#i really have a same feeling with both episode at the end

[missconchshell]

I loved this new episode of Miraculous! Oh my gosh, I didn't even realize it was coming out, but I'm so happy it did!

I've never been too too attached to either Marc or Nathaniel, but this episode really won me over! It was neat getting to see both of their parents, and show just how much of a difference unconditional support can make. It really reminded of just how lucky I am that my own parents are so accepting.

I also love the contrast in the setting as well, with Nathaniel's family physically further apart, while Marc and his parents are all bunched together on the same couch. I feel like the show has been putting in a lot more care into framing and the setup of scenes this season, and I'm all for it!

Also, this is one of the first times I've seen their new designs up close, and I'm a huge fan! Love all the little details, like Marc's eye makeup, Nathaniel's self-painted shoes and his wavy little hairclip. Just look at the happy boy!

Now, onto the meat of the episode. Nathaniel's passions (and by association himself) being rejected by his parents did get me to tear up. It hurt and felt so real, I'm amazed to see this sorta thing in a show like Miraculous.

I felt so bad watching him destroy his work and try and force himself to conform to his parents' expectations. It was a very realistic picture of this type of struggle, and is definitely something I and I'm sure many others have struggled with before. And I was shocked at how blunt the writers got with the implied homophobia with lines from his mom about making Nathaniel "go straight."

Then once it got onto the mom being named Ruler, I just kinda started laughing, like, oh, they weren't gonna be subtle at all!

And dang Lila, willing to even use homophobia to get those miraculous. Tsk tsk.

The Akuma's power was definitely pretty creepy, like I hate these eyes so much, but Lila got really dang close to getting those miraculous this time, far more than any of Gabe's minion-based akumas! And despite this being the billionth time Chat Noir's been controlled, the physicality of the animation and voice acting did a decent job of making it funny.

It was also neat that the Akuma's powers got to be used against them, with Nathaniel finally stepping forth and taking back control from his mother (side note: I loved his transformation literally having him come out of the closet, the animators knew exactly what they were doing).

I know I've ignored them most of the episode, but I will say that Marinette and Adrien were adorable as usual! And I love that he feels comfortable enough with her to tease!

Then there was the ending. I'm so glad Nathaniel's parents came to accept his love of comics (and Marc). It was a sweet moment of acceptance that not everyone is lucky enough to have, so I'm glad we at least got a happy ending here.

I also really appreciate that little serious moment at the very end. I was expecting more Lila dialogue when the ominous music started playing, but having a serious moment where they discuss how they're attacked simply living their lives was a sad but pleasant surprise. It's cool that they're acknowledging a reality that so many people face every day. But I'm so glad these boys have each other in this!

And even if I know for a fact that the identity reveal is going to blow up in their faces one day based on the show's history, it still was so adorable and I loved the scene! Just the joy on each of their faces, knowing they're not alone, was so sweet!

Overall, I'm just really impressed with the writers this season! They're tackling a lot more serious topics in these one-off episodes, and honestly doing it far better than I ever expected from this silly love-square show. So many of these stories have resonated with me, and it's been really neat getting to see so much representation of different struggles. And it's especially cool to think about how these episodes could meaningfully impact the show's younger audience as well! These are the sorts of things I wish I saw more of growing up, it would have changed little miss shell's world for the better. So, keep up the good work Miraculous Team!

[therebelcaptain]

While I enjoy seeing Cassian having a deep and intimate relationship with Bix as it shows his vulnerability in a way we've not seen before, it also feels at odds with the image of Cassian I’ve had since 2016—someone who had sacrificed everything for the rebellion. The impression I got from lines like “you’re not the only one who lost everything” is that he’d been virtually alone and isolated in this fight for years before we meet him in Rogue One, his only constant companion being K2. It felt like he’d been keeping himself in a prison of his own mind for the sake of the rebellion.

But in this season, Cassian seems more than willing to walk away for the sake of protecting Bix a mere two years before Rogue One. We're at the halfway point and Cassian is a lifetime away from the man we meet in Rogue One—he was honestly much closer at the end of season one. And maybe that's the point—that things like love can get in the way and hold people back from doing what they must in a revolution—but like others have already said here, making it the focal point of both Bix and Cassian's stories this season feels like a disservice to them as individual characters. Hell, it's not even something that hasn't already been explored in the show. Vel and Cinta's relationship in the first season already looked at how complicated it can be to fall in love while in the rebellion, so I'm not even sure of the necessity of doing the same thing with another couple, much less Bix and Cassian. It seems like the writers room decided an end point for the two of them—likely Cassian being forced to kill Bix, if his last conversation with Luthen is anything to go by—before working backwards to somehow make it feel earned instead of constructing a story that actually felt right for the characters.

While this is essentially what Andor is an exercise in, Cassian already has a specific end point that they need to work toward, but the majority of the main cast doesn't. The next batch of episodes picks up a year before the film, so Cassian's going to have to lose everything in one fell swoop in these next episodes otherwise I'm not confident that he will end up where he needs to be by the end. There are things mentioned in the Rogue One novelisation that could be explored in order show Cassian's further evolution into a fully fledged rebel who's willing to do anything for the movement. Jenoport is one such thing that comes to mind, but that probably won't happen given Cassian hasn't even met K-2 yet.

On the other hand, there is a lot more room to play with Bix as a character. Her end point isn't set in stone in the same way that Cassian's is. They could have explored a myriad of things with her character working through the trauma of being tortured and finding her own way to the rebellion as a result. While that is a factor in her story arc this season, it's frustrating to see her relevance to the story be tied so directly to her relationship with Cassian. At this point it's clear that she's only being kept around so her inevitable death can further galvanise his commitment to the rebellion. After everything she's been through as a character, Bix deserves so much more than being fridged for Cassian's story arc.

To those of you who think my opinion on this is because I'm a diehard Rebelcaptain girlie, it really isn't. Like I've said before, I actually like Bix and Cassian as a couple and would have enjoyed their scenes together more in a different context like maybe in a flashback to their youth. I'd always seen them as childhood sweethearts who still loved each other in their own ways, but had grown apart as they got older and their priorities in life changed. That made a lot of sense to me. What doesn't jive with me is that we're seeing this so close to Rogue One where Cassian is supposed to be living for the rebellion first and foremost and seemed to have been for many, many years. And at this point, the gap between these two men is the size of valley.

[dreamypyon]

Hi! I was recently on the Lemmasoft forums looking for an old demo and I stumbled across your old game Memory;Eternity. I'm curious if you still use any of these OCs and if working on the game had any influence on MWDH?

I def don't really *use* them like that but i think about these babies a lot and i feel like theres def a lot of their dna and tropes still in my main cast lmaoo

Like lets see, The name Aeronian almost ended up being used to describe flying fairies like Marina (I went with Pteritite, but Aeronian is still used in my notes lol...) and Anika is mentioned directly in episode 11!

val didn't start with darker skin (if anything, Alex is probably more directly me jus taking her looks and slapping it on a character lol) but val did always have gold eyes, and i always liked the red hair and dark skin look so i definitely was already biased toward using it again.

Anika is also mentioned as a fire character and she has a lot of siblings which is again something that ends up being used on Alex.

two of which end up being kind of unimportant younger kid twins lol..

and a lot of NAMES actually got reused. I end up reusing a lot of names that I like (Diana was apparently initially called Alice, and Chandra was originally called Daisy Vasquez. And the name Alice Vasquez ends up used on Spinel Heart lol)

so Anika has a brother named Liam, and there's this guardian character named Allen Vermillion.

another detail about them is that this cast is lowkey literally just breath of fire 2 with the serial numbers filed off (Anika is a red haired melee fighter that totally isn't a Katt reference, Nina is literally named after Nina but has the species and body of Katt.) Zane is Ryu if Ryu was a demon instead of a dragon, and his missing sister, Celeste/Vira, is Yua/Patty. Joshua is human Bow and is Zane's best friend. Nikolas is a male Nina and Aeronia is just the kingdom of Windia/Winlan.

the thing is though, is that Zane and Josh kind of never went anywhere if im being honest lol

there personalities at this point are crazy different but like, at the start Alex and Zane were practically the same guy and Liam was just a blond quieter Josh lmao

I think about reusing Nina and Nikolas ALL the time, I've got sketches of both of them as recent as at least 2020 floating around somewhere. but almost never think about Zane or Josh and this is probably the reason why lmao

Val also has a lot of Nina in her now that I think about it, which again she wasn't directly meant to look like her, Val looked nothing like her at the start, but

she definitely ended up taking on a lot of her design elements lol. Nina was a catgirl witch/mage character with a huge crush on the protag, Zane. but she's meant to be like 13 or something, her and val are both really lovey-dovey types but since Nina's younger, her personality is only surface level similar to Val since Nina is just less experienced (also she has no parents, Val has very cool and smart parents) so Nina is much more naive compared to Val who's capable of pretty profound moments, and she's also just more innocent rather than just... horrendously thirsty the way Val can be. Nina had her sights on one boy and her crush was unrequited (Zane is 17 and age-appropriate Anika was intended to be the real LI lol Valex will find eachother in every universe i fear)

[annabelle--cane]

hokay, just finished bingeing through the first season of murray mysteries, here are my #thoughts:

-> moving the narrative chunks around and starting with the equivalent of mina's journal without jonathan's castle segment does really interesting things to the mystery and the release of information. even though I obviously know what's going on it feels like I only have the same amount of information as mina so the events are a lot more unnerving, particularly the part where mina sees lucy being fed on by dracula. it feels intensely What The Fuck Is Happening Right Now.

-> this is pretty clearly a first-time passion project so the production values vary, I'm not going to hold that against it, and sometimes that marries extremely well with the frame of this being mina's low-key personal show. she and lucy have both the most convincing performances and the most convincing relationship, they feel like two friends just chatting about whatever in their own home, and that lack of polish makes me buy into the idea that these are real people which then makes it a lot more emotionally intense when they start to go through the horrors. nail-biting trembling sitting there with my headphones on thinking "noooo that's her actual friend who's dying someone call her noooooooo."

-> I'm good with most of the adaptational modernizing choices but I do think it was a misstep to remove the transfusions from the suitors and van helsing. I get that it would have been difficult to finagle that in a modern setting where doing an impromptu vein to vein transfusion of blood in someone's bedroom when 999 calls and ambulances exist is completely insane, but I think it would have been worth it to somehow work it in. this is a vampire story, exchanges of blood are kind of important.

-> the in-universe podcast format is doing unimaginable things to the energy of this narrative. at first I was like "even with redacting the name, mina and seward publicly sharing seward's patient notes for renfield online in an entertainment context is a bit much 😬" but I was a fool. I had not yet understood the insanity of these people when elevated to the status of podcast characters. lucy records and posts all her emergency doctor's appointments. lucy ends her testament with "please never let art listen to this, it would be too upsetting" and seward posts it. mina can't get in touch with lucy (because she's mcfreaking dead) so instead posts an open letter (voicemail) to her podcast feed without listening to any of the episodes her friends have uploaded while she's been away. they post the recording of lucy's literal actual death. mina listen's to jonathan's audio diary of his captivity and torment at castle dracula and without even consulting him her first thought it "I must post this for my followers."

-> of course van helsing's american. if van helsing needed to be from anywhere other than the netherlands it would have to be america. she's giving pure american nonsense.

[eddiediazbegins]

I know it’s already written but this is my perfect Bobby Nash alive/buddie timeline:

8x16: Emotional Buck and Eddie reunion where they realise just how much they have missed each other. At the funeral Eddie and Tommy are left alone and Tommy mentions the competition conversation. Eddie doesn’t really know how to feel about it. Then bam Bobby is alive. They get him out the coffin and in hospital. Ending two scenes are Bobby deciding to retire and Eddie and Chris deciding to move back to LA.

8x17: EDDIE DRINKS THE JUICE!! Eddie gets back used to LA life and the episode is mostly about him coming to terms with himself being gay, whilst the background plot is probably a water contamination plot line (so the episode title has another meaning) and deciding who will be permanent captain. The ending scene this time is Eddie just about admits to himself he likes guys, then is hit with the realisation that he likes Buck.

8x18: Eddie doesn’t really know how to act around Buck and Buck is getting suspicious. In an emergency they get stuck under rubble and whilst waiting for rescue talk. Just before they get rescued they almost kiss, which leads to Buck realising he likes Eddie. Hen also becomes Captain in this episode.

Start of season 9: Time skip, and both Buck and Eddie haven’t done anything about their feelings because they don’t think the other feels the same. Then at some point in season 9 they get together!

[utilitycaster]

because this has been stuck in my mind since I listened to the Ultimate RPG Podcast episode discussed here I just wanted to go over it:

Huge caveat that I'm not familiar with what work Friedman was referring to, so ultimately, I cannot judge if player agency was violated; my point is just to outline as best I can what I believe player agency means (and that this example does not clearly state the violation, which again, could have occurred and simply not been accurately described).

In the podcast, the example of player agency violation was a game in which all the characters had amnesia and had blank character sheets, and as they found out more about themselves, pre-recordings from other people (ie, not the players) would play. This was run in D&D.

This is not in my opinion automatically a violation of player agency! As D'Amato noted, this is the premise of some indie TTRPGs, and I would add that while this isn't the inherent premise of D&D, the fact that it was run in D&D doesn't mean it's violating player agency. It would be a violation if the players showed up with a fully made character sheet and the DM said "actually that's not who you are, here's a blank sheet." But if the players were told "so we're going to play a D&D game but you don't know who you are or anything about yourself - you will learn these details through gameplay. Sound cool?" and the players agreed (and safety tools are present, and by safety tools I include "players are allowed to just nope out", that's fine! If I lock you in a room in my house for an hour because I think you suck, that is violation of your agency; if I run an escape room and you say "hell yeah I'd like to do this" and voluntarily go in (and are told where the emergency exits are) and are locked in a room for an hour, that is fine.

Ultimately, the core of player agency is setting accurate expectations and getting consent. D'Amato also notes that it's very hard to tell if player agency is violated without being at the table and I would agree: if everyone at the table as described above agreed to that game, there is no violation of consent: they consented to playing an unknown character with amnesia and the DM creating their character for them. On the other hand, a super standard D&D game in which you fight a beholder is a violation of player agency if one of the players said "hey, I am really triggered by beholders, they upset me, and I don't want to have them in the game," and the DM said "ok, sounds good" and then threw one at the party and ignored the player's discomfort. It is not about letting players do anything they want; rather, it is about ensuring players understand the rules of engagement within this system and not violating that, nor needs of those players to which everyone has agreed (lines/veils, etc). [This is also why people whining about D&D not respecting player agency are stupid - if you agreed to D&D, you agreed to the rules of D&D. You can wish for a game that grants more freedom of action for player characters! That is not the same as player agency; indeed I think a lot of people conflate player agency and character agency.]

I think KolloK, at least as described, actually feels like FAR more of a violation of player agency. In the same podcast, Friedman notes that Zac Eubank has said that he is ultimately not at all focused on player experience during the game but rather on end product, which is at least a bad sign for respecting player needs and agency! I will again admit I watched an hour of KolloK and found it both utterly unimpressive unless you are easily wowed by camera filters, and also excruiciatingly boring (and also people talked about that set like it was not a blackbox theater with a slowly rotating rock. Emperor's New Clothes-ass situation) so I am disinclined to be generous towards it, but this really sounds like a pretty open and shut case of player agency not being prioritized (especially since there's explicitly not an open table policy). Now, we're in a murky area because I assume the players are all aware of this and like, were not forced at gunpoint to be on the show, but it's still Not Great in my opinion, particularly since the first example of the amnesiac D&D game sounds like it could be an incredibly fun and healthy experience and KolloK sounds grueling and unpleasant even if you agreed to it.

So just to recap:

Player agency: almost entirely a metagame concept. Do you abide by the rules of the game you and your players agreed to (even if those rules involve a degree of ceding character agency) and respect the safety tools agreed upon? But also: do you let players take a break without asking you? Do you explain why they can't do something they want to do in a way that treats them as people with brains and feelings?

Character agency: what can characters do within this game? Violating character agency is fine provided it does not violate player agency, ie, Dominate Person in D&D is fine as long as your player agreed to play D&D and did not nix this as an option in your session zero safety discussion.

Player agency is in no way compromised by any specific TTRPG system provided players are aware of the expectations of said system; Character agency can be. Players are real people and violating their agency is pretty unambiguously a problem; characters are not and violating their agency can be an important part of storytelling.

[nicnacsnonsense]

Honestly, it’s not just the imagery of Stede in the hold (though that is a strong argument in favor of Ed not getting tossed over); the entirety of episode 2x3 — by far the best episode in the season imo — hinges on finding Ed’s body at the midpoint.

First in terms of the Zheng plot where she’s going to execute Ed’s crew for mutinying. It’s pretty clear in the first half that Zheng is highly motivated not to follow through with the executions. Both because she wants to keep Olu happy, and because tactically the best move for her here where she has Stede, Stede’s surprisingly loyal crew, and Stede’s battered but repairable ship is to gift Stede back his ship and crew on the condition that he joins her fleet, something he’s probably not going to be too keen on if she kills half his crew first. But as long as there’s the plausible deniability of oh, Blackbeard just retired, maybe he was volun-told to do it, but mutiny-adjacent at worst, she can be feeling kind of merciful today and agree to let them go. And then Auntie finds Ed’s body and it becomes undeniably mutiny, so Zheng locks them all up to be executed. Which is in turn what necessatates Stede planning his jailbreak and escape.

Then in Ed’s plotline we see it start with him seemingly washed up on the beach from which we (ultimately incorrectly) infer that he was probably tossed overboard after the mutiny we saw at the end of 2x2. It’s a little unlikely that he’d wash up on the same beach that his former captain is living on, but that’s not an unusual sort of coincidence for OFMD, so the audience probably isn’t going to question it (I didn’t at least). It’s only during the inn scene that things start to go a little weird, then really weird until Ed’s screaming what the fuck is going on and cut to Ed’s body. And that hits. It’s a very stark and sudden answer to Ed’s question, one you cannot replicate without his body being on board.

And finally Stede’s side of things. Like I already said, at the beginning of the episode the audience is led to assume that Ed is alive washed up on a beach somewhere, and Stede is given roughly the same impression. Izzy downplays the violence that was involved in getting Ed into that situation, but broadly we the audience and Stede are on the same page here. So we are also on the same page of absolute shock when Ed’s body is revealed. We, Stede, and Ed all find out that Ed is (mostly) dead at the same time by the sudden shocking reveal of Ed’s body.

And then the whole back half of the episode for Stede is about his grief. The way he silently rebuffs both Izzy’s goading and his attempt to apologize, the way he saves his crew, in spite of his grief and the certain knowledge that they killed the man he loves. And of course, the moment when he comes down the stairs into the hold and sits at Ed’s side, ready to let himself breakdown. If Ed’s body hadn’t been there, then Stede wouldn’t have been grieving. He would have held on to the hope that maybe Ed survived and was somewhere waiting to be rescued. I’m not saying an episode about grief is inherently better than one about relentless optimism, but it’s not a trade I’d be willing to make.

I’ve done some more thinking on the topic of Ed originally being tossed overboard after the mutiny and how it doesn’t make sense that the crew would have kept the body onboard board prompted by @asneakyfox here (but didn’t want to hijack that since what I’m going to say isn’t the point of the original post).

I think it does make sense that the crew would have kept Ed’s body onboard. Tossing him over is definitely the obvious and clearest answer in terms of a crew having just mutinied. But I think if we also take into consideration how much they do love Ed, how long it takes them to mutiny, the way they’re clearly haunted by the mutiny (scrubbing at the boards of the ship, talking about how they can still see blood; they’re pirates, they do murder all the time so that’s not what’s bothering them; it’s that they did it to someone they love), and that it’s clearly a moment of high emotion, fear, and exhaustion that cause the crew to finally snap, once the deed is done and the adrenaline starts leaving their system and I think it’s totally plausible that there would be this moment of “Holy fuck what did we just do?? What the fuck do we do now???”

This wasn’t a planned mutiny that was well thought out, it was an act of desperation with no plan for what happens after. In a planned mutiny it’s a no brainer to toss the captain overboard (like their attempted mutiny on Izzy). But when you’ve just engaged in the murder of someone you love, someone who’s clearly hurting very badly, in order to protect yourselves I don’t think it’s as simple as tossing him over. I think they probably had a lot of mixed feelings over what they did and while in 2x5 they don’t necessarily want him around on the ship, that doesn’t mean they don’t care about him. It’s completely feasible to me that after they got everything out of their systems (we know from fang it wasn’t a quick thing, there was a lot of taking their frustrations out on Ed’s limp body 🥲) they would be conflicted with what to do with the body of someone they care about but who was hurting and in return hurt them.

If you think about it from that point of view, the idea of the crew having a discussion about what to do with the body and landing on the idea of keeping him on board, but out of sight. That way, they can maybe revisit what to do with it later as well as temper their guilt with “well, we may have beat him to death but at least we didn’t toss him overboard like he was trash”.

And as for “how did no one notice he was still alive?” 🤷‍♀️ How did Stede survive multiple severe gut wounds while Jim’s dad takes one little knife to the stomach and immediately dies? How did Jim get back to the ship at the end of s1? How did Buttons literally turn into a bird?? Honestly who cares? Something something magical realism. If it bothers you that much that it ruins the story for you, then just use Princess Bride rules. Ed’s mostly dead, hanging on for true love.

Anyway I just love The Innkeeper and the show was robbed by not even being nominated for an Emmy for that episode.

[nocofamilyau]

Any Cody-specific headcanons you have for this AU?

Definitely the more chill parent (though he still has a spine and won't hold back if you're a cunt to him) though he can come off as overly lax when it comes to giving his kids what they want and considering their feelings over anything else (I mean, he doesn't have many good examples to get advice from, so he ends up relying on occasionally dubious parenting blogs)

A sucker for cheesy (dare I say bad) sitcoms with the big casts living in overly expensive apartments or houses and get along by the end of the episode. So what if they're tropey and cliche and not even funny, it's comforting to watch other people live their life as if nothing incredibly sinister happened to them because they decided to degrade themselves on national TV at a young age!

Doesn't have much social media anymore, the only ones he uses you can't even tell it's him, he doesn't post anything anywhere for... obvious reasons, and only really uses it to stay in contact with close friends and lurk/see what other people are up to

His old/retro console collection has kept going strong! He's managed to bag at least 20 or so consoles since he started

He's surprisingly good with kids. Specifically older kids and tweens, so particularly those around Mike's age. Maybe cuz he's still interested in a lot of games/media that kids gravitate the most toward to, so having Mike and his friends around to share his interests sort of helps him embrace that and make him feel less like a loser

Definitely bonds the closest with Mike since they share the same taste in media. Mainly from Cody showing him stuff that he grew up on/ having movie nights together. One thing they're both really hooked on right now is the newest iteration of Mutant Forces Are Go!, an action cartoon about teenagers that transform into mutated animals and fight crime and shit. It started out as one of those toylines from the 80's that got made into a cartoon, one that Cody was obsessed with as a kid. Vibe-wise I'd say the one they're both watching now would be closest to stuff like Samurai Pizza Cats or The Aquabats! Super Show!

He's somewhat forgiven his father now that he's a father himself. Somewhat.

Had a phase in his early 20's where he idolised Elon Musk (or like the Elon-equivalent within the TD universe... Leon Dusk? idfk) He doesn't idolise him anymore for obvious reasons, but it's hard to tell if he came to his senses himself about it or someone had to knock some into him)

[ratguy-nico]

[roots-symphony]

do you think the reason agatha’s trial felt weird is because she was the only one who did not actually buy into the mythos of the road since she knew the truth? like that was why no perspective change and all the other reasons why people thought it was a fake trial

[sskk-manifesto]

(｡･ω･｡)ﾉ♡

[wildchives4]

Maybe I'm projecting and being hopeful but I mentioned to M that I don't even get to shit by myself in peace lmao and I feel like something clicked for him. Bc I was like hey, at least you get private bathroom breaks at work (noncombative). And since then he's been a lot more acquiescent when I ask if I can nap and stuff

[blubble-lake]

it's been over 2 weeks and this thing (unfortunately) still has a grip on me

[amtrak12]

[quietwingsinthesky]

I think the nature of Clara haterism on Tumblr can’t be fully understood without the historical context of 2013. Namely that by the time of DW season 7b Moffat was widely hailed as The Bogeyman Of All Misogyny Ever. Clara was considered THE prototypical Shallow Moffat Girl, and she became a sort of figurehead for everything wrong with the show. (Bc everyone was maybe 14 and Smith was too beloved to insult.) Consequently, she evokes a kneejerk bad faith reading response in many users even today.

yeah, alright, i can see that. i am surprised that, at least as far as i’ve seen, amy & river don’t get the same treatment? or if they did, it hasn’t persisted half as long as opinions on clara have. Because having now seen how all three of them were written, amy got treated. so much worse with The Misogyny™️, and River bounces between ‘actually a fascinating character’ and ‘moffat wrote a sexy girlboss who wants to fuck the doctor’ so hard it gives me whiplash. (and i say this as a River enjoyer, I love her and she deserves so much better lmao.)

Of the three of them, I think Clara actually comes out a lot better written overall? She’s allowed more space to be a character rather than be a woman, if that makes sense. Sure, bit of a rocky start in s7, and I can certainly see why the Impossible Girl thing could be aggravating to some people. (I think it was. Fine. fantastic episode conceptually that sort of fell apart when it came to actually doing anything.) but Clara in s8 (and the start of s9) is fantastic. Her relationship with Danny and the Doctor is messy and deceptive and so understandable. “Listen” as an episode almost felt like ‘hey what if the clara putting herself in the doctor’s past was actually interesting and impacted him’. Her becoming more like the Doctor, especially after losing Danny, both as an effort to hold on tight to the only person she perceives as keeping her moving forward and giving her a purpose AND because to her, the Doctor is able to lose so much and not be destroyed by it and she wants that (without really understanding just how much this life is fucking him up, too.), is just. fantastic.

where was i going with this. i have no idea. my point, i think, is: i guess i can see how initial reactions to clara might color a less than flattering picture of the rest of her, but :( consider: i love her so so much and everyone should be niceys to her.

[mleemwyvern]

session 7 feels like the moon big of secret life to me. dramatic, chaotic, deadly, a big event that took over the server and drowned out everything else. felt a little bit forced because there needed to be an end soon, but still lead to something entertaining. and im seeing very similar controversy about it. its interesting to me.