#idk???? i hashed this out mostly to settle my own thoughts

[ssaalexblake]

This week on STP.  Soap Opera: Picard commences.

(imagine me staring an 100 yard stare) 

Not even gonna go there. If I wanted to read this type of plot, I would go read it where it belongs... In a fanfic. Eh. I am withholding judgement for now under the technicality that assumptions are not canon and i’m not sure if i’m being generous to the writers for giving them the benefit of the doubt or if i’m grasping at the last few straws i have, but here we are. 

Mostly, as somebody who isn’t even a tng lover i feel bad for what is apparently being done to beverly here like damn, really??

amanda plummer aced every second of screen time she had, kudos! Was legit threatening and nice visual references, also. 

Michelle Hurd also has me by the Neck. Raffi’s been mistreated so bad. This never should have been a thing she was told to do for very valid reasons. Also, in a vaguely introspective way i’m like okay Section 31... The people working for it probably aren’t the kind of people all steeped in starfleet principles. Which is why Raffi can’t do it. She is too principled of a person. 

Honestly thought the computer handler was threatening Raffi with that comment about another body. Was legit surprised she just managed to turn the screen off. 

The convo with the ex annoyed me because like, from the character exploration they did with Raffi last season there are canonically a few good reasons her family aren’t in contact with her that are legitimately a ‘her problem’ kind of thing. This is not what happened here and i felt they unintentionally leant into some uncomfortable sexist notions when doing it. And they could easily have made that less infuriating by just leaning on last season’s work instead. But then again, from the ex’s clientele it looks like he’s not like... The Most Moral Dude Ever? Actually... going back to S1 and Raffi’s son being on hyper-futuristic-capitalism-neon-hell-planet does actually speak to certain implications i’d not thought of until this. So fine, sense was made, but this is one of those things that’s more annoying for being Mostly fine but needing tweaking imo than something just straight up annoying that i could just write off easily.

Anyway, Raffi’s problem is she is genuinely a very good person and can’t stand to watch this shit without trying to help or fix it. Which while noble, doesn’t negate all her issues, but it sucks to see her get kicked down for being the only one who cares. I feel so hard why she was so Furious with Picard in S1 now. This is a sucky story to watch but yeah yeah it works with the context of the rest of the show, which I can’t say necessarily about a lot of other things in nostalgia bait s3. Standing ovation for our last remaining new character standing. May you remain standing till the very end. Preferably with Seven. 

riker: why are you avoiding this???

picard: avoiding what???

me with fingers in my ears: yeah, avoiding what????

i next to never agree with picard (I tolerate him mostly) but sometimes he has his moments and the denial was one of them.

anyway, i think we can conclude that Shaw’s issue (aside from being a snide little butthead) is that he’s not meant for command. Not even in an insulting way, but somebody who can’t own their own decisions (blaming seven for the orders He gave, no matter how clear she was about her own feelings or the situation was out of line bc He still gave the orders) and then goes on to look the happiest he is the whole episode when an admiral forcibly takes control of his ship probably is not suited for the big chair. 

i feel very bad for laughing at the head thing. 

[thetriggeredhappy]

85 for EngieSpy please, also I'm a sucker for same faction

as a brief insight into the way stuff is rn i wrote and am posting this before i head to work in the morning and thats probably a commentary on my writing effort idk. (warnings for sappiness)

85.) “Take my jacket. It’s cold outside.”

One of the things Engie simply needed to get used to with Spy was how particular he was about keeping clean.

He didn’t shower with everyone else, Engie was aware. He knew that because he knew the layout of the pipework on the base, and knew that there was another bathroom branching from Spy’s smoking room. He wasn’t sure how one would access it—maybe from the room directly via hidden entrances, maybe from somewhere else nearby. But Spy showered often, and he made trips often into town to get his clothes dry-cleaned and pressed. And when they were stationed away from civilization for a while, he knew Spy kept up the habit, washing and ironing his clothes himself.

That was one thing that did make Engie curious, though. The fact that Spy was so particular about staying pristine, and yet still he so often went to be with Engie in his workshop. Home to grease and oil and sawdust and rust and metal, always smelling faintly of spray paint.

He’d decided that there were a few options to explain what might be going on.

Firstly, that Spy was indeed a cleanly person, and just liked Engie enough to put up with his workspace, aware that he really did enjoy his work and therefore couldn’t be pulled away from it very easily.

Secondly, that perhaps Spy’s cleanliness was a charade, and he didn’t particularly care in any real way, and it was just something used to exude an air of superiority much in the same way his scalding speech and calculated body language did.

Thirdly, Spy’s cleanliness was something enforced in much the same way that a good portion of his secrecy was, that it was part of his job description in a similar way that Soldier’s involved him marching the halls and Sniper spending time in the watchtower and Scout running errands for everyone and Heavy being a peacemaker.

Well, that last one probably wasn’t in Heavy’s job description. He was just like that naturally. Regardless.

He tended to favor the first one, even if he was aware that believing it was the first one just made him a downright sap of a romantic. But in terms of being sappy and romantic, he’d never really beat the Frenchman, he knew. He settled for little gestures instead, leaving all the roses and candles and grand declarations to the other man to do.

Admittedly, as much as his grimy workshop was surely a hassle for Spy to deal with, there were things that Spy was about that he himself didn’t so much work well with. In the same way Spy balked at leaning on a sawdust-covered workbench, Engie fidgeted at headed out to nice dinners and the like for dates.

He’d grown up in a small town in the middle of nowhere—there was a price to privacy for a family of born-and-bred geniuses—and due to his grandfather’s and father’s paranoia and overall seclusion he never even really knew about having guests over. Dressing to the nines and headed to a restaurant so expensive they didn’t list prices, sampling wines and sitting with elbows always off the table and never pouring his own water and staring down at far too many forks before him, it was downright stressful. And worst of all that stress meant he often slipped, forgot the purpose of him being there, forgot to focus on his date.

So he made Spy do yet another compromise. At least half of their dates were decided by Engie rather than him. So he settled for small diners, family-owned types of places, full of the smell of the same coffee and the same pancakes and the same bacon and the same hash browns that had been served the past twenty years of the establishment being open. Places where instead of a suit plucked straight off a walkway in Europe, he wore a pair of pants stained with paint around the knees, and a long-out-of-style jacket that had been far too big for him when he’d nabbed it from some hapless frat boy in college and only now in his later years when he’d put on equal parts muscle and fat was starting to fit correctly.

Spy’s habits died hard. Engie was half sure he didn’t own a single shirt without buttons (besides his undershirt, but Engie was fairly sure walking out in that may as well have been the equivalent to walking outside in boxers), and his pants were spotless and pressed, and his shoes were shiny. But he did roll his sleeves up to his elbows, and didn’t tuck the shirt quite to neatly, and didn’t even bring a vest, which was a considerable leap down from the suits that he wore whose prices rivalled that of his old, beaten-down stick-shift truck.

Most often, Engie asked him out to breakfast. He didn’t necessarily have an opinion on most restaurants, but he knew when a diner had good breakfast food, and the one in town (at least, the one without wanted posters) most certainly did.

Sometimes he did ask Spy to dinner, though, on busier weekends, if only for the very different feeling of it.

Leaving one of the nice restaurants Spy was so kind as to take him to, Engie was still stiff, still just a bit embarrassed by the looks he’d garnered with his thick accent and his version of politeness, and wide awake as a result.

But walking out of one of those little diners, stomach full of food that was mostly grease, usually late at night (the places often being open until halfway between dusk and dawn), Engie was always relaxed, feeling well at ease, well calmed, satisfied.

He did watch as Spy surreptitiously tried to pull his sleeves down to cover more of his arms, a half-step behind as Engie went to the counter to pay. Night in the desert was a bitter kind of cold, the kind of cold that animals had to have evolved to tolerate, and suddenly Engie was a bit sympathetic towards the fact that the other man hadn’t brought his layers with him for once.

Waiting for his change, Engie finally just sighed, looking over Spy. Twig like him would practically freeze to death walking to the truck, let alone waiting for it to kick on what meager heat it could provide.

All at once he was shrugging off his jacket, pulling himself free of his sleeves, ignoring the goosebumps jumping up on his now-bare arms in protest. “Take my jacket. It’s cold outside,” Engie said simply.

Spy looked almost startled, holding up a hand and shaking his head on almost instinct. “Oh, I couldn’t possibly—“ he started to deny.

Engie rolled his eyes, draping the thing around Spy’s shoulders before he could further protest. He noted the slight bend Spy put to his back in order to allow such a thing. “Just take it,” he said, allowing himself a little smile.

He was somewhat surprised by the way Spy didn’t immediately start inspecting the coat over his shoulders, instead crossing his arms across himself to grip at it, pulling it on more securely, and looking over Engie’s face. He looked at his expression carefully, then glanced over his now-bare arms, then back to his face again.

Engie shrugged under the scrutiny, smile widening a touch. Spy fought back a smile of his own and pulled the jacket tighter over his shoulders. It didn’t fit in the slightest. It made Engie chuckle.

They left the tip and left the establishment, headed for Engie’s truck, parked on the far side of the parking lot out of a paranoia that never quite left when they got off the battlefield.

It was something Engie didn’t really think about until the moment it happened.

He stood to the left of Spy, his keys held loosely in his left hand, and all at once felt something bump the back of his hand near his wrist. He glanced down, and saw Spy’s hand there, and when he looked up, the other man was looking at him with a kind of interest. Spy’s hand bumped against his own again.

Engie grinned as he finally understood the hint, rolling his eyes in mock exasperation as he laced his fingers through Spy’s. And it was then, all at once, that he realized he didn’t really hold hands with Spy. Not while going places, and certainly not in a public area. He wondered why for a moment, if maybe it was paranoia, if maybe it was pride, but the thought fell away as Spy’s thumb brushed over top of his own idly and he realized Spy had taken off his glove.

“Thank you for the jacket,” Spy said quietly.

Engie squeezed his hand. “This isn’t my giving it to you forever,” he chided jokingly. “I’ll want it back eventually.”

Spy hummed. “Maybe someday,” he said airily, and damn him, it made the poor Engineer laugh.

Little gestures. Little ones. Maybe they were all the more important.

[scifibi]

"The youth that inherited the Earth"

I really wanted to get some thoughts out before 4x03 airs. Mostly because this line from Abby was really interesting to me for some reason, and, hopefully, I'm about to flesh out what that reason is. 

So in 4x01, Abby and Kane both realise that they are not the generation that will lead their people in the era of life on earth. This is a pretty pivotal moment, considering the adults have always been conducting themselves as Superior to the kids, because Seniority, amirite? The concept isn't new at all, but let's delve into why this moment is important. 

First off, it's important to remember that the conflict between the older and younger generations has been a central theme of the show since S1.

Note Jaha's response to the argument Bellamy and Clarke are presenting. Every single response made by an adult to something one of the 100 says on this show can easily be characterised with this one sentence -- "Thanks, but you don't fully understand." (This isn't always necessarily a bad thing, btw!) 

This is also what makes 1x11 an important (if largely underrated) episode. 

Throughout most of S1, the delinquents spend their time on the ground playing defense. They don't really taking any steps forward for themselves as a group. Really what they're doing is just hoping and waiting for the day the rest of the Ark comes down to save them, for the adults to take the burden of their own survival off their shoulders.

Witnessing the crash of the Exodus ship (1x10) changes that for good.

(Also interesting that all throughout 1x11, the delinquents are gearing up to fight back, building some of their own agency as a group, while back on the Ark, the adults are struggling just to stay alive. Almost a role reversal for the two groups.)

MOVING ON TO S2.

The Big Thing of 2x01 is reunion. 

The adults make it down to Earth, they actually manage to find some of the kids they'd sent down. Reunion should be a joyous thing. It should inspire relief, gratitude. 

Instead, the S2 premiere makes sure to remind us that this intergenerational conflict is not just going to be swept under the rug. 

The first interaction between the adults and the delinquents is basically Kane trying to reinforce the Ark way of life on Bellamy and Finn. It's a scolding, plain and simple -- "don't forget, THIS is how we do it." 

This struggle continues all throughout S2, largely between Abby and Clarke. There's far too much material to go through here, so I'll settle for the scenes that sum it up best, from 2x11:

ON TO S3.

With Clarke absent from Arkadia for most of S3, the intergenerational conflict continues on via Kane and Bellamy. 

Note the wording here.

Kane's not wrong, either. Bellamy was deliberately misled by Echo, manipulated as part of Queen Nia's vendetta against Lxa. He really did only want to save lives. 

There was rational logic to Bellamy's decisions and actions, just as there was rational logic to every law ever made and enforced on the Ark -- unquestionable execution of any and all lawbreakers, imprisonment of those who had yet to reach adulthood, even the culling of 1x05. 

Kane accepts Bellamy's decisions and actions because they were 'reasonable'. 

Bellamy doesn't. 

To make things even more interesting, Pike comes in with fresh eyes (so to speak), and immediately singles out Bellamy as the linchpin of Arkadia leadership. 

Not interim Chancellor Abby Griffin. Not 'future Chancellor' Marcus Kane. 

Bellamy Blake. 

And you know what? Kane knows it, too.

(from 3x06)

What follows is a more explicit foreshadowing of a power shift in 3x05. 

It's not just because Kane and Abby start helping Clarke rather than trying to restrain/protect/take the reins from her, either.

Everything builds up to a huge confrontation between Bellamy and Pike in 3x16.

It's important to note that this confrontation follows immediately on the heels of Bellamy trying to help Octavia out of her downward spiral. How does he go about doing this? 

"I know how you feel. I let my need for revenge put me on the wrong side. I don't want that for you." 

Bellamy's seen just how vital it is, which figure of authority you hitch your wagon to. He's spent all of S3 stuck in the (narratively) interesting position of being both a follower, and a leader. This was Bellamy's first step towards reclaiming the responsibility of setting an example for the delinquents, beginning with the person who's always been most important to him -- his sister. 

That's why this segues so nicely into his exchange with Pike.

Now, this wasn't just a mentor and his student hashing out their grievances. This was an explicit address of the disagreement in how someone of the older generation views the hostile conditions of Earth vs. Bellamy's generation.

This is a huuuuuuuge moment for the overarching intergenerational conflict.

There's a danger that comes with seeing yourself as the Good Guy, the Hero. You believe that everything you do is Right, as long as it's Justifiable. (See above re: Kane and 'reasonable choice'.)

Sometimes, you believe it so much that you forget why you're doing what you're doing in the first place.

"I don't know what I believe anymore. I just know, I have to live with what I've done."

Bellamy is learning a very important lesson here, one that not even the adults have learned in all their time and experience of being In Charge. 

Bellamy is learning that while you can rationalise your decisions and actions into dust, there will never be a way to rationalise the consequences of those decisions and actions away. 

It's a stark realisation, and not just for Bellamy. Note the camera work in this scene. Right when we think it's over, what happens?

The camera switches focus, to show Pike's reaction.

This is a really firm sign that it's not just an internal growth thing for Bellamy. It's not just individual character development.

It's a revelation borne of the younger generation, that impacts the older. 

Okay, let's wrap this up.

In the pilot, who are the ones sent down to Earth ahead of everyone else? 

The delinquents are. 

This isn't just an ~intriguing story premise~. This is the younger generation literally spearheading the way for all of their people.

IMO, it's a very deliberate choice on the writers' part, that the very first one to fall to ALIE was Jaha -- former Chancellor and leader of the Ark, the person who'd spent his entire life setting an example for the people of the older generation to follow, right down to sacrificing his own son for the good of everyone.

The survivor's mentality inherited and cemented by Jaha and his generation might have worked for them in space, but it couldn't last on Earth.

(FOR EXAMPLE, notice how besides Jasper and Raven, there was never even any question over whether any of the delinquents would ever succumb to the City of Light. Even though Jasper and Raven did cave eventually, both of their descents were built up very deliberately, over several scenes and several episodes. Why? To show their behaviour as anomalous -- i.e. none of their peers would do the same.)

(x)

As early as 1x01, Abby being punished for refusing to let Jaha die sums up the survivor's mentality that belongs to the older generation:

Following the rules > Saving someone

Because in space, the rules are what keeps everyone alive.

In 4x02, there's an explicit shift of that survivor's mentality. Bellamy powers this shift, and Clarke supports it via agreement.

(x)

To fully appreciate the magnitude of this agreement, we must understand that Bellamy and Clarke are no longer just leaders of The 100. They're now leaders of their people. Their authority has been legitimised and affirmed in 4x01, by the leaders of old -- Abby and Kane.

(x)

With this, Bellamy and Clarke effectively start S4 off by unequivocally agreeing that:

Saving someone > Following the rules 

Because on the ground, there are no rules -- at least not any that they've been taught growing up. That old mentality may have sustained them in the past, but it won't do so as they move into the future. 

This brings us to one last important question: Does this put an end to the theme of intergenerational conflict for the show?

A: No. Themes that have been in place since the beginning of a work don't just end with a line. They just metamorphosise, develop and advance into different phases and stages of the same underlying premise. 

But what's made clear to us viewers is that the younger generation of the Ark, the younger generation of the human race have to forge their own path now -- a new path, for which the foundations will be laid in S4. 

(And, idk about you, but that's pretty damn exciting.)

(x)