#i mean once you get to s3 there are like 15 plots happening at the same time because you get into duke's whole backstory and james's murder

[vidavalor]

re: modern day flashback: That would be so fun! I'm a bit confused, though-- the trip to Edinburgh was to go to The Resurrectionist for the Everyday mystery (& for Aziraphale to go to the graveyard to work on his PTSD)? I do think we're probably going to briefly flash back to *very* modern days-- to after Aziraphale blew up his halo and The Metatron got on the circle floor zoom thing, as Aziraphale seemed to be saying happened the prior night during the morning of the end of 2.06.

We're going to see that Aziraphale told The Metatron to go fuck himself the night before right around the time that Aziraphale gets off the elevator in Heaven and is brought to... The Metatron. Because the one who took on that appearance and showed up with the coffee in The Final 15 is Satan. Hell doing Heaven's punishing for them a la the Job minisode, as Furfur brought up again just before The Final 15. Then, the actual falling part of Aziraphale's fall happens.

Our angel's a demon now but he's about to become the last angel to fall because the concept of Aziraphale being seen as evil is going to be enough to break the brains of every other character in this show enough that it's going to wind up toppling Heaven and Hell by them challenging The Metatron over it. That would be needed to help some people see what they just watched in The Final 15 differently and set us off running for The Finale.

If they want to show us another era that is closer to modern (by comparison to others lol), didn't they want to do the 1980s at one point? That would be fun. Like with anything, it'd have to be short and critical to the story to make it into The Finale but we don't know what else they have in store for us.

re: Bad Omen... Funny you should mention that... *dark snerk* I do think there was a plan for a Bad Omen-- not within the story but the show itself...

Didja notice how damn neat and tidy what I laid out in that post is? Like, suspiciously neat and tidy? I've had the thought that S2 was done in such a way intentionally that it would be possible for it to be concluded as a season or a movie. The asshole was always a ticking time bomb. I'm sure it was planned with options and I'm glad we get an ending but I've plotted story before and this was left in S2 in a perfect place to go either way with a season or a movie. I don't think that was sheer dumb luck.

S2 went deeper and slower in a way the story needed and it might have seemed like nothing was happening at times but everything really was. People mistake fast, action-oriented scenes for story. It's one of the reasons why the Armageddon threat being over so quickly in 1.06 throws some people. They don't realize that all the legwork to build to that quick dispatching of the threat was the slower-paced stuff they were watching the whole season through. The Finale is going to be the same way. People are freaking out about there not being enough time for flashbacks and it's just like... get Crowley & Gabriel to see what's going on and rally the other characters together and once that's in place within the first third of The Finale? They can end the fascist Mr. Potato Head in the length of time of a commercial break because we already spent S2 watching them get to that place.

Would I want more? Sure. Always. I love this show. Since the news of the film broke, though, have I ever been concerned that the film is too short to handle the main story points left and conclude it in a way that people will love? Not for a single second. It's going to be great.

<<The F15 was essentially the end of act 2. We only have the final act to uncover.>>

Exactly. I think people are concerned because they think that S3 was going to be about Jesus judging humanity and it's not. In a lot of Christian traditions, The Second Coming and Armageddon are more two parts of a whole rather than being the same thing. In order to get to the Jesus part, the war of Armageddon has to already be fought and won. In Good Omens, that would mean Earth would be destroyed and Heaven would defeat Hell. That's not happening. We may well see Jesus again before it's all over but, if we do, it's going to be briefly in some quirky capacity, not because The Second Coming in the Biblical sense was successful.

The Metatron's end goal is to get through Armageddon to The Second Coming but the plot is really Armageddon: Round Two. It's the same as it was in S1-- they have to stop Armageddon. They can do that by coming together and getting rid of The Metatron. That's very do-able with the time that's left because it's really now just a matter of needing something that pulls the characters back together and motivates them to do this-- i.e., needing to help Aziraphale.

The Finale is really more like not having a S3 but, instead, having a bonus, two episode finale to S2. I think it helps to think of it all more like we've only seen six of the eight episodes of S2, which is the final season, because The Finale isn't a separate plot with a new starting place. It's going to pick up where S2 left off.

<<If I was running the show I would hit us up with the flashbacks back to back like in S1, ending on their new arrangement which would feed right into the final 15. Recontextualise everything, and then hit the ground running...>>

Oh, you're a dastardly writer. *grins* I like your style! Just come in hot, flip everything on its head, leave everyone reeling and riveted through to the end. I think it could very well be like that and that would be a lot of fun.

I have a pretty big suspicion that the first scene of The Finale is The Vavoom. Whether that's a one-off scene that flips the kiss in The Final 15 on its head for some people and then goes into the opening title sequence and we're back in the present or whether it's the start of a second cold open, I don't know.

I tend to agree with you that doing a flashback sequence cold open to start The Finale would be pretty amazing. Structurally, I think this is the best place for it to go... in large part because of what could happen immediately in the present on the other side of it.

Imagine they cold open for, like, 25 minutes straight like they did in 1.03 and we go through time with Crowley & Aziraphale again in a half-dozen scenes and now, since they're past the point of needing to duck and weave in order to pull off the S2 twist, these are all pretty openly romantic scenes. The ancient times first kiss, a story around the cottage making us unable to wait for them to go live there, the origins of "A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square", the last part of 1941, etc...

...and then, while we're all trying to come up for air? Boom, we're back in the present, where Aziraphale gets off the elevator and is taken to the The Metatron to fall-- and Saraqael takes his memories before he does.

Everything we just finally watched is, for the moment, now gone in the story. We saw it to set up its existence being temporarily erased. Aziraphale goes into the pit of boiling sulphur and... cue the opening title sequence.

They should definitely do that. 😂 People would be screaming.

Ok,Since the Good Omens Finale is only going to be 90 minutes,I have a feeling we might not get a flashback sequence.

Hi there, @rougeside4 💕 I made an apple pie, if you want some. 😊Allow me to offer a different take? I wouldn't worry about this. There will be flashbacks. It's not the show without them.

Short thing on why we're definitely getting flashbacks and on which ones we can maybe see as being very likely still in The Finale.

The secret sauce of Good Omens, imho, is that the real juice of the story is actually always in the flashbacks. The flashbacks that we see are not random; they're always written to support the story in the present. There's a point to why it is these flashbacks we are seeing-- and when and in what order we are seeing them--when Crowley and Aziraphale have been on Earth for over 6,000 years and we could see any of their adventures. They're designed to inform our understanding of the story in the present. The real beating heart of the story is in the scenes set in the past and the story in the present would lack... *searches for words* emotional resonance? thematic weight? general, dramatic oomph? all of these?... if they were to cut the past. Put more plainly: it would suck 😂, and they're smart enough not to do that.

I think some of the most exciting parts of The Finale are actually going to be the flashbacks, just like how they were always the biggest treats in S1 and S2. In the way that they roll those out to us, piece by piece, they're changing our understanding of what we're watching in the present. The meaning of the story in the present is driven by the flashbacks in the past to a point that you cannot have one without the other.

Good Omens is actually driving all of its suspense and anticipation through the story in the past and that's what makes its non-linear storytelling clever. After all, right now, most people know this thing has a happy ending and aren't worried about that, right? We know Crowley and Aziraphale will get back together and be fine and no one is stressing over that. (And if you are... really? Guys. Honestly?! It's called Good Omens. It's a romance. It's a sweet, cuddly show. It's going to be fine. 💕)

So, what are we curious about, if not where it's going in the present?

1941, Part 3, right? Whether or not there's an ancient times vavoom coming our way? What the deal is with Jane Austen and/or 1650? Whether or not we might be surprised with a flashback that hasn't already been set up earlier in the story and what that might be?

Our biggest questions in the story aren't about what will happen in the future but about what we might get to see that has already happened in the past.

There is actually no conceivable way to do The Finale without flashbacks because the entire story is built towards having at least a couple of essential ones happen in its end game. I would not be surprised if at least somewhere around a third of The Finale is set in the past. Are there ones that we would have had with a full season that will be cut? Yes, but, are there also ones, though, that are too essential to cut because the entire story for two seasons has been building towards eventually revealing them to the audience in the final part of the story? Oh, yeah. 😉

Guaranteed: 1941, Part 3. There is no chance that they cut this-- none. They have built the ending of this trilogy of flashbacks to support the ending of the story in the present so it has to happen. It doesn't need to be an entire minisode in length. Part 2 really did all the heavy-lifting with plot and themes here, and Part 1 was a single, brilliant, not terribly long scene. If Amazon reduced The Finale to 15 minutes long, I think the show would still find a way to put 1941, Part 3 in there. The first two parts were so pivotal to the themes and parallels of the story in the present and it's the only flashback that we keep getting installments of throughout the story so its Part 3 is going somewhere massive. If there's one flashback that's in The Finale, it's this one.

Extremely, extremely likely: the ancient times vavoom to which they have been building in clues and hints for two seasons that is going to flip the entire show on its head by going back to The Flood. It would parallel and add extra weight to all the conflicts we have in the story in The Finale that were set into motion by the end of S2-- the kiss, one of them leaving/them being separated, the threat of an apocalyptic-like event, etc.. It would, in almost no time at all, complete the narrative magic trick of the show by turning it inside out for the audience.

The show that shows everything backwards has been sitting on the real first kiss the entire time and saving it until the end game of the story and that end game is The Finale so expect that angel and that demon to be sheltering under a canopy from a rainstorm in the very long ago days and break the internet in the process.

If I were them, I'd even open The Finale with this flashback, just because of how much it's going to pull the rug out from under The Final 15. After all, the first two seasons opened with a canopy-and-rain-themed scene, did they not? Just one wing at a time, though... no under a canopy together yet. No gazing into each other's eyes and vavooming. That bit of the beginning of their story has always been going to be shown to us in the end of the story. It could well be the, well, beginning of the end of that story by opening The Finale. We'll have to see. Either way, it's in there.

It's also worth mentioning that both of these above flashbacks would be going back to eras we've already visited in the story so no time would need to be devoted to setting up the scenes. That would seem to make them easier to not cut, in addition to how narratively important they are.

Going To Be In There In Someway, Somehow: A flashback that sets up the South Downs Cottage ending, which is suspected to be the Jane Austen flashback because of her living in real life in the South Downs around the years that it was mentioned in S2 that Crowley and Aziraphale knew her.

When this was set up for S3 back in S2, the Jane Austen story felt juicy enough to potentially be a whole minisode in length. Maybe especially since it's probably how they are going to be build a history of the cottage between Crowley and Aziraphale to help give emotional weight to them going to live there in the present at the end of the story. I've no idea what this looks like with a shortened run time. They might abbreviate or maybe it was never even that long in the first place? They might do something different in its place? It's hard to say, since we don't know, but they've got to do something to set up the cottage, so...

Whatever this winds up being, though, we're now up to three flashbacks that have to happen because of how they connect to the story in the present in The Finale. These are three, non-negotiable ones, basically-- and we are obviously only looking at ones that we can see having been set up already.

There is also the fact that there's usually a surprise flashback that wasn't set up but which is crucial to the story, like the Job minisode was in S2. It fits in perfectly, retrospectively, but we were intentionally not really given enough in S1 to see it coming in S2 so that there was something unpredictable for us to enjoy. I'm not expecting anything as long as Job again but there could still be a scene more 1.03 Cold Open in length that we don't even know is essential at this point because we aren't meant to know at this point but, much like we did with Bildad 😊, we will see as vital to everything once we see it.

Including that as a possibility, we're now up to four flashback scenes that seem unlikely to be chopped from The Finale. What I just described, give or take and depending on the length of 1941, Part 3, is probably collectively getting within shouting distance of the run time of the 1.03 Cold Open-- and that's going really bare bones and only talking about the scenes that seem too story-essential to consider cutting. There's also one more that might meet that criteria...

Could Go Either Way: 1650. If this has nothing to do with Agnes Nutter, it's probably gone. If it's how Agnes has an appearance in the end of the story to pull stuff together, they'll probably find a way to put it in there because... Agnes. 😊

No one knows what this thing is supposed to be about but we do know that it was set up in S2 for S3 and, between Aziraphale mentioning it, the historical ties to eccles cakes to this era, the fact that it could potentially show a Whickber Street in early development and, most importantly, that it's set five years before Agnes Nutter died, whatever this thing is? It's intriguing. We don't know how long it was meant to be but if it's something that was minisode-length but could be reworked to be shorter-- or if just was always short in length-- it's probably still in there.

It's very possible to have many, quality scenes that hop throughout time in a very short period of time. The 1.03 Cold Open is about 23 minutes long and jam-packed with goodness. I have no idea if they're going to sprinkle flashbacks in throughout The Finale or if they're going to do a flashback sequence like 1.03/Ineffable Bureaucracy again but I do think that at least a third of The Finale-- so, roughly 30 minutes of it, give or take-- are likely flashbacks.

We are going into this movie a lot closer to the end of the story in the present than I think it may appear to some at this point. All the set up work to get the characters into place to overthrow The Metatron in The Finale was already done in S2. It's not going to take 90 minutes for Aziraphale to be in trouble, Crowley and Ineffable Bureaucracy to find out and rally the troops, everyone to challenge The Metatron, expose him as a fraud, and kill the threat of Armageddon by overthrowing Heaven and setting it up to be democratized. That's pretty much what everyone knows needs to happen in The Finale and what is likely going to be the main story in the present in S3.

We know what is going to happen because we know it has a happy ending and we know that we need the Armageddon threat gone for the South Downs Cottage happy ending to occur. We know the only answer is that they've got to overthrow The Metatron. Whether you think the plot is Supreme Archangel Aziraphale or whether you're like me and think the plot is that Aziraphale is in mid-fall as of the end of S2 and that's the thing that triggers the other characters to come together against Heaven, the end result is still going to be the same: The Metatron's gotta go and everyone's got to come together to make that happen if we're getting the happy ending we already know we're getting.

We are all sitting here knowing pretty much exactly what the story in the present is going to be in The Finale and that's because the story has set it up so that we do. Yes, there's going to be joy in watching that unfold but a story designed like a magic trick has to have suspense and give the audience a sense of anticipation. We feel that from this story and from where are we getting that?

The past. The flashbacks.

Everyone knows what the end of this story in the present is but no one knows for sure where, say, 1941 is going, or what new things about Crowley and Aziraphale the past will show us in The Finale. Every new thing we see in the past? Changes our view of the present. That's what makes the story clever. It's also what makes it enjoyable. They cannot cut flashbacks because they'd be cutting the most interesting parts of the story and what makes Good Omens the quirky, unique bird it is.

The present and the past are so interwoven in the story that I'm pretty sure that it is impossible to do Good Omens without flashbacks. The only question going into The Finale is which ones they're going to surprise and delight us with. Don't lose faith or sleep over it-- at minimum, we'll see Crowley's 1941 hat again and that, truly, is all any of us really need to survive.

[cloysterbell]

what is Haven even about because every time i see gifs of them talking about Troubles with a capital T i think of the irish ones

Yeah you know, that's what I thought too when I started watching because they sure did name their little magical curse after the uh, very real political and nationalist conflict that waged in Ireland between the 1960s and 90 huh

Anyway Haven’s veeeeeery loosely inspired by the Stephen King novella The Colorado Kid so it’s set in a small town in Maine called Haven, natch, where every 27 years, these magical afflictions/curses called The Troubles pop up. They’re almost all terrible like Dwight becoming a literal bullet magnet or Nathan losing his entire sense of touch but some are more manageable, like how everything that one woman eats turns to cake. It’s a mixed bag but Troubles for the most part run in the family and are passed down from parent to child, so you typically know what you’re gonna get

But also, every 27 years the same woman blows into town. Sometimes she’s Lucy, sometimes she’s Sarah, sometimes she’s Veronica, but she’s always connected to the Troubles somehow and when she leaves, so do the Troubles

So Haven’s about FBI special agent Audrey Parker who gets sent to Haven for a routine case and ends up embroiled in the mystery of this town with her cop partner Nathan and resident bad boy smuggler Duke. They end up at the heart of the Troubles and together with their plucky rotating cast of women that the writers love killing off, they have to figure out how to rid Haven of the Troubles forever or risk the entire town getting blown up and everyone in it dying

[flirtmcgirt]

Why I hate MMFD Series 3, Circa 2015.

Ok, like I said, i randomly found this in my phone. It is extra, it is wild, it all holds up lol. It’s embarrassing, but who cares? S3 was embarrassing. It’s VERY long. Laugh, cry, mock me, fight me, enjoy yourselves. I’ll never get over it.

1. The whole series has a bleak feeling almost immediately that doesn’t let up. I don’t just mean plot, I mean color palette and vibes. It has this washed out feeling I hate.

2. I don’t side with Rae on her interview. I don’t. She didn’t take it seriously.

3. Rae wants to go to uni because..? Rae chose Bristol because..? Rae has no backup schools because..?

4. Rae says she’s happy. Cool. Why? What’s been happening? How’s treatment been going? The most elementary rule of storytelling: show, don’t tell. I feel like we got told for 2 hours, with no fill-in of the gap.

5. The end of season 2 felt like the jumping off of the beginning of something: Chloe healing emotionally, the relationship with Rae and her mom, Rae and Finn, attempts at taking therapy seriously. We spend the next 2 hours digging into NONE of these things. I’m not dumb, I know time was limited. But we needed more exposition, flashbacks, more SOMETHING. Why should I believe things are going well, especially when they’re about to collapse.

6. Flashbacks (this blows my mind): Rae shows us what we think are flashbacks talking about her happiness. They’re not-they’re flash forwards. And all of them are after Rae starts being dishonest and backsliding. That has always upset me as a viewer. We NEVER see Rae progress in this series in retrospect.

7. Why are Rae and Finn hiding major life decisions from each other?

8. Chloe’s doing well! Cool! Again, how and why?

9. Look, I was young with a boyfriend once too. I get there’s limited time between school, work, and family, and you want to spend the time you have taking off each other’s clothes at that age. But there’s no emotional intimacy here and it spits in the face of earlier seasons.

10. “I love you.” Enough said. But fine. Let’s take it at face value. Why are they not expressing themselves ? Are they happy, are they unsure around each other, are they coasting on lust? We don’t know, bc bad storytelling.

11. We’re right back to “let’s only discuss my boyfriend in terms of his looks.” Bo-ring, no growth, and not to get too explicit, but you don’t have repeated, committed sex, and not get past some of this. Embarrassing things happen, funny things, you open up emotionally and get real with yourself and each other. You’re telling me these two never made weird noises or weird faces or sweated horrifically all over each other?

12. I’ve always seen Linda as someone who cares for Rae, worries, and is observant, but often doesn’t do the best thing because of her own issues. She is out to lunch most of the series and I hated it.

13. The car crash. I hate it for so many reasons. It sucked up the plot time we needed not to make the whole series feel disjointed. It was too dramatic for me. One of the things I always loved about MMFD was it felt like a relatable show that featured teens, not necessarily a teen show. This was a teen soap stunt.

14. Rae is ostensibly happy when she gets her acceptance. Why does she immediately discard the idea? Why no inner dialogue about her actual desires?

15. KESTER. We’ve said it all. Kester telling her what to do instead of working through her feelings? Irresponsible. Lying? Irresponsible. Not properly transitioning out of therapy? Irresponsible? The mental health messages were disgusting overall. Add another therapist COVERING and letting her dump her meds was even worse. Kester’s choices were all about covering his own ass, and he’s ultimately pathetic.

16. The Gang. Just so much why? Why are Izzy and Chop forced into being stupid? Why does no one give a shit about Finn? Why is everyone grappling with major life changes but only Chloe and Rae have to bear any drama. Why is Archie not in uni? Why does everyone clearly know Rae is suffering and doesn’t even try to help; more importantly they mock her? That last piece makes me legit angry.

17. I like Rae and Chloe’s friendship growth. That it came at the expense of Rae’s guilt, fear, and shame is just disappointing.

18. Finn looks..tired, even before the Katie business. He looks overwhelmed and unsure and scared, and like he’s spent two years biting his tongue. I don’t doubt for a second he loves her, but is it healthy? It didn’t look healthy, and again, why? You’re getting paid to TELL ME A STORY.

19. Rae never uses anything she learned in therapy all series.

20. No one but Rae gets a real storyline and that stinks.

21. Katie. Faye Marsay is better than this. Lost more plot time for a teenage Single White Female retread.

22. The cheating. Out of character, we never get clear resolution on what happened, and most importantly to me, it’s the main reason for a breakup that has so many other tells simmering in the background, imo. That Rae is condescending, doesn’t own up to her parts, is just. Yeah. Why should I believe this person is ok? PS-We know he bought her that “you’re the milk to my cookies” shirt, it only makes sense. Ma’am you did not act like it.

23. Katie’s entire voodoo speech burns me up because we never get confirmation Rae doesn’t internalize and/or reject this. I actually think a conversation about the ripple effect of mental health is so important, and deserved better than whatever the hell this was.

24. Rae’s whole A-level experience. She gets saved and coddled so she can go somewhere they won’t play that game with her. How does this help her or show she’s ready?

25. No chippy. Fine, whatever, but I miss it lol.

26. Everyone perving on Finn, come on, this was cringe.

27. The look Chloe gives Finn at the pub. I don’t understand it, but I don’t like it.

28. No Baby Bouchtat time, wtfffff.

29. Rae never comes to a realization we hear about why she wants uni. She gets her back against the wall because her mom has to leave and everything else is falling apart. Great.

30. Speaking of, why is Linda still at home 2(?) months after she said she wanted to leave, halfway through her husband’s contract? I thought it was so damn important.

31. Rae’s dad..more plot time wasted. I honestly barely remember this. PS-hey Rae, I bet Finn Nelson would’ve heavily related if you said your shitty dad popped back up and you were struggling.

32. It seems like Rae cuts everybody out after the ball. This is not real life. You lose touch, people fade away, sure. Over months and years, not by cutting bonds off at the knees.

33. Town only being the background to Archie’s plot was such a waste.

34. That tub scene was sickening and irresponsible as fuck. Every other mental health episode in other seasons had inner dialogue to help the audience. That they played it as straight and left the audience dangling that long was reprehensible.

35. Everyone on this show got to develop an outside life we knew about away from Rae except Finn and he deserved more.

36. The going it alone message is terrible. You always need support and love from people around you.

37. Petty, but that dress did Sharon no favors, please dress our queen properly.

38. The last song being Creep is so lyrically bleak and sums up this entire dumpster fire.

39. “The bullshit goes with me?” GOODBYE. Please.

40. The train scene: kind of nice! Reminiscing! Tix! But also weird. Why do Kester and Chloe look so serious? Why does Finn only look like he wants to fuck her? Why is Liam even there? Whatever.

Please add more lol. Or don’t, because this is out of control. I roast because I loved and knew what it was capable of once.

[weirdthoughtsandideas]

WELL. I FINISHED VIOLETTA. ONCE AGAIN.

Get ready for next out of context video. It's gonna be so epic, I got so much content

My Diecesca opinions go up and down constantly. In the beginning of S3, I felt like my focus was almost exclusively on Fran. How she felt, what she thought...

It kinda does not make sense cause later in the season I kinda scrap this idea, but in the beginning of S3, I have this headcanon of Fran going through a bi realization. And, no, it actually does not necessarily have to do with Violetta as you might expect from me. It's more about Fran herself. In the beginning of season, she tries to figure out what she wants. It doesn't feel the same with Marco as it did last year, and she wants something different. It causes her to also figure out who she wants to be with... does she want to be with Marco or someone else? Does she even want to be with a boy...? You're following me? Maybe it doesn't make sense, idk, but I have fun playing around with this hc, it makes the viewing more fun for me.

Also, I think Francesca just feels a little stressed in the first 20 episodes and doesn't have the time to really sit down and ponder what she wants. Camila does mean well, but I think she in the beginning (note, in the beginning, not later) kind of gets pushy with Fran. She just wants to help, but it causes Francesca to lash out and get frustrated, because she just needs some time and space to figure things out on her own. Not to mention how Diego just keeps interacting with her when she also needs some space from him.

I will always be baffled how okay Marco is with Diecesca dating right away. I feel like the original plan was to hide from him, which would have higher stakes since it's a person both of them are more or less equally close with. Honestly Marco´s storyline in general was pretty ?????? so idk.

But the hiding from Vilu plot... oh, my Franletta heart is beating. Oh, my Vilu defense mode is beating. Francesca is not even enjoying her and Diego's first kiss because she thinks of Vilu and Marco, but as Marco leaves she constantly overthinks how to tell Vilu. Cause she cares so much about her, too much about what she'll think. And she should have just told right away, cause the longer it goes, the harder it is to say. People often make the argument "Francesca couldn't tell her because Violetta always talked about herself and never listened". This... is not true. In actuality, Violetta constantly asks if Fran had something she wanted to say. Yes, she can talk a lot, but she does take the time to quiet down to listen to Fran. It is, 80% of the time, either Francesca herself chickening out and making excuses why she can't tell Violetta, or someone (Camila mostly) interrupting them. I actually got a bit mad at the show when Francesca herself said that she couldn't tell Violetta because Violetta had been talking so much about Leon, and then in the previous scene, Violetta had mentioned Leon in ONE sentence, then asked Fran what she wanted to say, ready to listen - and then Camila stormed in and interrupted. It was not Vilu's fault there and honestly sometimes you're blaming her too much in this fandom. But yes, there has been scenes where Violetta actually does not listen - but it happened in literally 2 instances. 2 instances out of like... 15. And in those two, she either gets called out about not listening, or she realizes her mistake immediately, goes after Fran and to apologize and hear her out. She cares so much about Fran and Fran cares so much about her her. None of them wants to intentionally hurt the other - which adds to my next point:

Violetta is about to give up the Roxy thing very early, but Francesca unintentionally brings her back into the madness. You see, already in episode 28 (3 eps after Roxy and Fausta has been a thing), Francesca says she does not want to do this anymore and she and Violetta have a fight. During this time, Violetta realizes how silly this whole thing is and is about to give it up herself. But just as she is about to go out and forget all about Roxy, Francesca comes back in, goes "I have Fausta in my bag, let's do this" and drags Violetta back in again. Vilu also a lot of the time apologizes to Fran for dragging her into this - she feels genuinely bad for the mess she brought on herself. But without Francesca, it had stopped much sooner, but she cared so much about Violetta that she decided, even when she didn't want to, to help her out with this crazy plan. They were two in this. Violetta did not force her as much as it's portrayed she is.

Anyway I can dissect Franletta in S3 all day, because I focus so much more about them than Diego and Fran in the Diecesca plot, but I gotta admit - Diecesca, after the reveal when they can just be a normal couple without hiding, is pretty fun. The show lets you know just how silly the two can be - especially how silly Francesca can be. Though, it's a little sad that a lot of it is focused on bickering with Gregorio. That took me out a bit.

Now, for the other friendships - I have realized just want a bundle of chaos Violetta and Camila are when they are together. Camila should have been Fausta tbh, in actuality I can see that being her idea more than Vilu's. I don't know how Camila got to be the voice of reason in season 3, because she has literally never had that role before x) She was the one always dragging especially Fran into craziness in the earlier seasons. But Camila and Violetta together in season 3 is really like seeing two braincells interact. It's very hilarious. Poor Fran having to deal with them.

I don't know how Brodemila is endgame sometimes tbh. They argued so much, even randomly broke up for two hours at several occasions. Also, the fact that Camila wanted to practice a kissing scene with two other dudes and NATY before even considering kissing Broduey... I just... hm...

With that, Natila. My BELOVED. This is Natila dating season and it's off with a BANG.

And in that, we got LUTY. LUTY LUTY LUTY LUTY LUTY LUTY- holy shit do they have content, millions of more content than what they had in the previous seasons. They are a virus who keeps spreading, so true <3

This may be the Franletta (derogatory) season, and it is the season where I have most felt "omg what if I don't ship them, what if I have just fooled myself?". Yet, every single time I think that, they come back to me. It takes ONE scene and I am BACK IN!! Franletta never dies baby!! (Plus, I don't think I could've fully stopped shipping them anyway, because even if they had less content in S3 they have so much much content in S1 and especially S2 that always is there for me). I told myself that I can and I will find Franletta scenes and baby, when you look for it, you find it <3

I won't forgive Germán for his past failures. Just because he's a good dad now all of a sudden, I can't forget everything he did.

Angie was on bad terms with him in the last episode. She hated him the whole time. They weren't even dating. Honestly to god, this marriage will not end up as happy as they want it to.

I'm so glad Jade got someone who cares about her <3 She deserves that actually.

Also I am very glad it ended with Priscila ending up at a mental institution. Both realistic and what I feel is a good ending for her. Honestly, people like her very much exists in real life and I hope that there was some kid watching this show and realized they were not alone with having a parent like that, and even acknowledging that's not how parents are supposed to be like.

Leonetta Leonetta... my beloved. Gosh, there's something with them that just keeps me intrigued even when they are being so stupid. I can say that I enjoyed their "trying to only be friends" plot just because they had more or less more tension than they ever had before and it always gets me. Idk if it's the nostalgia talking, but Leonetta... ah... them <3

This was Ludmila season. And she deserved it all. She is our supernova and she shines beyond the stars!

So apparently there is a "4096 characters per block" limit (????) but anyway. Fuck Gery no one likes her, also Clement was very boring too. Milton was also very ????? what was he even doing.

Feels like there's a million more things to say, and there is. I can never shut up about Violetta. This show has been there for me through thick and thin and I can't imagine how my life would have been like if I never saw it.

Thank you all for following me on this rewatch. It's been a blast.

[chicoriii]

Season 4, Episode 17 - Larme Ultime (Rocketear)

So this is a DjiWifi episode from which comes a screenshot I've seen over a month ago (I think). It's good they got it, before season 4 started I really wanted it to happen and to see a kiss between Nino and Alya in it (but that didn't happen and I don't get why, only the main pairing is allowed to kiss in this show or what?), but now I could not be excited about it anymore, because I'm sick of Alya and I'm not able to hide it. Yes, I'm biased, but I'm just a normal viewer and I have right to dislike her favouritism.

My the biggest thought after watching this is that it looks like since Optigami, Alya is not only a deuteragonist, like I said in my post about Sentibubbler, she's actually more like a co-protagonist now. That was an extremely Alya-centric episode (even more than Lie was was about Adrien, as it was mostly Ladybug who saved the world like almost always, also because Chat sacrificed himself again), while in Optigami and this one she has screentime comparable to Marinette. I'm still trying to avoid spoilers (so please, don't tell what's going to happen in the next episodes, I don't want to know), but I'm sure that either 15 or 16 is also highly about her, because we've seen the new Rena's suit in this episode and it looked like it wasn't the first episode with it. But really, I won't be surprised if Alya has lots of screentime in both episodes and all others to the end of the show as well. I don't think Adrien is ever going to get as much special treatment like Alya. :/ The creators have never been as nice to him.

Didn't the writes have enough ideas for another story arcs? And thanks to it they were able to save money, because then creators could just reuse old models of villains more than before. Have anyone noticed that S4 has even fewer number of completely new characters than previous seasons? The scientist seen at the start of the episode has detailed model, so she had to be akumatised in any of the previous unreleased episodes (or one of the next ones). And why she looks a lot like Alya, is she her relative? If yes, you know what that means? Another excuse to make an episode full of the fox wielder, because, you know, it’s not like she already got enough occasions to shine in S4. 

Speaking of Rena Rouge's new suit. What a waste, it would be great for a potential chameleon Miraculous, so it seems it won't be ever created for canon. So bad, I think it's one of the coolest animal, so a Miraculous based on it would be awesome. It could one from an African Miracle Box which should appear, since they are planning making an African special. The suit is good and all, but I still feel disappointed that it's not the superpower of a chameleon Miraculous. :(

Why is Nino acting over the top out of nowhere? I like film noir atmosphere, fedoras and especially jazz music full of saxophones (my favourite music genre and instrument), but it looks totally ridiculous when he's like that. I thought it's Marinette's speciality, and he beat her in that category. I'm not trying to say it's a a bad thing, it just feels weird seeing Nino like that. And since I love jazz, I would like to listen to that film noir-esque music more once I got 5.1 audio, since it was hardly heard in the episode. It didn't sound much interesting, but it's too early to judge it seriously.

Too bad they had written the main conflict in the episode using one of the biggest romantic cliche - misunderstanding in which one character see and\or hear something, but not the whole thing, so said character interprets it wrong. Motifs like that are rather annoying, so it's good something similar haven't happened in the Love Square's arc (yet at least). Though I have a big issue with how they write it this season and I'm going to make a post about it (is anyone interested?).

The akuma is one the ugliest and has one of the most laziest power ever. Really? He shoots using tear bullets and does nothing more? I know many people hate Bubbler's design, but no matter how silly it looks, it was much more creative than this.

And of course the whole thing with Alya remembering the whole conversation with Chat Noir was extremely far-fetched. The could think about something more believable, but I'm not surprised it happened, since I think this season is generally more lazy written than previous ones.

On the other hand, I'm surprised that Marinette is actually aware that Shadow Moth should not know that Alya is still Rena Rouge. It seems that the whole episode 15 (or 16) is about they trying to figure out what to do with that problem.  I won't be surprised if Alya would do it all by herself like it happened with protecting charms in Mr Pigeon 72, because it's completely normal that a random person who has never met Fu is better at decrypting the grimoire than someone who has been trained to be a guardian to some extend :/ Still I think they should not be sure that camouflage mode would solve the problem completely. From what I understand the new suit doesn’t make her completely invisible to others. Rena could be seen by anyone who takes a photo of her and then post in on the internet (it won't be believable that she's the only one crazy about superheroes in Paris). But at least they tried to do something and Marinette sees the danger to some extend. It’s something new.

It's not like Alya is careful, she's completely reckless (and they think she's a good reporter material? Don't make me laugh) and she still thinks more about her own fun in being the superheroine than safety of herself or the world. But of course, it's not gonna happen, because plot armor is very strong in this show. I really had a feeling that she acted like a little child in the first minutes of the episode. She's unable to see that her situation is not a joke. She should be all happy that Marinette still lets her to keep the fox Miraculous. She really lacks humility and I see it clearly since Optigami at least. Besides, Marinette ignores another red flags, that Alya is taking pictures of herself in the new suit no one is supposed to see and thinking about posting them on Ladyblog (was Bunnix right that Alya is able to reveal Miraculous secrets on her blog because of her overenthusiasm and lack of ability of seeing consequences of her actions?).

By the way, now I think, if Alya can't keep in secret that she's still Rena Rouge from Nino (which happens because it's needed for the plot), so how could she be all fine with keeping in secret other facts like that Ladybug gave her the fox permanently and she knows her identity (which isn't happening because the plot doesn't require it)? She still has to lie on Nino because of these secrets.

They are making Marinette a big hypocrite this season. Since she revealed herself to Alya, it's been shown that secret identities rule was bullshit from the start, but Marinette is still saying that heroes can't reveal their identities to anyone. What? What has she done before like not revealing herself to someone, so how she dares keep saying about how crucial is keeping secrets from everyone? Sorry writers, I can't take that rule seriously anymore since Alya knows and no one should. Because Marinette told Alya, she could tell it to other persons she trust as well. What's the difference between her best friend and the rest of the people in the world? Is Alya the only person she trusts? In fact, revealing herself to Sabine, for example, would be much better choice. She's actually wise and mature unlike Alya and her secrets would be much more safe with her mother.

I've seen Chat Blanc again on TV recently and I remembered one thing Ladybug told to Bunnix there: "The best-kept secrets are the ones you never share." (Google Translate says that the line is exactly the same in the French original). Some episodes later, she isn't thinking twice if she should tell all the guardian secrets to Alya. Okay, she revealed her identity because of being too emotional in that exact moment, but then when she calmed down, she should be able to think if telling all the Miraculous secrets is a good idea. The other hypocritical thing is telling Chloé "you can't be Queen Bee anymore, because Hawk Moth knows your identity" but still calling the other heroes whose identities have been exposed.

So I can't even blame Alya for telling Nino the truth if the guardian herself is not following her own rules. Not to mention, Marinette doesn't address wrong things Alya is doing at all, so no wonder she feels she could do anything, she won't get punished, no matter what. After all, it's not the first moment in which she does something her best friend forbid her.

And we can say the show has been confirmed that Nino is even worse at keeping secrets, especially in crisis situations, so why people wanted to see Adrien revealing himself to Nino? It's obvious that he would tell Adrien's secret to Alya and maybe some other people as well.

I thought that since S3 finale Adrien is supposed to know identities of every backup hero from seasons 2 and 3 and I was ready to be salty about that as well. But yes, actually after purification of Miracle Queen's akuma, brainwashed heroes didn't detransform. They were forgotten completely and we don't even know what happened with them exactly. I suppose Ladybug took their Miraculous when Chat Noir wasn't there anymore.

Adrien has every right to be angry at Ladybug, she treats him so badly, since Alya knows her own secrets and she doesn't even have the guts to admit that. But I'm going to say about my the biggest issue in the Chat Noir and Ladybug's situation in another post, I hope I would write before the next episode airs.

[clacing]

"Oh cool, an episode titled 'Olivia and Yunan'" I said, "most likely a secondary-character centric episode where we'll probably see Marcy on the side" I said. I WAS (almost) WRONG. I mean I had been spoiled about Marcy and the core so I knew it would happen at some point but I was not expecting it *now* oh my god. The absence of music in the credits after that was an excellent choice, it was underlying the chilling side of the events

Aand they have changed the opening credits to add Marcy+core. I love when they do that in cartoons but god it does hurt a little bit. How am I supposed to get through the regular slice of life episodes and *wait* for this catastrophe to unfold ?? (Kidding I love that they're developing the characters so much with other stories, but you weren't kidding about the slow burn)

Amphibia anon again, small update : I love small details on this show and when they make a joke about it, like ANNE'S SHOE I lost it 😂😂 I actually noticed it before Hop Pop pointed it out and I went back to see if she lost it where I thought she did, and I just love that kind of running joke, this show is great

Oh man. I have now finished Amphibia. I've been crying for 15 minutes. It was just supposed to be a silly little cartoon with dumb jokes and frogs, what has this done to me

Catching up on all of your messages at once:

I remember when That scene in Olivia & Yunan was used as the stinger for the s3 trailer and we all collectively lost our fucking mind. Thinking back on it now it did spoil way too much but the fact that a crack fandom theory based on nothing at all was actually proven right..... god it got us all so hyped.

I think they could've done a lot more with it tbh but Amphibia was never meant to be this big action-heavy show. When I said it was a slow burn, what I meant is that the heart of the show isn't the big plot episodes but the "filler" episodes leading up to them. That's when you actually get to know these characters and their relationships with one another, and without them the big plot episodes wouldn't hit half as much. Part of it is that by the time another plot episode comes around you're so starved for something, anything to happen that you'd take whatever the crew throws at you, and yet every time they decided that was simply not enough and that they needed to blow it out of the fucking park. It's just such a good show for what it wanted to accomplish, regardless of what we wanted it to accomplish.

And yeah.... trust me, I get you. That finale gave me depression for like, two weeks. I'd just randomly start crying throughout the day and that hadn't happened to me in a long while. It was rough, man 😭

ALSO thank you for liveblogging your watch it was so fun!!! Every time someone starts watching Amphibia because of me I need to know their reactions in real time. I live vicariously through y’all ‘cause I can’t experience the show again for the first time :(

[blushinggray]

Free! The Final Stroke screeching/reaction (spoilers)

AHHHHH I JUST WATCHED THE FINAL STROKE MOVIE TODAY IN THEATERS ON PREMIER DAY AND IT WAS LAKSJDFOAIFJWOEI to summarize it all, it was Very Gay, which was to be expected but they DID NOT have to get so freaking extra with it 😩😩😩

much screaming and many spoilers ahead

FIRST OF ALL, KIRISHIMA NATSUYA: HE WAS SO FUCKING HANDSOME DAFKJOIEFJOSIDJF. SO HANDSOME. SO HANDSOME AND STUPID AND OVERLY FRIENDLY AS WE LOVE HIM TO BE ALKDSJFOAIEW.

he was in the film for a total of maybe 5 minutes altogether, which was kind of a lot bc the film kind of was just putting all the characters back in for the sake of putting them in imo? for the fans, lol. so everyone could see their faves. and in these five minutes that he appeared, our mans:

bragged about his little brother he's so proud of

got laughed at by nao for being natsuya (aka dumb and straightforward) as usual

trained with sousuke (he was hanging out in the same pool with him, nao, and makoto to train and aid in sousuke's rehab training)

got a call from ikuya after the international swimming competition in sydney!!!! in that same cafe he's always at!!!! and he was with nao at the time he got the call. casual and cool as always, being the cool big brother or whatever. he ended the call with a curt, "you got it. see you. don't catch a cold."

HE WAS HANGING OUT AT CAFE MARON WHILE THEY WAITED FOR THE SYDNEY COMPETITORS TO COME BACK TO JAPAN. HE WAS BEHIND THE COUNTER WITH ASAHI (WHO WAS HOLDING BABY TSUKIMI IN A CARRIER ON HIS CHEST!!!!!) AND HE THREW HIS ARM AROUND ASAHI AND WAS GETTING SO CLOSE LIKE ALKSDJFAOIEJAOEI. I have absolutely no clue what he was saying at the time bc i was too busy freaking out and trying to hold in the sounds bc the theater was so quiet. but his GODDAMN FACE. HE WAS SMIRKING. SO HANDSOME 😩😩😩😩😩😩😩

and of fucking course, they were all out together at a restaurant when the sydney competitors came back, and he was like, "wth no one else is drinking alcohol tonight?" and nao was like "ofc not haha" AND YOU KNOW WHAT HAPPENS NEXT

HE FUCKING FALLS ASLEEP AT THE TABLE AFTER DRINKING AND EVERYONE IS SURROUNDING HIM AND PATTING HIM LIKE "dude..." and ikuya is sitting there like, omg can't believe this mess is my brother....

i thought that just might be his last scene in the film but then we show back up to the kirishima household and natsuya is eating some sort of luxury holiday(?) bento and ikuya is like "aren't you gonna save any for me?" and natsuya's like "of course not. this is for me, you gotta wait until next year xD" and then ikuya just fucking SNATCHES up several different foods and stuffs his face with all of them and natsuya starts arguing with him over them laskjdfoawiefjao where was this brotherly affection all this time?????

and then cut to a few seconds later, natsuya's bumming in his room on the floor like in s3 when ikuya comes in and tells him about his new future goals and alskdjfaoei brothers sharing their ambitions together 😩😩 WHAT IS GOING ON. EVERYONE GETS ALONG SO WELL NOW???

NEXT: we'll go back to the beginning i guess lmfao but they're preparing for some sort of university festival

we start off with an easily misunderstandable shoujo-style situation where asahi is talking to ikuya like, "i know it's your first time... you don't have to be nervous. i know you can do it." and ikuya's like "no! i can't 😣" like the tsun he is backed up against the wall. and then it turns out they're trying to make a mille feuille cake.... but everything he's made so far looked like crepes

and for some damn reason, KISUMI comes outta nowhere into the kitchen and is like "ooooh what's this? a mille feuille cake? although they all look kinda like crepes haha ^^" and then ikuya RUNS THE FUCK OUT OF THE KITCHEN, yelling, "i told you i couldn't do it!!!" like the fucking tsun he is... and asahi is yelling at kisumi like "why did you just say that!!!" and starts rubbing his knuckles into kisumi's head and kisumi's just laughing like, "oh did i do that hehe"

and for some reason... seijuurou is working at the booth in his speedo and swim team jacket. i mean i'm not complaining but sir.... PLS TAKE MY MONEY AND GIVE ME YOUR FAT OCTOPUS BALLS. (he literally started a batter mixing competition with hoshikawa inside the booth, like what are they even doing in the same booth???)

then rin and sousuke show up to ikuya, asahi, and hiyori(?)'s booth, and they're offering them the crepes and then they get into a conversation about smth that leads into them showing the embarrassing photos they have of each other?????? like ikuya has a pic of rin in his maid costume for some reason??? (tho it isn't shown) and rin shows an embarrassing pic of ikuya he has in his phone that he got from natsuya???????????? and then ikuya starts chasing after rin yelling at him to delete it lasdkjfoaei

and then haru is off to the side selling ugly ass bird mascots again lmfao. bc ofc he is. love that weirdo

BUT THE REAL KICKER HERE IS KINJOU!!!!!!!!!!!

APPARENTLY, HIS VILLAIN BACKSTORY COMES FROM HIS CHILDHOOD CRUSH (/exaggerated) ON HIYORI ALSKDJFOAIE WHAAAT. apparently he was that annoying kid in the playground who would go up to hiyori and bother him bc he wanted a friend. bb hiyori was literally like "why are you even talking to me so much?" in his sandbox. and bb kinjou is like, "well there's gotta be smth you like, right? what is it?" and hiyori's like "well i feel kinda happy when i'm swimming... :)" as images of ikuya flash into his mind, that gay ass

BUT KINJOU'S GAY ASS EYES START SPARKLING TOO AND THEN HE'S LIKE "I GOTTA LEARN WHAT THE BIG DEAL ABOUT SWIMMING IS" and he runs home, begs his brother to take him to the pool. but next time he brings his swimming stuff with him to the playground, hiyori isn't there anymore and apparently he left for america at that time (or smth). so poor baby basically got ghosted

but hiyori still knows him when they're older!!!! kinjou shows up when they're throwing out the trash after the uni festival and calls out to hiyori to taught him (which is where that bullying preview scene came from i guess) and alkfjeoiaejoaifj omfg it's like that estranged childhood friends (sorta) trope but it'll never go kinjou's way bc hiyori is and will always be in love with ikuya 😔

kinjou would make such a good yandere tho!!!! he has a feral expression on a few times throughout the movie, and during a race he gets super competitive mid-race and... ngl he was kinda sexy 😳 i'm actually kind of surprised by how taken i was with him in this movie. doesn't help that he's unfairly handsome and his hair looks fucking amazing. i MAY OR MAY NOT be exploring this man in the future..................

i also found the ending with haru pretty interesting!!!! it kind of hints at neurodivergence? smth along the lines of disassociation or multiple personalities? (guess 50% off was kinda right on that end lmfao).

he gets obsessed with beating albert wahlander, which is the most fired up i've ever seen him (to the point of almost hurting himself) and then the shadow or whatever effect albert has on haru kind of just overtakes him and pushes haru out of his own body in a way... it doesn't make sense to describe it this way, i know, but haru is literally watching himself say hurtful things to his friends while being overtaken by this... albert obsessed persona?

it's so interesting to see haru being the one obsessing over someone instead of the other way around for once!!! at the end of the movie (after all the credits) haru says the same thing he once said at the beginning of season 1? about how "at age 5, you're a prodigy. at age 15, you're a genius. at age 20(?), you're average." and this is def gonna be explored/concluded in the second part of the final stroke movie so i'm excited for that!!!! april 2022 come at me!!!!

there were SOOOOO many other things going on, plot wise and fanservice wise, and ofc kyoto animation was fucking TOP TIER SHIT. all the water effects... there was a shot where haru was looking at his reflection in the water and they make a drop fall and spread and shake his reflection in the waves and it was lafkjsefoiaeja fucking glorious. the soundtrack was lovely too. there was a RADWIMPS-esque beginning song and a sexy ass electric guitar buildup for kinjou (which may or may not be contributing to my growing obsession with him...)

AHHHH!!!! it was so good and everyone was so cute and handsome and gay and funny. we literally see every single character we've met before in some way, shape, or form lmfao. i might just go back to the theater and watch it again on one of the upcoming holidays this week.... SO GOOD. SO GOOD.

I LOVE ALL THESE GAY SWIMMING BOYS SO MUCH 😩😩😩

[discotreque]

LwD 2.05: An Embarrassment of Dooplers

So I was a little nervous about this one! I hadn’t heard any spoiler-spoilers, but screeners have been out for weeks now, and I’d heard a bunch of individual, vague, non-spoilery hints about (1) big character moments, on the scale of a mid-season finale even though the show’s not taking a mid-season break; and (2) an ending that would make me cry.

I guess I imagined something relatively serious and dramatic, like “No Small Parts”? This show makes me cackle with laughter and giggle with nerdy glee and “d’awww!” at heartwarming friendships every week, but it’s only ever made me cry once—and then I was impressed that they were going to get there from the wacky hijinks we saw in the brief teaser.

The lack of a cold open made me apprehensive too—in my experience, that’s typically a sign that there’s so much plot in the rest of the episode that they need that extra scene—but after ~21.5 minutes of aforementioned hijinks, I was having so much fun that I’d completely forgotten about the alleged tear-jerker at the end…

…and they were not the tears I was expecting.

I didn’t think I’d be smiling and crying!!!! That was wholesome as SHIT!!!!!

I almost can’t believe they earned that—but they totally did.

After a Mariner–Tendi episode and a Boimler–Rutherford episode, we’re back to the “usual” Season 1 pairings… except the relationships between these characters have changed since Season 1. Mariner still feels thwacked in the abandonment issues by Boimler bailing for the Titan, and Rutherford’s having a tiny little existential crisis about losing an entire year of his life.

Both of which are extremely understandable and very heavy situations—and both of those situations get resolved because everyone in them is vulnerable with each other and honest about their feelings—AND that honesty and vulnerability brings both pairs of friends closer together. Are you kidding me?? I would watch SEVENTY seasons of that shit. Put it in my veins.

Onto the notes:

So basically Dooplers are Tribbles, but for cringe comedy instead of slapstick? Ohhhhh boy.

Look at Ransom the diplomat, tossing his own fork on the floor! I like that he’s actually a pretty competent Starfleet officer, despite also being a completely ridiculous person.

Wait a second, is that—OH HOLY SHIT, THE DOOPLERS ARE VOICED BY RICHARD KIND.

It makes sense that B. Boimler would find William annoying—who likes seeing their own flaws reflected back at them? And who could be a better reflection of one’s flaws than one’s literal duplicate?—but most interesting to me is that it implies on some level, Bradward knows the stick up his butt is a flaw. (Does William?)

Why does the Cerritos model have working phasers?!?!

I’m loving hot pink as the currently en-vogue colour for “dangerous sci-fi energy” in animation (cf. almost every previous episode of this show; Into the Spider-Verse; other stuff I can’t remember right now). As a former child of the 80’s, I’m living for it… but as a former teenager of the 90’s, I can’t help but wonder if it’s going to age as poorly as the harsh neon green of The Matrix, every Borg appearance on Voyager, and like 80% of the websites I made in high school…

SKANTS! SKANTS! SKANTS!

That fake-out joke with the fly-by over the Cerritos model was in the season trailer weeks ago, and I was so enthralled by that handsome lady that the sticker coming into frame still got me good 😂😂😂

BECKY Mariner????? omg yes

Some top-quality Boimler screams in this one. Poor Jack Quaid must drink gallons of throat-coat tea when he records.

One of the great things about Star Trek to me is that you never know what you’re going to get from any random episode. A murder mystery? A road trip? A spooky thriller? A cheesy romance? Broad comedy? Body horror? Didactic political screeds shrouded in tissue-thin science-fiction metaphors? Brain and brain, what is brain??? And after this many years of watching, you’d think I’d be hard to surprise. But if I ever told you I thought I’d see a Blues Brothers–style car chase through a frickin’ shopping mall on an episode of Star Trek, I would have been straight-up lying to you. I loved it, it worked for me, my jaw was on the floor and I was clapping with joy—but I’m definitely comfortable calling this one “unexpected.”

It’s CAPTAIN SHELBY!!! And an ancient babydyke crush rose from the depths of my childhood subconscious… (Also I think her Number One is based on the original makeup—eventually deemed too complicated—for Saru? Now that’s a deep cut.)

In 20th-century Trek, you almost never got to see what was going on inside a starship from the outside. Even after they switched from physical models (where it was next to impossible on a single episode’s budget) to CGI (which was still in its infancy, still not exactly cheap, and still broadcast in SD anyway), it was a rare thrill to see any meaningful interior details in an exterior shot. Disco’s modern VFX have given us some tasty, tasty treats in that department, but nothing quite as sublime as all the pink Doopler light glittering through the Cerritos’s windows.

Mariner says she’ll take her contact Malvus down with her, and threatens that they’ll end up “in the same cell.” Malvus is a Mizarian, a species introduced in TNG’s “Allegiance,” in which Captain Picard is held in a mysterious prison with one. I think I see what you did there, McMahan?

Bartender… so hot… lesbian circuits… overloading…

The Tendi and Rutherford C-story was, well, a C-story within a 22-minute episode, so there wasn’t much to it, but the one scene that mattered actually mattered a lot. I’m ambivalent on whether they should end up romantically involved—I’d prefer they don’t, but they’ll be one of the cutest couples in Trek history if they do—and as long as they keep that pure, sweet friendship between them at the heart of whatever else happens, I’m on board.

Carol Freeman was already one of my favourite captains before this season, and she’s been steadily moving up the list. The quiet throughline about her ambition to be on a better ship has been fascinating so far, and it’s starting to actually make me feel a little conflicted: I’m of course rooting for Captain Freeman to recognize her worth, make Starfleet recognize her worth, and become the ass-kicking captain of a hero ship that she’s clearly ready to be—but that almost surely means she’d be kicking ass off-screen, because LwD isn’t about those kind of adventures, and I’d be devastated not to have Dawnn Lewis on the show every week. So I’m kind of on the edge of my seat about this one!

I had so many favourite jokes this week I put them in a separate list:

“Even the replicated water on the Titan tasted better” is a low-key brilliant dunk on people who can’t shut the fuck up about the cooler places they used to live.

“Ooooh, they have a Quark’s now! That used to just be an empty lot where teens would make mistakes!” ← That’s literally me every time I go back to where I grew up. I felt so Seen™ I almost hid under a blanket.

“I would never go down the stairs!” (evil grin) (goes up the stairs)

The “well, shit” expressions from Mariner and Boimler as their crashed car sank right into the water… which started to bubble innocuously… and then the bottles of Data bubble-bath popped up, paying off a joke I thought had already been paid off—that was the one that woke up my poor cat this week. Just exquisite timing.

“YOUR PAGH IS WEAK, AND IT DISGUSTS ME!” “I don’t even know what that is, but I don’t like your tone!”

“Okona’s in there? He’s not even Starfleet! This is outrageous!” made me shout “NO!” at the screen like I was scolding my cat for scratching furniture. (She did not wake up that time.)

Best background joke: the neon sign at the dive bar advertising FREE SHOTS & BEERS. (Get it? Because they’re on a Federation starbase? Where nobody uses money?)

And of course Quark merchandised DS9.

This wasn’t just a standout episode of Lower Decks, this was a brilliant episode of Star Trek, period. The Dooplers, though extremely silly, are nevertheless also a clever sci-fi metaphor for real and relatable personal/interpersonal issues, and an effective plot catalyst for meaningful character growth from all four of our ensigns and the captain.

The jokes were hilarious, the action was kinetic, the A-, B-, and C-plots linked up thematically, the visuals were consistently and thoroughly gorgeous, the character beats—between Mariner and Boimler, Tendi and Rutherford, Mariner and Capt. Freeman—were all genuine, heartfelt and wholesome, and the references to other Trek canon were both deep and deeply affectionate.

Only 15 episodes in, and this series knows exactly what it is, exactly what it wants to do, and knows that it can knock our socks off doing it. Mike McMahan has said in recent interviews that the back half of S2 (and the apparently almost-fully-written S3) is a straight line uphill in quality from here—which surprised me at first, because McMahan seems like a pretty chill dude who doesn’t normally brag about his own work like that.

But then the Prophets sent me a vision of my space dad Ben Sisko, who reminded me of the words of 1930’s baseball player Dizzy Dean:

“If you can do it, it ain’t bragging.”

[Thanks to cygnus-x1.net for the screenshots this week—I was too lazy to do my own.]

[impala-in-gotham]

SPN Finale Theory: Part Two

Finale realizations continued--taking off of Part One

Chuck’s Swan Song Finale 2.0 and Cas Omitted

Throughout the show Chuck is still trying to get the brother vs brother end using His own "blunt instruments" by bringing back Lucifer(s7-15) multiple times, giving Dean the MOC(s10), bringing in AW Michael(s13) and possessing Dean(s14). It never works because free will, love and family always wins.

So... all of s15, minus the last 2 episodes, were filled with all the character development we saw develop and arcs that were the product of "running their own race". THEN Cas dies.

Everything Cas represents fades away in ep 19. The last time we hear his voice is corrupted by Lucifer. (But it also canonically confirms Dean loves Cas.) How he changed Dean’s self-worth, renewed Sam’s hope, and Jack himself is all that’s left of Cas to help change the narrative and defeat Chuck once and for all. He died believing this would come to pass because he saved Dean.

You feel the disconnect happen in between Lucifer and Michael’s deaths and Jack becoming the new God. But even with Chuck the writers no longer in power, its reverted back to before Cas ever interfered. Family is back to only the brothers and the plot is back to hunting monsters. The ending for each brother mirrors the finales of the season before Cas meant something to them. Dean got a season 3 finale since Cas meant something to Dean first and Sam got a season 5 finale since Cas didn’t mean as much to him until s6.

Carry On:

Dean’s character has dwindled back down to his car, pie, rock music, and beer of s3. He even loves dogs again as if he’s pre-hellhound death trauma. Sam’s character has dwindled back down to the baby brother that no longer wants to hunt but there for emotional support of pre-s5. Even the damn journal's back and Jenny for some reason.

Dean’s s3 "at least then my life can mean something" mindset AKA before found family-Bobby reminds him it always did and Cas saves him returns. He dies by getting stabbed in the back mirroring how Sam died in s2 which led to Cas & the apocalypse to begin with. Dean desperately tries to accept it and begs to be told its ok for him to die. It’s as if s15 Dean that doesn’t want to die is battling with s3 Dean who always feared but expected he’d die on a hunt. Cas doesn't save him this time. Since Sam went on to apparently live a very hollow, apple pie life where he was mourning his brother the whole time it mirrors s5 Dean’s life with Lisa. Sam builds a family but his wife is just a stand-in, his son is a Dean jr, and all his memories surround the parents and brother he lost. Cas still doesn’t interfere. Sam also needs assurance to let go.

Even heaven isn't post-s5 accurate despite the claim that Jack and Cas built this to be the heaven Dean dreamed of and deserved. Sure, Jan. Cas is supposedly alive and well but it’s not known or is [Omitted]; however, what Cas represents is not in heaven either.

Everything about Dean’s heaven is pre-Cas or pre-apocalypse canon:

Pre-s4 cast of Bobby, parents, and Rufus are the only ones “known” to be in heaven. Leaving out post5 family like Charlie, Kevin, even Adam. Cas witnessed the grief and guilt their loss had on Dean, plus all 3 were already included in s15 (AW Charlie but still Charlie callback). Cas would have had them there, on or off-screen.

Despite Bobby being there as supposed found family, he’s also dwindled down to the Bobby of s3. He doesn’t even get up and hug Dean who he hasn’t seen since s8 which canonically doesn’t make sense for post s3 reunions for Bobby or Dean. You get reunited from death, you hug each other; its the Supernatural law of the land.

Harvelle's is thee bar and only actual setting in heaven instead of Dean's dream of Rocky's Bar circa s14. Which Cas not only knows is Dean’s dream, he stood in it. Cas never went to Harvelle's and the only time it was heaven-related was s5 as a part of Ash's heaven only. Dean never mentions it after.

The heaven beer is El Sol. The same in Dean's djinn dream(s3) AND in the Beautiful Room(s4). Not the beer that they've been drinking in the bunker for years OR the ones in Rocky's that are real-life Jensen's. And not because it's his favorite like in s3/4 BUT because it was his first/with his Dad....that's what we're going with? That's what Dean dreams about? No.

Despite heaven being new & improved, it's actually similar to s5 Dark Side of the Moon heaven. Baby just appears and Dean has to follow the road which can only lead to Sam. Which Cas does witness but...interesting.

In conclusion, episode 20 was unbelievable because it's an illusion of what Sam and Dean's life/fate/heaven would be without Cas changing the story and without Chuck being in charge of it. It's not real. It's a figment of what could have been post-Swan Song. This is exactly why you can watch up to season 5 then skip 10 entire years and still follow the finale. If anything its part 2 of Swan Song that Kripke wanted but didn't get. Jensen knew it. It deleted 10 yrs because it deleted Cas and everything that resulted because of Cas. I have no idea what all was Omitted but I have a feeling the finale was still this s5 nightmare, I’m just thinking maybe it was on purpose.

Cas/Misha persevered despite the 3-6 ep arc role he was supposed to have and continued challenging God's narrative for 12 years. This is why ALL of us that are screaming into the void, can't move on, and hated the finale just so happen to ALSO be Castiel fans or Cas/Dean Girls or Hellers or any fan that saw how Cas's entire arc was the driving force from s6-15. We know #CastielMatters/Energies because without him the show would have died with him as false-god Godstiel. We recognized the profound effect he had on Dean and Sam throughout their character development.

I didn't make any of this up THEY wrote this into being. They wrote the show. They wrote the characters. They wrote the parallels and the very specifically done set design/lighting. We just saw it through a lens that maybe you can't see without being more like Cas. An outsider, self-loathing, trying our best in a world where it’s easy to do our worst, have more faith in love than God, and maybe even be a little queer too. Yes, it was a story that started out as two brothers hunting monsters but they grew up. The whole show grew up and this is NOT how it ends.

[mittensmorgul]

I saw that apparently we will get a flashback ep later this year. Do we know if this "flashback" ep will be about the brothers childhood or an offscreen hunt/case taking place after s3 so Cas can be in it? Hopefully the later. It would be foolish to instert a filler brothers only ep so late into the last season.

Hi there! I’ll start with what I assume are facts (but facts can change and I’m not psychic and can’t see the future, and all that), and then wander off down theory tangents for a bit once we’ve established a baseline here. :)

We were told at the start of the season that Misha was again contracted for 15 episodes. Will this hold true? Will they negotiate for more episodes from him? We just don’t know. So for now, I’m going on the assumption that we will have 15 episodes with Cas, and 5 episodes without Cas. Let’s calculate!

So far this season, Cas has been absent from 15.04 and 15.05. We are pretty sure he will NOT be in 15.10 (it filmed during his book tour, and as far as we know he wasn’t present for ANY of the days that it filmed... this is one reason we suspect that something will happen to him in Purgatory, since he will not be in 15.10, but he IS in 15.11, so regardless of what happens, he will not be gone long).

That’s three episodes of the five we suspect will be Cas-less due to Misha’s contract. We know also that he will be in 15.12, and in 15.13, because there have been reports of him on set during the filming of both of these, as well.

That leaves us seven total episodes left, with TWO of them theoretically without Cas in them, if Misha’s contract has not changed.

So... one way to fill a Cas-less episode would be through a good flashback episode for Sam and Dean... perhaps one that is DIRECTLY RELEVANT to the major issues they’re facing in s15, facing down Chuck and wrestling with their entire concept of Free Will. This... is definitely something that could mesh seamlessly into prodding them into their final resolution to fight for what they each want in life, you know? 

And I would hardly call that a “filler” episode.

When writers are faced with the very real circumstance of NEEDING to write Cas out of an episode, and yet still continue to tell the overarching narrative of the entire season, this is the scenario they must confront, you know? They’re not CHOOSING to “ignore Cas,” or rendering him irrelevant to shove “filler Samndean” content down our throats. They are working with the real-world limitations of things like actor contracts and filming schedules, you know? And I trust the writers to have a very good reason for giving us one last series of flashbacks, and making it specifically relevant to the s15 plot.

If this is an episode we’re getting, I would LOVE IT if they continued the theme of 15.07 and Dean’s reunion with a friend he hunted with back during the Stanford era... I would LOVE to see Sam’s early days at Stanford, striking out on his own and facing the conflict of balancing his past and his entire life to that point with struggling to adjust to a “normal life” at school-- making friends, going to classes, trying to fit in and craft an entirely fake life story to share with them... I would honestly love to have that contrasted with what he would choose for himself NOW, having lived through everything we’ve seen in the last 15 years, if he could legitimately make that decision all over again.

And I’d LOVE to see Dean from this same era, for the first time in living memory that he wasn’t directly responsible for taking care of Sam, where John even left him to go off and hunt on his own, how Dean “family is everything” Winchester adapted to having responsibility only for himself, and his struggle to even WANT anything for himself outside of what he was trained for and ordered to do since he was four. I mean, this could help him come to terms with what actually was his choice all along the way, you know? So yes, this could ALL be relevant to the way the story of Supernatural plays out in the end, and could resolve SO MUCH of their endgame goals and desires, in contrast for what Chuck seems to have planned for them.

So, yes, if we MUST have two more episodes without Cas in them, then I approve of this sort of direction... even if it’s not a Stanford-era flashback, I suspect it will maintain exactly this sort of relevance to character growth since the beginning of the series.

[bourbon-ontherocks]

20 26 39!

Ooooh these are so great, thank you!!! ❤️❤️❤️❤️

20. Post a snippet of a WIP you’re working on.

Mwahaha, I literally just posted an almost 10k words chapter and you're still hungry?? Okay, so here are the first paragraphs of this Fitzpatrick story I'm working on (it's his POV):

He's a man of rules. Always have. There's nothing more satisfying than the certitude that things will happen exactly as planned. Wake up every morning at 7:15 precisely. Always wash his hands twice. Never talk shop on an empty stomach. Little things that provide anchoring in life. That's probably what drew him to accountancy in the first place. Rigid columns of numbers, irremovable rules carved in the granite of modern treasury.

Something which may sound boring to many people. But when others see complications he sees appeal. Opportunities. He likes his world obeying a set of rules. And that's when people start deviating from these that troubles come.

Take what's happening with the Boland case for example. But -- later on that.

Because today is not about work. Today is a day off. Today, it's been exactly ten years since Mary died.

  26. Standalone or series, and why?

I feel like I already answered a similar question a few weeks ago but I'm too lazy to look for my original post right now so I'll answer again, hopefully with new elements.

I started writing with series (I assume series means long fics here? Or are we talking about AO3 series which are a collection of fics? Am I questioning this too far? Does that even answer the question?) and as much as I like having space to develop a plot, have a wider range of characters and interactions, sow hidden clues everywhere, finish every chapter with a cliffhanger, I... am getting tired of it.

I mean, I generally love it at the beginning, but then at some point, once I've finished plotting the whole thing, I guess that the idea of having to write it is just stressful more than anything? Take the chapter from It's All Coming Back To Me that I posted last night for instance. I imagined its last scene (dialogue included) mid-January (I remember it distinctly because it was during a weekend I spent in London, I was walking along the Thames when... Nevermind). Mid-January!!!!! 😱😱😱

It was five months ago, and the thing is, during those five months, my brain has discovered new fic interests so it's really hard to pull my mind back at writing this fic because it's like, "Oh come on, I've finished planning this story already!". Like, I'm super happy with the chapter I posted, and I'll never abandon an unfinished story, but I don't know, it's been months since I've known exactly what happens in this fic, and all I have to do is write it now but my brain is more excited with newer projects (also I didn't plan to finish this story widely after S3 aired, and I generally like to stick to canon, which makes this story actually obsolete? Idk). The point is, I'm not spitting on this story at all, I still love it a lot and I enjoyed writing this chapter, and I'll enjoy writing the last one. It's just getting harder to get back in the right mindset as I'm dragging it along.

So no more long series for me at the moment, I think.

On the other hand, standalone stories... I started writing some one-shots while S3 aired, as a catharsis. And I very much enjoyed it. But if you look closely, you'll notice that I got growingly incapable of not adding a second chapter to them. That's exactly what happened with Take A Dip tbh. And I think that currently, this is my jam. I love that diptych structure with a cliffhanger in the middle, I think that the duality really allows for some contrast! You can switch POV to bring a different reading on the event (Don't Steal From Me, Something You Love) shift the mood and spice things up (Moose Hunting), or bring a resolution to all the threads that were pulled in the first chapter (what will happen in Take A Dip). And obviously, this is the perfect structure for mirrors and parallels which, as you may know, I'm a slut for! 😂😂😂😂

Obviously I'm not going to write only two-chapters stories from now on. The Fitzpatrick one will probs be a long one-shot, a la Four Seasons In One Day (am I just challenging myself with citing all my fics in one ask??), while the CXG crossover, which WILL be out someday, will probably be a collection of loosely related chapters.

But that's the kind of thing I currently tend to. Although who knows, maybe six months from now I'll be all about 20-chapters monster fics haha!!

  39. Do you base your characters on real people or not? If so, tell us about one.

Mhhhh, not really, I guess? I mean I already base my characters on a TV show, so... And as for the (very few) OCs I wrote, I don't think I did either. Maybe I based them on other characters from other universes, but I'm not sure that I'd feel comfortable with basing anything I write on real people. Not yet, at least. I think that I wouldn't feel free to do whatever I want with such characters, it would be too... involving? Idk if that makes sense, though.

  Ask me writing things!!

[multimetaverse]

Andi Mack 3x18 Review

Something To Talk A-Boot was a pretty good ep that was surprisingly fillery and made apparent the cracks in the show’s writing. Let’s dig in!

We got some great Tyrus scenes that more than made up for the crappy writing we’ve seen the last two Tyrus eps. For once they got to end on a happy note which was much appreciated. We returned to the same fun and flirty dynamic we saw before costume day and it’s like that whole mess never happened (which I’ll discuss more in the negatives). 

We’re back to the confident and flirty TJ we had been seeing up until costume day and it’s good that the show has abandoned it’s incredibly ill advised and poorly done internalized homophobia story line which is necessary because Tyrus can’t canon in the finale if TJ and Cyrus aren’t both comfortable with themselves and with each other. Luckily for the show, most of the audience will never know what the hell was going on with TJ in eps 13 and 15 and will just ignore it as bad writing. 

Lot’s of completely unnecessary touching between Tyrus in this ep like holding on to each others shoulders after the verdict and TJ tapping Cyrus as he was putting his seat belt on. I was pleasantly surprised by the full on hug we got; I didn’t think Terri would get a hug approved in this ep and be able to get hand holding approved in the finale but looks like she pulled it off. It made for a rare rule of three for Cyrus as we saw three increasingly gay hugs between him and TJ this season. I loved the whole you’ll visit me on the inside bit, that’s the kind of thing only couples say. 

Man was that Tyrus golf cart scene ever romantic. Just pure flirty fluff and it was wonderful to see. Really the only reason TJ stole the golf cart again and drove off to find Cyrus was to flirt with him. It’s the closest a show with 14 year olds can get to a classic drive off into the sunset ending. Has there ever been a better nerd/jock ship? The golf cart scene was a perfect encapsulation of their dynamic and showed such growth on Cyrus’ part from the scared kid who couldn’t imagine breaking the rules to the more confident self TJ has helped him become. It’s a bittersweet thought but even though a good chunk if not most of the audience still thinks Tyrus is a friendship or one sided crush, everyone who ever starts the show after the finale will know that Tyrus is a romantic relationship and for them subtext will be text from the very start. 

I think it was very deliberate that all of TJ’s scenes were at the school, we needed to see him interacting like normal with Cyrus at the place they’ll spend most of their time. This ep really was in many ways a glimpse of what canon Tyrus will be like after they get together and come out to the world; supportive, flirty, comfortable.

They really took advantage of Luke being 17 and a good driver. I wonder if ‘leggo’’ was in the script or if that was a Luke ad lib.

This was the last confirmed ep they ever filmed at the school and there’s an extremely good chance that the very wholesome and very gay Tyrus golf cart scene was the last scene we’ll ever see at the school. Which is a hell of a way to say goodbye to the school. 

We got just under 5 minutes of Tyrus screen time and just over 5 and a half minutes of total TJ screen time this ep (excluding TJ cheering in the stands). This is the most he’s had since 3x06 and may actually be the most he’s had or will have all season. And this was more Tyrus screen time than we’ve had in 3x11, 3x13, and 3x15 combined which is a damning indictment of Disney’s censorship. Partly this was likely because the writers were trying to pad his screen time a bit since he was originally supposed to be gone for 3 eps in a row instead of 2. Funnily enough, because his story line was left intact even with the cut ep and re-shoots it now looks as though he may actually get a little more screen time in these final 7 eps than Marty does.

It’s impressive too because all of TJ’s scenes were filmed over two days; it makes such a difference when they’re actually allowed to have him on set for more than one day and that they let Luke and Josh actually have scenes together and took advantage of them being older and able to work longer hours.

This ep really built TJ’s character back up and it’s easy to see that the writers knew they had to get the audience back on TJ’s side and remind them of his and Cyrus’ dynamic especially since he was supposed to have been gone for 3 eps in a row instead of 2. 

Josh did a great job hamming it up at the trial. Loved the ‘’you’re showboating’’ ‘’thank you for noticing your honour’’ bit. And Cyrus adding ‘’sir’’ when he was pretending to respond to himself from the witness box was good too. Love that Cyrus took the time to change back into a suit before hearing the verdict.

It makes such a difference for Cyrus’ character is TJ is in an ep or not and I don’t even mean from a shipping perspective. In non TJ eps Cyrus is almost always reduced to therapist friend or comic relief, when TJ is an ep he usually gets to be an active character and actually get to do things. 

We had Buffy saying he used to be the worst and is now the best and Cyrus taking credit for seeing the good in him which was a nice reminder of the amazing growth TJ has had. And of course, there was no real reason to have TJ be the one to help Buffy get to class except to make him look good in the audience’s eyes.

I know a lot of people wanted to see more of Buffy and TJ’s friendship but I’m fine with their brief interactions. The only reason he had so much time with her in S2 and why the end of S2 set up a friendship between them was because Garren had left and they didn’t know they could get him back.

Such great growth on Buffy’s part from the girl who wouldn’t even pass the baton to her team mates back in S1. The Spikes have largely been treated as a joke but we really saw a great dynamic between them and Buffy tonight; they all felt like a real team for the first time ever. And it was interesting seeing Buffy’s room and seeing her doing normal teen stuff with people outside of the GHC. Glad the Spikes got a win and glad Buffy was able to bounce back from her injury and snatch victory from the jaws of defeat. 

Very sweet last scene between Jonah and Amber, it was a nice call back to 2x01 when Amber confided in Jonah about her family’s money problems. It was messy but they did help and support each other. I’m happy that Jonah will now be in a more secure place. 

This was also the last confirmed ep they filmed at the Spoon and Jonah watching Amber get him a milkshake is a sweet way to say goodbye to a location that was almost a character in and of itself. We also got to see one last glimpse of the ginger waitress who we’ve seen in a couple of eps.

I liked that Jonah pointed out how well the GHC know each other; he’s a part of the friend group but he’s always stood apart from the GHC itself. 

I also liked that Jonah didn’t know what an existential crisis was. Always funny when they lean into dumb Jonah. 

Jonah and Andi had a sweet scene; glad he’s self aware enough to know he’s not a good advice giver. Liked the callback to Jonah scaring Andi. 

Bex is doing her best. Andi is definitely reacting like a teen. 

No Kira this ep which was great.

Shout out to the FBI and SLPD for shrinking the gap between TJ’s appearances. As much as cutting Ham has ended up damaging the other story lines it will definitely make Cyrus’ story line age much better. Having TJ be gone for 3 eps in a row only to come back after the wedding and only being able to have this kind of screen time and nice scenes after the wedding is so transparent that even kids would have noticed why that was.

Negatives:

I plan to have a happy finale night so I’m going to get my criticism of Terri’s handling of Tyrus out of the way now. I’ve seen quite a few posts on different social media sites wondering if TJ was in the cut ep and that’s why Kira isn’t mentioned or if there were cut Tyrus scenes but the plain simple truth is that this is just bad writing, some of the worst Terri has done. It’s not a satisfying explanation but it’s reality. 

I’d like to hear Terri one day explain what she thought she was going to accomplish with this internalized homophobia plot line on a show with so many restrictions and with an audience that doesn’t know TJ is gay. I don’t think there is a good explanation but I would like to know what the hell she was thinking. She’s always shown such care with the gay story line and to just drop the ball so badly when the show is almost done is more sad than anything else. Thank god Disney let her have canon Tyrus in the finale.

It’s clear from the writing of S3 that they knew from the very start that Tyrus couldn’t canon until the finale, if at all. It’s been nothing but drama that keeps them apart up until now: Buffy is still kind of mad at TJ, Reed had a gun, Jonah is mad at TJ, Bubbe Rose dies, Kira comes in. TJ isn’t even involved with the Spikes after 3x04 and barely had any scenes with Buffy and he hasn’t had a single scene with Jonah since so it’s not like those plots were meant to have an impact. And Terri would have known that TJ could only be in 9 eps max this season and she was the one who cast a 14 year old to play Kira, knowing that Raquel just wouldn’t be able to be on set nearly as long as Luke which of course she did because she knew it didn’t matter how old she was because Kira and TJ would have limited screen time anyways. And she would have known that the look back had been edited to make it look like TJ was straight and yet she still went ahead. 

Honestly, Terri is lucky that most of the audience will never know that TJ was supposed to be struggling with his sexuality in 3x13-3x15 because if they did this story line would come off as much worse than it does for them. I can buy that she wouldn’t have known how far she could go with canon Tyrus until close to the finale itself but that just makes her decisions even more baffling. If she ends up being able to have a textual ending then she has to have TJ be confident or it just won’t make sense. But if Disney said no to canon Tyrus then there’s no way they would have let her properly explore an internalized homophobia arc anyways which makes it all pointless. 

Now that we’ve seen up until 18 we can see just how defensive Terri’s instagram post back in November about not complaining about Disney censorship or queerbaiting was. At the time all she had actually accomplished was Cyrus saying the word gay which was historic and wonderful but only one ep. There’s obvious censorship by Disney and it would have been even more apparent if it wasn’t for Stoney’s arrest. And up until now there’s really nothing differentiating  Tyrus from queerbaiting as Cyrus hasn’t even been able to say he has a crush on TJ. I know she’ll do a good job with Tyrus in the finale but I really hope she doesn’t do something egregiously bad with Kira’s ‘redemption’

It doesn’t make sense that no one would mention Kira. We had TJ scenes over 4 days in universe and no Kira in sight. So either she’s not clinging to him or he told her off. It’s all just so her appearance at the party can make Cyrus flee to the bench for one last bit of contrived drama. 

We finally ended the very poorly plotted Jamber arc. It’s clear that they first decided to get Jamber back together, likely to keep Jandi apart and as a shocking twist, and then worked backwards from there to figure out how to make it plausible and settled on Jonah also having financial issues. The problem being is that those financial problems were largely ignored and we never got an in depth exploration of Jonah or Amber’s psychology. It’s not like they didn’t have time for it since Amber set a new record for recurring characters, excepting S2 Bowie. It’s hard to say Amber has had a true arc over the series. She definitely got nicer but we’ve only really gotten character development from her these past couple of eps. She’s in the same place she was back in 2x01, newly broken up with Jonah, with parents who fight, and forced to work at the Spoon to help support her family. 

Loved that the Spikes were watching footage of their game with the Spartans, which hadn’t happened yet, at their sleep over. Back in the S2 finale when Buffy announced that she was founding a girls team I never imagined that they would be written as a joke and barely shown. I’d guess that was another casualty of them being able to get Marty back for S3.

Looking Ahead:

I’m a lot more content with the show ending after S3 after seeing these recent eps. There’s been way too much filler and a lot of bizarre decisions. Yes the cut ep and the re-shoots hurt a lot of plots but it doesn’t seem like the originals were all that much better. It’s clear that the Muffy plot in 3x17 ended after the bowling alley and Amber’s plot ended with her leaving Cyrus’ house which means that Marty went with Buffy as her date to the wedding in the original 3x18 only to friendzone her and tell her to get her foot checked. And Amber still went with Jonah even though she knew he had been lying to her and they only broke up at the wedding. I’m sure the Mack family A plot would have been great but the B and C plots look like they would have sucked. 

Terri’s never had a show that went beyond 2 seasons and I think in some ways she struggled with plotting out 21 eps worth of story lines. Better to end now when the show will go down as historic then drag it down in a potential S4. And better for Terri’s reputation as well, she gets to end the show as a visionary whereas if we got a S4 she’d likely end up with more of a Michael Jacob’s type reputation. 

Also this ep shows that any hope for seeing canon Tyrus in S4 was just a dream. Disney is clearly only willing to let things get textual in the finale itself. Even Mack Chat didn’t mention Cyrus once tonight despite him having a big role in the ep. An odd game Disney plays with showing the bench scene in promos but not letting Mack Chat get too gay. 

New finale promo sheds a little more light on things. Two Cyrus waving scenes, probably one is before the bench scene and one is after. Bench scene starts with some extras near the fire and once they leave is when things get textual. TJ and Marty will probably have an interaction after both Tyrus and Muffy canon. Looks like there doing something with Jandi but again I don’t think we get canon Jandi, just something ambiguous. Bowie and Bex dancing in the back ground, Bowie in his dad’s tux and Bex possibly in her wedding dress. Obviously they’re already married but it’s probably them re-creating the wedding they had planned for but didn’t end up having.

Next ep is one with a ton of re-shoots and should feature the new wedding. We’ll see how smooth it is. My one hope is that we get some word that Jonah has told his parents about his panic attacks, even if it’s off screen. 

[steve0discusses]

Yugioh S3 Ep 39: Tea Fight

Hey I just wandered into a random forum on the internet about the deaths that impacted you the most in a series, and I was in there faster than you can say “How many GRR Martin fans does it take to kill off a pregnant lightbulb in a random wedding episode″ (the answer is no one in this entire forum watched anything but anime) and then this one guy stood up in the back of this little internet forum and was just going off about how this one dude died in Yugioh GX and he turned off the TV and like didn’t want to even go back to the season until his students were like “no really, professor, please keep watching Yugioh GX” and he was like “WHAT’S EVEN THE POINT NOW” and it was like...really??? The series where nearly 200 people have died in just the first 3 seasons??? (which I didn’t comment, don’t worry, I just kinda lurked in stunned silence)

So like, lets talk more about Yugioh, which apparently has one of the roughest death scenes in any series that this random adult guy on the internet has ever watched. Course that was GX. I’m pretty sure I take so long on this show that I’ll probably still be recapping Season 3 of Yugioh when I’m dead and reincarnated into some cursed locket that a poor internet blogger wears around their neck.

Which would be shaped like a DVD set of Seaquest, S2. Like sometimes we talk about -sonas and we draw people and characters but what would your puzzle necklace -sona be? (remembering that is has to be cursed, heavy, awkward, and as inconveniently shaped as possible--you can’t just say Gucci or wtv) Because mine is the DVD collectors set of Seaquest, but only S2. Bro says that his is a Comic Sans version of Tolstoy’s War and Peace.

But I digress, so we start this episode knowing that Joey and Kaiba are dueling or whatever--but honestly none of this matters to me. Not at all. This doesn’t matter to anyone because for the first time ever, I finally get to see Tea try and punch out a God. Or a Ghost. Really hard to tell the difference between God and Ghost in this show.

And like, no one else will even witness this event because they’re too obsessed with Joey. So much so, that Yugi makes a staggering observation.

In the actual dialogue of the show, Pharaoh’s response to Yugi’s comment here was “HMMMMMMMmmmmMMHhmmmmmmmm”

and it’s like yeah, hard agree, Pharaoh, hard agree.

(read more under the cut)

Anyways, our very punchable God/Ghost character never came down from atop of Card Mess Mountain, and he’s just been sitting here on his perch trying really hard to just parse what exactly went down over the past few episodes.

Marik right now is me before I write every recap.

So he decides, well if the Rod did something for Kaiba, I guess it should do something for me, thus kind of proving that no one on Earth understands how to use this item anymore. I was kinda banking on the the fact that Marik’s Slightly-More-Evil-Possessed-Ghost-God-Entity-Person was kind of like the only guy who knows what’s going on with these gadgets outside of Bakura, but nah. Not even this guy knows. Now that Bakura’s temporarily vaporized, basically all that these millennium items are now are heavy paperweights that sometimes make your life just super inconvenient.

And I guess it can possess minds but wtv. Had Marik remembered that this rod can possess minds he would have had a much, much easier time in this episode. Of course, we haven’t really seen him possess anyone since Slightly-Better-Marik peaced out, so maybe that’s just something only Slightly-Better-Marik can do?

Ah. There it is.

What sweet catharsis.

She doesn’t actually punch him, which is kind of a shame, but because they can’t show Marik explode like a slo mo frozen giant gummy bear shot with a deer slug directly on screen, this episode is Tea-punch free.

Anyway, during this episode, the Millennium Puzzle develops a neat new trick--which is to set an alarm to remind Pharaoh to check up on his sort-of-not-really-girlfriend for once in his damn lifetime because this asshole will not do it otherwise because he is just waaaaay too busy thinking about cards.

And then it just finally dawns on Yugi that he boarded Murderzone island like 3 hours ago.

And, because this is Yugi, do you think he’ll tell everyone else what’s going on? Do you think he’ll step in and be like “woah woah stop the game for five seconds I just realized Tea might be in huge danger and we all should go and stop the murder.”

Do you think Yugi, for once in his entire life, will finally tell the entire truth to his friends who have constantly given him love and support and who just want Yugi to tell them the entire truth even once? Just ONCE?

That’s right, in an effort to be polite, he apologizes to Joey for ditching him and then books it without bothering anyone else.

The lengths Yugi will go to be as awkward as possible in order to not make anything awkward.

And then he just books it as fast as he can go and I guarantee that offscreen, everyone just kind of stopped what they were doing, looked at eachother, and Seto was like “Well, now why am I even playing?”

Anyway, atop the tall tall tower that takes like 15 minutes to get to the top of, Marik as Tea is very easily holding their own. And listen, Marik didn’t say any of the next lines in these caps but I can’t stop thinking about how freakin weird this would be for him. I’ve been kinda holding this in for a little while and youknow what? I have to talk about it for just a little bit. Just a little.

Like I usaully just erase any shipping stuff but just...give me a little second to just...touch on this subject. Just a little bit.

And while Marik thinking about dating is absolutely not canon, I’m just saying, going from tombkeeper to living within the body of not-Pharaoh’s-GF must have been a really crazy ride for Marik. Like, he starts out life learning literally everything about Pharaoh lore that is left over from the wastes of time. But, none of it--and I mean none of it--could have prepared him for the High School dating scene of “but should I text him more than twice a day or is that too much texting?” They don’t tell you how to do that in the Pharaoh brand card scriptures that they tattoo on your back with a hot knife in underground Pharaoh school.

Marik went from mole-person who has no human contact to just watching this whole weird thing unfold with Tea and Pharaoh giving eachother hoverhands-of-a-hoverhands hugs, and it must have been just completely wild for him. I’m not suggesting he remotely enjoyed it or didn’t enjoy it, but I’m just suggesting that the thought must have crossed his mind that this would be the last place he ever expected to end up when he picked up the Millennium Rod.

And it’s like, congrats, Marik, your soul went to hell and then you accidentally dated your own god.

I’m sure there’s plenty of fanfics about this already to fill in the gaps, so I won’t go too deep into this but man, Marik could have possessed anyone, and he possessed this girl.

Which again was probably because she’s strangely super strong because then Tea reveals that she could have done this the entire time.

LOOK AT THIS.

SHE DID THIS FROM STANDING. OLYMPIC GYMNASTS CAN’T DO THIS.

And then I guess Marik got sleepy after that much effort and just passed out.

And no one got to see it, Ishizu didn’t see it, Pharaoh didn’t see it.

Who’s here now, PS, Pharaoh finally showed up. That long as hell elevator must’ve stopped like 4 times on the way up for Roland who’s on his break, probably heating up the grill to talk to the other Kaiba Dad Stand-ins and have a Kaiba Dad Stand-In brunch where all they do is talk about sports, dark sunglasses, and if they should send Mokuba to UC Davis or Colorado State.

And so, seeing that Tea is passed out on the ground, Pharaoh jumps to conclusions and it very much looks like we’re gonna get a Millennium Item fight, which we haven’t yet seen Pharaoh even do.

Like, when you think about it, do either of these people even know what they are doing? Like Marik can at least fight a bunch of robots and one stationary computer monitor, but does Pharaoh have any idea that thing can shoot lasers?

Much like a bobcat making itself look really big to fight other bobcats, Pharaoh managed to poof up his hair big enough to spook Marik into actually stepping down. I guess Marik figured he’d have a better time with cards than lasers that neither of them know how to shoot in any general direction.

I gotta say, Pharaoh’s reaction to Marik secretly being in the body of his girlfriend was like “oh. Well we better go save him then before he dies.” and I do appreciate that. He seems secure enough in his own identity to not be bothered by this gender reversal he was not even aware of at the time. How I wish more boys on TV were more secure about that type of thing.

Like obviously this show that has no romance in it will never actually talk about sexuality but just enjoy this moment of zen where this possible lowhanging punchline could have happened and the writers room went “do we have to do the Family Guy/Friends thing?” and they were like “nah.” because Pharaoh canonically would not at all be bothered by this. At all.

Anyway, I’m kinda bummed that they didn’t extend Tea fight out for 3 episodes, but at least I got one Tea fight in before the end of the series.

I can’t believe she did a weird backflip thing off of a rail that was on a tower 300 ft in the air. I can’t believe that was the B plot of this episode.

And here’s a link to read these recaps in Chronological Order.

[natsspammityspamspamham]

Dino Watches Anime (Nov 24)

Africa no Salaryman (7/12)

Story? Mediocre (but funny) Art? (Clearly) bad Music? Terrible But I’m enjoying myself. I don’t see myself dropping this trashy series. I’ve laughed a little bit from week to week. Have you ever wanted to see a mix of bad CG and limited 2D animation by a studio that has no other notable anime (besides that flop from 2018)? Have you ever wanted to hear the villains of BNHA (All For One, Overhaul, and Dabi) voicing weird safari animals with quirky side characters? Seriously, they took the money that they should’ve put into animation and hired a bunch of famous seiyuu who seem to be having fun. We have Eri Kitamura, Yui Ogura, Akio Otsuka, Kenjiro Tsuda, Hiro Shimono, Toshiyuki Toyonaga, Kengo Kawanishi, Akira Ishida, Hiroshi Kamiya, Tatsuhisa Suzuki, etc. It’s a lot of fun guessing them.

Ani ni Tsukeru Kusuri wa Nai! (S3) (7/?)

Another (slightly better animated) bad anime. It’s a collab between Japanese and Chinese studios (but is originally Chinese), but since Japanese dubbing is far more accessible, I went with that dub. Sora Amamiya, Yuuichi Nakamura, Kensho Ono, and Natsuki Hanae are part of the main cast here. Nothing is really notable besides the story. The sibling thing is kind of relatable.

Bokutachi wa Benkyou ga Dekinai (S2) (8/13)

I will eventually stop wasting my time with these bad romance series, but *cough* I need to fill my depressive void with something, and somehow other’s awkward situations distract me from my own. I mean, this feels like an anime that was supposed to fill the void that Nisekoi left after finishing in Shonen Jump. Hopefully, this time he’ll end up with the right girl. As usual in a lot of harems, the main character has several bad choices. But the overall message and whatever’s left of the plot is really nice and entertaining. The characters are actually intriguing when the fanservice isn’t glaring in your face. 

Boku no Hero Academia (S4) (6/25)

Bones is sure taking their sweet time with a ton of filler and exposition. It’s so slow! Episode 5 was a lot of fun. Besides that, it’s the usual stuff. It’s like Bones is dangling a stick in front of us, and we all have to watch it anyway no matter what. I just feel like they’re doing this to save money and to make sure they won’t get ahead of the manga.

Dr. Stone (21/25)

This turned out to be a good show. It’s a strong 7/10 so far, and it might place higher (or lower) depending on how they want to end their arc. The politics and science behind this anime are really cool, and whatever they lack in character diversity (which I feel that because the cast isn’t nearly as strong as the other ones on this list) they make up for in their science and story execution.

Fire Force (18/24)

Ladies, gentlemen, and other fine people, let me introduce the BIGGEST DISAPPOINTMENT SINCE MY BIRTH. Waste of a good OP, waste of awesome art, waste of a pretty okay cast, waste of my time that I want to stay through the end, and it turned into a badly executed gimmick. Seriously, how did we dive this low? It ever happened since Tamaki showed up. Ugh, I hate how this show gave me hope.

Kono Oto Tomare! (S2) (8/13)

This anime is heading very slowly, and that’s probably because only one chapter is released a month I think. It’s a music anime with not as music as you’d think, and honestly, until the music starts going, I find that this anime insults the art that the original manga had. It does its part, but the original manga is beautiful. It looks like a shoujo manga that got put into Jump SQ.

Ore wo Suki nano wa Omae dake ka yo (8/12)

Everyone in this anime is a scumbag in one way or another. Everyone has their bad sides, and unlike a lot of series, this anime isn’t afraid to put them front in centre. This contrasts nicely with Bokuben which is mentioned above. Both are centred around harems, but this one is everything turned on its head with vengeance. Protag? May have a Deku voice, but he’s a pervert that’s described for being “Jekyll and Mr Hyde” which I find interesting because he’s truly nice to his best friend and doesn’t want to betray him, but he also really, really, really likes girls and would want nothing more than to have several of them all to himself. Best friend? Jealous as heck and would probably stab him if things truly went south, but he’s also his wingman. Class president? Talks like a samurai sometimes when nervous and uses MC. Childhood best friend? Terrible liar and uses MC. Then there’s a whole bunch of other people who use everyone. The score is not that great. It’s better than silence, but it hasn’t really been anything above that. The OP is catchy, but I’m not sure if I like it? The ED is nice. The voice acting for this anime is PERFECT for the MC anyway. Daiki Yamashita is really good at acting like this animal of an MC.

Sakura-sou no Pet na Kanojo (15/24)

Once you past the first few episodes of fanservice, this turns into an anime that’s surprisingly deep and fun to watch. I have to be in the right mood for this, and while it’s usual for JC Staff to animate these kinds of anime, this one feels different. The voice acting is good, the characters are interesting, the gimmicks work, and I just like this anime. Yeah, there’s still fanservice, but it has meaning and a good story this time.

Kekkaishi (27/52)

I really watched... 27 episodes... in one day. Life goes faster at 1.25 speed. I haven’t watched a good shonen action anime at my own free will in a while. Hero Aca is going slowly, Dr Stone doesn’t have that action that I sometimes want to see, and Fire Force is like that pudding that started to be covered in mould (you don’t really want it anymore).

This anime is 13 years old, but it stands and fills a void that a lot of shows can’t really do anymore. It has a not-so subplot of romance with a MC that has no smarts, a heroine who doesn’t have as much “talent” but makes up for it with hard work, and she’s one of my favourite characters that I’ve seen in a while. She’s what Maki of Fire Force should’ve been. She’s awesome. Finger guns are actually valid in this anime. The music is really good too. The score is written by Taku Iwasaki who still writes for several anime to this day. It adds a layer of substance the manga couldn’t do. 

I’d highly recommend this anime for people who don’t mind anime from 2006. 

[murasaki-murasame]

With the recent info about how the Fruits Basket reboot is apparently going to be exactly 63 episodes long in total, and the recent leak of what seems to be the outline for most of season 1′s story, I think now’s a good time for me to finally get around to laying out my detailed thoughts on what I’m expecting from the long-term pacing and plot structure of the reboot.

I’ll put it under a cut since this is gonna get long and very spoiler-y.

I initially didn’t know if I should put much stock into what I was hearing about the reboot being 63 episodes long, but it seems to come straight from one of the main voice actors for the dub, and he sounded pretty specific and certain about it. Usually dub VAs and whatnot are very out of the loop on stuff like this, but Funimation seems very connected to the production of the reboot, so they might know info like this.

I was hoping that the reboot would be 75 episodes across three sets of 25-ish episode seasons, but it sounds like it’ll probably be two 25-episode seasons, and then a final 13-episode season. Which could be fine. They’d have to speed things up a bit near the end, but it could work. At the very least, the way the scriptwriter for the anime has talked about it makes me think that they worked out a concrete outline for the entire series very early on, so I trust that they have a specific plan in mind for this. I’m still a bit worried that the slow and leisurely pace we’re getting thus far might lead to them having to rush it later on, but I think they’ve planned it out enough to avoid that.

Recently we got an unintentional leak of sorts, with how apparently in the video Funi posted about the reasoning for Momiji’s accent in the reboot, you can see some sticky notes on Caitlin Glass’ computer [the dub voice director] that seem to be notes on the episode by episode plot outline for most of season 1, up to around episode 21 or 22.

Combining the vague glimpses of that we saw with what’s already happened in the anime thus far, and a bit of my own speculation for how they’ll handle the last few episodes of season 1, I think it’ll end up like this:

Ep1: Chapter 1

Ep2: Chapters 2-3

Ep3: Chapters 4/8

Ep4: Chapter 5

Ep5: Chapter 6

Ep6: Chapters 7/9

Ep7: Chapters 10/12

Ep8: Chapter 11

Ep9: Chapters 13-14 [Haru’s intro]

Ep10: Chapters 15-16 [Valentine’s Day]

Ep11: Chapters 17-18 [Hot springs trip]

Ep12: Chapters 19-20 [New school term]

Ep13: Chapters 21-22 [Ayame’s intro]

Ep14: Chapters 23-24 [Grave visit and Momiji’s backstory]

Ep15: Chapters 25-26 [Lake house trip]

Ep16: Chapters 39~41 [Uo’s backstory Part 1]

Ep17: Chapters 39~41 [Uo’s backstory Part 2]

Ep18: Chapters 27-28 [Kisa’s intro]

Ep19: Chapters 44-45 [Ritsu’s intro]

Ep20: Chapters 37-38 [Hiro’s intro]

Ep21: Chapter 29 [Yuki fan club visiting Hana’s house]

Ep22: Chapter 51 [Hana’s backstory]

Ep23: Chapters 30-31 [Tohru getting sick and setting up the Kyo arc]

Ep24: Chapters 32 and part of 33 [Kyo arc Part 1]

Ep25: Rest of Chapter 33 and Chapter 34 [Kyo arc Part 2]

Everything up to Hana’s backstory was laid out in the notes we saw, so everything after that’s just my personal guess. It seems pretty likely that since they don’t seem to be planning on doing the Kyo arc earlier in the season, they’re probably planning to end season 1 with it. There’s a few different ways it could go, but I think that combining chapters 30 and 31 together would work really well, and it’d let them spend two whole episodes on the actual meat of the Kyo arc, which would let them pace it out nicely and have it feel less abrupt.

I’m not sure if the two Hana chapters are going to be adapted into two back to back episodes, or combined into one, though. I’m also not sure if season 1 will be 25 episodes long or 26, but I’m leaning toward 25. Either way, it’s possible that they might fit in chapters 42 and 43 before the Kyo arc starts, but they might push that to near the start of season 2.

And on that note, I don’t really have a specific outline in mind for all of season 2, but if it’s going to be another 25 episode season that leads into a final 13-episode season, I think it has to at least cover up to chapter 99, which is the whole climax of us finding out the truth about Akito once and for all. They’d have to at least get that far in order for season 3 to be able to adapt the rest of the manga in just 13 or so episodes. And I think it could work.

To start with, if season 1 goes the way I think it will, season 2 will probably immediately start out with chapter 35, since that’s the immediate aftermath of the Kyo arc, and how Yuki feels in response to it. They might fit chapter 36 in there too, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they incorporate the trip to Ayame’s boutique into his intro episode in season 1. After that, I think they’ll move into adapting the second half of volume 8, plus maybe chapters 42 and 43 if those aren’t in season 1. I think it might actually work pretty nicely to move those chapters into season 2 so that there’s not as huge of a gap between when Kakeru and Machi get teased at, and when they actually show up for the first time. [Fake edit: I’m also curious to see if they might bring up Rin during Haru’s intro episode, which might let them get away with skimming over or cutting out elements of chapter 43 later on, since that’s where we first properly hear about her in the manga]

And on the note of Kakeru and Machi, one structural change I want season 2 to make is that I want them to have those two only show up for the first time at the start of the new school year after the vacation arc, along with the other student council members. I’ve always thought it was a bit awkward how in the manga they just kinda vanish for like three volumes after the chapter they first properly appear in. So even if it means waiting longer to see them, I’d like them to show up a bit later so the pacing feels more natural.

Similarly, I think it’d work nicely if they move that one chapter near the end of volume 9 with Tohru and Kyo visiting Kazuma to later on so that it happens at the same time as the chapter where Tohru talks to Kazuma about the curse after the vacation.

I also want them to move the other chapter from volume 9 where we see Uo and Kureno first meeting into season 1, probably in the second episode focused on her, just so that we properly get to see him before season 2.

So basically I want the reboot to shift things about so that we go straight from the end of volume 8 into the summer vacation arc, which I think would work out for the best.

If season 2 is gonna get up to at least chapter 99, I think they’ll have to start speeding things up a bit, so in particular I think they might trim down the summer vacation arc to just 4~5 episodes rather than 6, and they might go through stuff like Kyoko’s backstory faster than the manga did. That whole part’s like four chapters long, but I think it could be trimmed down a fair bit, and the way it’s bookended with the present day scenes with Kyo would make it work nicely as a single episode. I think they could also go through some of the stuff in volume 15 with Yuki’s big talk with Kakeru and the culture festival fairly fast as well.

Season 3 would be a bit tricky if it’s 13 episodes long, since even if season 2 gets to chapter 99, that still leaves nearly 40 chapters for s3 to adapt. But I think there’s a lot of parts in the final volumes the anime could go through surprisingly fast, since there’s a lot of moments that are really heavy on the lengthy internal monologues and stuff. I could also see them trimming down the final volume to two episodes. And there’s always the possibility that they might have a double-length finale, which would give them a bit more room to fit stuff in.

Even though there’s a fair bit of stuff I want them to shuffle about in season 2, I can’t really think of anything I want them to change in season 3, based on the material it covers. It might be good for them to move the Machi-focused chapter from volume 16 so that it happens in the same episode as the other Machi-focused chapter a bit later in the manga. But other than that I dunno.

All in all I think that the reboot will probably be able to faithfully adapt the entire manga in 63 episodes. It’d just require them to focus more on trimming it down rather than fleshing it out later on. I think the pacing of the first eight episodes isn’t going to be very indicative of the rest of the reboot’s pacing, and it’ll probably get faster from here on out.

As the reboot gets further along I’ll probably post more detailed speculation about seasons 2 and 3, but they’re just too far away at the moment for me to want to think too hard about it.

Before I forget, though, I’m also still wondering if they might be planning to do a short 12-ish episode adaptation of Fruits Basket Another once the reboot’s done. It’s something I could give or take, but even though it’s a short series, I think they could probably work with Takaya to flesh it out into a full anime. I haven’t read it yet, but I’ve heard that it’s split into 12 chapters across three volumes, so it might fit pretty neatly into a 12-episode anime.

[hopevalley]

What did you make of the new synopsis for ep 1 of s1 that is doing the rounds? Gowen and Bill are going head to head to buy the saloon - interesting?! Also who do you believe Abigail was best suited to....I think she and Bill could have gone somewhere if the fallout between them had been written differently. I mean come on, you've got people believing she and Henry are a thing and he is responsible for the death of her husband son! Bill could've been forgiven his drama with Nora too.

First, this is almost 3,000 words long. I’m so sorry..

I assume you meant S6E1—and naturally I have a lot of opinions!

I’m into the general concept of that plotline. It’s so easy to picture. I imagine it’ll happen something like: Gowen makes a comment about buying the place and Bill is instantly like, “Or I could prevent you from doing that” and then it escalates almost instantly into a competitive irritation-fueled bidding war. It’s perfectly in character for both of them.

Bill has proven he can be jealous (see S2) and petty (see S3), sometimes to the point where he can be cruel (see S5). Henry is a very competitive guy who will do what it takes to get what he wants, often at the expense of others (see pretty much every season). We also know there’s absolutely no love lost between them. Despite the short moment where Bill was almost friendly to Henry in S5 (when Henry turned in the woman who offered him a job if he betrayed Lee), it’s clear Bill and Henry are bound to be…well, I don’t want to say “lifelong enemies” so maybe: lifelong personal antagonists?

Their history is complex and interesting, and it goes back at least 20 years. They’ve known each other (or of each other) longer than they haven’t. Think about that. And there’s that whole mess with Nora getting pregnant, Bill marrying her and raising Martin, the comment Bill made about how Nora “always had a weak spot for [Henry]”—and the fact that Bill has investigated the mining company Henry worked for more than once, both ending in prosecutions; but the first time he did this ended with Henry being spat out as a scapegoat for the company: banished to Coal Valley.

So Henry blames Bill for a lot of the things he’s had to deal with. On the opposite side of things, Bill has known Slimy Gowen for so many years that it’s hard for him to really believe the man is capable of change, especially a drastic change. Neither of them…are really wrong, though; to a certain extent, it’s a matter of perspective. Bill thinks Henry is a scumbag, and Henry thinks Bill has always had it out for him.

And, sure, Henry didn’t let Ray Wyatt shoot Bill, but 1) he’d be implicated in that, and 2) all it really says about his character is that he has a moral line he won’t cross. He sicced his goons on Bill in S1, worked to ruin Abigail’s livelihood for literal years, and used Nora. He wasn’t a good man. But he knew who he was and he knew how far he’d go.

I like to think he’s still that guy, just…maybe better—or at least willing to try to be better?

And you know what? I like that even though Gowen has been making an effort to be a better person, the series hasn’t tried to push the two of them into some kind of happy friendship. Their history together isn’t good, and neither is their present. “You testified against me, Bill. Now, I see you taking a stroll down the boardwalk with my co-conspirator” (S5).

It’s just nice to see that “second chances” don’t always have to be these grand gestures of love and friendship and closeness; they can be just…staying in your own lane? I mean, even if Bill absolutely hates Henry, he mostly just ignores him/leaves him alone/lets him do his thing—and vice versa. That’s a form of giving a second chance. It doesn’t have to be on a personal level, and I think with these two characters, any kind of “wholesome, wholly-trusting” resolution would just feel…really bad. They need to retain their integrity as people, which means they’ll probably never actually like one another.

So of course they’d get into a bidding war over the saloon. 

The only real question I have about it is…uh…where’s Henry getting the money? That must be some promotion Lee gave him, huh? I love the plot, but this is a huge oversight.

Look, Bill can theoretically have a lot of money. We don’t actually know how wealthy or un-wealthy he is. He’s been working an unpaid position off and on for the last two years as the sheriff of Hope Valley, but he also owns half of Abigail’s Café.

And this can’t be overlooked, either: he worked at a very high-profile and no doubt high-paying job before this. Does he pay alimony to Nora? We actually don’t know. It’s possible the café ownership keeps him afloat enough that he doesn’t have to touch his savings, but he could have a substantial amount of them, even though it’s obvious he used some of those to buy out Gowen’s half of the café. Still, early-seasons Bill was something of a workaholic, so even when he was making a lot of money, it’s doubtful he had the time or inclination to spend it. He could still have a sizable amount of it left after 30 years in the field!

But Henry? He’s poor. We’ve established this. He more or less came crawling back to town and had to take what was offered to him: a position at the bottom of the lumber mill totem pole. But he worked it and he didn’t complain.

So again, my question: where’s the money coming from? How can Henry competitively bid against Bill at this point?

Are they both intending to take out a loan or is part of Bill’s offer that he can pay in cash? I’m curious to see how they juggle it, but I really hope Henry’s stint as being poor isn’t just…overlooked. If he has to take out a loan for it, I’d be fine with it; I really love the idea of Henry getting that businessman spark back and taking a risk because of it! But I guess we’ll have to see.

As far as Abigail’s best suitor goes: my answer is Frank. I feel pretty sure that he was just about everything she needed in a partner. He wanted to communicate, he worked through things, he was good at talking about his feelings, he brought her flowers, he spent time with her, he had family meals with her and Cody… The list goes on. They were a great match! It’s unfortunate that he was written off the show.

As for Abigail and Bill…I have to agree with you.

But I should disclaim my post.

I don’t see them as romantically inclined toward one another at all—in fact, I can’t watch their dating scenes in early episodes without cringing because it just feels awkward and performative to me. But if the show can will-they won’t-they with Henry and Abigail, it feels kind of yucky to me that we never even got a sincere discussion between Bill and Abigail about what happened between them, let alone a genuine apology and acceptance scene.

Don’t get me wrong; they make amazing friends. I loved the end of S5 when he went to Abigail because he knew she’d get it—she’d get him, even the things he couldn’t make himself say.

But there’s something to be said for attraction and what a person wants in a relationship at different times in their lives, too.

Let me explain.

When Abigail met Bill, she was just starting to move past the grief of losing her husband and son. That’s not an easy thing to do. But it’s like she says in S1: “Life goes on for all of us.” Abigail didn’t want to steep herself in grief forever. She wanted to move on. And Bill, unrelated to the accident but in town to help solve it and give her peace of mind, was the perfect…I don’t know. He wasn’t a “rebound guy” but for lack of a better term, let’s call him that. He wasn’t that well-suited to her but he was available and she needed…some of what he was capable of offering right away—especially assurance and (lawful) action.

She was married from the cusp of womanhood until her husband died, so it’s doubtful she had a line of beaus on a string in her youth. Abigail never played the courting game. But here she is years later, a widow ready to try and move on…and Bill shows up and is nice to her, respectful, kind of charming, and sincerely helpful…and at this point in her life, that’s exactly what she needs! She needs someone who feels dependable and can take care of her in the way she needs taken care of, which at this point was…bringing her peace of mind/bringing justice to the town and the men who died: her immediate needs (that could be fulfilled by a non-suitor Bill, too, by the way).

But Abigail was having a nice time. Again, a good-lookin’ guy comes to see you and talk to you and tells you that your cooking is great and that you look nice…and you’re not wrong and it’s okay to want justice and he’s gonna make sure you get it…

It’s flattering and confidence-boosting. And hey, except for the whole…lying thing, he was the perfect rebound guy. He didn’t want to rush anything; he respected her space; and he actively worked on the things he promised to work on (getting justice for the dead men).

But there were other aspects of Bill that just…didn’t work for her and probably still wouldn’t. He’s an emotional husk most of the time and he’s not a Romantic Man. I don’t know how to explain it, but for an example, let’s go with flowers.

Bill gives her flowers “for the café, to brighten things up.” It’s a romantic overture, but we’re not shown him actually giving them to her so it feels…kind of disconnected. Frank brings Abigail flowers and not only do we see it, everything about it is intended to be romantic. He brings her favorites, demonstrating he knows what she likes; he smiles a lot; he wants to touch her and be touched; he hovers around after and offers to help her with what she’s working on…

Bill does these types of things because it’s expected of him.

But it’s like, you can’t forget the kind of person Bill is, either.

He’s a workaholic at this point in the series. All he does is work. And he was in a marriage for an indeterminate number of years (anywhere from 15 to 25 of them) with someone he didn’t love. “I married her as a favor to her father.” Bill never had to romance his wife; he married her out of obligation—because her father made sure he got his schooling.

Bill is the guy who, at least at this time, did things because “that’s what you do.” It’s almost like he’s following a manual. You give flowers to the woman you’re courting. You offer your arm. You say romantic things. Or in the case of his job, you follow the rules, you fill out the proper paperwork in the right order. You submit cases on time. In the case of Nora and her father, too. He did you a life-changing favor so you need to do one for him, too.

Because he’s just doing what’s expected, the things he does don’t feel romantic when you have time to think about them (and compare them to others). It’s like taking out the trash because it’s expected of you, or doing the dishes. That’s what these kinds of things seem to be to him, at least when he’s low-key courting Abigail: they’re tasks. He’s just doing them to check them off the list; there’s not much feeling in them and personal preference isn’t taken into consideration.

Which brings me back to Bill’s, uh, emotional constipation.

He was definitely lying in S1/S2 when he didn’t admit he was Divorce Pending. But even at moments where Abigail was trying to communicate feelings to him, he was just…completely avoidant. Remember this scene?

Yeah, the way he just…segues away from feelings or attachment is cringey. It’s hard to watch a second (or third, or fourth) time. Bill is Bad At Feelings (dealing with the ones he has AND admitting when he doesn’t have them), and Abigail needs someone who is good at them: at understanding what they’re feeling and why, and a person who is willing to regularly and effectively try to communicate them with her.

(Just quickly here I want to point out that Bill’s emotional constipation may have been why he and Dottie didn’t work out, too, though the writers sort of dropped the ball on that one… And it’s why he was so mean to AJ in S5; this man literally can’t talk about his feelings short of an actual breakdown, and that is NOT the kind of thing most people are equipped to deal with. And to be fair to the Dottie/Bill relationship, him cooking for her was a marked improvement in him trying to court a lady, but there are aspects of it that just feel like he’s just checking off boxes.)

This is mostly why I prefer that Abigail and Bill just…stay friends. Because neither of them need to settle for a romantic relationship they’re not wholly into, but also…they both need very different things in a relationship; they just don’t seem compatible to me that way.

So sure, Abigail thought he was pretty good-lookin’ when he showed up, and he’s nice to spend time with, but everything beyond that isn’t really her cup of tea: he doesn’t forgive easily; he holds grudges; he’s extremely independent; he doesn’t like asking for help; he’s terrible at communicating feelings; etc. So I mean, even if he improves in the feelings department, it’s probably not going to matter enough.

Bill’s needs matter too, of course, and Abigail fulfills some of them, but not all of them: he really needs someone who’s gonna call him out, keep him on his toes/things from getting boring or stagnant; he needs an opinionated complaining partner; he needs someone who knows their own heart well but who will also understand his without him having to spell everything out/their feelings getting hurt when he doesn’t spell it out for them; etc.

And I mean, it really sucks because they do have a few things that are good for one another. And for what it’s worth, I think they could make a relationship work if they had to/felt inclined to. Bill isn’t very good at compromising, but Abigail’s better at it. Still, would they both be happy, or would it ultimately just rob them of their ability to be and feel independent? Bill doesn’t like being told what to do and he’d HATE having to, say, be home at a certain time. I think when he met Abigail, that wasn’t important to him, but now it is. He likes being able to do what he wants, when he wants to do it.

(Which reminds me of Frank, who spent a lifetime extremely independent but was more than happy to have someone to answer to; the issue between he and Abigail was that he needed that expectation communicated to him; that was it! I feel like Bill would find it stifling and ultimately it could breed resentment.)

Anyway, I don’t disagree with your message. I think if things had been written differently, if Bill’s character had gone in a different direction maybe, they’d be more suited to one another right now.

As far as Abigail and Henry goes… I pretty much loathe the idea of them as a romantic couple, so if you’re ever down for a good rant: feel free to hit me up privately. That said, I want to be fair to the characters in terms of like, feeling attraction…or uhhh the lack thereof if you interpret anybody as asexual!

At the end of the day, it’s not unreasonable to think that Abigail could be attracted to Henry.

Maybe she was attracted to Bill at one point, but no longer is (mainly because she’s realized they’re just not that romantically compatible, even though they get on great as friends). And maybe she finds Henry attractive even despite the things he’s done, because, uh… I don’t know, he looks THAT GOOD in a hat and scarf.

I still think the writing surrounding Henry and Abigail is weak, though. Like you said, he was complicit in the deaths of her husband and son. He’ll need a lot more redemption material before I’ll buy into Abigail being romantically interested in him. An attraction? SURE. She’s not blind! But more than that? I hope it doesn’t happen.

Actually, right now I’m kind of hoping Abigail just stays single for a couple of seasons while they focus on other romantic plots that are in town, like Jesse and Clara, and Rosemary and Lee. Abigail needs a little less focus for S6…and I’d prefer it remain romantic-free.

(Don’t forget, we’re getting a storyline for her that’s a two-parter about someone from her past! I’m still hoping it’s one of her brothers, though. That’d be SO cool.)

But that’s just personal opinion, y’know? I’ve noticed that over on Instagram, the fans are really divided in the different Abigail-relationship camps. It’s kind of cool that everyone gets something different out of each type of relationship presented…and of course, seeing everybody’s different interpretation of the characters is fun, too.

So I’m not saying, “you can’t ship X” because you can enjoy whatever it is you like. This is just my interpretation. ♥

(Sorry if there are any mistakes, I didn’t really proofread this multiple times as usual. Let me know if you see anything glaring!)