wolf. (Frequently referred to as “the dog”) Hercules- Sir not appearing in this session- Goliath Barbarian. Amber- Miss not appearing in this session- Tabaxi rogue.  Loads of dead people- Dott’s previous party members. Also naturally not appearing because they’re dead. 

Also: Spoiler alert for Storm King’s Thunder. We’re made it to the finale somehow. 

So at the beginning of the session we met with three giants. One introduced herself as the missing Storm King’s daughter. 

Oh yeah there was a plot to this campaign wasn’t it? We’d been too busy gambling and robbing traveling traders to notice... (In our defense, they were demons..) 

Shaumar introduced the party as “The Chosen Ones” and the Princess claimed she’d already met some of those... this confused the party a little but then again there had been quite a few chosen ones over the past little while... Zefros the Cloud Giant just seemed to have a habit of picking up random adventurers calling them the Chosen Ones. 

These people had found signs of the Storm King in the “Trackless Sea” so she offered us an expensive ruby and a mysterious orb. 

We were then suddenly teleported to a  small coastal town. Our party’s combined intelligence isn’t particularly high so Wind decided clearly the orb was supposed to transform into a boat...so she yeeted it into the sea.

It did not transform, it just sank to the bottom.

The child transformed into a dolphin using polymorph and managed to retrieve it. 

After that Tara and Wind went to the docks to see if they could rent a ship to take us out to sea, while the rest of the party went to get some supplies, namely arrows.

Dott, not being very good at math, went into the supply store and dropped about 930 copper on the table asking how many arrows she would get for that... all of them apparently. So she stuffed about a hundred arrows into her bag of holding, and gave two stacks to Shaumar and Child. 

At the docks Tara and Wind only found two ships willing to take us. 

The largest one was owned by a crew of totally-not-pirates in creepy black robes, the other one staffed entirely by gnomes. 

Naturally.... we went with the totally-not-pirates. They seemed like a trustworthy lot. We paid using the ruby (despite Wind’s protests at giving up her shiny rock.)

So our sea-journey began. 

Not much happened for the next few days beside Tara learning how to sail, Child holding a concert for the crew, and Dott tied Ttod to the mast so he wouldn’t jump off the edge.

Then one day we spotted a storm in the distance.

The ship stopped, presumably to avoid sailing straight into the storm, but someone overheard the captain say in dwarvish that it was “almost time.”

Time for what?

An ambush of course...

Things didn’t go so well for our paladin as she ended up getting hit by a ballista and got stuck to the mast. 

The rest of us on the other hand basically massacred the crew, Child even took control of one of the ballista with “Animate Objects”, as well as animating a fancy puppet she had picked up along the way. The (very expensive) puppet was however sadly destroyed by one of the pirates.

Child shattered his head in response. 

Tara got herself free from the mast by using Misty Step and got healed by Dott...just as an even larger ship appeared in the storm, ramming straight into us, instantly killing the remaining pirate...

Also the ship we were on was now quickly sinking... 

We managed to get on board the other ship, finding it completely empty... and yet seemingly sailing on its own, always at the center of the storm.

The orb we’d been carrying was glowing extra brightly on this ship, even more so when we found what appeared to be the Captain’s quarters. 

Inside we found five bottled ships, one of them marked “Morkoth” as well as a torn up piece of paper. 

Child used her “smarts” to put the paper pieces back together, but no one was able to figure out what it said... except Dott. It was written in thieves cant. 

The message warned  not to open “Morkoth”.

Wind naturally went to try to open this bottle right away but Child put it in her bag of holding. Wind crushed another one of the ships in frustration. Dott being the hoarder she is, pocketed the remaining three. 

At this point we realized the orb was no longer glowing... but if we took the bottle ship out of the bag it glowed brighter than ever. 

So it seemed we had found our goal... but we had no idea what to do with it.. or how to get back to land since the ship seemed to be sailing on its own towards who knows where, and there was no food aboard... 

Eventually we just decided to open the bottle, assuming the ship may somehow escape we brought it outside, Wind however remained inside because she didn’t want to go out in the rain.

The cork was removed from the bottle and...we were immediately sucked inside.

All of us, sans Wind, fell into the water right in front of a large squid-shaped ship, while falling we spotted  several people walking around on the deck and in the middle, chained up, was a storm giant... wearing a crown.

Child polymorphed herself into an orcah and the rest of us got on her back. 

Shaumar used Greater Invisibility to try and explore the ship, and reported his findings to the rest of us, before we too climbed on board, and immediately attacked the crew. 

This battle however wasn’t quite as easy as the one with the pirates. 

A spellcaster appeared from inside one of the rooms, and cast Dominate Person on Shaumar.

And Dott...my darling Dott... was downed by a half-orc using a poisoned sword. 

Worst part is she was on a different floor when it happened so none of the rest of the party knew where she was or that she was even knocked out, they had enough to deal with with the mindcontrolled bard and the spellcaster.

Child spent much of the battle ramming the ship in orca form and Ttod was just kinda confused and scared.

Just to make matters worse I rolled a nat 1 on my death save... two out of three failures. Luckily however I rolled a 19 on the next one.

Ttod eventually sniffed his “mommy” out and ran up to the ladder barking to get the attention of the paladin, who probably could have done more if her only healing spells weren’t also touch spells. 

Thankfully Dott’s savior finally made it on to the ship, in the form of a purple whale... namely Child, who turned back to her tiefling form and cast mass healing word on the party. 

She then attempted to cast polymorph again but was counterspelled... 

Dott did manage to get revenge on the orc though, shooting him through the head from the second floor. 

Now only the spellcaster was left, (as well as the still mind controlled Shaumar, no amount of damage we did to the spellcaster seemed to break his concentration). 

But we did finally beat him. Ttod went down twice due to his low HP but thanks to the paladin he didn’t die...but he may have a grudge against Shaumar now. 

When the battle was over we managed to free the Storm King, as soon as the chains were off he woke up immediately, after a quick explanation (and a good persuasion roll) he did not immediately murder us, instead he teleported us out of the ship, and then the whole party (including Wind who’d been watching from outside the bottle this entire time) back to his daughter...

Back at the castle however we found the Princess paralyzed, her guard dead the third giant missing and a hole in the wall... a large dragon-shaped hole... 

[mattelektras]

random and wildest but also most savory foursome involving mattelektra you could imagine shipping? dc characters are also welcome... (i mean, it's not like bruce and matthew don't know each other)

OH GOOD CONCEPT.... elektra kinda hates men so it’s basically be girls she’d have a crush on and matt. ANYWAY

bruce and matt are the same level of fucking dramatic so maybe matt/elektra/bruce/talia. elektra would LOVE talia

matt/elektra/nat/bucky!!! boys who lost their gfs to each other’s gf

matt/elektra/betsy/warren

matt/elektra/misty/danny in 616. mcu mistydanny is evil

matt/elektra/selina/talia

matt/elektra/silver/wolverine

matt/elektra/kirsten/nat??? just matt’s good living girlfriends. elektra would treat them better than him

also the dream concept...... matt/elektra/betsy/neena... both the otps in one place

[couldcarefewer]

#i kinda ship misty with nat#they also have good chemistry i can say

every time a new viewer posts something like this an angel gets its wings

Im gonna stop watching yellowjackets for now bc if i watch one episode from my phone my battery drains a bit faster than usual but.. theres always tomorrow

ALSO WHY IS SHE SO WEIRDLY SO HILARIOUS LIKE IK SHE UNHINGED BUT I LIKE HER OK

[jq37]

The Report Card – Fantasy High Sophomore Year Ep 3

 Thanks, I Hate It!

This week, we move forward by first jumping backwards. Last episode, the Bad Kids found that Riz and Fig were missing. Now, we get to see what happened in the meantime. Riz was in his office, trying to put together anything new on the Nightmare King. We’re reminded that his sword--the Sword of Shadows which he got from the arcade and lets him misty step (also, which he used to kill Kalvaxus)--was made by Tabaxi ninjas (seemingly relevant considering the whole Shadowcat thing). He notices that, in his photo, Kalina’s image doesn’t look as time-worn as the rest of it, as if only the part where she appears was protected. He hears a noise and goes to investigate. What he finds, is a creepy-ass nightmare skeleton person in the mirror claiming to be Baron, from the Baronees (the person he on the fly lied--poorly--that he was dating in ep 1). Respecting the fact that Murph never clarified whether Baron was a guy or a girl, Brennan has Baron exclusively refer to themselves as Riz’s R̵̪̹̄o̸̱͝m̸͔͔̂̽a̴͕̾̈́n̵͙̬͒c̸̣̏͠ḙ̸̃̓ ̶̞̇̕P̸̞͚̈́a̸͉͒͝r̴̛͈͈t̷͓͇̋͒n̸̬͛̈́e̴̮̒r̴̝̃̓ in this mega-cursed, fake Swedish(?) accent.

Thanks, I hate it. 

Riz, faced with his lie brought to life, is pretty freaked and tries to shoot it but he’s quickly subdued and dragged into the mirror. Luckily, he’s able to leave the photo for his friends to find. 

Meanwhile, Fig spent the night in a weird fugue state--almost like an enjoyable nightmare. Most of her focus is on this feeling of isolation, fame, and power--but in a good way. In the background, she’s doing some unimportant stuff. You know, packing her stuff, stealing a gem, trapping Gorthalax in it, and going to Bastion City. No big deal. Anyway, that brings us back to the present with the rest of our party.

They make it to Bastion City and, more importantly, the hotel where Fig is supposed to be. On the way, Adaine tries to detect magic on Sandra-Lynn to try and figure out why she can see the photograph but nothing comes up. At the hotel, they unsuccessfully try to get the concierge to tell them where Fig’s room is. Adaine detects that the receptionist has some kind of transmutation on them and her first thought is, “Magic plastic surgery.” She dispels it. Not magic plastic surgery. The concierge is a demon--which is different and worse than devils who are at least lawful and, like, part of the bureaucracy of punishing people who deserve it.

Anyway, fight time! A lot happens during this fight so I’m going to try and highlight the most important parts:

All the employees in the immediate area turn into various demons to fight the party.

Adaine and Kristen catch sight of Fig’s room number (downstairs penthouse) right before the fight starts and, at the top of the initiative, Adaine goes invisible and runs for the elevator. 

Fabian vaults of Gilear’s face--unnecessarily--and rolls a nat 20.

Gilear (who has FIVE hit points) ducks and covers because of course he does. That doesn’t stop him from being completely obliterated by one punch from one of the huge gorilla demons. He freaking DIES. Thanks, I hate it.

Downstairs, Adaine finds a bunch more demons who are with Fig who is clearly being mind controlled. They have Riz strapped to a table and Fig’s about to stab him with a ritualistic knife. Adaine goes for a dispel magic and gets advantage because of Boggy which leads to her rolling *two nat 20s* and snapping her out of it immediately. 

In a very boss move, Fig immediately grabs Riz and dimension doors him out of his restraints and them both to the coat check where she left the ruby with Gorthalax. Before they poof out, Riz sees yellow eyes in the shadows. Familiar tabaxi eyes. Seemed like she was calling shots. 

Riz gets in a very cool kill with the line, “Tell Daybreak I said hi.”

Fig finds out Gilear is dead and grabs his soul. Kristen heals him up.

Fabian vaults off of Gilear a second time and rolls a nat 1, sending him back into death saves. 

Kristen tosses a spare the dying at Gilear and then kisses full wolfed out Tracker because time isn’t of the essence or anything.

Fig grabs the ruby Gorthalax is in and sees that it’s cloudy--cursed somehow to keep them from breaking him out. Not good. She also finds a bunch of other gems which she also grabs.

We meet Kristen’s new spirit guardians which are now hipster Post-Grad philosophy students in a full spectral coffee shop. She finds them insufferable but is also kind of into it. 

They clean up the rest of the demons and then Fabian does donuts on the Hangman. And we are out of combat.

Fig is a little distraught about having almost killed Riz and brought them all into this dangerous situation which literally killed Gilear--even though no one else blames her even a little. Gilear has a bit of a breakdown which is fair. The man died. They try to send him home--Fig wants to give him 10k gold and send him on vacation--but he is determined to stay and experience things and be useful. Also, Fabian has it in his (and Gorgug’s) head that Gilear must be some kind of chosen one since one of the demons in the fight chose to attack Gilear over him. 

Fig looks through the other gems she got and only one--a Celestial Sapphire--is similar to size to Gorthalax’s. When they bring it out, a slot in Gorgug’s van pops open. They slot the Sapphire in and, through the radio, an Angelic voice speaks to them. He sounds like Owen Wilson and he doesn’t remember his name. The Hangman hates him immediately. Fig pretends to be a cop to get info from the cops that arrive on the scene, doesn’t find out anything useful, but does roll a nat 20 on her deception (come on) and briefly turns the game into the sister, cop-drama show set in the same universe as the Grey’s Anatomy sham-life she’s living, kissing another full adult man. Incredible. 

They regroup at a posh restaurant/cafe called The Swan’s Little Parade. Sklonda calls and, after she and Sandra-Lynn do the mom-catch up thing, she has a quick talk with Riz where we find out a few things about Kalina:

She only worked with Pok on missions between Falinel and Solace.

She was great at going invisible and other infiltration things.

(Note: We actually learned this earlier but I wanted to keep this info together)She looks more like a traditional housecat than a big cat like some other tabaxi.

It’s extremely hard to scry on her. 

She didn’t attend Pok’s funeral.

The last time Sklonda heard from her was 12ish years ago.

Riz only encountered her a few times as a kid. 

Last Sklonda remembers, she reached out to Pok it was something to do with the ship the Oracle sank on. 

They pass around the picture to see who can see it and not only does it appear that Ragh can see her (oh, kinda implied this before but Riz can too) he also seemed really bugged out. Tracker says she can use her cleric mojo to put up some wards to (1) keep them from getting mind whammied like Fig did overnight and (2) maybe make Ragh feel safe enough to talk. She also suggests they all sleep in a huge dog pile for safety which I think is great and someone should draw that.

Gorgug gets a text. It’s Zelda. She can’t believe he left without saying goodbye.

Thanks, I hate it. 

Detention

Fabian for Using Gilear as a Launch Pad Two (2) Times

This was a top contender for this spot, even before Fabian did this a second time and screwed up so bad (nat 1!) that Gilear dropped to zero again and had to make death saving throws.    

Honor Roll

Adaine for Freeing Fig 

Listen, I will freely admit that I have a clear bias towards Adaine. You got me. She’s my favorite. HOWEVER, you cannot tell me that going invisible, rushing straight to the elevator, then rolling double nat 20s (a 1/400 chance) to release Fig from domination right before she plunged a knife into Riz’s heart wasn’t the sickest series of events that happened during this ep. What could possibly compete? 

Random Thoughts

I’ve been trying to figure out the rhyme or reason to who can see the full photo but I haven’t figured out a pattern yet. It’s not that only people who have seen her before can see her because Sandra-Lynn can see it and she said she’s never met her--although I guess it’s possible that she has and she didn’t recognize her since she’s a super spy. And it’s not a blanket thing on the Bad Kids specifically because Riz can see her. I was hoping they’d show it to more people so we could get a better idea of the rules. Maybe it’s based entirely on if she wants to be seen by that specific person? But then why wouldn’t it default to the blank image. It seems (from our limited POV) that most people can see her. Maybe for most people a blank space would be more suspicious than a random tabaxi? Idk.  

Riz forcibly installing himself as Fabian’s best friend and it working is low key the funniest relationship development in FH. I’m so glad Murph and Lou ran with that. Also, the fact that he’s basically accepted that Riz is his best friend but the Hangman hasn’t at all is so good. 

Brennan really just shot Zac in the head at point blank range at the end of the episode, huh? He really just did that to our boy. What’s also funny is that, unlike--say--CR where there’s usually at least a good minute of decompression and goodbyes, Brennan just goes for the kill shot and then peaces out immediately. What a power move. 

Also, poor Zelda! She’s already so insecure, this isn’t gonna be good for her self esteem. Arguably, there were extenuating circumstances Gorgug can claim but you know that’s only gonna help so much since he def could have at least called/texted her to let her know he had to leave in a hurry because Fig/Riz were missing. I wonder if there’s a section of the binder on this. 

For reference, the demons they fight in the hotel lobby are a Cambion, and then several barlgura and skeksis.

“He’s just a guy!” He certainly is. Check out his stats. Hilarious but also, I can’t act like my stats would look that much different. 

I truly, truly cannot believe that Emily pulled the exact same hospital stunt again and it resolved in exactly the same way. This is like when I played blackjack with my brother when I was a teenager to teach him that the house always wins and he hit 21 twice in a row. 

Also on the topic of Fig, her coming down from her mind control was my favorite part of this episode, for a couple of reasons. I love how sincerely Emily played the immediate shock and horror at what she almost did (closed book my ass). I love how every other person was so happy to get her back. I love that none of them even entertained the thought that she might be dangerous or untrustworthy now. Relationships at the intersection of constant bullying and ride or die are my favorite. 

While we’re on the topic of emotional scenes, Gilear full breaking down in the van post-fight was very funny but you also genuinely felt for the guy. It’s been a really long day for the guy and he died like one and a half times. His, “I haven’t experienced anything before this moment,” line really hit me hard. And I think it’s very wild that Brennan set the DC for convincing him to go home at 25 (which Fig did not pass with a 21). It’s very interesting that Gilear’s reaction to this series of events was to double down and be like, I *need* to be here. Seems like this could be a set up for some interesting Gilear development. 

The amount of times I have almost typed Balnor is unreal. My brain stores all the middle aged men hanging out with people too young for him to be hanging out with in the same folder.  

I can’t believe Adaine just went for that dispel except that I can because she did the exact thing with Iris’ wig at the NY live show and I couldn’t believe that either! I really did not think (1) that was a good move or (2) gonna lead to combat (except for the kind that gets you banned from a hotel). I completely misread that situation. Like, it’s a world full of magic. It’s not that weird that a random person would have a spell on them. Anyway, this is why she’s the oracle and I’m not. 

The Barlgura needed a 3 or higher to hit Gilear. He got a 19. Yikes.

“I had to ask.”/ “No you didn’t.” (The crew explodes into laughter.)

Riz tells the whole gang about the Baron thing and tells everyone that they need to stop lying in case all their lies are gonna pop out and attack them. Gorgug admits that he’s kissed the Hangman. Kristen confesses to a group of her closest friends and girlfriend that she is gay. Tracker is like, “Babe, what?” Tracker (and the Bad Kids but in a different way) must really love Kristen because she is just so much all the time. 

Fabian: Who are you seeing then?/Riz:...................No one. 

Ally Middle Name Beardsly wtf is a paranoia check? 

The comedic rhythm of Fabian vaulting off of Gilear’s face with a nat 20, him dying, being resurrected, and the Fabian trying to do it again with a nat 1 and knocking him near death is so perfect that it’s wild that it was totally random. This is the kind of thing that makes you get superstitious about dice. 

We’re introduced to Boggy’s second mood this ep which is Boggy’s mood which is a slightly squinted, “Hmm...I don’t know about this.” Thanks, I love it. 

In addition to considering Gilear might be the chosen one (by who? Of what? They don’t know and neither do I) the half of the group entertaining this theory also considers Gilear might be the Nightmare King (”If you are you have to tell me. I’m your daughter.”). I don’t know if the NK does possession but please have the NK possess Gilear at some point. If the theme of this season is carefully filing away random off the cuff gags and making them plot relevant, please let this be one of them. Also, lol at Murph trying to roll high enough so that Riz has the knowledge to stop the shenanigans before it derails the whole campaign.  

The group bestows upon Gilear the positions of Tour Manager, Social Media Manager, and Honorary Bad Kid (listed last of course).

Fig grabbed a lanyard of out Adaine’s jacket and I remembered, oh yeah, she has a very magical jacket that is only ever used for shenanigans, if at all. Imagine being so magic that you have a magic jacket that you’re always wearing that can summon anything (w/i reason) and you just kinda...forget about it most of the time. 

Curious about why Fig specifically was called in to do the sacrifice and why Riz was the one who had to be sacrificed. 

I hope Adaine just continues to loan out Boggy to anyone having a bad day. I love that.

“Maybe this is one of those massages that hurt.”

Really wanted Hilariel to Skype in and ask about Gilear. Her take on everything is always so funny. She is as crazy as everyone else in her family but in such a low key way.  

Lol at the party being like, “Yeah, Tracker healed me just fine without any 69-ing,” which is truly an incomprehensible sentence without context and still mostly incomprehensible with context. 

Don’t wanna overlook the coolness of Fig rolling double 17s (disadvantaged) to command the barlguras. Not magically, just convincing them she was still in charge of them. Very clutch.

Fabian is so much chiller about letting people on his motorbike these days. He let Gilear ride it. He let Riz ride it. He gave a blanket invitation for anyone in the area to hop on before he did donuts. I love Sophomore Fabian. 

Gilear gets a nat 20 for his first roll! Riz and Kristen got two nat 20s. Fig got one, Gorgug got one (he rolled a second one that was lost with disadvantage), and Adaine rolled two but they really only count as one since it was with advantage. Fabian rolled one of each. That’s a lot of 20s for one ep!