#i literally would've been FINE if not for atlanta

[queerofthedagger]

the mortifying ordeal of having to decide if you're unwell enough about a new fandom yet that you should add it to the tagging list/intro post, or if there might still be hope for you.... knowing that the fact you're considering it means it's most likely already too late..... knowing it's so SO far past 'most likely' because there are already three (3) plots pinned in the discord server.............. SIGH

[hypermania]

I stopped watching the walking dead at the end of season 8 and only know what happens after that from seeing other people post about it when it was airing and there was so much negativity so it’s really interesting to see you watching it now and seeming to have mostly positive thoughts. Do you think watching it after the fact helped or am I totally misreading your feelings? 

this is a very funny ask to receive because i feel like all i've done is complain about how bad the show became starting around 7x01 but apparently all of my complaining has been confined to other spaces haha. i do, however, think that not having to wait and watch week-to-week helped me get through it and enjoy it more than i would've if i'd still been watching it live, but even the ability to binge it can't fix what i think are the show's three fatal flaws:

1. negan—i know this is an unpopular opinion but negan is one of the worst things to happen to the show. he takes up so much space and energy and yet the show never fully commits to actually doing anything with him. in s7 they literally bashed us over the head with his villainy and it was boring. his monologues were supposed to be menacing; they were supposed to make us scared to find out what he was capable of, but all they really turned out to be were long and corny and so fucking frequent that you couldn't help but tune out. i didn't need to hear him monologue about being an asshole to know he was cruel. i got that perfectly fine from his actions and the actions of the people who worked for him.

and he was cruel, in a way no other villain on the show was, but the show so desperately wanted to keep jdm around that they shot themselves in the foot by trying to pull back on the cruelty. yeah sure negan will bash several people's brains out with a baseball bat just for fun in front of a child but he would never lay a finger on that child. no, no, he didn't threaten the kid. he was just bonding with him.

yeah sure negan will force women's hands so that they feel there's no other option than to marry him and therefore sleep with him but he'll kill a blatant rapist. don't you get it? he's evil and you should fear him (but forget all that because he's totally redeemable).

yeah sure he'll help burn hilltop to the ground but don't you see he's actually on your side. like?? it's not nuance or moral complexity or shades of gray. it's just bad writing so that jdm can stick around, despite there being zero reason for negan to still be around. negan is responsible for so much damage and loss of life (and loss of potential in the form of community building) that it is unconscionable to me that he can ever show his face among any of the survivors. he wasn't a compelling villain and he's somehow an even less compelling reluctant ally. let maggie kill him already. at least there'd be a little catharsis in that.

2. rapid world expansion—this is difficult because long-running shows need world expansion to keep from becoming stale and repetitive but you have to strike a balance between expanding the sandbox and straight up changing the sandbox. i think the show did a really good job of opening up the world in the first six seasons. everything up to and including alexandria felt real and grounded in the world that they had established. in atlanta (and the outskirts of) they were such a small group and operating within such a limited amount of space that it made sense whenever they came across new places and/or new people (the farm, the prison, woodbury, grady memorial, terminus, etc). and then making the pilgrimage up to dc and finding alexandria all made sense as well. they spent time establishing what alexandria was and how it came to be.

but that explanation relied heavily on the idea that alexandria was isolated (i mean, aaron had to go out and travel just to recruit people ffs). so when you then add in the kingdom, hilltop, the saviors, the scavengers, oceanside, etc. you're saying, "actually there is a giant interwoven network of communities all around that somehow just magically never crossed paths with alexandria, not even when they were dealing with the gigantic horde that should've threatened all of them." and it makes no sense. and then add to that the commonwealth, the whisperers, and whatever the fuck the crm is. it's just too much. and none of those places they added in are ever really established in any meaningful way, with any real connection to our protagonists.

the commonwealth is the worst example of this. it's a a community of fifty-thousand people, most of whom seem to be completely out of touch with the reality of the apocalypse, and it's never really explained how. how do they keep walkers out? how do they have plumbing? how do they have electricity? how is noise not an issue? where is the food coming from? the weapons and ammunition? what were they doing with the train cars at the beginning because it seems like actually they accept everyone? why were they so suspicious? none of it's ever explained past a few comments and vague allusions here and there. they just plucked us out of the zombie apocalypse and plopped us into a dystopian society and said, "have fun at your new playground!" and i'm sorry but i'm not having fun. this is not the playground i signed up for.

3. rapid cast expansion—this one goes hand in hand with the world expansion. the show needs to add in new characters to replace departing characters and to introduce new and fresh dynamics but it's important that those characters matter in relation to their connection to the found family the show's been establishing for 5+ seasons. in my opinion, the last time the show successfully added new characters to the group was when they introduced abraham, rosita, and eugene (*there's a notable exception of 1.5 characters to this but i'll get to that in a second).

it's not that i don't like any of the characters they add after that, it's that none of them feel like family. none of them ever feel fully integrated into the group or fully realized as character in their own right. they're just... there. i like ezekiel and enid and jerry and princess and connie etc but they just don't matter. they're just people who also exist. the thread that ties them to the group i care about is a shared living space and desire to survive, not anything they've actually been through together. and that's kind of stupid because they've been through a lot together (fighting the saviors, building their communities, the whisperers, the stuff at the commonwealth, etc). it just doesn't feel like it because they're all so spread out geographically (due to the rapid world expansion) and because their connections aren't really to the family, but to the communities at large. and that doesn't work on a character-driven show.

*the exceptions to this are, in my opinion, dwight and maybe jesus. dwight is the only later seasons character that the show puts any effort into actually making me root for. some of that's because he starts out as an antagonist and therefore has to redeem himself but a lot of it is because he does actually redeem himself. i understand why he did everything horrible he did in the first place and i sympathize with it, but then i also watched him put his own life on the line over and over and over again simply because it was the right thing to do. dwight was held more accountable for his actions than any other single character in the history of the entire freaking show and despite proving himself, they still send him away just so they don't have to look at his face. and i know it was because he was going over to FTWD but damn does that suck because he's one of the only later seasons characters that actually feels fully developed.

i have some thoughts about jesus as a character and why he feels more fully integrated and realized than, say, gabriel or aaron but they're still very jumbled so i'm not going to get into it right now.

anyway, the point is that there are all these characters that the show is telling me matter and are important to my characters but they don't ever give me a reason to believe that beyond the fact that they just all happen to be on the same side.

so. yeah. i don't like the show anywhere near as much as it probably seems like i do and those three issues are the main reasons why. i have smaller gripes too (eugene never being held accountable for anything ever, rosita dying, michonne leaving her children, etc) but they're not structural issues, you know?

and despite having said all of this, i immediately started rewatching as soon as i got to the end because i do really love the found family of it all.

[kiss-my-freckle]

I saw a post by a Stelena fan with hundreds of likes saying that Kevin and Julie wanted to end the love triangle after 2x01 when Damon snapped Jeremy's neck and that Delena happened after for fanservice. I cannot believe they're that delusional. Even though Kevin wanted Stelena to end up together and Julie's original idea was for Damon and Stefan to die and Elena ending up with Matt, Delena happening was the point of the show.

If they didn't want fans to ship it, they wouldn't sell it. They certainly didn't need to write Delena the way they did if they weren't planning to pair them. Elena would've been perfectly fine acting as the voice of Damon's humanity whether they were friends or romantic partners. But they continuously wrote them in scenes like Atlanta, where Bree quite literally asked Elena, "He is good in the sack, isn't he?" Damon falling in love with her in the first season, to the extent that he put his life on the line with that vampire device, then kissed Katherine on the porch while believing she was Elena. Just look at him and Bonnie. They're exactly what it would look like if the writers weren't planning to pair them. They could've done that for him and Elena. They chose not to, and they knew what they were doing when they chose not to. There's nothing more pathetic than shippers blowing smoke up each others asses because they can't handle it.