#if this show doesn't get a second season I'm going to go feral

[soldat-buck]

i had a vision while making coffee this morning

bg3 culinary headcanons: Companion Edition

- Shadowheart: absolute zero regard for contamination while cooking. kitchen habits of a permanent bachelor. licks the tasting spoon clean and keeps using it to cook. eats hot cocoa straight out of the container with a spoon. thinks pouring ranch over an entire head of lettuce and eating it like feral animal while holding it over the kitchen sink counts as "salad". if you can get past the contamination thing, the food she makes actually tastes pretty good, even if it's sometimes odd (she cooks like a stoner, despite being perfectly sober. she is just Like That).

- Astarion: perfectly capable of cooking, and actually can cook quite well. food may not taste the same after becoming a vampire, but his enhanced sense of smell tells him nearly everything he needs to know about how to season and cook food properly. he doesn't cook because he doesn't like to (washing dishes? by hand? no fucking thank you, being undead is harsh enough on the nails and skin. finding a good lotion for normal undead dryness is already impossible)

- Lae'zel: in the modern world, if her life took her in a chef direction, she'd be in a Michelin star restaurant as the world's best and most terrifying sous chef. she absolutely would throw a knife at you for fucking up her plating (she'd intentionally miss. the first time). no nonsense is ever tolerated in her kitchen, but that doesn't necessarily mean she's got temper issues (her coldness and lack of tantrums is what makes her terrifying). she'd put Gordon Ramsay in his place for his rage theatrics and then make him weep with joy after serving him the most competent omelet he's ever had in his life. if she likes you, you may address her as "Yes, Chef!" outside of the kitchen.

- Karlach: uses 4 pots to make ramen. not because she's doing anything fancy or elaborate with it, the first pot was too small and started boiling over (whoops). the second one was, oh hold on, that's a cast iron pan, maybe you're not supposed to use that for boiling liquids, huh? wait shit, can't use this one either, i'm not supposed to use metal spoons on nonstick, don't want to scratch it. There we go! this one is the right size! and if i scratch this one, it's fine! wait, where the fuck did the flavor packet go (you should definitely be concerned about leaving her alone for the weekend)

- Wyll: very resourceful cook due to his Blade of the Frontier days. can improvise a meal out of damn near anything. can identify every edible plant and mushroom and tell you how to use it in a dish. would carry an herb garden in his adventure pack if he could. would absolutely thrive on the show Chopped (he's actually banned from auditioning again because it's not fair to the other competitors to have him on). he could make you a dessert featuring rattlesnake and fresh picked clover, and you don't know how or why, but you actually like it

- Gale: approaches the kitchen the same way he approaches most things in his life - academically. knows the proper safe temperature to cook meats/etc to, knows how to brown an onion, knows what seasonings are typically used together for certain flavor profiles and how to match seasonings to proteins. knife work sucks because he uses mage hand for mise en place and his mage hand has shitty DEX, but he's scared of his chef knife from the one time he sliced his thumb open (he was cutting an onion with improper hand placement and the knife slipped)

- Minsc: would exclusively eat by dumpster diving if it weren't for Boo's disapproval. eats like a human garbage disposal. he will eat a n y t h i n g that fits in his mouth, he is the least picky eater you will ever meet. does not understand how food challenges in the show Fear Factor are supposed to be challenges

- Halsin: world class forager. very competent hunter. prefers to eat everything as raw as possible. understands but doesn't believe in strict food safety because obviously stomach acid kills germs (and anyway, a little dirt here and there never killed anyone; exposure to germs is good for your immune system). open-mouthed kissing him is gambling with your health. makes the best vegetarian salads but do not trust any chicken he has "cooked". people with weak CON might want to consider avoiding his food

- Jaheira: uses Talk to Animals to Cinderella/Ratatouille rodents in the kitchen. she commands them like she's in perilous battle and the entire world is at stake (also rodents are worse to direct than cats, they do not know the difference between left and right. there's a lot of "No! Not that cupboard, the other one! NO, the OTHER other one! Flank him, he's off balance!"). making a cup of tea is a convoluted, stressful process that takes 10 times longer than just boiling the damn water yourself

if you want more bg3 culinary headcanons, there's also: the Absolute Edition

[neyafromfrance95]

I’m gonna be real here but your understanding of l Sauron and Galadriel and their relationship is far superior to the writers. It gives me chills. If you were one of the writers on board, the show would be next level.

I don’t think they’re clever enough to dive into it like that and aren’t even bold enough either, so we have to keep telling ourselves that we aren’t going to get Haladriel complexity sadly we might not even get Galadriel being complex since they’re already mellowing her down

omg, thank you! you made me blush fr :D

however, i think i simply interpret and put into words what we are actually getting. it's just that what we are getting is very subtle and subtextual. smtms vague bc they got no guts to more explicidly convey what i'm 100% sure they want to convey.

think about the already iconic "to worship the light of its queen" line. while s2 was airing, a few shippers started referring to sauron's yearning for galadriel as a "worship of the light" and concluded that he thinks everyone in the middle-earth must share his adoration. these takes were based on the subtle details, parallels and metaphors we saw in the show. but i never imagined that they would actually make sauron explicitly confirm this word-for-word! it is actually such an astronomical win for us!

and then galadriel altogether stops her feral and desperate fight when she sees halbrand in front of her. she drops all of her defenses for a moment and just looks at him. then when he recites his s1 speech, she closes her eyes for a second! bc her feelings for halbrand are so intense! this scene was literally a confirmation that galadriel loves halbrand, as we have suspected!

but yeah, right now, i'm very anxious about galadriel's characterization and arc in the future seasons. the ending made it seem like she suddenly fully overcame her darkness and was calmer.

and listen, while lotr!galadriel is calmer, she has never been this stay-at-home tradwife the incelbros say she is! she is thirsty for power! lotr!galadriel wants power more than trop!galadriel does, trop hasn't really tapped into galadriel's power hunger at all. and lotr!galadriel is still devoted to her fight against sauron! think about it, she doesn't go to valinor when celebrian does and she doesn't stay in the middle-earth while celeborn does! she only leaves the middle-earth for valinor when sauron is gone! and what about the crazy scary dark!galadriel when she is offered the one ring? what about the fact that she only passes the test after 3000 years and until then her heart greatly desires what sauron offers her? and how sad her tone is when she says she has passed the test (which doesn't even mean she has slain *him* in her heart, as her taking nenya to valinor can mean that she still holds onto their connection)?

my hope right now is that the ending was deliberately misleading and that the wound made by the crown will have a side effect on her.

unlike the majority of the shippers in our fandom, i never believed that galadriel would give in to sauron. not just bc her gaze is fixed on the light above as finrod taught her, but bc her pride wouldn't allow it. still, there are other ways to make her inadvertently succumb to the darkness! she was already on that path in s1 when her search for sauron slowly started to turn her into his mirror. their mind communication and the dark powers sauron could share with her through their bound could make her even more obsessed with slaying him herself, and that could be conflicted with her feelings for halbrand who she slowly realizes indeed is sauron.

it simply makes 0 sense for her to be obsessed beyond the reason with the idea of him for centuries and then get over it after one fight where she actually faces him!

anyways, fingers crossed that the incelbros don't get their way and the writers don't cater to the misogynistic demographic 🤞

[pigeonmilk-216]

House MD makes me absolutely FERAL.

For instance, I finished rewatching S3 E15, "Half-Wit", the one when House fakes cancer so he can get high (typical). And

AHHH

Everyone's response to House potentially dying is EVERYTHING. And displays both the characters and their character growth SO WELL.

Wilson, ofc, is offended that his best friend *cough* *lover* *cough* didn't say anything, and hid it. And something I think (and forgive me if this is not actually how it went down to everyone else, it's 1am and I have brainrot) is really interesting, is that beyond Wilson giving House shit for not saying anything, Wilson doesn't give any of the platitudes that everyone else gives. We don't see Wilson trying to "fix" anything or say, "House your dying, can we have an actual human connection for once?". No no, Wilson just lets him be.

Now, either Wilson is pissed and reeling from this news , and is just distancing himself (which tbh feels ooc, like House has crossed worse lines before, and Wilson deals with cancer everyday, idk).

OR you can look at the option of Wilson knows House well enough (and cancer, let's be real) that trying to fix it, won't change anything, that coming up to House and trying to "console" him won't do anything. House is House, and Wilson KNOWS THAT. Wilson knows that if House really and truly wants a conversation about it, or any comfort, House will just be like, " Yo, can we go get wasted?" and that's that.

AND THEN HIS FUCKING ANALYSIS AT THE END AND HIM FUCKING LAUGHING AT THE IRONY.

And Cuddy, I feel like, is the middle ground between how Wilson and the kids react. She doesn't go out of her way to say something, but in an almost hand-on-the- doorknob-as-I'm-leaving type way does she say something. AND THEN THEIR BANTER IN THE HALL IS FUCKING EVERYTHINGG. And her FUCKING smile as House grabs her ass (istg I can only say this in real action to this fucking show) but still dismissing him coming to the bedroom with her

Like both her and Wilson and obviously hurt, right, but they don't outright change their behavior toward House or anything, but they accept it (kind of) and don't go out of their way to change anything,

AND THEN THE KIDS' RESPONSES. ANHHH

I love Chase's moment. He's just like, "Dad, shut up and let me hug you" AND FUCKING STARTS CRYING

CHASE IS LITERALLY THE ONLY ONE WHO CRIES

He's like, "Goddammit, I'm going to lose two of my parentals to this cancerous bullshit. Tf."

AND HUGH LARUIE'S ACTING I CANT

YOU CAN SEE HOUSE REALIZING THAT, "oh shit, they really care and this is really going to hurt them" LIKE WHAT THE HELL. MY HEART, FUCK THIS SHOW WTH

And I love how Cameron is shown in this episode, over the first three seasons, we can see her kinda of coming to her own, and learning from House, so instead of like, backing down from helping House she just fucking kisses him so she can steal his blood. Like. YES CAMERON. GET IT.

AND AGAIN

HUGH LAURIE. YOU CAN SEE HOUSE'S HESITATION, WEIGHING THE PROS AND CONS BEFORE KSSING BACK.

And tbh I feel like House is low key proud of Cameron for a moment in a "she is taking after me" type way.

And Foreman trying not to care, but caring the whole time, and HIS FACE WHEN HES TELLING HOUSE HE DOESNT HAVE CANCER. LIKE. JXNKSCVJVXFBJKBFVSKJ

And I just love everyone's reaction five seconds later when they realize

"House is an addict. Right. Fucking this was a sham, fuck"

AND THEIR FACES ARE EVEYTHING

Cameron is crestfallen, outraged. Foreman is slightly pissed but completely nonplussed almost? Like a I should have expected this/this is such a House thing, which is why I dislike the man. And his sarcastic response is EVERYTHING And, Chase, oh Chase. He's so disbelieving and hurt. Like my baby I'm so sorry.

And House like really understanding how much this hurt them, and kinda of being a fucking TOTAL IDIOT and like slightly scared I feel but arrogant enough to just fucking like. Trying to blame so he doesn't feel guilty (he does) pushing them away so he doesn't have to face consequences (he's spiraling) and and after Wilson (finally) talks to him, having to stop and THINK about how fucking miserable is he really (he's such and idiot) and just AHHH

AND THEN HIM FUCKING GOING INTO THE RESTAURANT AT THE END?????? ITS A FUCKING CRIME THAT WE DON'T SEE THAT CONVERSATION BETWEEN HIM AND THEM. LIKE SIR, I WANT TO THIS POTENTIALLY EMOTIONALLY CHARGED MOMENT. LIKE

And honestly, Ilove how House interacts with the patient in the episode, it's on par with the boy who had autism earlier this season. Like the piano part is what really intrigues him, but still goes forth to give him his life back. Idk, just felt special.

Okay, um so thank you for coming to my Ted Talk. Idk what happened.

[cboffshore]

with very little respect to that one feral Chima-purity-defender: here's that thing I was talking about the other day I now formally present THE SLOG THEORY.

obviously, this is STUPID rough. In order to make this way more accurate, I'd have to know how many normal days each season of Chima and Ninjago takes, which... not happening. I ain't doing that. This is very heavily rounded and largely for illustrative purposes.

(@ghostwalloper said I was cooking. It's dinnertime, pal.)

The original joke was that, since Chima is such a pain in the ass to watch and feels like it takes forever, obviously time in that realm must be WAY slower than in Ninjago, and only equalizes when The Merge happens and throws everything into a blender. Hence the name Slog Theory. I'm building on the time slowness thing here, because it's FUNNY. I could be entirely wrong - maybe everything in Chima happens in the span of five Ninjago minutes during the first season and they're just sitting around for the rest of the time.

Reading the chart: Blue side is Chima, with season chunks numbered. Red is Ninjago. Please note that the Ninjago season numbers are off to the side, ABOVE their related chunk, due to space. The purple V shape is when the Merge happens well after the end of N15. I drew this on my phone over breakfast, okay? Don't come at me for that. With that being said, I kept all of the time chunks on each side approximately the same just for ease of drawing, because - once again, for the people in the back - there is no way I am going back and doing the math to figure out exactly how many regular days each season takes. That's impossible. There are clues, sure, but WAY too many cuts. Just roll with it, please.

See those green zones on the blue Chima side? Those are our KEY POINTS. There are three, each correlating to some spot on the Ninjago side. They are:

The infamous Possession cameo. My brief research shows that this is an edited scene from EP 15 of C1, which leaves us two possibilities: either the cameo scene with Lloyd and Morro present is canon to BOTH sides, or history repeated itself on the Chima side after the original Eris/other bird iteration, and they all went to hang out on that hill again, hoping to see another fight. And boy did they deliver! Besides that scene EXPLICITLY being an edited version of one from C1, we also know that character lineup is consistent with C1.

The Beaver Portal thing from the second have of N11. It's trickier to place this in the Chima timeline because it doesn't have any of the main characters involved to indicate what season it happens in via armor or lineup, so I just let it fall where it may, which loosely suggests it happens somewhere off to the side between C2 and C3.

The final cliffhanger shot. Following with the time line I've already established with the other cameos, approximately 4-5 seasons have passed since the last one, which puts this after the end of N15 - right around where the Merge would kick off DR. Which would explain why we never see the Chima characters go have adventures down there - reality gets shredded first! Like, right after that shot!

Anyway! It's ultimately all pretty pointless - we're over here fighting over a toy commercial, after all - but I thought that drawing and writing it out a little more thoroughly helped me out, so I hope it helps you all, too.

[chaoticly-shy-dragon]

so I am working - dragging my feet - through natla (1 episode left) and I thought I would share some of my thoughts and commentary:

Iroh: You must use your tact, your empathy-

Season 1 Zuko: [looks back at him]

*

Canon s1 ep3 Zuko: You... are working with Zhao. Willingly.

Show s1 ep3 Zuko: Yes? What's the problem? He is annoying but that's mostly it.

Canon!Zuko: UNCLE! DID YOU PUT SPIRIT MUSHROOMS IN MY TEA AGAIN?! I'M HAVING LUCID NIGHTMARES!!

Other random thoughts:

[Suki proceeds to defy gravity with her fan to impress Sokka]

Me, exasperation incarnate: Suki, I didn't know you were an airbender!

and

[Previous incarnation avatar bashing sesh]

Me: [...] But I love Zuko-Iroh interactions

[The one scene. Zuko is shouting how they can't just ask around. Iroh is offering advice until he gets distracted by street food.]

Me: The fact Zuko stood there for a few seconds trying to figure what this proverb means before he realizes its very much not a proverb - cackling

Second-hand long-suffering friend, who is at the end of her wits after hearing me talk about the butchering of Kyoshi's character for 20 minutes: XDDDD He legit thought rice had sth to do with it XD

there is more but it's more of

Oh no, he is hot.

And oh no he is also hot

Why is every extremist hot?!

Bumi is very bitter. Very.... Jaded.

Aang has no situational awareness: He did not just ask Zhao (Zuko too) to let him go so he can go save other enemies of the Fire Nation. He didn't.

Also. Why the firebender this, firebender that. Are the Fire Nation non-benders saints or something??

Mai casually says Ozai sucks for not thinking Azula is perfect <- Me: I mean she is absolutely right but she would not say that.

Azula's whole. Thing. I felt the narrative was trying very desperately to make her seem competent and clever but the fact that Iroh's thoughts insinuated the frontal attack on the Northern Water Tribe was her idea left me in stitches

But yeah. They nerfed Azula

Zuko - feral, bloodthirsty, a loser. <- Me: Oh my god they captured his essence! Minus the honor thing!

ZUKO NOT SAYING HONOR

THE TRAVESTY OF SOKKA NOT WEARING A DRESS

I WANT SOKKA IN KYOSHI WARRIOR UNIFORM

Katara not having any emotions ::: Aang walks all over her saying he can't support her in her fight against the patriarchy that is actually just Pakku and Yugoda or whatever was happening in the 7th episode: Katara doesn't blow up at him. Sokka calling her a little girl and never actually apologizing about the whole Jet accusation especially when he did the same with the Mechanist. : Katara doesn't blow up at him

Me: sounds fake but okay

At this point when Toph comes along Katara will let her not be a part of the Team (no Gaang just Team Avatar) and not contribute and not bond and NO FOUND FAMILY TROPE

Aang teaching Katara waterbending, Aang not goofing off, No Kataraang (not even a smidge) - something in me shriveled up and died.

Why is Azula soft??????

And why is Ty Lee assertive and forthcoming??? Just?? Why????

And finally, my second favorite:

Azula, trying very hard not to mention Zuko's ludicrous tenacity: Commander Zhao is a great asset... Maybe he needs better resources to showcase his true potential.

Zhao who barely passed his exams according to Jee the gossip queen: Yes, I do need the best resources. Give me all the 'sources.

[buckybarnesss]

on fire: a teen wolf novel chapters 1-3

on fire was published on july 17, 2012. the day after raving had aired during the show's second season.

it was written by nancy holder who has written many, many tie-in books for multiple franchises but most notably she wrote novels for the buffyverse.

by tapping nancy holder to write the novel confirms to me that mtv was trying to do what teen wolf's spiritual predecessors did and create tie-in novels with the show and on fire was testing the waters for that.

it did not succeed because teen wolf doesn't have the kind of space for that. the timeline is too tight. teen wolf was part of the new netflix binge era. it had a seasons of 12 episodes that were wall-to-wall plot. there weren't silly filler episodes and they didn't do monster of the week plots.

on fire assumes that you have seen episodes 1-5 of the show but it is also an AU of season 1 post-the tell.

i get the vibe that the author was given notes, some information or like an outline that she used to build a plot so it's interesting to see what tid-bits holder uses and refers to that still gel with canon or is consistent with what we know.

this isn't a novelization of season 1 that's for sure but, hey, i took notes.

i'm going to break the novel up into 3 chapter chunks.

so without further ado let's get into it. on fire: a teen wolf novel or as i've been thinkin of it as.

the novel starts right at the very end of the tell after the parent teacher conferences. 

the way it's described when argent shoots the mountain lion brings to mind the scene in to kill a mockingbird when atticus shoots the rabid dog. chris argent is no atticus finch but he sure does learn to walk a mile in someone else's shoes doesn't he?

i somehow always manage to forget that the tell is the episode where allison turns 17. she doesn’t live to see her 18th birthday. shot through the heart man. 

oh my fucking god scott. the way this is written i imagine holder is trying to invoke derek and kate as if there’s some wild age gap between him and allison when they're like 9 months apart in age. allison is not kate jesus chris. look at this shit:

“scott hadn’t known allison was seventeen, a year older than the other kids in their class -- older than him -- and didn’t want anyone to know.”

Fuck Rafael McCall. Meet me outside and catch these hands.

“he knew his dad wasn’t keeping up with child support payments. not that his mom had ever mentioned it.”

this is where the transition into heart monitor would be. it is a pretty terrifying dream scott has. peter’s such a dramatic bitch. scott’s dreaming of being in the woods with everything on fire and then he’s being compelled by peter to come kill with him. which just reinforces my whole thing about peter and scott being psychically connected. we don’t see this with any other alpha-beta connection to this degree. derek senses victoria killing scott in raving but we really do not get this in the show very much as it seems to be a Dark Sided power. but we do see peter use it again in season 6a with the whole “you were my beta first” scene. 

scott mentions stiles’s having ADHD so to me that means that nancy holder was definitely working with the idea that stiles does have it. stiles having ADHD seems like a plot thread that got dropped really quickly by the show but remained in dylan’s acting choices and in fandom’s mind.

scott is the only beta we see experience sleepwalking episodes. it seems tied to the compulsion and mental link he shares with feral alpha peter.

the entire paragraph is something. firstly, it wasn't until night school, the episode after this one, that peter tried to push scott into killing his “pack”. but lol melissa called stiles scott’s “litter mate” and stiles wearing his target shirt that he wore in wolf moon and the one that subtextually could reference the nemeton and eventually scott's pack symbol. i don't believe we ever actually saw that shirt again. the tragedy.

“stiles had on his bullseye t-shirt, and it kind of freaked scott out when he wore it. as if it meant that stiles were a target. They both knew the Alpha wanted Scott to kill him to cement Scott’s acceptance that he was a member of the Alpha’s pack. Who better to take down than the guy Scott’s mom had once referred to as his “litter mate”?”

this is where it's starting to get kind of weird because the plot of this book takes place during season 1 but it’s not strictly following the plot. it feels like an alternate season 1.

jackson has gone missing. when is he not missing is the more appropriate question? 

so chapter 2 starts with scott and stiles joining lydia and allison at The Popular Kids Table to discuss jackson being missing. this wouldn’t have happened in season 1. this dynamic didn’t exist until at minimum season 3. lydia didn’t even acknowledge stiles’s existence until the winter formal at the end of the season. 

jackson’s parents apparently went to paris right after the parent-teacher conference, leaving their high school age child alone for an extended period of time in the middle of the school year? what? no wonder jackson’s fucked up. why didn’t they just go around christmas and instead they waited another three weeks or some shit. that is weird.

jackson’s been left a note from a supposed private investigator about his birth parents while his parents are out of town, which is totally not sus at all. 🙄🙄 lydia's concerned about him looking stupid so she won’t go to the sheriff and she doesn’t even approach jackson’s best friend danny. like, danny would know a lot more about jackson than scott or stiles would. lydia, i know allison is the one who involved scott but for fuck’s sake. 

look even a page later lydia says “he and jackson barely know each other.” then why are you involving scott in what you seem to believe is a personal matter? 

do people just generally know jackson was adopted? i can see lydia knowing but scott and stiles? allison just fucking moved there so she doesn’t know anything about anyone. this is quite the personal piece of information i doubt he’d want others to know lydia. 

this is such an AU because after the parent-teacher conference stiles was giving scott the cold shoulder due to his dad being hurt. 

also stiles is supposedly sitting at this table the entire time lydia, allison and scott are talking and has not given his opinion on the matter yet. very unlike him. if there's one thing stiles has it's opinions on jackson and his father's job. stiles would be all over this.

this fucking line is brutal man -- “stiles was the only person on the planet who knew he had become a werewolf. well, derek knew, too, but derek hardly counted as a person.” that said, i do think it’s accurate to scott’s headspace at this point regarding derek. avoiding seeing derek as a person is a way of detaching himself from the situation he’s found himself in. 

alright so we’ve got a POV change to allison --a nd it’s all about how cute acott is. allison I love you but chill please. 

okay so this is interesting. “her mom had been angry, too. allison could tell that if had been left up to her, she wouldn’t have been so harsh about having to stay all weekend. her mom liked scott.” are we sure we’re talking about the same victoria argent? granted this is pre-werewolf reveal so as far as victoria knows allison is just mooning over a nice normal human boy but i have a hard time imagining this being the same victoria who gave us the crazy eyes and the sharpening your dick metaphor.

this still haunts me.

"except i won’t get to spend time with scott except at school until i’m, oh, 112.” oh right in the feels

this book really assumes you’ve seen episodes 1-5 of the first season. allison’s mentioning aunt kate and the necklace in a way that makes the assumption the reader knows who and what they are. 

jackson’s password for his tracking app is “captain”. that is worse than the password being lydia or like scott famously having allison as his password. y’all suck and have shitty computer security.

these kids are sophomores in high school and lydia and allison are really having a discussion about jackson going to a pay by the hour motel as if that’s a thing 15-16 year olds do in the california subburbs on a regular basis. as if jackson would lower himself in such a way to begin with. he’s snobby as fuck. it’s such a weird conversation.

i am page 20 and i feel like so far this author hasn’t been very nice to stiles. not having him say a word in the lunch conversation about jackson despite not only being very opinionated about jackson whittermore’s general existence he’d also have thoughts on a missing person. like, he didn’t even speak when his dad was brought up as a possible avenue of help which is odd. then about a page later there’s this sort of tone used around stiles that feels condescending about him being hyperactive.

this paragraph is, uh, something that could’ve only been written in 2012 because it feels gross:

“lydia shrugged. then she turned to allison. “tell you what. if the boys are willing to the motel for us ---” “to a motel. to look for a guy,” stiles said. ”maybe you should ask danny?” danny, their lacrosse team goalie, was gay, out and proud. “he could act, you know, more casual about it.”

that said, it does track with stiles being overly occupied with the perception of his sexuality and that danny does shit he’s way too young to be doing which is written around his sexuality. remember the whole older boyfriend and going to the jungle thing is season 2? 

it has been like 23 pages and allison’s got this subplot where she wants to have sex with scott. like girlie you’ve known scott for 2 days, keep your pants on. (it keeps coming up with scott too and it's annoying, okay).

it took stiles barely a paragraph to mention derek hale when the point of view switched to him. sir. 

i’m laughing at how derek’s point of view is paired with stiles in the way that scott and allison’s are. even in the non-canon book the Sterek Agenda is there. 

“a prankster with a wicked sense of humor.” is what derek refers to peter as before the fire. is that what we are calling it derek because i would disagree.

“i dreamed of other alphas coming after me. why? it’s not a crime to kill an alpha. i’m a werewolf. the way we progress in status is through challenge.” now this is an interesting perspective. werewolves progress via challenges. that's still sort of in-line with what we see in canon.

allison and scott are driving into the seedier side of town. AKA what seems to be where the poors live. scott describes seeing boarded up buildings, pawn shops and “some kind of clinic where you could sell your blood.” which I assume is a plasma center where people donate and get paid in return and this little classist shit says “remind me to never get a blood transfusion.” god he’s such a 16 year old..

i saw kate's name on the next page where chapter 4 is

[becauseplot]

Last night I finished Ordem Paranormal: Calamidade Episode 2! A five hour episode---lots of things to think about lots of things to talk about, hooooo boy.

Second set of characters! Second set of characters! More little guys for me to rotate!

Going into this season, I already knew that there was going to be another team of players/characters moving through the story, but this doesn't make it any less of a delight! So happy to see Luis, Triz, and João back in action, and now we have a couple new players, Mount and Zero. Exciting!

I suppose this is what Cellbit meant when he said at the beginning of the season that even he doesn't know how this story will end. Since we have our "good guys" team and "bad guys" team, the success of their respective order's missions is going to depend directly on the players' actions. The fate of the story has been almost entirely put in the hands of the players. And now whatever happens, happens.

This episode wasn't particularly plot-heavy: mostly just a bunch of fights one after the other. But that's not to say this episode wasn't without its moments. And it certainly didn't feel like it was lacking on the character-front, no sir. It was a pretty fun episode for me, because I love watching fights---not as much as I love watching character moments, but the fights are fun as well. And they can also lead to character moments!

Depicted: the Escripta crew demonstrates all five stages of grief simultaneously as T-Bag takes 38 damage in a single round from Signore Leone.

Alright let's go down the list.

Demir and Boris! Lumping them together because I. I'm sorry I don't have any major feelings about them right now. They exist! They seem to be twins! They had a brother whose name I can't quite remember but presumably died to something to do with the Devil, if I remember correctly. All the more reason to want to do away with the paranormal. Could they be the same brothers that the previous case was about? Probably not, but interesting that we have some characters with a direct history with the Devil. I just really think it's funny that this is the second time Luis has played a character with a "body double" if that makes sense. I don't quite know how to articulate it but out there exists some sort of Venn-Diagram between Damir and Luci/Fer with a non-zero middle part.

Anyway very interesting combat strategy they have, with Damir using rituals to buff Boris' weapon and defense for combat. They both care deeply about each other, as is obvious with the ways they try to stick close and protect each other. They're not just siblings, they're a functional duo! Also I believe it was Demir who said, when "the Devil" showed up, "This is not our fight." Something like that. Do I sense a hint of reluctance to fight for the Escriptas? To lay down your life for them? Why join in the first place? Is it better to cut your losses? Incheresting... (I could also be completely making this up, but I'm too lazy to go back and check.)

T-Bag! The rabid feral dog of the team! Auto subs hated whatever the hell he was saying about killing his dad but I'm convinced that 50% of what was coming out of his mouth was unhinged nonsense so it's...alright, I suppose. I find it infinitely hilarious that this guy has one of the largest sanity stats of the whole team. Yeah he might be crazy but he's not crazy, you know? His craziness is not a detriment to him, it's just how he is. Just a hungry little cannibal guy <3 Just looking for his next meal <3 Eating Artemis' possum for a snack to tide him over <3

Artemis! Firstly her personality is. So funny? Whenever shit is going down she always seems annoyed, like, "Man, now this is happening? Come on. 🙄" And meanwhile the "this" that is happening is a bunch of people are beating the shit out of each other and trying to murder her. When Gal (we'll get to him a second don't worry) sat down on that table in the front room to do his typical postering bullshit, Artemis just rolled her eyes and shoved him out of the way so that she could level her sniper on it. And that endeared me to her immediately <3 So sorry Triz's little possum friend got eaten two seconds into the season. 2 for 2 on dead animal friends, I'm afraid. Funny to think about how the Marcados are (theoretically) connected to each other by their players, and Triz's characters unfortunately inherited the link of "Animal friends who perch on your shoulder get their necks snapped." Sorry :T

Oh yeah and she's a cannibal too! Diversity win! There are two cannibals on the team and they are very different people who come from clearly very different walks of life and have a different style of cannibalism! That really caught me off guard. When she started to eat the dead body beside T-Bag I was shocked and absolutely delighted. Oh, she's a little fucked up too! And she can shape-shift, apparently! Artemis always kept me guessing this episode. Love her <3

Teammates <3

And of course, we now come to Gal. The bastard. The melodramatic sadistic motherfucker who's been here since the beginning of this shitshow. I've said this a billion times in the discord but GOD I love how João plays him. João's performative playstyle is absolutely perfect for a performative, arrogant character like Gal. Ever since his first appearance in OPD, João has put his heart and soul into making this character fucking rotten and wrong and sick, and it works. so. well. Like I said, you LOVE to hate this guy. Gal is a fantastic character, expertly crafted to be the perfect villain. Even on a meta level---João will sometimes go as far as to interrupt Cellbit just to keep being evil (cutting off the closing narration of OPD ep 6 to continue describing how Gal goads at Joui and co about Liz's death, to keep counting up his dice on the attack on the first Leone even after Cellbit has told him the guy is dead) and even goad the players (OPD finale, at Guaxi: "Might want to start thinking about a new character, eh?") to make sure that you hate this guy's putrid shriveled guts. No joke, when João showed up on the screen and Gal's little icon appeared on the tabletop, I just about foamed at the mouth.

My genuine reaction on discord.

GOD I love Gal. I want to rip his throat out with my bare hands. I would do unspeakable things to this character and I do NOT mean in the sexy way.

But! We got to see a little more of Gal as a person this session, which I really loved. Seeing him outside of combat and interacting with his subordinates was so much fun. He's fond of some of the Escriptas under his command (when they're not annoying him), especially his "son" Dagan. The way he treats Dagan is almost pet-like and sickly sweet, emphasis on the sickly. He ruffles his hair, brings him gifts, smiles fondly at the thought of Dagan having fun murdering a bunch of people in the rooms upstairs. Honestly it's kind of cute? In a fucked up way to be sure. Still cute though. That's Gal's little guy! Everyone needs a little guy!

I think at the heart of Gal's leadership style is that he has no patience for dealing with people who he thinks should know better. Otherwise, he's chill with you---or as chill as this sadistic bastard can be---and will even try to care for you.

POV: you have to explain to your stupid lackey for the second time that the evidence needs to be translated because you don't speak Italian.

Because on some level, he cares. It shows in how he treats Dagan, it shows on how gently he treated that one soft-spoken girl with the dyed hair (whereas Damir just snapped at her for not making eye-contact when she was talking to him, the dick), it shows in how he tried to do something stop Signore Leone from advancing when Signore Leone used his lionhead mace to throw Artemis against the wall, and it shows how when "the Devil" showed up, Gal looked to Kian and said, "Don't let them [the Escriptas upstairs] die." Even if he knows that all of them will have to die in the end to achieve Kian's goal of destroying the paranormal, some part of him still cares about his team. Sure, it could be that he just wants to make sure that they maintain enough man-power to see the job all the way through, but...no, it's not entirely that. There's something under the surface there, as twisted as he may be. He is not immune to giving a damn.

Kian. This guy. Fucking nerd. I don't dislike his character but I don't have any super strong feelings about him, probably because we haven't seen him as a character very much at this point. His reasoning behind destroying the paranormal is still some whack-ass shit. Over 4000 years to come up with a plan and THIS is what you arrive at? You're kidding. For a guy who """knows everything""" how could you POSSIBLY miss the detail that massacring thousands of people would, I dunno, CAUSE AGONY AND FEAR, which would, I dunno, WEAKEN THE MEMBRANE AND THUS MAKE THE PARANORMAL INFLUENCE IN THE WORLD WORSE. Chopping heads off hydras is what he's doing. Idiot.

It's talked about during Gal's conversation with Signora Leone in the office upstairs. Interesting for a character to understand and possibly even sympathize with the Escriptas' motivation. Signora Leone wants the paranormal to end too! She would do anything to rid the world of it---anything, that is, that doesn't require murdering thousands of innocent people. Gal tries to justify the mess downstairs as "it's the paranormal that's killing your family" like no bro I'm pretty sure that was you?? I get what he's saying, but if the paranormal no longer exists, or if the world was somehow reformed so that it's like the paranormal never existed, who's to say that the Leone family still wouldn't be involved in some sort of dangerous, non-paranormal dealings? It's such a subjective argument. Second grade level of critical thinking. Guess that's what happens when you get indoctrinated into a cult. "Kian sabe" oh please Kian doesn't "sabe" shit.

Anyway, that's about all I have about this episode. The NPCs were cool, watching Gal babysit his gaggle of weirdos was fun, and I liked the part where they nearly blew up T-Bag by firing a bazooka into a (closed) safe. They're so good at this.

Huh, feel like I'm...forgetting something...

OH WAIT.

JOUI IS BACK! MY BOY! MY BESTEST FAVORITEST BOY IS BACK AND HE IS PISSED.

Good lord. I actually screamed when this happened. I just. Okay how do I manage to take the chanting of jouijouijouijouijouijoui in my head and turn it into something intelligible by other human beings.

Let's start with the fact that I LITERALLY posted my Joui sword OPD rambles when I was less than an hour of episode away from this fight. I was over here angsting over the loss of Joui and missing him and talking about how fucked up it is that Mascara-Joui still has his sword, and then I get hit with this. I just. Okay! Sure! Why not!

To be clear: yes, I had seen Joui's OPC character miniature online before, both with and without the mask, and I knew from friends on the discord that Mascara-Joui had a stat sheet and he was STRONG. But, I figured that because Joui is still technically hanging around, it would make sense that maybe he could be like, a fight-assist NPC that would show up at some point to help the Ordem crew. Still an NPC, still emotionless, still masked, still not really Joui. So to see Luba return and play a version of Joui that CLEARLY retains his Joui-ness had me falling out of my chair. It was the last thing I expected. I really thought Joui's fate would be final, a no-going-back deal, since that's a pretty common theme with Ordem---permanent, inescapable consequences. I really thought that everything that made Joui Joui would be lost forever.

But no. Despite everything, Joui is still here, and he is not empty---he has his hate.

So many fucking questions. Most important of all: how is Joui here? He seems to have retained his memories from before he got masked (some of them, at least) but doesn't recognize who Kian is, mistaking him for Luci/Fer. I've got...one theory. Bear with me now. We know that the Devil is some sort of big-shot paranormal entity thing* who seems to thrive off of making pacts with humans. So, the Devil would not be too happy with people who are trying to stop the paranormal. This would include both the Order and the Escriptas, and especially the Escriptas since they're seeking to end the paranormal for good. So, perhaps the Devil used its power (made a pact with Joui somehow?) to restore Mascara-Joui and send him after the Escriptas. The Devil HAS to have something to do with this, considering the walls began to bleed when Joui showed up upstairs---something we know from ep 1 signals the arrival of the Devil---and the mention on the radio of someone claiming to see the Devil (perhaps it made a brief appearance before leaving Joui to it).

*A correction to the previous journal post: this is not the first time we have encountered a seemingly sentient paranormal entity! The God of Death from OSNF was clearly intelligent as well! I have other thoughts about this but they're kinda meta so I won't put them here.

Also, Joui is a very Death-coded character: his pensiveness and the fact that he often thinks back on what has happened when he meditates, the motif of death hanging over him since that night in the graveyard where his friends died, being frozen and helpless to the inevitable as Liz was killed in front of him, his dead-set motive to kill all of the Escriptas following said death, his fate being taken out of his hands and sealed when he made the deal with the Mascaras (more inevitability) and being in a downward spiral trying to kill himself in combat over and over leading up to the deadline. There's probably the more, but that's the gist. I do believe Joui's NEX is well beyond 50%, and he's got to be Death.

Here, though, I see both Death and Blood. Death is in his single-mindedness in this fight. He's like a force of nature, unstoppable, inescapable, inevitable. Given enough time in that fight, he would've killed them all, there's no doubt about it. Blood is in the hate, the sheer hate, he has for Gal and the Escriptas. It is potent. Death is often distinguished the absence of emotion and the inconsequentiality of the flesh, so the hate and violent rage Joui feels cannot be from Death. It has to be Blood, and the Devil I'm sure would be happy to help fill in those gaps. Joui's hate and anger brewed for a majority of OPD, so the Devil has plenty to work with. I love to see my boy cranked up to an 11.

And the fight. Needless to say, it was incredible. Every line out of Luba's mouth was a banger, every attack and action he did had me losing my mind. What I loved the most was how Cellbit, Luba, and João worked together to make Joui Jouki the scariest motherfucker ever. Both João and Luba can be pretty descriptive with their character's actions, so they complimented each other perfectly. João's RP skills really shone here, playing into the choices that Joui made and making it clear how affected Gal was by this fight. If you've got the guy who revels in pain fleeing from the fight, you know it's serious. When Joui cut off Gal's arm and Luba apologized to João ("sorry, friend") João just smiled, nodded, and respected it. God that is. PEAK RP right there. Genuine appreciation for other players' decisions, even if it's at the expense of your own character.

And actually---who says it's an expense? Gal has clearly been shaken up by this fight. Like João said, he's in shock. He lost his arm, the Escriptas are being slaughtered all around him, and Kian has seemingly abandoned him. There's plenty for João to work with here. I'm excited to see what he does with Gal, now that Gal's façade has finally cracked.

A final note about Joui... He really has changed, hasn't he? Yes, the anger is his. As I said, it's been brewing since OPD, but here, he is just out of control. No more of that self-discipline. He doesn't care anymore. He's angry. His hatred is beyond words. He has nothing but fury living inside him. Maybe that really is all he has left. I love the detail that his sword now heals people, but heals them wrong: a painful, twisted scar, leaving the flesh "rotten." That's what Joui kind of feels like now. A scar that healed wrong. A man restored but twisted by his pain and anger. And he will kill them all, one by one.

[FOLLOWING CONSTAINS SPOILERS FOR QUARANTENA]

And to finish it off: Joui tearing Hanna apart, limb from limb, furious, not reveling in it but dead-set on making her suffer just as he has before finally, finally killing her. Not really Nidere-core (Nidere definitely reveled in it fhdsk) but it is in my heart. Ouppy <3

[larsnicklas]

watching game 7 properly a day late bc my plane wifi was NOT good. "live" blog under the cut tehe!!

sasha absolutely obliterating a man in the corner was NOT on my bingo card but i liked it

ah gorgeous tip by mr v.erhaeghe. i knew he was going to show up that man ONLY scores big time goals

i love that pomo put okie back in the lineup. and not just bc i hate nick c.ousins lol it's just like. it's the right thing to do, to give okie a wack at this. i know when you're making lineup decisions it can't be about sentimentality but sometimes the Right thing to do is also the morally correct one lol

i do wonder a little if something is limiting bob physically a bit. obviously nothing that really has impeded him but. just something that's hindering his natural athleticism JUST a touch

good fun first period. it's very nice that both teams decided to play well in the same game. this has not happened during all games of this final LOL

espn wanted the o.ilers to win so bad they looked silly. especially m.essier AKSLJDFLAKSJD

okay lmfao you know what. that tripping call on matthew was NOT a trip. should've just been incidental contact, just a nothing collision. however. there COULD have been a call on erod for goalie interference so i think all in all it's ok. THAT BEING SAID puck don't lie and that's why the cats got the kill <3

stenny spent a minute and a half without a stick on the kill he is so cool so brave i would die for him i am so serious. also gus using stenny's stick wronghanded and also like probably five inches too big for him...... that was so harrowing. but bob was so up to the task. kith. i love him.

the cats really finally looked like themselves again this game eh. it was so good to see them LOL they are really such a joy when they play their game

fourth line looked very good

hockey is so funny in the way that a chance at one end can result in a goal at the other

that was an UNREAL play by kuli by the way. i'm so glad he had the second touch on the puck because he deserved an assist, batting the puck away from the crease while falling down. great shot by reino, and WHAT a pop in that building. my god. i knew it was coming and my heart is still pounding. holyyy what a moment

boys were laying the body. very good. wear them down.

e.kblad-f.orsling pairing you are SO very extremely important to me.

i don't mean to be too predictable but. samuel b.ennett is really such a warrior he's just got the heart of a lion he's mean he's intense he gets an icy cold calm feral look in his eye sometimes it's terrifying. i LOVE him. playing this whole series with a bum knee and honestly skating well, all things considered. fuck darnell n.urse lol

fascinating strategy from the cats in the third (treat it like a 20 min penalty kill) but i guess if it works it works!!!

bob was so locked in. the way the crowd popped with every save he made as the third period progressed..... man i LOVE sports

the scramble with 7 min left on the clock; dude florida owes gus f.orsling WHATEVER he asks for.

bob actually made a miraculous glove save on that play as well i feel so genuinely glad he had a bounce back game like this to win the cup

cats did a very nice job in the final stretch making it difficult for the oil to pull s.kinner

that being said. if EYE was a coach and my team was desperately trying to get the equalizer to extend the season and my opponent iced the puck with 3:29 left i would definitely pull my goalie and get my sixth man on the ice in the offensive zone but. idk what do i know

oh my heart really does swell with joy and pride lol they were truly selling out in the final minutes. bob was so fantastic. the five guys on the ice were throwing themselves in front of the puck, in front of sticks, in front of bodies. this is such a panthers way to play

btw sasha really embodies just. THEEE ideal. he plays hockey in a way that makes you nod sagely and go ah, that's how that's supposed to work. he's really wonderful i know he doesn't care to be a household name but i'm glad he will be (by hockey standards anyway) after this cup run

oh they are such a great team man. seriously when gus and mikksy and benny went into the corner to keep the puck along the boards for the final seconds ooooh the confidence i felt. no way THOSE guys were about to lose a board battle in THIS scenario. no fucking way. dudes rock.

also i did cry on the plane yesterday but that did NOT innoculate me from crying again today :( like what. i'm supposed to look at the tears in aaron's eyes and NOT well up in response??

me 🤝 keith t.kachuk wiping tears from my eyes

ok this concludes my "live" blog sorry if any of you actually read this. it wasn't very coherent

[sevensoulmates]

https://www.tumblr.com/sevensoulmates/748150924126666752/deeper-depths-of-his-queer-love-the-realization

See I both love this and hate it. Love it because it’s very well thought out. And this so many details. But I hate it because realistically I just don’t see the show going to a 10th season so if they don’t actually get together until 9b, assuming the show stays at its 18 episode count, we’d get 9 episodes of them together and that’s it. And after all these years of waiting that is just… not enough time and would start to feel to much like a oh well it was the end of the show so what do we have to lose here ya go.

Maybe I would've agreed with you just after season 6 ended and the announcement of a shift to ABC. I might've thought then they don't have many seasons left but I've changed my mind about that over the last few months since they started heavily promoting season 7. ABC said that they want to keep 911 going as long as they can, and they even said they want to continue making spin-offs like Lonestar (hopefully better than Lonestar) in different cities in the U.S. That doesn't sound like a network that wants to cut 9-1-1 off after season 9.

I'm sorry but a network that approved Grey's Anatomy to have 20+ seasons is ABSOLUTELY gonna approve 9-1-1, their number one money maker right now, to have 10+ seasons. I'm fully expecting to get to AT LEAST season 12, and I'm being so fucking serious.

ESPECIALLY if 9-1-1 actually follows through with the groundwork they're setting up right now with Buck and Eddie. I'm not kidding when I say, if you feed your fanbase they'll keep coming back for more for the rest of time like a feral cat to your house after you feed them. Once people catch wind that buddie went canon, they're gonna be throwing money at ABC so fast that ABC just might approve an additional 3 seasons right then and there.

As for the second part of your question, no. I don't think the show would just throw buddie at us at the end to "throw us a bone" once the show's slated to end for real. If they didn't do that at Fox when they had a real chance of wrapping it up for good, they're not gonna do that with ABC. "What do we have to lose" doesn't feel like the right mindset here. If that was the case, they never would've had Buck come out in early season 7. That was their riskiest first step, and it paid off, and now they have proof that they have SO MUCH to gain if they actually explore these stories organically with enough time to feel satisfied. So, no, I don't think we're just gonna get them shoved into the end with no development.

And I also just think that this fandom and casual viewers/journalists too, vastly underestimate how much these writers care about these characters and the story they're telling here. Yes, I do think that some of the writers have shown biases (KR) and have made some missteps in handling storylines, but again, they're beholden to a whole chain of bosses and external circumstances. BUT I think at the core, this show WOULD NOT EVER have been so beloved by many if the writers did not CARE about these characters deeply. So no, I don't think the writers would just "throw" anything at these characters just to placate viewers unless they really think it's necessary or works for the character arc. Yes, that includes things like Marisol and Natalia or "Shoehorned in" plots. I think the writers do their best to do right by these characters to the best of their ability. And I think that's so INCREDIBLY rare both in the past and currently.

So yeah, sometimes the writers make mistakes or don't handle plots the best in certain circumstances but when it comes to the bigger picture I never once questioned that they care and want to give these characters the best they're capable of.

[animehouse-moe]

Jujutsu Kaisen Season 2 Episode 9: Shibuya Incident 4

What a letdown. No two ways about it. A handful of good cuts here and there, and overall solid animation, but how good can that be without execution, without direction or purpose? And the fact that there's animation certainly does not make up for the parts where there is none. I hardly even want to talk about this episode, but I think there are some key differences to go over regardless.

So, we start the episode off in good fashion, adapting the end of chapter 88. At the start, I liked it. I thought the silly 4:3 low quality style was pointless considering the era/year, but that's whatever because they add to Gege's sentiment by extending the detail around the characters as they talk about Gojo.

However, and this is a big however, Gosso (yes, Gosso boarded this episode) whiffs on the completion of it. Gojo is nowhere to be seen. The entire point of the dialogue is to show Gojo's loneliness at the top, that no matter what else people will say about him he will always remain the strongest, an existent out of reach for everyone else. That's the entire point, and what happens instead? We just get another shot of Yuuji.

It's painful to see the entire purpose of the interaction removed.

It doesn't really get any better either. The misfire that was the previous episode? It was boarded by today's episode director. So you get things like borderline excessive panning, and rotation without reason. Honestly, it feels like the rotation is simply used as a different transitional effect because there's so many in the episode.

And just while we're at this point, anime Gojo doesn't even come close to manga Gojo in this sequence. The anime just can't pin down his animosity. He's not insane, he might be a little feral, but he's certainly not the awkward and almost slow depiction that the anime gives. They bounce him back and forth between "faster than the speed of sound" and standing still for 30 seconds, and it does not do well for his character. Nor does the nonexistent choreography.

It's.... painfully bad. The parts that do well are the parts carried by individual animators, but those cuts fall into one of two areas.

The first: dimming and ghosting hell

The second: 2 second cuts

Seriously, this piece of Gojo going after Hanami after they use their technique looks great, but you see it for a total of.... 2.71 seconds. Then it's right back to being so close up you can only see individual body parts moving.

It's just like, why even really bother, almost. The few good cuts get ruined with ghosting, the leftover ones are a fraction of a second, and everything else is just not good.

They "skip" over Hanami's death. They take 10 seconds to get to the actual part, and then black out the screen so that they don't have to animate it. What's the point.

What's the point in not remaining consistent with Choso's attacks. Why does this one sequence alone just freeze in the air.

What's the point in this clip of the transfigured humans mowing down the people trapped in the station? It holds the same angle for so long, and does literally nothing.

There is just so much wastefulness, so much pointlessness to what is going on with this episode. While there's probably more "good" level cuts in this episode, the fact that it's still so similar in overall quality to the prior feels impossibly depressing.

But don't worry! Gosso and Mappa will draw out original scenes and make sure that they look good, you can certainly count on them for that.

And that's really where I end it. There's other small changes and whatnot, but at the end of it, this episode is borderline a disgrace to one of Gojo's craziest "I'm him" moments and the Geto reveal. I just don't have the willpower to go much deeper than to say, it's bad.

[marley-manson]

After complaining about how so much media that centres on women is about the experience of being a woman, I watched a season and a half of Yellowjackets in two days because let it never be said that I don't actively seek out the media I want, and I'm feeling cleansed.

It doesn't have that fandom spark for me, there's no ship or blorbo I'm invested in, but it's really really satisfying as a show about women that isn't about womanhood lol. Like sure it's about trauma, but it's not about the trauma of sexual violence or the male gaze or your mom's expectations or the virgin whore dichotemy, it's about the trauma of being stuck in the wilderness and eating a bunch of your friends. Universal themes right there.

I even get the impression that Travis and the coach are there in large part to hammer the point home that the cannibalism isn't like, a metaphor for girlhood or the monstrous feminine or female ferality unconstrained by societal expectations and patriarchy or any other metaphor I was bracing myself for going in lol. They're there to contextualize the descent into cultish cannibalism as more an ungendered teenager thing (to whatever extent it isn't a supernatural thing lol.) Travis is right there at the pyre with them when they eat [spoiler], and the older coach is the only one who is horrified and doesn't participate. The dividing line is age, not gender.

It also holds true in the present day. The characters are women, but their stories have very little to do with being women, aside from the basic realistic details of day to day life. Even the dissatisfied housewife central protag is bored not because she's trapped in marriage and lacks opportunities, but because lower middle class life is boring compared to violent cannibalism lol.

I'm only on like the fourth episode of the second season so I haven't finished the whole thing, but I'm really loving it so far. Kinda wish I shipped any of the characters, but oh well, can't have everything.

[theflyindutchwoman]

You know, the more I think about it, the more I would love to see Lucy on a long undercover mission, one that lasts several episodes. Up until now, she only had either short missions where Tim was directly involved (either as another UC or as surveillance), or a somewhat longer one that happened before they were aware of their feelings. Now, the stakes would be different and the potential for angst would be tremendous.

On Lucy's side, she would totally be on her own, completely cut off from her family and always on edge since she can't trust anyone - minus her handler. That would give her a real insight of what UC life can be. She had a taste of it with her first solo op, but once Salonga's crew made contact, everything happened quickly. She spent more time waiting than anything else. So it would be interesting to see her more in a constant dangerous situation. And she could finally get her own recognition since last time, it was marred by La Fiera's escape and Jackson's death. You know, get a second medal, a commendation or something.

On Tim's side, he would also be on edge, probably getting more and more worried with each coming days… That could give us some insights about what he went through the first time around with Isabel and the trauma he experienced. Again we saw some of that when Lucy went on her first solo op, with him monitoring and badgering Nyla even though he was not part of the op in the first place. Only now, it would be more intense. Not to mention that if something goes wrong, he would not hesitate to go all feral again, à la Day of Death. And we could get the love confession in a dramatic setting as well, if they have not done one by then.

I doubt it will happen but that could be a way to get them separated, with some extra pining because now they can't even contact or see the other… They also get their own personal journey. But without betraying their growth as a couple. Because that's the thing that would bother me with a hypothetical breakup : how it could potentially cheapen their story. These two have been characterised as having no quits in them, to the point they don't even know when to break up with their boy/girlfriend… Only now, they would do it at the first obstacle they encounter. After they said they were worth all the effort and the risks. After spending 4,5 seasons fighting for the other. Suddenly they can't do it as a couple… I know the breakup would most likely be a temporary scenario. But honestly, knowing that Tim or Lucy would so easily give up on each other when that was the one thing they were afraid of and avoiding in the first place, that'd be pretty disheartening. Sure, they would get back together eventually. But that doesn't negate the fact that when faced with their first low, their first instinct was to break up instead of fight for each other… so in a way, how's that different from their previous relationships? This is the kind of storyline that would require to be done with a lot of care and I'm not sure the writers can do it justice… Not on this type of show anyway.

Now, this is just my opinion and is by no means a criticism of the people who wants this trope to happen. I love reading different takes, so the last thing I want to do is make it more difficult for people to share their opinions.

[mauxanhduong]

i don’t know what bsd is but i am having so much fun watching you go feral over it

HELP. i'm glad you're enjoying the secondhand backlash from the finale <3 basically it's this show where many characters have special abilities (think like very specific superpowers) and a lot has happened but.

a character (literal kid) sacrifices themselves to save the world, but gets saved at the last second by none other than bram stoker

a hugely beloved character is apparently dead

a character that apparently died in a gruesome scene (and the guy that shot him) were faking it the whole time

another beloved character who's also been the main antagonist for the past. 3? seasons? is also apparently dead. but he quoted jesus's last words as his last words so who knows what's gonna happen

the main antagonist's best friend (who's also been trying to kill him) cradles his bloody detatched arm to his chest and cheek and has this moment of like grief and despair and like. he's lost his whole purpose and his closest friend

the other main antagonist and his ex best friend had a hashtag old man yaoi moment. it's like ten minutes total of them. they have like a "i want you to kill me" moment. he doesn't manage to kill him but he ends up dying in his ex best friend's arms

the main character and. archenemy turned comrade??? also have their moment. this involves one biting the other's neck and dialogue that paraphrases to "can we really defeat this guy?" "do we need anyone but each other?" it's a whole thing.

a brand new(?) antagonist has been introduced like less than two in-universe hours after they finally fix all the stuff that's been going down

so. it's a fun time. ALSO literally no one knew what would happen before this episode because the manga chapters that correspond w this episode haven't even been released yet so so many theories and metas have been floating around and hyping everyone up. bsd fans did i forget anything

[rappaccini]

yellowjackets and 9, 10, 12, 13, 21, 22

(questions from here)

9. worst part of canon

season 2 episode 9. what in the goddamn fuck.

no but seriously: poor lottie. s1 set her up to be an extraordinary antagonist, and then we never got that character.

adult lottie is so coddled by the narrative even when she does such dodgy shit that i can't tell if the writers realize what she's doing ("i'm a benevolent self-help group leader, though i have all your money, control your access to the outside world, and have fatal poison ready to go in the sharing shack" .... fuck off. "i only have nat's best interests in mind, even though the only way i could have known she was about to kill herself is if i was stalking her"..... fuuuuck off. "i was only helping travis! even though i immediately took all his money and told none of the other survivors, including the woman who's basically his woods wife, that he died" fuuuuuuck off.).

and teen lottie goes from "let the darkness set us free" to "let's hold hands and listen to the trees" with no moment of change between those beats. she went from a passive, frightened girl slowly learning to embrace the wild, revel in her mental illness and find confidence in herself, who reveals her dark side on doomcoming, and is finally ready to take power and shed blood to keep it.... to the same passive, frightened girl she was in s1. i hate it!

and okay. fine. sure. lottie isn't the shaman in the pilot. suuure. lottie cedes control of the group to natalie. sure. if teen lottie had gotten to be more antagonistic at the start of s2, like she was set up to be at the end of s1, i'd be totally cool with her losing steam over s2 and caving to nat. it'd be a great arc. but she doesn't get it. instead every bad thing that happens as a result of her wilderness faith is Someone Else's Fault.

kinda hate how the women's wrongs show decided to explain away all the woman's wrongdoings as ~everyone was manipulating her and taking her out of context~ bitch? let lottie versez le sang! it's what she deserved!!!

10. worst part of fanon

currently, the insistence that you have to blindly love the show and dismiss its many flaws or else you're not a True Fan. the cope is hitting hard after 209.

12. the unpopular character that you actually like and why more people should like them

i mean. travis martinez of course. he's the Token Female Character In A Mostly Male Ensemble, but genderswapped and i love all the ways that affects his characterization. he's a quiet, kind boy going through a hard time, struggling to cope with it. he just wants to be one of the girls. he loves nat more than he fears the wilderness god or the wrath of the cannibal clan or losing his own life. he's now (perhaps temporarily) the first lady/king consort of the yellowjackets. i love him so much.

but also: kevyn tan. another character done DIRTY by s2. the fandom seems to start and stop at Ew Cop with him, and they're completely missing the why of it all: kevyn likely put himself into the goth to cop pipeline because of natalie. dude saw his best friend/first love vanish and return a year and a half later deeply traumatized and never the same because the search team called it off too early and were looking in the wrong place. of course he decided he wanted to protect people and bring closure to their families.

kevyn loves nat so much. it's the best execution of an unrequited childhood best friend crush i've seen in a long time. he cares about her well-being, he listens to her, he understands where she's coming from and wants to help her. he doesn't blame her for anything that happened in the woods, he's clearly jealous of travis (he so wishes he were travis) but doesn't hold that against her. he's carried a torch for nat for decades, but lets her approach him. and they almost get a second chance together.

the thing that makes me most feral about kevyn is the tragedy of him.

the tragedy of kevyn tan is that he wants so badly to protect natalie, and he can't. as teens he couldn't defend her against bullies at school or her father at home (...the guy was literally there the day her father died, and the only reason why he didn't see it is he ran away). he couldn't stop her from getting on that plane. he couldn't get on it with her (he wishes he'd been travis, but if he had actually been in the wilderness with nat, he'd have been a javi). he couldn't participate in the rescue or relief missions because he was also a kid. and as adults, he still can't save her. he spent years becoming, in his mind, the person who could have saved her. then when they reconnect, he tries to reach out, to understand, to give her what she needs to get closure, and it still isn't enough.

(and as much as i hate the execution of their deaths i can't deny there's something poetic about nat and kevyn dying within an hour of each other, in the same place, in a manner that'll lead to them being dismissed and mocked posthumously, when they were only trying to help someone, and neither even knew the other was there.)

13. worst blorboficiation

i mean nothing's worse to me than s1 lottie becoming Poor Lottie but honestly i think the show's starting to lean into it so i can't even blame the fandom for it anymore.

so fandom-wise it's misty-- the cunning opportunist who manipulates lottie into taking credit for the javi hunt and forces natalie to watch a boy drown because she's calculated that he's an easier kill-- suddenly becoming a sweet misunderstood loving woman who loves her bestie nat, and the knight to natalie's queen, as if we didn't just see her play evil advisor to lottie and spend all of s2 learning how to become a better manipulator through acting to get what she wants, and as if knight isn't travis's role.

21. part of canon you think is overhyped

choosing violence with this one: this show is significantly less gay than people say it is. it has one (1) gay man, and three (3) lesbians, one of whom is an extremely minor character.

like, i get it. i also 100% think that jackie's a repressed lesbian and she and shauna's friendship was very gay. i also agree that lottie and laura lee's friendship was Not Straight, and misty and crystal's was too. and i am so for shauna and lottie's vibe getting more and more psychosexual. but unless the show confirms those feelings in-canon, it's not romantic.

i know everybody loves to make f/f headcanons and ships, and i do agree that this being a show about a girls' soccer team means there definitely need to be more queer girls than there are. but that's the thing: there aren't, people don't seem to realize that, and they're losing perspective on what the characters actually are.

honestly it's not even a problem unique to yj-- you see it a lot with shows with minor queer rep and strongly queer fanbases-- they blow the representation out of proportion and give the writers credit for something they aren't doing, then get confused when it doesn't turn out the way they thought it would.

22. your favorite part of canon that everyone else ignores

nat and travis's relationship. best couple in the whole show.

[lcngliive]

Was that [ALVA BRATT]? Oh no no, that was just [SHIN HATI], a [CANON CHARACTER] from [STAR WARS]. They are [TWENTY FIVE] years old, use [SHE/THEY], and [ARE] aware that they are not actually from Washington DC. Too bad they can’t stray from this city for long.

how long has your character been here

they've only been here for a week.

what is your character's job

nothing yet, but she'll probs be some sort of muscle for hire.

where has your character been pulled from in their fandom

from the end of the ashoka series after being trapped.

has any magic affected your character

nope.

and any other information you might find useful for us and the other members to know!!

okay ,, this feral lil shit is shin hati, there's not much on shin's early childhood or anything like that - I'm just going to kinda make that up as i go along tbh bc the show hasn't touched much on that other than she's a force sensitive kid that baylan found not in the jedi temple or on courscant. obvs if we get a second season of ahsoka, I'll change her stuff if we find out more abt them :)

okay here we go

shin's always been force-sensitive, but obviously, because the jedi order was no more.

shin doesn't remember her parents - they were killed when shin was four and they spent time in an orphanage before baylon found them.

from there, he could see their potential to be something greater than the jedi ever were - except for most of the things she learned early on were heavily influenced by the jedi, esp the wearing of the padawan braid that she still has.

they both spent years being muscle for hire until they allied with morgan elspbeth in the hunt for thrawn, but there was always something greater than baylon wanted for both of them, so he went along with the plan to find thrawn just to further his ambitions.

so they spent years working for her and eventually broke her out of prison after she was captured by ahsoka tano.

after that, shin was sent off on a few missions of their own - specifically one to lothal to retrieve the orb that held the map to get to peridia, nd that was where she met sabine wren for the first time and where they stabbed them lmaooo.

after all of that, they managed to get the giant ass hyperspace rings working so that they could go get thrawn.

shin absolutely did not like morgan or the other nightsisters that were around, they lowkey creeped them out.

shin fought off ahsoka, sabine and ezra for a little bit - but in the end up they ran away when ahsoka asked her to join them.

but baylon had gone off and left them, so they were once again on their own, so she went off to find the hunters that they'd worked with before and that's the last we see of shin in season 1 :)

jodie's hcs abt shin :)))

was raised by a single mother, her father was killed by smugglers when they were trying to get to a different planet before shin was born.

shin bites. 100% is a biter, will bite to win a fight.

also pulls hair.

does not like being alone, it reminds them of the time when she was alone when she was a child after her mother died.

they don't know how to talk to people their own age without being rude lmaoooo.

will absolutely start a fight over anything tbh.

they favour form iv ataru - it's known as the aggression form - and a lot of shin's control comes from her anger, which is shown a lot when she spontaneously does things that are driven by anger.

here in dc

after everything that happened in the ahsoka show, shin is very confused abt how they're here??? she was still thinking they'd be stuck on peridia after thrawn left.

so she is very confused about everything, will be absolutely so defensive abt everything.

so it would be good if there was someone that would be able to kinda like show them around lmaooooo????? give them the vibes of the place pls nd thank.

potential plots

roomate(s) - idk why anyone would wanna room w/her but ?????? they clean up after themselves and probs wont say much so ????? win-win kind of situation lmaooooo.

friends - kinda like everything else??? shin doesn't trust easy and def stabs and bites so ????? take that as you will lmaooo - but def some people who are of the same sort of mind set as her ??? like the whole dark vibes nd kinda thing like that, they'd get on easily with someone like that.

a slow burn relationship - shin absolutely does not trust anyone but her master - and obs he's not here so ?????? feral lesbian is open to a ship - but it will def need to be slow burn, she has a lot of trust issues and that won't exactly make them a good partner to start off with ?????? but they'd probs end up catching feelings

friends with benefits/hookups - like before, shin is a lesbian - but this would just be random people they've met and would probably never want to see again lmaooo - but some of them could turn into something like enemies or whatever ???? down for vibes.

[worrywrite]

I hadn't thought that hard about it, but probably. I think it would vary from cav to cav though. The sixth probably has some actual formal agreement, but the ninth is a grudging "one flesh, one end".

Also I'm thinking about it more, so I'm going to say that powers wise they would vary. Gideon is getting bone armor and unlimited bone swords. Camilla gets accelerated healing and can scan ignore most non-lethal wounds while transformed. Jeanmary gets stealth but also a sword that shoots lazers, because she deserves it. Marta gets enhanced speed and when she wounds a living thing she gets a little healing. Naberius doesn't do his thing so much, relying on his own talents most of the time, because his thing is that he eats Ianthe and gets a big general buff at the cost of Ianthe getting progressively more control over him (she gets spit out after, until she doesn't). Magnus gets to be the heart of the team, never really going on on missions, his abilities are research based and let him spot weaknesses and disarm people. Column... Hm, martial trance berserker ability probably. And Protesilaus isn't actually a contracted cavalier, he's a strong puppet creature because Dulcinea is actually Cytherea and Cytherea is like the archetypal fallen magical girl villain who commands demons and stuff.

I'm going to say that lyctors are entities that had their contracts "fulfilled" and can also take human form if the wish but they look part cat. Alecto is just a normal feral cat. Nona is straight up weird feral cat girl. John gets to be a sphinx cat. For narrative purposes, Harrow becomes a lyctor by dying with Gideon and they have to do a sort of body swap back and forth thing, sort of like Palamedes and Camilla do, but they're actually stable and can communicate mind palace style (because the genre is fluffier than the actual books) but eventually the Gideon half gets corrupted and sort of dies on Harrow.

I'll say... Main plot is probably more cohort versus the resurrection beats at first, with resurrection beats being the sort of they send a monster of the weak invading demons thing until Cytherea gets sussed out and all hell breaks loose and that season ends with Cytherea being defeated and Harrow and Gideon fulfilling their contract after Cytherea tricks Ianthe and Naberius into fulfilling theirs (to their detriment). Second season splits the original team into two teams (the river team and the lyctor team) and introduces the old lyctors, and I'm just going to assume setting wise everyone is still going to have to deal with high school or something. Lyctor team gets more direct missions to take on a resurrection beast properly, but they're disfunctuonal. John currupts Gideon behind the scenes and siphons her out of Harrows contract, leaving Harrow weaker and beginning to turn Gideon into a proto resurrection beast. The beast Varun arrives and all hell breaks loose when John simultaneously betrays everyone but then Harrow goes up against Varun alongside G1deon (her reluctant and harsh mentor character for the season) and there's a sort of fade to black season ending. Season 3 is sort of a mid apocalypse theme, Nona shows up and no one is sure who she is, Palamedes and Camilla have fulfilled their contract in the background, G1deon is dead but Pyrrha is around and it is implied that Varun did to G1deon what John did to Gideon. Varun is still there too, but inert. Everywhere there are rumors about an ancient hero, Alecto, who will return to end this crisis at the darkest hour. Somehow school is still happening, kind of. Gideon is around, weirdly becoming friends with Ianthe, also looking very demonic but acting mostly normal. The resistance, who has been a largely minor antagonistic force throughout the series, has turned into a general ally in John's sudden and dramatic absence. The cohort is falling apart. The pieces all come together is a dramatic all hell breaks loose scene where Nona accidentally turns Varun back on and releases everyone's souls back where they're supposed to be. And Alecto does return, but as the only human in appearance minion if a returned John at the last minute of the season finale.

The show gets canceled during preproduction for season 4.

Locked Tomb au, but all the necromancers are magical girl cat companions to their cavaliers (who get to be martial coded magical girls).

Mostly I want to see what cat Harrow looks like, but in a way where she's like an actual character and not just a cat. Also I think the cavaliers should all get a magical girl transformation sequence as a treat.