#im not trying to be dramatic when i say that when s3 is released it's going to be one of the hardest goodbyes i have ever had to make

[halosluvchild]

parasocial relationships are weird because for me Louis and Harry are like parents/older siblings/supportive friends because that's exactly what I'm lacking in everyday life which is psychologically what a parasocial relationship is for a person. so I have my cute little nicknames I call them that really aren't original like Harry is bun, bunny or just H and Louis is Sun or Lou and I have a habit of cringing at any sexual tags that I see being used about them ( yet I'm fine with smut and nsfw manips which is weird) but I wouldn't tell anybody to stop using them or try to police what they say just because I feel a certain way about it. I just find it weird how all our brains are wired differently and how we can have the same parasocial relationships but for different reasons.

[xuune]

some thoughts on s7

this ended up me kind of rambling about my thoughts and feelings on s7 that are all over the place, so please bear with me if these thoughts don’t seem too well organized or anything: 

now, before i even actually saw the season, i was just snooping around here on tumblr to see what ppl’s reactions were, and i kind of let it get to the better of me. some people were just over dramatizing what was happening in s7, and their negativity on the season made me believe that i would wholeheartedly dislike the season. i saw all the posts with people going on about how if youre still watching the show, you should immediately drop it (and it was mainly centered around few central complaints going around right now, pretty sure you can figure that out on your own on what that was). it was understandable on where the frustration was stemming from. i only got 3 hours of sleep because of what people were saying despite not even seeing the season for myself and seeing how events would ultimately play out. but like they would always say, you shouldn’t let other people’s judgement affect you, and it really shouldn’t be the determining factor on how you view things or how your opinions are formed. 

when i watched the season, my general reaction to it was that its “ok”, i didn’t think it was entirely and absolutely terrible. i already know how a lot of us didn’t like the way a few characters got treated. i mainly thought that the animation looked nicer and improved in some of the action scenes. the writing was kind of “meh” for me when it came to whatever certain plot points that got introduced or continued. watching it on my own actually removed any thoughts of me disliking/hating the season entirely. 

even though i say this, the things i mention here are mainly about some issues that kept being brought up by people and circled around ever since s7 got released. 

in terms of character development? besides what we’ve been given for hunk, which has been awesome so far (i dont really feel like i have much to go in depth with for this, its already self explanatory in the season itself), i guess its going somewhere. i’ve got some hope, but it’s not on the level where its overwhelmingly high and optimistic. everyone’s been talking about the lack of actual lance development, how he’s constantly being reduced to being the “dumb” one, but we actually see him take initiative when needed. lance has been shown to stepping up and taking his role into account when handed the opportunity to do so, and it was multiple times when lance was given the re-established position of keith’s right-hand man. despite whatever remarks keith made on lance, whether or not they were supposed to come off as teasing/joking for the audience, keith does still seem to believe in lance’s capabilities. if he didn’t, keith wouldn’t have trusted lance the task on leading their team on their mission(s). lance actually got scenes where he could shine off as being portrayed more than what he’s constantly being insulted as. there are still some scenes of them showing mutual trust and respect for each other, especially with lance voting for keith during “the feud” and the reasoning he gave. but yeah, some parts it did seem like keith was kind of ooc in certain episodes when comparing his personality back to s3. who knows why keith gave the reasoning he did when he voted for lance. EDIT: acoolemocucumber’s post makes a good note on pointing out how during the voting section, keith is actually the first one to start writing. it’s later revealed that he chose lance on first pick. lance was the second to finish. even though he was peeking over at hunk and pidge to see who they chose, he instead decides to choose keith. keith choosing lance as a first choice without pure hesitance is amazing to see, and it really shows he trusts and respects lance a lot despite the reasoning he gave. then again, actions speak louder than words and countless times keith has shown to be that kind of guy by relaying a lot of important tasks to lance throughout this season. 

i’ll do say that i enjoyed most of the scenes they shared when they had to take a leading initiative with each other though. that was pretty nice to see again, and it felt like a decade since i ever saw that kind of dynamic from those two. 

there were a lot of action packed scenes, and i watched through those entirely to see if there’s any important plot detail to know, or make note of, while watching the ep to make sure i wouldnt be lost with whats happening so far. some people found it boring, some people found the fight scenes amazing and stunning. certain scenes had me really amazed on how well it was animated, some other scenes not so much in terms of repetition, and thats kind of bound to happen if we’re provided an arc where its continuing to keep the tense vibes on the recurring events with the current situation of the season. 

this is just merely my take on it, (my memory’s not the best with how much information im recalling from those 13 episodes) but it kind of felt lackluster with how the paladins barely got any kind of break where they could seriously spend one episode on unwinding, having in-depth conversations one on one, and not be so worried about the galra all the time. sure, there’s a few scenes like that in a few episodes, but it didn’t seem enough to make it feel like it balanced out whatever conflicts or character issues were newly or constantly introduced. 

ive read posts already about how some people had liked the season a lot, loved the actions scenes and all. but to me, some conflicts that took place seemed out of place or just didn’t really align well (idk how else to phrase it) especially with adam’s death, and i had minor mixed feelings about ep “the journey within”. 

about adam, it just seemed out of place and rushed for them to introduce shiro’s s/o only for them to take him away. we don’t get to see how fleshed out adam could’ve been, and i’ve already seen the frustration/rage people had with adam being killed off when considering how the creators told the viewers that they were gonna get to see adam, but weren’t told how long we’ll see him (plus the entire thing abt lgbt rep that was promised?). the thing with adam left me on a weird note, mainly because if you were just given no other info besides the info from the season, you wouldn’t even be given too explicit information about the relationship shiro had with adam. from there, it felt like there was no point in adding adam into the story if the viewers aren’t given clear information on what kind of bond shiro and adam had besides adam saying that they’ve been through a lot together (or whatever he said, idr it too much) and the “how important am i to you” line for lgbt rep points. its just pretty vague “””representation””” thats just leaving the audience to make the most out of what they’re given. we’re only given confirmation that they used to be fiancés from what they said in panels/interviews, but never in the show. im not sure what to really think about that, my mind’s just kind of in the void when i think about it. but this part i structured kind of badly and i apologize for that, but hopefully those of you can get what im saying. 

as for “the journey within”, it was reasonable for the way characters acted; theyre all tired, frustrated, and losing hope and were floating in space waiting for nothing but at least something to happen. keith snaps, gets irritated at everyone, lance is also the one to lash back out at keith saying keith ran away, giving the audience a big sign that lance was hurt by keith’s disappearance/leave from the team. but for keith to quickly later on go take everything back in just a few minutes seemed really awkward for me. its a kids show and all, but i just kind of didn’t like how that one section of that episode was written ¯\_(ツ)_/�� just a feeling i had with it. however, i did love how hunk took a lot of the initiative during the episode, it’s showing his growth of actually him continuing to fully accept his role as a paladin and determined to not back down regardless of his own cowardice that could prevent him from doing so at any time.  

and there’s the thing about k/acx: ive already seen a bunch of people going somewhere along the lines of disbelief, anger, frustration on how keith is getting het endgame but when i saw the episodes, his interactions with acxa didn’t even seem borderline romantic to me at all? to me, i merely saw 2 characters actually getting on better terms with each other and returning the favor. the two no longer see each other as enemies but allies now. keith only went back to save acxa because it seemed like he believed that he felt in debt to acxa for trying to save his team. ezor and zethrid merely poked fun at acxa, but if you consider previous seasons where acxa and keith interacted, the two just continued to return the favor of owing whatever debt they had for each other. it didn’t seem like there was any romantic tension intended in any of the scenes where they interacted. we already know acxa betrayed ezor and zethrid by switching sides, and if you were betrayed you’re bound to make at least a  remark on whoever betrayed you either way. in this case, ezor and zethrid found it reasonable to make a comment on acxa’s alliance with keith, hence how they teased acxa possibly crushing on keith (whether or not thats actually confirmed, its just left ambiguous and up for interpretation at that point). there’s the parallel with how they animated the shot between keith and acxa talking to each other, but neither did that one seem romantic to me? i hope im not the only one who thought that? the other scene people talked about was when acxa is in the same scene where keith was present when he visits his dad’s grave with krolia. i dont get why some people were upset about that either. even though its at the last ep of s7, there’s nothing to imply that keith invited acxa to go visit his dad’s grave with him or anything if you consider their placement in the scene. if keith did care about acxa’s presence being there when he visited the grave, wouldn’t he at least acknowledge acxa’s presence by showing obvious attention to her, or have her close to where him and krolia were? she remains distant but respectful of keith in the scene. i dont see where these scenes would imply keith automatically finds a romantic interest in acxa. acxa to keith? maybe, we don’t entirely know. keith to acxa? i dont see it being implied anywhere at all. not to mention keith’s “can’t we just fight” statement right after ezor and zethrid teased acxa about having a romantic interest in keith. again, its just my take on what’s being presented and my own thoughts on how people are viewing it. 

and with a/l, it leaves me on a bad note with how its progressing if its really getting the sealed deal endgame. like most people have been saying, it would be good for them to be endgame if they were only written better. am i entirely convinced theyre endgame? not really because there’s that small chance where vld pulls a 180 and the show creators stay true to their words on lance not being a rebound, lance being someone’s first choice, lance getting what he needs, not what he wants. what’s being given/presented so far is just bad writing with how allura suddenly reciprocates feelings for lance out of nowhere despite showing consistent disinterest in lance’s advances in previous seasons. s4 and onward we see her seeing lance more than just an annoying flirt, and the two become better friends who could genuinely talk to each other without having allura annoyed with lance’s flirtatious antics, and without lance being reduced to a constant flirt. during allura’s interest in lotor, we’re yet again presented how allura doesn’t return feelings for lance, especially during the scene when the mice told her about lance’s feelings for her back in s6. she seems rather disappointed, pitiful, or uncomfortable with knowing how lance genuinely liked her when she liked lotor during that time. later on, allura’s been out of her previous love interest with lotor, and hasn’t shown returned much of the same interest in lance. sure, she hugged lance and he returned the hug, but that only seemed necessary in the moment for when allura had felt betrayed by someone she wholeheartedly trusted and fell in love with. she needed comfort from someone and the person she spoke to was lance who was able to lend her some comforting words. but that was about it. i’d like to say that considering that this is a kids show, it does give a bad incentive for children to develop on believing that if they continue to force their feelings onto someone else, the person they’re interested in will eventually like them back out of the blue, which is the worst course of action to take despite being rejected countless times (and its kind of being shown with what a/l has right now). to take this kind of scenario and to fix/put it with good writing would to just properly depict lance accepting rejection and allura staying true to her previous feelings on not reciprocating his feelings. in a general sense, we all know that we can’t always get what we want, and that’s an important moral that always gets taught over and over again even if youre a child or an adult. rejection and acceptance of the rejection is something that can be taught here through the romantic subplot they’ve been having. just deciding that they should become endgame out of nowhere would leave the writing very dull. having allura get out of her previous love interest with lotor only to quickly move onto lance just doesn’t leave off on a good note. it just reduces lance to a rebound and that’s about it. 

the writing for me wasn’t really that breathtaking, overwhelming, or emotional or anything when it came to new plot points being presented (you know, all the fight scenes, galaxy garrison, that stuff). again, a lot of things seemed pretty rushed, i had mixed feelings for some but not all episodes. it was nice to see mostly everyone united back with their families and characters developing new motives for what they believe in doing. yet, the writing kind of just wasn’t on the level of where it actually gets me really interested and invested into the storyline like how it had back in s1 to early s3. i’ll still mention how the writing did it’s part in presenting development for hunk, though. i enjoyed that a lot.  

some parts of the writing were questionable, some parts of the season were enjoyable, but it wasn’t entirely overwhelmingly disappointing for me. the season was on the bare minimum on having the writing go “decent”, but again it felt pretty “meh” and this is just my own feelings on it. people have their own opinions, frustrations, concerns, questions, some people loved it, some people severely hated it or just felt extremely disappointed. 

the season has its peaks and lows, some pros and cons, but whatever you take from it is what you believe. 

i’ll still keep watching the show to see how it ends, that’s for sure. 

[scuttleboat]

Do you like Echo? I really want to now that she's a regular but I can't shake my wariness of her. It seems like she's constantly in the antagonistic role for our mains, but then she'll look sad for like 2secs and people will feel bad for her. But I don't. Do you feel me? Im open to her changing and growing with the spacekru, and I hope I like her character next season. But as of right now I don't understand the fascination some people seem to have of her.

An Egregiously Extensive Echo Essay

I’m gonna throw this wild analogy at you: Echo kom Azgeda is James Bond.

She is a dangerous, beautiful, ruthlessly loyal spy. She serves the queen (or king) and has to kill a lot of people. Fanatically loyal, always gets the job done. She gets captured, she makes allies, she lies to people, she gets friendly with the enemy and then later has to fight them or kill them to save her country.

bad difference: she doesn’t get to have smokin’ sex with the enemy officer (yet)

good difference: she feels actual, on-screen, sincere regret and anguish for deaths that she knows are necessary for her people but will nonetheless cause pain to someone she respects. I don’t think I’d personally seen a movie with genuine anguish from James Bond until Casion Royale came out.

So James Bond is a superhero if you’re British, but if you’re Russian or Communist or you work for a well-paying criminal mastermind, he’s basically like a horrific monster who kills your friends and blows up your factory and keeps your homeland from winning the cold war either militarily or economically. Either way, a loyal killer lapdog of the monarchy.

That’s Echo. If you look at where she’s coming from, even the fact that Bellamy helped her once isn’t enough to counteract the belief from her people and her queen that the Sky People represent an extreme danger to the clans and to Ice Nation. So they betray Lexa (who they see as an unfit conqueror anyway), and take out the enemy stronghold (Mt. Weather). To do that, Echo lies to a man who helped her once and saved her life. Yes, it’s a cruel and terrible thing to do.  Yes, he’d be in his rights to hate her forever. But that doesn’t make Echo any less of a hero to her people.

((sorry this is getting long, so…. behind the cut))

The way I see The 100, the show goes to extreme lengths to show that everyone has motivations for evil acts. Most of the time, those motives start out “good” (such as self-defense, protection of community, stopping cruelty).  In a few cases, it becomes evil when A) the harm done so vastly counterbalances any possible rational good (Dante), B) when someone is just a total sadist (Cage), or C) when ego and neglect and vanity cause the literal apocalypse (Becca/ALIE). Echo does not meet the standards of either A, B, or C. None of the major Grounder characters do (maaaaaybe Luna? !SQUIRREL!).  Anyway, Echo, like our main characters Clarke, Bellamy, Kane, Jaha, etc… she’s done terrible things to protect and serve her people.  I don’t hate or even dislike her character for that. She just is a character in this universe. And I certainly adore Bellarke, who have done as bad or worse than Echo for the same reason, so I can’t point fingers on the whole military actions thing.

We didn’t get to really know Echo until this season, and I think the show tried hard to put a lot of character building in while not forgetting about what they’d used her for in the past. They did an… adequate job. There’s definitely stuff that could have been handled in a smoother or more complex manner, but at the end of the season I’m generally satisfied with how they brought her into the regular cast. Weak episodes aside, there were several of her scenes I liked, and plenty of points at which I felt sympathy for her, just as you mention in your ask.  

The biggest thing I had wrt Echo going into season 4 was “How is her relationship with Bellamy going to be handled?”  Because I stan that guy, and she did him dirty. She did him as badly as Lexa did Clarke, except no one was there to intervene and save the sky people this time. I was pretty frustrated with their dynamic in the first half of s4, especially 401, because I thought their scenes really underplayed the anger that Bellamy ought to have been feeling.  And then again in 405, their pivotal conversation didn’t feel successfully dramatic to me because I was just asking “WHEN IS BELLAMY GOING TO BE MAD ABOUT STUFF?” Like, Echo was a pivotal agent in a plot that got his friends and lover killed, she lured him into a potential bloodbath to disrupt a peace summit, she held a sword to Clarke’s throat, she mortally injured Octavia, and she advocated for war with Skaikru. Even if Echo was just protecting her own nation, it’s incomprehensible that Bellamy wouldn’t be angry that she used their past shared trauma to personally manipulate him. And then like, basically assassinated his sister.

For most of s4, I was like “????????” about how this was going, but that was more about Bellamy>>Echo than about Echo the character. Luckily, 410 went a LONG way to fix that for me. In 410, we finally saw Bellamy’s rage. I normally am not here for guys choking women on TV but in this unique case it felt really earned as a climactic fight. He almost kills her the same way they killed Lovejoy, the same way Murphy and then ChippedKane almost killed him. I cheered cause WOOOO DRAMA.Bellamy found out Echo was interfering and would try to assassinate his sister AGAIN, so he tried to kill her and his violence took on a form that is indicative of his lessons on the ground. We saw him finally let out that rage that was suppressed during their earlier encounters.

I’m glad he didn’t kill her, and she didn’t kill him, but I think they needed to come close. They needed that release, so the real forgiveness could come. We’ve seen Bellamy forgive–or at least live with–the people who tried to kill him or his loved ones before (Pike, Murphy, Jaha, Kane). Bellamy at his heart is a loving person who is damaged by anger, not made strong by it. Forgiving Echo at least enough to help her survive is absolutely in character for him at this point in the story. That’s what makes him a heroic protagonist. Being a protector is a core trait for both him and Clarke, and part of why they’re ultimately so compatible.  Does that mean Bellamy could fall for Echo? Ehhh… They’re in a fairly unique situation and I wouldn’t take sex off the table. I think a delicate strange friendship will come about. But I highly doubt he’d actually fall in love with her. If I was shipping them, that’s a really complex dynamic to write a ton of fanfic about. As I’m not, I don’t care.

“Do you feel me? Im open to her changing and growing with the spacekru”

Anon, I have to say that nope, i do not feel you on this. Specifically, I don’t think she has to “change” if ‘change’ means to go from being a bad person to a good person. From the POV of her journey, she did the right thing by her people every step of the way until 410. The conclave was the first time she went outside her orders and did a dishonorable thing to save her people. Ironically, the Skaikru did the exact same thing that very same evening. A lot of people cheated at that event. But why it mattered to Echo’s character is that honor was the heart of her story–and it was honorable, to her mind, to kill in defense of her nation in s3 and s4. But when she let her fear and distrust drive her to break the rules of this (totally outrageous fucking bonkers) murder game, she violated her own honor. Roan came down hard on her for that, because Roan happens to care a lot about honor when it comes to fighting, I guess. Echo went too far in 410–just as Clarke and Jaha and Miller did. Just as Bellamy has before, as Lexa has before. She was punished for it, essentially ordered to die in a few days time.

I don’t look at Echo’s character and see a bad person who needs to learn to care about things–Echo clearly cared about a fucking LOT. It just wasn’t what our mains cared about. Echo did have to learn a lesson about when to have restraint, but then that’s what everyone on the show has had to learn. Other than that, her being in a antagonist role has been entirely a function of plot on the show. The plot was that she worked for the enemy. Otherwise, she is pretty similar to our heroes, only taller. 

We did see, at several points this season, that Echo’s fierce loyalty to Roan and the Ice Nation caused her anguish when it came to betraying Bellamy. She was fully aware of what he’d done for her, and that between them personally he didn’t deserve to be so horrifically betrayed. To be a little callous, that’s more genuine visible remorse than we ever saw from Lexa or Pike or–check this out–Emori. As a viewer, I feel like we’ve been given enough material to see her position and to understand where she comes from. I’m content with her being in the main group. I think she’s one more interesting person in a mix of interesting characters who are trapped together in space.

I mean, I may have a bad reaction if we have to SEE her make out with Bellamy. Like, I hope I don’t have to see that. Otherwise, I’m cool with her on the show. I feel bad when she makes a face like a kicked puppy. I think making deep and meaningful connections with people outside her clan will enrich her as a character.