#its not until the end of s2/beginning of s3 he really gets a chance to process it all

[taiturner]

VIKTOR HARGREEVES 2x02 “The Frankel Footage” | 3x02 “World’s Biggest Ball of Twine”

[offshore-brinicle]

see now i'm wondering if his ring ID is the kind of person yi sang could have become if he didn't join limbus company. like he internalizes the thinking pattern of "i'm a fool and not worth a damn and everything i do only hurts people" and expresses that self-loathing via his art. eats drywall

OK SO. I TOOK SOME TIME TO ANSWER THIS ONE BECAUSE I WAS TRYING TO GET HIM FOR MYSELF. I don't even really play the game anymore and keep up with the story via YouTube but. Y'know just to prove a point basically and Virtual Yi Sang Collectionism while I find myself with too much free time again so you might have gotten to see it by yourself by now but. Still.

Actually looking into this with his story and all of his dialogue they really did just give him an actual Bad End ID like Nclair, Ahabmael and G Corp Gregor (with some variation of Erlking joining eventually? but I have no idea how that will work taking in count the plot aspect) since Spicebush Yi Sang doesn't really Qualify as one of those and is even framed as being empowering in a way for him taking in count its release was timed so it could be used in the Farmwatch fight instead of waiting for the end of the Season like the others. I believed that W Corp Yi Sang was this spiritually; since it depicts him at his lowest point imaginable following on the track he was on already and the themes of Canto IV perfectly though not related to it, but now Ring Yi Sang has shown us a much more connected, and much darker potential path for him. So I'll take this post as my chance to analyze this:

In regards to his self-loathing it's very interesting that he actually seems to feel a sense of pride not seen in any of his other IDs, talking about "what he deserves" and disregarding everything that doesn't cause him a reaction. He now uses creation itself as a way to fill the emptiness inside of him, while in the main story, Yi Sang's resolution was that his impulse to create was his way of connecting with others.

You can see that in these lines, where he has completely disregarded everything about life and other people, pretty much all of his dialogue revolves around wanting to create and he has only interest in what can inspire him, to the point he nonchalantly kills civilians for failing to make him feel that way.

I feel like this is even expressed in the Sins for this ID compared to base Yi Sang, the set-up is the exact same; S1 Gloom and S3 Sloth. However, the one that changes is S2. Regular Yi Sang has S2 Envy while Ring Yi Sang has S2 Lust. Added this to Ring Yi Sang's passives even being fueled by Lust as well while base Yi Sang's are fueled by Gloom. I take this as a representation that he has taken this Lust, an obsessive desire, as being what will drive him forward throwing away all the self-loathing and regret, with many of his lines calling the past meaningless.

Now I'll tackle his story and do a rundown on it while giving my observation, as it ellaborates into this and what his mindset is (and frankly, it's utterly fantastic). First of all, we get a unique, dissonant track that so far seems to have never been used in any other instance in the game to my knowledge.

Yi Sang's approach to his scientist position is very...unique, because he does so as an artist rather than more proper scientific people like for example Faust, Dongrang, Aseah and Gubo. People who simply want practical application and results, means to an end. Dongbaek seems to be the only person who shares this approach he has which is why their bond is treated as unique compared to the other League of Nine members. At his core, what fascinated Yi Sang so much about technology and sciences was simply the euphoria of discovery itself, finding new things. Which is tackled immediately when Ring Yi Sang's story begins as I am showing here.

With science, you never truly "create" anything, you go through right and wrong answers until finding something that works or causes some effect, he even says so himself in Canto IV. And he goes on to criticize his prior fascination with technology with this particular aspect in mind. Even more shockingly is that he calls the League of Nine's conferences a "waste of time" now, each of their creations predictable which could tie into him being a one-of-a-kind genius, which is also somewhat tackled in Dongrang's observation log. To him, everything else his friends made was child's play.

So instead, he looks towards what made him so fascinated with The Mirror in the first place, echoing this particular point he makes during his log for Dongbaek, both of them are driven to reach something abstract and inconcievable and ended up using technology as their path to that vague destination that can only be described in poetry.

And finally, he completely foresakes his past at the League. He even he believes he finally has his wings but calls them fabricated, and there is something obviously wrong with the entire thing on multiple levels. They are fabricated wings because he was guided to this conclusion by the hand of another, rather than the introspection throughout IV. His chapter title is "The Unchanging", and it's the only chapter where the trait assigned in the title to the focus Sinner is a positive; him staying true to himself and his ideals was the key, but he needed to actually move past his apathy and actually grasp them, but here he has completely changed beyond recognition. Turned arrogant, callous and utterly irrational, discarding all of his self-loathing by divorciating himself from the self that he hates, yet the Sloth—the apathy remains, instead of moving past it, fighting it back with his Lust in an endless cycle of dopamin chases while growing numb to everything else and even destroying it if it fails to satisfy that Lust so that it will, as shown as he kills failing students to take delight in their shock and agony.

But at the same time it frames that portrait of the League in his background art a completely different meaning. It is most likely that this portrait is a mockery of all of them, regarding the past and the life he lived until now including his past self with the same condescencion he does examinees that fail to impress him. Specially when you take in count how his own face is much more well-painted than the childish erratic strokes he assigns to the other, making them look ridiculous. But at the same time, Yeonsim is there under them, but flipped to its underside, he still held onto it but as far as we know it might be completely broken and only keeps it as part of his insulting work going by another of his idle chatter lines.

This dark inversion of Yi Sang's journey even before Limbus and Canto IV is also emphasized by Pointillism in particular being chosen as the subject for this ID, this was first pointed out by this Korean Twitter user (and fellow irl Yi Sang enjoyer going by the layout) in the original announcement for this ID:

Of course, this theme compliments Yi Sang's resolution in IV pretty well. He loved the League and grew to love Limbus because they were his resting place. I can't find any translation of Jochunjeommyo however, so I can only rely on summaries and posts put through machine translation. But from what I can summarize, the story is about an artist who can't find a place to breathe and simply exist due to the materialistic, capitalistic nature of the city he finds himself in, which fits pretty neatly with Yi Sang's story as a whole.

I'd also like to point out how a less overtly unhinged variation of this kind of development is shown in his Dieci ID story (which I wanted to make a post on for a while because it really feels like it was preliminary to this and not enough people talk about how messed up Dieci Yi Sang actually is) and how he comes to adopt a mentality just like Ryoshu's, with her already being linked to The Fingers and knowing about their workings personally to the point she might have been affiliated at some point though we cannot confirm, however I will instead link to this post by my friend on the topic since they already did a dissection on how Yi Sang and Ryoshu act as ideological foils and they pretty much said it better than I could: https://www.tumblr.com/ishcliff/743271628518129664/so-any-thoughts-of-well-the-blade-lineage-itself?source=share

So that's all I've got for now! Honestly I am so over the moon with this ID and the potential implications going forward as you can imagine.

[strangerfigs]

will vs eleven’s sadness in terms of not ending up with mike is such an interesting concept because they both have endured extreme amounts of trauma so like yeah, but when you look at it from the romantic perspective of both of their stories/lives: will is discovering himself and his sexuality. he is in love with his best friend who is a boy. it is the 80’s and there is an aids epidemic. this boy is also dating his sister. this boy was will’s friend first. this sister was not his sister until after this boy and the girl’s relationship started. will has never been in a relationship. will has been pushed aside by his bff boy that he is in love with because his boy is too involved with his sister. where as el… literally was held captive from normal society and the minute she enters society, this boy attaches to himself to her, and of course she cares and adores this boy who made her feel loved and safe after she has never experienced those feelings? like how could you NOT. but it’s literally just so fundamentally unhealthy. not that it’s at ALL mikes fault because he was just a kid too. but el never had the chance to explore his sexuality or crushes or anything. even if she clearly wants to through subtext, saying mike is her “first” boyfriend. but even beside and more importantly, she truly truly needs to be single. because she needs time to FIND herself (which has been so pushed by the lovely max). el has literally been controlled by men her entire life. it makes me think of karen wheeler too and her speech to nancy.

so yeah el will probably be sad about a break up with mike. I think she does have genuine feelings for him (although not totally convinced she is not a lesbian). I think she loves him a ton though and like I said how could she not? the way that mike found and took care of her, of course she would. it reminds me of how when you find a baby animal in the wild, abandoned, and take care of it, it will think that you are it’s actual mother. but mike didn’t present himself as a mother or father. when el asked if he’d be like her brother, mike kissed her to clear it up. AGAIN ITS NOT MIKES FAULT HE WAS 12 OF COURSE HE IS NOT THINKING ABOUT THIS SITUATION. but she truly attaches herself to him and el probably would have just gone along with any kind of relationship that mike pursued because she was ATTACHED. like a little duckling. she doesn’t really know any better than to just go along with it.

which sounds fucked because it is comparing parental and etc and there is a lot of discourse on the subject but I think that that’s where their relationship gets so damn messy because of how it started. it was doomed to fail (like romeo and juliet)

so yeah, it would be sadder if will does not end up with mike. sorry this was all over the place and saying stuff that has been said forever it’s just crazy. like yes i do think el would be sad but to an extent she already lost mike. she already realized that he didn’t love her anymore. she has already grieved the loss? we have seen it like we have SEEN her lose him and she was FINE like yes, will will also be fine, but she at least had mike to lose and there is much GAIN from el losing mike where will truly has nothing to GAIN from losing mike. it’s just not the same. they are both losses sure but only one of them gains more from it and that’s el!!!

if the duffers really wanted these two to be some epic love story they should have ended them at the beginning of s3 for real or ended in s2 or made it so like … yeah they kissed in s1 but they weren’t in a relationship? but they made the relationship just too immature and relatable to those middle school relationships where you kissed once, that means your dating, which is why mlvn feels so shallow and why they were cute in s1&2 to so many but not beyond that because as the older they are, the more obviously it becomes that they are in this middle school relationship that went on for way too long because of a) El’s natural attachment to mike b) Mike idolizing the shit out of el because she is a super hero and C) that they moved away from each other just dragging out the end of this relationship

I also just think it’s craaaazy that Mike finally could tell el he loves her after her powers came back like that is WILD and it’s just such an immature relationship mixed with attachment (like mike clearly still wants to take care of her because that was the role he took on when they first met) and he obviously idolizes her because she is this cool superhero who likes him which makes him feel special and he clearly is extremely insecure because he was bullied his whole life but this proves he is cool which is also another reason he isn’t his nerd self around el because he views all that stuff as uncool and doesn’t want to break that false image of himself

anyways this a lot of rambling I’m insane

[buffyfan145]

This is mostly me making an educated guess-wish so I know very well that it may not come true but I'm still putting it out into the world anyway for there might be a chance it does 🤭

S2 covers with the Fall Of Eregion and may, most likely, end with the forging of the One. Or it may happen next season. So, in S3, we may get to see the beginning of the Black Years with Sauron expanding his dominion over Middle Earth, creating the Nazgûl, the retreating of the Elves and, because of the show's compressed timeline, ends with his defeat at the hands of the Numenoreans. S4 covers his time as Zigûr in Numenor and its subsequent fall whereas S5 will deal with the arrival of the Faithful, the establishment of Arnor and Gondor, the formation of the Last Alliance culminating with the Battle Of Dagorlad and the siege of Barad-dûr.

Now, this is where the guessing ends and my wishful thinking begins: Galadriel will remain with Sauron for most of S3. I started thinking of it after I came across the theory of them ending up in each other's company at the end of S2. Charlie did say that Sauron will never stop trying to get Galadriel to join him so he might do that in the next season, tempting her when she is with him though we know she won't join him for real. In the end, she might escape either by herself or with the Stranger (who may or may not be Gandalf)'s help and reunite with Celeborn. S4 will have her reconciling with Celeborn, finding Lothlórien, etc. But we will have plenty of shipping content by then and, if we are lucky, then who knows the mental bond between Haladriel might continue until the very end of the show when the ring is parted from him. Most of this is motivated by the continued emphasis on their connection, the foundation of which was laid in the very beginning, and only encouraged by the team.

Let's see what the future has in store. I am prepared for all outcomes but I would like to be proven right for a change.

That's a really great theory!!! 😀 It fits with what I've been thinking too and other fans, including non-shippers think as season 3 should be his "King of Men" season and we find out who the 9 are including the Witch King of Angmar. I actually think he won't make the One Ring till the end of season 3 and due to whatever happens that season, and of course the shipper part of me thinks that losing her again adds to him creating it. Like I've said in other posts we got to see the whole season 2 to get a clearer grasp of what could be coming and we could be wrong, but there's still a chance.

[insomniactalks]

I think maybe EJ will realize he’s into Val but is fighting it because he’s with Gina, meanwhile Gina is realizing she’s into Ricky but fighting it because she’s with EJ, until it leads to both of them admitting whatever they had has run its course and mutually breaking up. I hope I’m wrong but something in my gut is feeling that terribly predictable cop out storyline coming this season.

I don't actually think ej and val are going to have some big romance that'll be the end of portwell, but I 𝘥𝘰 still think that there will be a rina romantic plot this season... idk I just have a gut feeling ricky will realise he has feelings for her and that she'll find out that maybe she's not completely 100% over him... 😞

Both anons have similar concerns, so I'm answering y'all together. Are these scenarios a possibility? Sure. It could be some interesting angsty drama, and had this been any other teen drama show, I could totally see this happening. However, Tim ultimately wants the show to be about “basically good people basically be good to each other,” as stated in this interview. If EJ and Gina realize they have feelings for other ppl while they’re dating e/o (which does happen in life), then the show has to make the effort to make sure no one gets hurt in the process. They didn’t have EJ and Gina have all this character progression for no reason. If Portwell break up in S3, it must be a mutual decision that both agree is for the best. Tim also acknowledges in this post-S2 interview, "[Ricky] is really afraid to be alone." For Ricky to have any chance to be a good romantic partner for anyone, including Gina if that’s the plan eventually, he has to realize that being in a relationship does not equate to personal happiness. By the S2 finale, he’s not quite there yet. He admits he “thinks” he’s happy to Miss Jenn in 2.12 before “Second Chances,” but he’s still thinking he needs/wants to be in a relationship, like his mom w/ Todd and his dad w/ Miss Jenn, to be truly happy. In the 2 weeks at camp, I think Ricky will finally realize it’s okay to take some time for himself. The “second chance” to “begin again in the summer wind” for Ricky might mean him taking a chance on himself this time. Last summer, when he and Nini were on a break/break up, he was still “talking to some girls” (1.01), so he wasn’t completely unattached. This summer, maybe Ricky’s second chance is actually on himself? Last thing, for Ricky and Gina to have any chance at being in a relationship, they have to mend their friendship first. I think this is more likely than anything else this season for them. Of course I’m biased, I admit, but in only 2 weeks, I doubt Ricky will be prepared to enter his next relationship post- whatever he’s got going on with Lily. We have to keep in mind that storyline isn’t over yet with the way S2 ended. Who knows what Tim has in mind in S3? LOL               

[tarysande]

S6 Thoughts: A Tale of Two Brothers

But wait! There’s more. Thoughts on the overall arc of the series, Heaven and Hell edition:

In S1, Lucifer is “vacationing” on Earth but doesn’t plan to return to Hell. Amenadiel spends that season trying so hard to force Lucifer back to Hell, where he “belongs,” that he himself Falls. We’ve got this role reversal of an angel doing evil things to return the devil (doing ... good things, like solving crimes) to Hell. It’s all very “The road to hell is paved with good intentions.” 

In S2, Lucifer still has no plans to return permanently to Hell, but he’s willing to face it to save Chloe. Of course, this then leads to him experiencing his own forced hell-loop. Amenadiel is also conflicted. Though he’s changed enough that he no longer wants to force Lucifer back to Hell, he’s still uncertain where that leaves either of them. In fact, even when Lucifer pleads with Amenadiel to return him to Hell, Amenadiel refuses. However, when Mum plants the idea of returning to Heaven as a family, Amenadiel clings to that. He’s looking for a purpose. Lucifer, on the other hand, is still very much aboard the Heaven nope train. Here, we also get the foreshadowing of celestial war, and Lucifer’s rejection of Mum’s plan because “In war, there are always casualties.” He would rather sacrifice one--Mum, Uriel--for the many. But it hurts him. If he belongs anywhere, he thinks, it’s Earth ... but, ultimately, that’s shortsighted because we know he doesn’t actually want to be on an Earth that doesn’t have the people he’s coming to care about on it.

S3 is, as we all know, a bit of a mess. But, hey, it’s actually thematically appropriate! Lucifer’s having an identity crisis (wings) that just keeps giving (or taking), and even though subconsciously (we later realize) he gave himself the wings because he was, in fact, making progress reconciling his past and present, his conscious is backsliding like (pun not intended) hell. Much as he wants Earth to be home, he’s got these non-stop reminders of both Heaven and Hell. It makes complete narrative sense that this season reaches the point where he can no longer hide from himself--or from Chloe. 

In this season, we also see Amenadiel really start to settle into the idea of staying on Earth, of embracing humanity. He’s shedding the aloofness he once had. He’s learning (we later realize) how to be the kind of God who sheds mysterious ways in favor of boots on the ground. I mean, he doesn’t realize this. But Dad ... well, he has a Plan. Lucifer begins the season with sudden wings. Amenadiel ends it with his wings’ very deliberate return. 

In many ways, this season is about Hell on Earth and torture at the hands of an entity far more intentionally and deliberately evil than the actual devil. This is why the catalyst of Cain is so important. He is all the things Lucifer has been accused of being, only he embraces it in ways we’ve seen Lucifer reject and recoil from again and again. This season is torture (lol). It’s Hell. It’s every ugly thing lies beget. And much as we love Lucifer, we’re given an extreme close-up of how his omission of truth is very nearly as devastating as Cain’s outright lies. Of course, this nearly results in Chloe’s death (in more ways than one; you can’t tell me that godforsaken marriage wouldn’t have been like dying), and the devil’s vengeance results in the removal of Lucifer’s choice about the where and when to reveal his true nature to Chloe. 

Which brings us to S4, aka The Season of Angst. For Lucifer (and Chloe), anyway. Not so much for Amenadiel, who is set on the path of fatherhood, of responsibility, of partnership and not just commands he expects to be followed. In case we’ve forgotten how much Amenadiel has changed, Remiel “mini-Amen” shows up to remind us. In Linda’s “When angels fall, they also rise” of it, Amenadiel is rising again. He’s not the same as he was, no, but ... we didn’t like old Amenadiel very much, did we? Like Lucifer, Amenadiel is on a journey of learning who he is, the good and the ugly, so he can choose the parts he wants to keep with both eyes open. 

Of course, while Amenadiel is rising, Lucifer is falling. In having to deal with Chloe’s reaction to his devil face, Lucifer is put in the uncomfortable position of either growing enough to face his own darkness and self-loathing or retreating, very literally, into who he used to be because it’s comfortable and less frightening than the prospect of change and the unknown. Until it isn’t, right? The more he becomes the devil Eve remembers, the more uncomfortable he becomes. And the more frightening he becomes. Not to Chloe, as he fears, but to himself--though it takes a while to recognize it. If nothing else, we have to hand this to Lucifer’s subconscious: when it wants him to PAY ATTENTION DUMMY, it’s pretty good at getting its point across. If S3 was Hell on Earth starring Cain as the devil, S4 is Hell on Earth starring, well, the devil as the devil with bonus demons. It’s Lucifer’s earthbound iteration of a guilt-induced hell-loop. And at the tragic end, he chooses to return to the place he swore he’d never return, losing everything good in the process, but doing it for selfless reasons. So, that’s new. And it’s why there was still a sliver of hope even when things looked impossibly dark.

S5 begins with Lucifer in Hell--farther from the things he cares about than he has ever been, but also closer to his true calling. Not that he realizes it; this is Lucifer we’re talking about. So, of course it makes sense that as the season goes on, he’ll end up confused by suddenly having everything he always thought he wanted within his grasp. The Lucifer who led a rebellion against his father because he thought he could do better than God? Of course that part of him wants to be handed the job now. No--he wants to earn it. And while some of his reasons are not great, others are. His heartbreak about the injustice and unfairness of life, well ... who hasn’t felt that way? Who hasn’t wanted the power to unilaterally make things better? But that’s not how free will works. That’s not how choice works. While Lucifer wrestles with the necessity of becoming God, Amenadiel recoils from what his S1 self would have seen as his right and his calling. S1 Amenadiel would have made a terrifying and inflexible and absolute and judgmental God. Perhaps even a God closer to our imaginings of Evil than Good.

S6 is about how sometimes personal growth means we grow out of old dreams and acquire new ones. Sometimes, it’s about reimagining those old dreams, rebuilding them with new information. For Amenadiel, that means recognizing that the person he is now is the best man for the Big Job. It means recognizing that Heaven can be (a place) on Earth if he wants it to be. It means he sets aside the pride of “If God wants something done, he sends ME” in favor of delegation and accepting help--and in doing so, helping others (his siblings) discover their callings too. He learns to lead by example, tempered with love and humility.

In Paradise Lost, Milton’s Lucifer famously declares that it is better to rule in Hell than serve in Heaven. But our Lucifer ... his calling isn’t ruling in Heaven. That’s the old dream of a person who no longer exists. Ironically, Lucifer’s calling is to serve in Hell. Not to serve a distant, ineffable, unfathomable being’s mysterious ways, mind you, but to tangibly serve the humans he has come to love, and who have taught him so much about himself. Who have taught him about love and sacrifice and light and darkness and second chances and hope and faith. When Lucifer chooses to return to Hell, he does so with his eyes open, just as Chloe returns to the LAPD with her eyes open. It’s a lesson that revisits the first episode of the season: Truth and wonder don’t have to be at odds. They can go hand in hand. The mysteries at the heart of pain and suffering and trauma--those are the ones Lucifer wants to solve. Because solving them isn’t about trusting to a higher power (aka the justice system, which is flawed) or designing the perfect torture. It’s about quite literally helping others set themselves free. Finding release. It’s about being a guide, not a judge. And it’s about fulfilling not the temporary desire that merely scratches the itch, but offering the tools necessary to help others determine--choose--their path to the desire they may not even realize is buried beneath the layers of scar tissue within them. And what could be more wonderous than that? Especially when you have a partner who makes you better at your calling, even as you make them better at theirs.

In the end, Heaven and Hell are what we make of them. One person’s Heaven is another person’s Hell. Love is what matters. In all its many, many forms.

[memes-saved-me]

Thank you for tagging me in this brilliant idea!!! @lovebillyhargrove 💖💖💖💖💖

Answers below😁

1. Do they get together BEFORE MF possessing Billy or AFTER shit goes down? (Or maybe DURING😲)

I'm a sucker for their tension boiling over some time around Christmas and that's when they either kiss, have sex, get together or all three lol. That or post Starcourt Steve is left to take care of Billy because no one else is around who can and he slowly falls for him while Billy falls for Steve all over again.

2. Who kisses who first?

Steve. Steve going on for the kiss is my favourite. Billy of course returns it and is the one to take it further but Steve is the one to lean in or push Billy against a wall and go for it. Billy hesitates because he likes to tease and because he isn't fully sure Steve is on the same page.

3. Where do they have their first sex? (Location) (HJs and BJs count)

Blowjobs and handjobs at school. Hidden away or a party where they're drunk and it's messy but amazing. Sex wise Steve's room. Either its romantic and its been building to this or they rush to his, up the stairs and one is pushed down on the bed and so on. Its either intense and tension breaking or slow and caring. Or both honesty but its at Steve's house.

4. Who says 💖 I LOVE YOU 💖 first?

Billy. Steve thinks, knows he does way before but is scared to say it first so he waits and then once Billy says it, probably before, during or after sex he says it every chance he gets. Billy is a little less generous with it but when he says it Steve finds it means more than saying it all the time.

5. Bottom!Steve or Bottom!Billy?

I personally believe they'd switch. Hormone filled teenage boys happy to get what they can and deal it just as much. However, I'm a sucker for bottom Billy to begin with, Steve just getting into being bisexual so at first experienced Billy takes that position until Steve is comfortable enough to go for it. After that its whoever wants to or both of them. They just love being either side of things.

6. Do they give gifts to each other?

Steve will buy Billy things he wants or needs at any opportunity but Billy will buy little things here and there that have significant sentimental origin. Or he makes things like daisy chains and puts them on Steve while they sit in the grass. Little things like that.

7. Where do they end up living?

I love the idea of them leaving Hawkins, going to California and it just not being as good as Billy remembered. He bigged it up in his memories and they can't really afford the kind of place they would like there so they leave and go somewhere else to build a life together instead of relying on their past to bring them comfort. I'm not sure where they would end up really, maybe even another country eventually.

8. What are their future jobs?

Steve in sales, office work sort of thing. Billy a mechanic or dog trainer.

9. Who's a better cook?

Steve likes to think he's a better cook but Billy for sure is.

10. Steve Hargrove or Billy Harrington?

In terms of 😏 Steve but on terms of "Oh shit he's my favourite" Billy

11. What's Max's reaction when she hears they're together?

She's honestly disgusted by Steve's lack of taste and standards but is glad to know why Billy had been acting happier recently. Her first theory was drugs so being gay with Steve was more than better.

12. Describe in ONE SENTENCE Hopper's reaction when he hears the names Hargrove and Harrington mentioned together?

His ears perked up at the mention their names while sitting at the table with El, her run down of the day stating they were a couple which definitely caught his attention because never did he think the resident bad boy Billy would end up with preppy boy Steve but hey, teenagers are teenagers.

13. Does Robin like Billy OR does Robin hate Billy?

Robin loves anyone who helps her tease Steve but she also gives him the shovel talk which isn't as affective considering he was practically dead at one point. They have similar music taste and Billy is always brushing girls off and sending them in her direction which is an added bonus so yes Robin loves Billy as a friend but hates him as Steve's boyfriend because that's the best friend rule, you don't like their bf especially when they complain about them one minute then gush over him the next.

14. What about Dustin?

Dustin is just confused, for a long time. He doesn't really get why Steve would do this. Waste his time on Billy and he constantly asks him why but then he sees them together and sees Steve smile like he does when he's genuinely happy and he lets it go. Whatever makes Steve happy is okay with him. But he also gives Billy a talking to regarding hurting Steve or dumping him.

15. Fav Harringrove AU?

That's a real tough one. I'd have to say maybe the catching fire one I did because it lives in my head rent free and I mean in luxury with no bills rent free. It fits too well not to lmao.

Maybe the one where Steve accidentally kills Neil and they run off, idk there's just something about that.

16. Billy+Camaro=

Others have said it but I see the Camaro as a reflection of Billy and his current state. Like in S2 its all loud and fast and dangerous but then at the end once Max has threatened Billy she takes control of it just like she did Billy. In s3 its in a state of disrepair while he is flayed and catches fire as his fate is sealed and he dies just like the car. Also these shots right here are just 😭

I'd ramble for hours but I don't have time🥲 but thank you!! I just love talking about these boys!!!! Also everyone seems to have been tagged but I'm not sure so I'll leave this open for anyone!!💖💖💖

[ichika27]

Mairimashita! Iruma-kun s2 ep21

Last episode for this season!

It’s strange we’re only getting 21. It feels like an awkward number to end on since many other anime that goes on for 20+ episodes have at least 24-26. Oh well, s3 has been announced so it’s all good I guess.

It's still the Apocalypse (the last day of it) and Iruma is trying to finish all of his homework which seem to be going well. He had a lot to do due to homework being doubled.

Why was homework doubled? It's the consequence of a past action...

It was due to the bet from back at the Walter Park arc! They remembered about it (I kinda forgot about it, honestly, since so many things happened since then).

Grandpa Sullivan is the one to choose the winners and decided it was all of them making them all both the winners and losers of the bet. With this, both the prize and punishments applied - they were treated to an expensive meal but they also have to deal with a ton of homework. Kalego-sensei is pissed he had to pay for everyone’s food but was very happy to tell them that they will be suffering for the rest of the apocalypse.

Iruma worked hard and got through all the homework though.

This Apocalypse Iruma had: gone on vacation with his friends, went on a sleepover at a friend's house, and went on a date... so naturally, this time around he's spending time with family!

He and Grandpa are gonna go buy school supplies. I kinda missed when me and my family did that back in the day. I always found shopping for school supplies fun.

Due to the season's earlier events, Iruma has gotten pretty popular it seems so Grandpa gives him anti-recognition glasses for a disguise. Ain’t the boy cute? I dunno why but with anime characters, glasses actually either add or subtract from how good or bad their appearance is.

Haha this reminds me, there’s this anime called “Castle Town Dandelion” and the MC is a girl who hates standing out and in one episode, her sister gave her glasses that could allegedly do the same thing Iruma’s glasses here could. It doesn’t work like that and everyone just acted as if it does to make her feel better. Akane needed this version lol.

They're headed to Magical Street to go shopping! A new area has been introduced to both us and Iruma.

This is apparently where shops, parks and also teacher's dorms are located. I’m wondering why the teacher’s dorms are here when back in the episodes where Iruma joined the student council, it seems he and the student council members were staying over at school. Why isn’t the dorm for faculty members at school, too then? Weird.

Iruma's Grandpa is pretty popular, too. People crowded around him as soon as they saw him but doesn't recognize Iruma due to the glasses. Makes me wonder why Grandpa didn't wear ones himself lol.

Grandpa Sullivan isn’t just popular as he’s well-liked, too.

First, clothes shopping! Iruma tried on a coat as they need some for the upcoming winter. Grandpa decides these were good and takes an entire rack. Damn they're rich lol. He tells Iruma to just wear a different one everyday.

They're buying accessories next and Opera suggest that Iruma buy a collar for his familiar which is Kalego-sensei lol. Iruma knew it would not end well if he actually did that and declines. Opera is disappointed by this... they really want to mess with Kalego, huh?

I think it’s funny but I also pity Kalego-sensei. Having to deal with his senpai’s antics long after graduating. The nightmare of many former students.

Next they're buying books! God this makes me miss going to book fairs.

Grandpa tells the staff at the desk what books he wanted and each one he lists off automatically flies down next to him (pretty cool). Grandpa explains that Iruma would need a lot of books to learn more spells. They talked about the spell Fractal (which Iruma used to princess carry Ameri last episode) and Grandpa tells him that with enough practice, Iruma could also use it to be able to fly. Grandpa takes this chance to show-off to Iruma by using it to take down a shoplifter. Everyone in the store is amazed but Iruma's praise is the one Grandpa cares about the most.

They continue shopping for stuff. This was funny cause the way Grandpa said the lollipop's name reminded me of how Doraemon introduces the items from his pocket. Also, does this mean that lollipop has no expiration date?

The day ends with the two having a talk (Opera went and got the carriage). Iruma says he had a lot of fun at school which made his Grandpa happy knowing Iruma has gotten used to living here. Grandpa tells him that the new semester would be even more eventful than this one and showed him a poster of what I assume would be the festivals the other fans have been mentioning.

In the middle of their talk, Iruma suddenly asks Grandpa about how to become a Demon King (likely cause he overheard some people wondering aloud why Sullivan, a powerful demon, didn't want to take the job despite being qualified for it).

Grandpa is surprised and speechless for a moment but then becomes happy and says if Iruma is asking cause he wanted to be Demon King then Grandpa will support him. Iruma explains he’s just curious.

Flashback! It seems Grandpa used to work for the former Demon King, Delkiller.

Too bad his face is covered. I’m curious to know what he looked like when he was younger.

Oooh... we finally see him - the infamous Delkiller that's been talked about for a long time. His face isn't completely properly shown for now, I guess but he’s shown to be pretty huge. He seems lazy but he also takes pride in the Demon World he's created. The flashback ends here though.

His hair color reminds me somewhat of Evil Cycle! Iruma’s hair color...

We get a bit of lore info from Grandpa about Demon Kings.

Grandpa explains about the 13 Crowns - representatives of the Demon World who help govern it - and that to become a Demon King, one must possess the trust of every single one since they'd be the one to rule the Demon World.

He also explains the role and power of the Demon King - their word is law and they are the Demon World itself. Demons will do as they commanded. The Demon World is a reflection of whoever ruled it and right now, the Demon World is a fun place because Delkiller-sama was a fun person.

Grandpa explains that with all these in mind, he doesn't know if he'd even get the role someday if he wanted it or if he ever did, if he'd be worthy of it. It’s such a big thing after all.

If he did become the Demon King though, he says he'd do this: make the Demon World "Iruma"-themed lol. Seriously though, he says he'd support Iruma if he'd become the Demon King and would like to see what kind of world Iruma would create.

These statements are very ironic considering who would end up being future Demon King haha.

While Iruma said he didn’t want to become Demon King, he did end up thinking about it. What if he did become the Demon King?

Hmm... for someone who isn’t interested, he looked like he was thinking deeply about it.

They get back home and later that night, Iruma checked the stuff Granpa bought him.

Iruma finally gets a hold of the Demon King Prophecy! We've heard about the prophecy before but Iruma probably hasn't yet until now. After listing the stuff about the future king, there’s a shot of Iruma’s hand with his ring haha. Upon reading this, Iruma thought more about it: What kind of world would it become if he were to become the Demon King?

You’re not the only one wondering Iruma. I’m sure the rest of the fandom is wondering that, too.

The new semester begins! The entire Abnormal class is told that they now have to attain Dalet (4) rank before their second year begins as it's the minimum they'd need to graduate - failure results in them losing the Royal One classroom!

--

Not gonna lie, the shopping part of the episode reminded me of the scenes at the beginning of the firsts Harry Potter movies with them shopping at Diagon Alley. It’s fun and I got to see more of the Demon World. I wonder if they’d show us other places in the Demon World in the next season.

Grandpa happily doting on Iruma made me think that maybe it’d have been better for him if he had gotten to adopt Iruma as a child. Iruma is already a teenager and so their time they could spend together wouldn’t be as long or as often since Iruma had friends and busy with school. On the other hand, Iruma gained a lot of experiences in his crappy life before getting here and it did help him become the person he is. I guess the problem here is that he’s human and he probably ages faster than everyone else. :P

Like I mentioned before, it feels weird we only got 21 episodes this time. I was hoping there’d be another arc before the end of the season. There’s already a season 3 announcement and for next year, I think, so its all good. It might feel like a long time but I thought the same back when season 1 ended and now the finale for season 2 had just aired. Time flies fast.

I just wanna point out that in the last scene at the classroom when they were being told about the rank raising they gotta do, Agares is shown with his eyes visible. I’m glad they never put that mask back to cover his face cause he looks good haha. Glad they kept this detail.

Well, thank you for reading this and the other posts, too if you did. I guess we’d have to wait for season 3 now. I’m glad this show is popular enough to gain another season so fast. :)

[shygirlwriter]

here, have some mando s2 finale meta

yeah so idrk how everyone tags their spoilers here (I think I hit the big tags), but this contains FULL SPOILERS for the mandalorian, up to and including s2ep8, “Chapter 16: The Rescue.” and just to be upfront, I enjoyed the episode overall and think that there is potential in the new story they seem to be setting up for s3 and beyond. I do not think it completely shit the bed-- the first 40ish (out of a total 45) minutes of the episode were really great, old-school Star Wars stuff. but I 100% understand, and in broad strokes agree with, the criticisms I’ve seen from others. this got way longer than I thought it would so i’m putting it under a cut.

but I think the biggest thing about the mando s2 finale is that it indicates that the production team thinks that they’ve been making an entirely different show than the viewers have been seeing. and I think it comes down to lack of setup of themes, then constructing the finale as if there was that setup, leading to unearned (supposed) catharsis. 

I understand how Favreau, Filoni and Co. came to the decision to end it the way they did, and I think that there is a universe where this ending can be satisfying. on its face, if you don’t take emotions into account, it is indeed a satisfying conclusion to the particular story arc of the season. Din has accomplished the task (return the kid to the Jedi) he was given at the end of s1. Grogu was reunited with a Jedi who can and will train him. Din recognizes that he is unable to care for Grogu the way he needs to be cared for (i.e. he knows pretty much nothing about the Force, the Jedi or what “Jedi training” entails) and lets him go with Luke.

unfortunately, this show (and s2 in particular) has been all about the emotions. Even from the very first episode of season 1, when Din shoots IG-11 to prevent him from killing the baby. The closing image of the premiere-- Din reaching into that little cradle with his finger --became an iconic image immediately. the end of s1 literally came out and had the Armorer straight-up tell Din that since the kid is a foundling, until he can be returned to the Jedi, he is his father. and season 2 has only reinforced that-- aside from all the cute single-dad moments of him taking care of Grogu, there’s Ahsoka specifically noting their strong bond in “The Jedi,” and the fact that he willingly (albeit as an absolute last resort) removes his helmet in “The Believer” for the express purpose of obtaining coordinates to Gideon’s ship so that he can rescue the kid. Not to mention other characters (Cara, Mayfeld, etc.) referring to Grogu as Din’s child. do not act like Din was not secretly relieved when Ahsoka went back on her part of the deal and said that she couldn’t train Grogu (BECAUSE HE’S TOO ATTACHED TO HIS PAPA!) 

and then the finale comes and expects us to believe that he would willingly a) remove his helmet in a roomful of people, and b) hand over the kid, even to a Jedi. neither of these things make sense with the character of Din Djarin as he’s been presented in the show thus far. 

point the first: at no point has the show spent more than 30 seconds at a time forcing Din to reckon with the idea of having to give up the kid. this one’s pretty self-explanatory, and imo is just lazy writing. 

point the second: the show never demonstrated a crisis of faith on Din’s part. which is especially weird, since it seems like it set one up and then never followed through on it. Bo-Katan and her crew immediately write Din off as a cultist in “The Heiress,” which seemed at the time to be setting up a thematic arc of Din questioning his faith. (even though Bo-Katan is immeidately hella derisive of Din’s faith to the creed, and “The Rescue further demonstrates her (and Koska too, tbf) to be a Bad Person when she’s shown being space-racist toward Boba.) The show re-canonizes Jango Fett (and Boba, by extension) as Mandalorians, and Boba shows Din the chain code in his armor in “The Tragedy.” But while he doesn’t criticize Din’s dedication to the creed, Boba does seem to be more of the helmet-optional type in his older age. This is the perfect setup to have Din question, at the very least, the helmet-on-always aspect of the creed-- even if he doesn’t take Bo-Katan’s words on their face, Boba’s chain-code bona fides do prove his heritage and he’s seen without the helmet --but nothing really ever comes of it.

Din removing his helmet in a roomful of his friends/allies to say goodbye to Grogu seems like it wants to be a cathartic moment, combining both saying goodbye to his son and decisively violating the creed he has lived by his entire life (and I argue this is different from taking off the helmet in “The Believer” since he does not immediately put it back on at the first opportunity, like he does after the shootout in the officers’ mess), but the show did not do the necessary setup work for that to track as a catharsis. 

I don’t necessarily have a problem if Favreau, Filoni, and Co. wanted to wrap up this arc in s2 so they can move in different direction with season 3. Din bested Gideon in combat and earned the darksaber, which now I guess makes him manda’lor (a title he doesn’t even get a chance to fully accept/process before the darktroopers and Luke’s x-wing show up), and now has to contend with Bo-Katan (and possibly other members of the Mandalorian diaspora, but we’ll see.) Pivoting into a show about Mandalorian politics is not necessarily a bad idea. The problem is that, once again, there has been little-to-no buildup in this direction! The show never gave us any indication that Din had any desire to get involved in Mandalorian politics, even at the beginning of the very same episode when he tells Bo-Katan that if she can help him get Grogu back, she can have whatever she wants including the darksaber.

could this have worked? could we see a world in which Din, after meeting other Mandalorians with different relationships to the creed, questioned his own loyalty to it? could we see a world in which Din slowly comes to terms with the prospect of leaving Grogu, and being sad about, it but also realizing that the child will be better off with a Jedi who understands the Force and can train him?

on both those counts, I say absolutely yes! but we would have needed several more episodes’ worth of set-up for this to have landed with the kind of impact “The Rescue” thinks it has. Din Djarin and Grogu’s story seemingly ends with a whimper.

(And on a tangentially related note, I’m more than a little concerned about the post-credits stinger with Boba and Fennec. Do I really like what Temuera Morrison and Ming-Na Wen have done with these characters in just a handful of episodes? Hell yeah, I do! Am I excited to see an OG Star Wars character, who got shafted real hard when Disney acquired Lucasfilm and de-canonized most of the EU, get to be badass again (and be badass while being played by an older (Morrison is like 60) man of color, who’s also returning to a role he kinda-sorta played twenty years ago)? Hell yeah, I am, because I Am A Boba Fett Stan Now, I Guess!)

(I know not to put much stock in the rumors about on-set conflicts during production of s2 and Pedro Pascal allegedly leaving the show, since they’ve been publicly rebuked by the man himself and multiple entertainment-news articles I’ve seen indicate he’s confirmed by sources to return for s3. But the increased prominence of another Mandalorian character in the latter part of this season, coupled with the announcement that The Book of Boba Fett will debut in December 2021, aka the same time frame as Mando s3, does have me a smidge on edge about the possibility of making this show into an anthology with s1-2 focused on Din and s3 (at least) focused on Boba. Sure, Din Djarin is “The Mandalorian” of the title, but he’s by no means the only Mandalorian on the show.) 

tl;dr: s2 of the mandalorian sets up a lot of interesting thematic material, then doesn’t follow up on it, but constructs its ending as if it did. and that’s why I think it feels uniquely unsatisfying to a lot of fans. 

[nymphixdevelopmentarchive]

What changes will you be making in your Au? I crave the knowledge

Woah hi anon!! Thank you for all the questions so far! I would be really excited to share with you all the lore I can offer (without giving out too much ;) )!  I hope you didn’t mind the long wait as I wanted to get really deep into this so I hope you enjoy it!!

Nymphix: Dragon's End is a canon-divergent au (which for those who don’t know means after a certain point in canon I cut off from there to begin a new point of lore, writing, and story) which cuts off after season 6's midseason finale and completely erases s6.5 (Mythix) to s8 (Cosmix) in order to place Nymphix in an easier time frame. 

This is basically how ill be sectioning off this entire answer, apologies for how long it is I get really encouraged to write when people as me this stuff: 1 will be basic pre-nymphix lore, explaining how the au will break off from canon, 2 will be changes to designs for each girl/guy/and parents (only really the main two ill be using: Oritel and Marion) and finally 3 the new additions to Winx lore and explanations of them. 

Pre-Nymphix Lore

So how will this au break go about? Well in order to implement Nymphix smoothly, I had to do one rewrite which is for the s6 midseason finale. After the entire Vampire invasion of Gardenia, Selina promises the Trix that her best chapter is yet to come. Selina is planning to summon Archeon at last in order to finally get rid of the Winx and maybe even the Trix to absorb their energy into the Legendarium to free her master. So long story short, the Winx confront Selina and the Trix and they fight. The Trix cover for Selina as she reads from the Legendarium and Archeon slowly starts to climb out of it, sucking in magical energy from all except Selina. That is until Bloom talks to Selina and tries to convince her to stop which causes Selina to do a double-take and stop reading and decides to use the magic energy she gathered and sacrifice herself in order to save the others and to hopefully undo all the damage she's done. Yet she can't, as Eldora finally reveals herself and grabs the Legendarium from Selina and uses her Mythix and stored Fairy Godmother energy to seal herself and Archeon back in the Legendarium causing it to be safe. 

Now with Eldora out of the picture (both literally and plot-wise), the Mythix arc cannot happen setting off a chain of events causing s6.5-s8 to not happen and instead causing Nymphix to be slowly rolling into action. After the Battle of Cloudtower v.3, the Winx decide to take some personal time off from saving the universe for almost 6 years straight to focus on themselves. So for a year, the girls have been pursuing either their royal duties or personal dreams. Bloom is learning more about how to be a Dominoian Royal, learning under her mother, Queen Marion. Stella is back in Solaria going under rigorous training to become Queen of Solaria which causes her to be in isolation from Radius as he hones in on her training. Flora is with Helia in Lynphea with her parents planning a wedding while Helia is learning under Flora’s Father to become a medical wizard. Meanwhile, Musa is with Roxy on Earth working at Frutti Music Bar and working on her music career. Aisha is currently ruling over Andros as Interim Queen due to something happening and Tecna is working on a big project for Zenith with Timmy. Sky and Brandon are on Erakylon as good ol’ King Erendor is attempting to retire, making Sky king and Brandon his right-hand man.       2. Design Changes (cause the Dragon knows we need them) First of all: I’m doing more look changes, giving the girl’s different body types and heights as I just feel like that makes each girl a lot more different. I’ve also changed how some hair looks, probably just on how I draw hair but Bloom and Tecna’s are the most different in a sense of length and style. Here’s a height chart for reference (this is an old one so please forgive the shitty anatomy and other things, I haven’t had a chance to make another yet!):

  I’ll go into each girl’s differences stylistically briefly. Bloom has much longer and wilder hair than her canon s6 counterpart, I honestly didn’t like the whole thing she had going with her hair so I brought the old style back and made it a bit longer and crazier with a lot of waves. Stella is a lot shorter and has longer hair, keeping more or less everything the same. Flora is chaotically different, having a much much taller form and making her bangs not look like they can cut you on impact, similar to Bloom’s bangs. Tecna has a lot of changes as well, mostly with her hair, giving it a very unkept manner but longer than the pixie cut we’ve first seen her within S1-s5, making it as long as her Bloomix hair. Musa has the second shortest hair, keeping it tied with Aisha. Musa is also the shortest in the group, but can still kick your ass. Lastly, Aisha is at the same height as Bloom, but I decided to keep her original hairstyle from s2 and s3 as I feel like those are the best representations of her hair but added the salmon highlights into her hair cause I think those look amazing on her. One other thing I have changed for the girls is their Bloomix designs. I honestly didn’t have to redesign them but I couldn’t help myself as they have a lot of problems aesthetically and efficiently, especially for a webcomic. I went for a still-looking good, but less sharp design and got rid of that shitty side ponytail from Stella’s Bloomix. I’m also giving the girls a lot of unique outfits to wear based off of previous transformations so look forward to seeing that and the Bloomix designs!  The guys have a lot more fixes than the girls, giving them a better glow-up than whatever the fuck s4/s5 did to them (rip Sky and Helia’s hair). Sky and Helia get their glorious locks back in full swing and made them longer, while the entire boy group gets new outfits and armor! The parents also have modified designs and personalities, especially Oritel and Marion. Marion, or The Dragon Queen of Domino, is a feared royal to most of her enemies and even some of her allies but a soft mother and kind leader to her subjects from those who know her best. She’s the current guardian of the Dragon Flame, having the “guardian form” of the Flame giving her a special transformation. Marion is also known to have a fiery temper during Alliance debates and talks with other kingdoms. Oritel rules by her side, gifted “The Key of the Flame” (the sword from SOTLK and MA and other times) by Marion when they were first married. Oritel is a lot calmer and much more level-headed during debates than his wife and usually takes care of these affairs as well as ones closer to home. Also no more bucket helmets and weird half-circle hair for them, they get new designs.        3.  Added Lore 

This is gonna be a bit shorter than 1 and 2 since some of the stuff in the added lore section are MAJOR spoilers. However, I can give you somethings that I think you will like anon! First off we have The High Council of Fae which is a council containing guardians of all canon transformations including Nymphix. This council is the main place where Fairy magic is tested, kept safe, fairy-involved history is recorded and stored, and trails of fairies happen. Daphne is apart of the High Council, being Lady Sirenix (Harmonix included). No one except the Council themselves and their close family knows the guardian’s true identities (except for the royals of Andros due to a loophole in sentencing) and are kept secret at all times. Each guardian looks over their respective transformation and guides those who want to gain it in the right direction or protect those who are involved in said transformation (Like Mythix with the Legendarium, Tynix with the Mini Worlds, Butterflix with the Fairy Animals, and Cosmix with the Cosmic star energy that is used by the Queen to bless fairies who are worthy). Another thing added to the lore is a small thing, Fae is used to reference Earth Fairies as its used in common folklore to call fairies of Earth Fae, especially since the Earth Fae have an almost entirely different magic system and way of life. Lastly, the Dragon Flame isn’t just Blooms, it's also been given to Daphne and Marion. Due to Domino’s past, a girl or son born in Dominoian royalty is usually blessed with the Dragon’s Flame as when they become Queen/King, they are seen and trained to be the protectors of the Flame. Queen Marion is one of them, as stated earlier, having a special fairy form of the Dragon Flame especially suited for Queens and Kings. Daphne, however, is very unique. Due to Daphne also being Lady Sirenix (basically having pure sirenix energy straight from the Heart of Sirenix), combining it with her Flame created the Water Flame which is a special type of Dragon Flame that is so enhanced by Sirenix magic that it becomes the Water Dragon’s Flame. Bloom has the purest form of the Dragon Flame, having the chance to basically become God. Each holder of the dragon flame also has a special Dragon that is gifted to them after being blessed with the Flame, coming in different forms that suit the user. Marion has a ram-horned Dragon, Daphne has an Eastern-Dragon-inspired dragon, and Bloom has the dragon we all know and love. Also as a fun little addition, in times of great fury, power or distress a Dragon Flame user can have horns in the shape of their dragon appear on their heads. 

[miss-musings]

“THE BLACKLIST” & WHY PEOPLE HATE LIZ SO MUCH

I’ve discussed on here several times how much I’ve been annoyed with the way TPTB have written Liz’s character over the course of the show. But, I tried to keep my frustration and annoyance directed more so at the writers/showrunners and less on the character herself or the actress Megan Boone.

However, after watching 6x10 “The Cryptobanker,” I think I may have finally hit the point where I really started to hate Liz in and of herself. So, I started writing this post, which I’ve added to and edited over the past few weeks, but I still stand by my original point.

Now, I follow the Blacklist on Facebook, and almost every single time there’s a new post, the top-voted comments are always praising Spader/Red and hating on Liz. I’ve seen people say she’s annoying, that they didn’t like this S6 plotline with her and her sister, that they hoped the show kills her off for real soon, etc.

I always thought that most of the comments were somewhat valid but maybe a little overblown (especially the ones about wanting her off the show). But, it really made me wonder why so many people hate -- and I mean HATE -- Liz so much.

While I admit that her character is starting to really get on my nerves, I’m going to try to put my personal feelings aside and tackle this objectively. I want to really look at what reasons within the show, its writing, its format, etc., Liz receives so much more hate -- vastly more than any other character on this show. As I said, Red/Spader is always highly praised along with Dembe, and I rarely if ever see comments complaining about Samar, Aram, Cooper and Ressler. I would guestimate that 95 percent of complaints about any one character are directed at Liz.

A THEORETICAL POSSIBILITY

Now, I will theorize -- and keep in mind that this is only a theory -- that part of the reason for this hatred toward Liz has to do with some male fans being misogynistic/sexist and some female fans’ annoyance at what a crappy avatar Liz makes for. (I’m talking about straight viewers, FYI.)

With regard to male fans, I think they look at Liz -- who at times has been terse, mean-spirited and vindictive -- and see her as a giant bitch. After all, that was the whole idea that Liz herself sets up in the pilot. She is not who her male colleagues expect her to be. She doesn’t play into the traditional feminine role of simpering, smiling and content to sit on the sidelines and let the men sort things out. (And, I’m really generalizing here.) So, I think it’s a fair assumption that some male fans have the same sentiments about Liz that her colleagues canonically have too.

As for the female fans, I think Liz might come off as a poor avatar. When you’re plunged into a fictional universe, usually there’s a character who’s plunged into the story along with you, and you learn as they do, to the point where you start to project yourself onto them. Think Neo in “The Matrix” or Harry Potter or Luke Skywalker. It’s every person’s fantasy to discover some great power within, harness it to defeat the bad guy and win the heart of the beautiful woman/handsome man in the process.

Liz was clearly meant to be our avatar into this universe. We were brought into the world along with her, saw her learn about Red, begin the Task Force, and plunge into this world of the FBI and the Blacklist.

Now, I imagine that for older women, especially, the fantasy is to be the kind of gal that a guy like James Spader would absolutely devote himself to. And that’s exactly how Red treats Liz -- like a woman he would do anything for. However, unlike many viewers, Liz is ungrateful for Red’s devotion and continual sacrifices for her benefit. Instead of seeing him as a savior and white knight, she often sees him as a nuisance and a terror in her life. I personally think she’s often justified in that, but I’d guess that 80 percent of the current audience is watching it simply for Spader’s performance alone. So, when the favorite actor’s character is not appreciated and is continually hated on by his co-lead character, it makes for uncompelling television from a “I want to project myself onto this character” kind of way.

But, with the theoretical discussion out of the way, let’s examine some more concrete reasons as to why people hate Liz.

LIZ IS OFTEN WISHY-WASHY (ie, has little conviction) WHEN IT COMES TO HER FEELINGS AND DESIRES.

This is what I’ve often described as the “Liz loves Red, Liz hates Red, Liz forgives Red” song-and-dance routine. But, there’s much more to it than simply Liz’s relationship with Red.

Liz was first introduced to us as a woman who wanted to start a family, and yet she thought about giving up her baby for adoption and then later gave Agnes away to her mother-in-law so she could spend more time on her revenge plans. The entire pilot goes out of its way to show Liz struggling with the demands of being an FBI agent and a prospective parent, and drives home the whole “Mommy Liz” vibe with the admiral’s daughter.

Yet, when she finds out she’s pregnant, she hesitates and thinks about giving it up for adoption. Then, when she has Agnes, she agrees to Kaplan’s plan to fake her death so she and Tom and Agnes can be happy and safe away from his world. And, later when Agnes gets kidnapped, she frets and worries about her constantly.

But, the minute she wakes up after being in a coma, she’s totally cool with pawning Agnes off to someone she’s never really met. Cool.

I realize there are mitigating circumstances, but this is a woman who made all her loved ones -- Red, Cooper, Ressler, Samar, Aram, any family members she had left (except Tom) -- believe she was dead so she could live with her daughter in a safe location!!!

The idea that Liz wouldn’t just drop everything and give up the Task Force indefinitely to heal and spend time with her daughter after losing 10 months of time with her is absurd, IMO.

But, no, revenge is far more important.

It’s also really annoying that after finding out Tom had betrayed her, she was able to give him a second chance and continued to love him despite all sorts of stuff in Seasons 2-5, but the minute Red does anything, she wants to drop him like heavy airline luggage.

So, in case you forgot: in S1, she found out that Tom had been lying to her, manipulating her, and abusing her. So, after shooting him in the S1 finale, she chains him up on a boat for several months in an effort to make him useful to the Task Force. However, the minute that she hits the “hates Red” part of her “love Red, hate Red, forgive Red” cycle, she runs right back to Tom and very quickly forgives him. And, while her positive feelings for Tom continue from late S2b until his death in 5x08, her feelings about Red are all over the place, as mentioned.

Now, in her defense, her feelings about him seem to waver whenever a crucial piece of information about his involvement in her life is discovered. When Tom’s fake passports were traced back to Red in 1x06, she blamed him and said she didn’t want to work with him anymore. But, then the very next episode, when he offers to leave the Task Force completely, she doesn’t tell him to do so.

And, when Red admitted to killing Sam toward the end of S1, she was again ready to let him leave. But then at the end of the episode, she stops him.

In S2, when Liz believes that Red was only interested in her for the Fulcrum, and never really cared about her, she gives him the cold shoulder. And then when he admits that he did hire Tom to be in her life, her coldness toward him again grows.

While they’re on the run together in S3, their relationship is at its best, arguably. Until she finds out she’s pregnant and he tells her that the fight is not over, and she doesn’t want her child to be in Red’s world. (Which is understandable)

And on and on it goes through S4 and S5 and now S6. The minute Liz realizes  that he stole her father’s identity, she’s ready to burn him to the ground. But then only a few episodes later, she’s teary-eyed and regretting that she turned him into the authorities.

AS OPPOSED TO RED’S ... 

But, what really makes this all so annoying is the fact that while Liz’s feelings toward Red are cyclical, his feelings for her are constant, enduring, and never wavering. I mean, he’s basically Garth Brooks’ “Shameless” in human form. He is completely devoted to her, would give his life for hers without hesitation, and has loved her (in some form or another) far longer and far deeper than she has seemingly ever loved him.

If both of them liked each other, or if both of them disliked each other initially but then grew closer over time, the show would be much better. For instance, ABC’s Castle -- while it definitely has its flaws -- started off with the two leads liking each other from the start. Yeah, maybe they’re trying to get used to each because he’s a goofball and she’s kind of a hard ass, but it seems like by the end of the pilot, they both generally like each other as acquaintances.

Or NBC’s “The Enemy Within” -- which is eerily similar to TBL and I’ll have to do a whole post on their similarities some other time -- which starts off with the two leads being tenuous with each other. He hates her, and she is kind of neutral toward him, but the two of them need to cooperate to accomplish a shared goal.

This was never the case with Liz and Red on TBL. In the pilot, Liz is very wary of Red, as she should be. However, he -- according to Zamani -- is obsessed with her, and it’s clear that he cares about her far more than he should. To our knowledge, Red has never met adult Liz. He’s seen her from afar and kept tabs on her, of course, but this was the first time he’d met her (presumably) since The Night of the Fire. And from that meeting, his love has only grown, while hers -- as discussed -- has been all over the place.

THE TWO ARE NOT EQUAL

As I’ve said in previous posts, while the show wants Red and Liz to be partners, they are really so unequal on multiple levels. The same could be said of the two leads on “The Enemy Within, but their inadequacies tend balance each other out. She has all the know-how, but he has the freedom and jurisdiction to do things, and he is the one who ultimately makes the decision on what his team should tackle and how. She has some of the power in their dynamic, and he has some as well. Thus, their advantages tend to cancel each other out.

This is not the case with Red and Liz. All this time, Red has withheld crucial pieces of information from her, which he gives to her in piecemeal and only when she demands them. I won’t judge whether that’s the right or wrong thing to do, but it puts her at a disadvantage as far as their dynamic goes. And while Liz should be given some advantage of her own, she really doesn’t have one. Red has an immunity agreement and gets to do pretty much whatever he wants, unlike on “The Enemy Within” where the male FBI agent has some say over what privileges the female CI has because she’s still in custody.

I guess the one advantage that Liz has over Red is that he’s told her he will never lie to her. And she has confronted him and asked him direct questions before because she knows he *has* to tell her to truth if she does. But, that doesn’t stop him from stalling, changing the subject, or trying to do a verbal workaround.

And then, when the show was promoting S6, they made it seem like the power was finally in Liz’s hands -- she knows he’s an impostor and he doesn’t know that she knows.

But, while the show tried to give Liz a bit of an edge over Red, it ultimately fizzled out. She knows he’s an impostor, but she no longer has an interest in pursuing it. Which goes back to my previous point about her not having conviction. She wanted to destroy Red, and betrayed him to ensure that he wouldn’t get in the way of her and Jennifer’s quest to find out his true identity. But then, she drops it.

Again, I realize there was a lot going on -- Jennifer was kidnapped; Red was almost executed. And while I think the fact that, right now, she’s fine with not having all the answers is a sign a maturity, it’s also incredibly frustrating to see how she went from 0 to 100 in such a short span of time.

Anyway... moving on to my next major point:

LIZ DOESN’T FEEL LIKE A REAL PERSON

Relative to the screentime she’s received, Liz does not feel like a real person, but merely a plot device or a vehicle for Red’s schemes and/or the Task Force’s missions.

Very rarely do we get to see her on her own, doing her own things, outside of Red/the Task Force -- going to the store, doing chores at home, hanging out with her kid, etc. The only times we do are when it’s relevant to the overall plot. Like when she gets beat up in the parking lot in 3x11 or when she brings that Lady Ambrosia kid over to her house, tries to cook him something, and then the fire alarm goes off.

She seems solely to exist within Red’s/the Task Force’s orbit.

I feel like the fact that Liz doesn’t have any friends or family outside of the Task Force, Red and Tom (when he was alive), really speaks to how she seems to exist more as a character, not as a person within a fictional universe.

She doesn’t seem to have any hobbies, and outside of her mentioning the Wizard of Oz and a few other things, she doesn’t really seem to have any interests in anything.

By comparison, we have lots of scenes with Red and Dembe, doing puzzles, playing cards and board games. We know Red enjoys art and food/alcohol and traveling, and he has a penchant for some types of drugs -- his favorite being sex.

And even Aram enjoys Doctor Who, biking and cooking.

I’m not saying that Liz needs to start chatting with Ressler about Monday Night Football or playing pool at some local dive bar, but something! Just a line about how she Skyped with Agnes last night, or her talking to Samar or Aram about her trying to decide whether she should download Tinder and try to get back into the dating scene, or a scene of her running around a park but she’s disturbed by memories from her past. Just something. Something to make her feel like a real person, who does things outside of the Task Force.

Again, I always hate the fact that Liz was supposed to have all these friends in S1 (the house party at the end of 1x03 and the vow renewal later in S1), and yet, they seemed to have vanished. I hate the fact that Liz doesn’t have any support system outside of Red and the Task Force. The girl needs friends! Hobbies! Interests! Something!!!

LIZ TRIES TOO HARD TO PROVE HERSELF, GETS IN TROUBLE, AND OFTEN NEEDS TO BE RESCUED BY RED AND/OR THE TASK FORCE AS A RESULT

This gets into a personal pet peeve of mine where Liz reassures people that she can do things. In the most recent case, she told her sister that she was definitely capable of deceiving Red and keeping him from finding out that she knows.

But then within the episode or two, Red definitely knows that Liz is up to something because she has been acting weird around him. And, before she begs Dembe not to tell Red that she was the one who betrayed him, Red was pretty certain that she was the one who did. I would suggest that the minute he was arrested, he had a good suspicion it was her. Hence why he said that what he would do to his betrayer would depend on who they were. He was hedging his bets, in case it was Liz.

Liz and Jennifer kept going back and forth on trying to convince the other that they could pull off this “Find Red’s true identity” side-plot, but ultimately, Jennifer got kidnapped, Liz killed a dude, and ended up having to recruit Ressler and Red to help her find Jennifer and confront the people who took her.

This type of situation happens A LOT on the show. Liz will try to do her own thing (finding Red’s true identity, etc.) and it ultimately gets her into trouble. It seemed to happen more often in S1-3. One example I can think of was when she didn’t kill Tom, but instead captured and imprisoned him, and then he killed the Harbormaster and forced Liz to face charges for murder. Red and the Task Force and even Tom had to come to her rescue to make sure she didn’t face the consequences of her choices. Yes, Tom did kill the Harbormaster, but Liz was the one who had decided to chain him up on the boat in the first place. The murder is on him, but the imprisoning is on her.

Liz also killed the Attorney General, and Red and the Task Force (and Tom, once again) were ultimately responsible for saving her from the Director’s plot while she was trapped in The Box, bringing the Cabal’s actions to light, using the Director as the scapegoat for Hitchen and then getting Liz out of the murder charges by bringing in Karakurt. And then, later, Red was responsible for leveraging the President into pardoning her so that she could become an agent again.

Now, there have been a few occasions where Liz was kidnapped simply because she was an FBI agent, not because of her connection to Red or anything else. For instance, in 1x04 “The Stewmaker,” she’s kidnapped and almost killed because she had her own personal history with that Lorca guy.

But, again, too many times Liz is put in the “damsel in distress” position where either she’s in trouble or her life is threatened and others have to be the ones to save her, either by saving her life or by saving her from legal repercussions, etc.

In a way, this whole S6a has been the consequence of Liz’s actions, which she regretted and then was looking for any and all help to make sure Red wasn’t executed after she’d turned him in. Yes, Red was the one who insisted on the death penalty, but he never would’ve been in that situation if she hadn’t betrayed him. And ultimately, it was Cooper who came through and pressured the President into staying Red’s execution.

Going back to the “Red and Liz aren’t equals” thing, very rarely is Red the one who needs saving. And, even when he is, it isn’t always Liz who’s rescuing him. Again, Cooper was the one who saved Red from execution. Liz has saved him a few times that I can recall -- she stopped that guy from shooting him in 2x14 and she leveraged the Director into calling off the hit in 2x19.

But, again, Liz seems to be in trouble far more often than Red is, and she very rarely is able to save herself (with the solo-Liz episode being one of the few times she does). Meanwhile, Red is able to get out of jams on his own much more often, such as when he escapes Anslo in 1x10. And, he and the Task Force save her far more often than Liz and the Task Force save him. And, even then, sometimes Red saves her single-handedly (like in the S2 Super Bowl episode) while she usually has to work with others to save him.

Once again, I realize there are a lot of mitigating circumstances. Red has a vast criminal empire and more knowledge and resources than Liz does, most of the time. But, I do wish that 1) Liz wouldn’t be kidnapped or have her life/livelihood threatened so often and 2) that Red’s would be a tiny bit more frequently, so that *she* can save *him.*

It also doesn’t help that she was sidelined in S3b partly because she was a felon who was no longer able to be an agent on the Task Force and because both Liz the character and Megan Boone the actress were pregnant. And then she was sidelined again in S4a because of the whole felon thing / trying to get Agnes back.

TL;DR

I believe the reasons why people hate Liz  are similar to why people hate Sakura from the “Naruto” Universe (as YouTube channel SwagKage describes in this video):

Liz doesn’t get the character development she should relative to her screentime; and any development she does get seems to be cyclical and inconsistent. (ie, she acts however the writers need her to for the given arc/episode)

Liz often tries to do her own thing, despite warnings not to; and while she’s by no means useless to Red or the Task Force, she often has to be rescued (either directly or indirectly) far more than she does the rescuing.

Liz often acts demanding, ungrateful, and selfish -- or at least relative to how the audience might want her to act, especially with regard to Red. And, jumping off the second point, also has a bit of an ego and can be proud and willful, which as I theorized, might be a turn-off for some male viewers.

Also, the Lizzington shipper in me could point out the parallels between Sakura liking Sasuke (who was a giant dick to her) and hating Naruto (who was constantly helping her out) and Liz’s dynamics with Tom and Red, respectively, but I’ll leave you all to watch the video for yourself.

Overall, I think some of the reasons for hating Liz are valid, but as I said, I *try* not to direct my annoyance toward the character of Liz herself or Megan Boone, the actress, but rather the writers, who I feel need to take responsibility for what they’ve done and continue to do with this character.

Don’t take this to say that I hate the writers, but rather that I want them to do better. I want to see this show succeed and I want to see Megan have some amazing material to work with the same way that James seems to with Red.

I’ll say it again: I don’t hate this show; I merely want to offer up my criticisms and objective-ish insights into why I think people hate Liz so much. In that way, we fans can have a discussion and perhaps maybe the writers will take some of our points to heart.

For my next major TBL post, I’ll try to tackle the similarities between TBL and The Enemy Within. :D

[actuallylorelaigilmore]

I feel bad for not caring about Avery and Schneider on the show. I mean what do they even have in common besides being rich and hating it. Maybe it’s because they don’t show them as a couple or even her as a character much. Idk, they are just so boring to me. She does seem nice and she’s beautiful and I love that they are married in real life but as a couple on the show? I just can’t see it

Okay, this is totally you asking for an essay on Schneider and Avery, right? Whoops you’re getting one anyway because I have so many feelings about them and so many opinions I haven’t had much reason to dig into yet.

The genius of Schneider and Avery is that the actors playing them, real-life marrieds Todd & India, have the MOST ridiculous chemistry.

The problem with Schneider and Avery is…the exact same thing.

The Backstory

I knew long before S3 came out that Schneider was getting a love interest this season, and that she was going to be played by Todd’s wife, who I wasn’t familiar with at all besides his Instagram photos. I’m not even sure I knew she was an actress until they announced her guest starring role. Because they announced it early, I had a lot of time to build up anxiety over it.

I’m as deep into this fandom as I am because I ship Schneider with Penelope. I love the show exactly as it is, and if they never become canon I won’t love it any less, but that doesn’t change the fact that: 1) I watched the show; 2) I started shipping them; 3) I decided to write my first fic for a sitcom because of them; 4) through fic I made friends and developed headcanons and made more friends and managed to keep writing through some really rough life events; and 5) then from filming announcements and through the fandom, I found out Avery was coming and that the show was going to be including the weird Pen/Schneider sibling vibe in S3.

So before S3 premiered I was really, genuinely scared I might not enjoy S3 as much as I adored S2. What if I hated it? What if I hated Schneider’s new girlfriend??? I wanted to like her so much because I knew the actress was Todd’s wife, but I had no idea if I COULD because I had no idea how they were going to include her or who she would be. And I’ve never hated Penelope’s love interests just because I like her with Schneider, but I had also met several of those by the end of S2. Schneider getting a girlfriend was new.

1. Todd and India have more than their fair share of chemistry. Who do I speak to about that?

Then, in 3x03, we meet Schneider’s new love interest–and I was basically Schneider (as I often am). From the glasses that don’t succeed at all in dulling how gorgeous she is to her nerdy interests and apparent mild social anxiety (when she asked ”are you making fun of me?” so sincerely, my heart just went…oh. oh okay.) I thought she was adorable and funny and even more than that, I’m SO weak for devoted men, I can’t even tell you.

Well, I don’t have to tell you. If you’ve read anything I’ve ever written about Penelope and Schneider, you know. I love men who love women so much they would do anything for them, especially when they’re quietly selfless about it but so in love that it just radiates out of them.

That’s how Schneider has always acted with Penelope, a little bit, even when he wasn’t trying. That’s why I fell for the ship.

But that’s also how TODD acts, opposite India–to a ridiculous degree, in a way that isn’t acting at all. You can feel it hitting you through the television, how lucky he feels just to be with her, just to be NEAR her. It’s so sweet, I die. Schneider/Avery isn’t even my OTP and I’m gonna make them a gifset at some point, just because I cannot handle the fact that Todd looks at his wife that way, every time he focuses on her.

So because this is clearly going to be long, to sum up point 1: Todd Grinnell, who plays Schneider, and his offscreen wife India de Beaufort, who plays Avery? Absolutely fantastic couple. I’m totally rooting for them, these strangers I don’t actually know. Just because watching them act together is a beautiful thing.

Also because India is a sweet human who told me on Twitter that the little nose rub between them after they reunite in 3x13 was improvised by them, not scripted. And you better believe I could not love that more if I tried. THEY ARE CUTE. Conclusion one.

2: Schneider and Avery have too little screen time to make sense as a couple.

ODAAT as a show is so strong because it holds the Alvarez/Riera family at its core and builds everything around them. You’re supposed to fall in love with them first, and grow to love the supporting characters around them, as you slowly learn more about them.

Now, in some cases, it’s not a slow process. It didn’t take me long to love Carmen or Schneider–it only took me one scene to love Syd. But the show’s purpose isn’t those characters, at least not at first. It’s Penelope’s family. And the rewarding thing about ODAAT is that the definition of ‘family’ grows and envelopes more of the characters, as time goes on.

Because Schneider was still a (fabulous, lovable) supporting character before S3, he was on the outside a bit, along with Dr. B. I think you can look at the show like a set of circles, with Penelope and Lydia and Elena and Alex in the center circle, then with Schneider & Dr. B. and Syd one ring just outside of that, revolving around them. The support group, most of Penelope’s love interests, and Elena and Alex’s friends are a ring outside of that.

S3 widened the inner circle and pulled Schneider in. It was the first season to actually dig into his backstory, the family he comes from, his sobriety. And while it was amazing, it was still just a start. It was the beginning of showing him as a full family member. It put him in the center circle, and that meant giving him more focused scenes, more story.

But the show is still also about the whole family, and S3 has the same amount of episodes as the first two did. The show included more Schneider, but still only fit in so much. And one consequence of that is that his relationship with Avery exists almost entirely offscreen. They told us more about it than they  showed, and let Todd and India’s chemistry fill in the gaps, the unanswered questions.

3. What we actually saw onscreen when it comes to Schneider and Avery.

A meet-cute, which was pretty well-done. We learn she’s a geek along with him, that they’re compatible in at least that one way. We learn they like each other pretty instantly, which isn’t always believable, but the show’s got to move at a fast pace and I respect that. We learn he likes her enough to argue with Nikki, and she likes him enough to do the same. She’s no pushover, and she inspires him to be stronger. A good start.

Schneider spends some time with Penelope in the next episode and Avery doesn’t come up at all. When we see her again, Schneider’s about to have his first real date with her, as far as I can tell, on Valentine’s Day. (No pressure or anything.) It’s clear that Penelope and Avery have met by now, though we don’t know when or how. By the end of the episode we know that Schneider and Avery spent most of their first date lying to each other.

The big reveal, that they have even more in common than they thought, was super predictable to me but still funny, and my only problem with it is that once they land that plot twist, it becomes Avery’s entire personality. She’s no longer the quirky kindergarten teacher who gets along with Schneider the hobbyist because she loves to write poems and appreciates his niche interests.

Now, she’s his rich girlfriend. They get along because when he needs to fix his expensive hot tub, she can suggest they just pay someone to do it. The next time we see her, Avery’s entire existence is a few lines that show how well she gets along with his father because HAHAHA money. And then? We don’t see her at all until her surprise return in the finale.

5. What we didn’t see onscreen between Schneider and Avery.

Offscreen, as far as I can tell, they had other dates, they seem like they were serious enough to probably have had sex, she clearly was invited to some dinners etc with the family (though we don’t know if she went), before he started drinking again and they broke up and then she avoided him completely until Lydia convinced her to give him another chance.

We know Schneider completely blames himself for their breakup, but we have literally no idea what happened to send her running scared. Did he start drinking in secret and she caught him? Did he start drinking around her openly because he thought her reaction would be different from his family’s? Did she leave him because of the drinking or because of some specific thing that happened while Schneider was drunk or for some other reason entirely???

Based on their conversation in the finale, something happened, whatever it was. And Avery definitely knew he needed to be sober, otherwise why else would she be scared to try again?

Therefore the single biggest conundrum that S3 left me with, especially the more I rewatched, was this:

Avery knew Schneider well enough to know he wasn’t supposed to be drinking, or enough to tell there was a problem when his drinking came to her attention. SOMETHING happened that was bad enough for them to break up, and for her to ghost him after.

Avery also knew that Schneider’s family of choice was Penelope and her mom and her kids. She’d met them often enough to be able to talk to them politely, to know where they live.

Why didn’t she say ANYTHING to ANYONE in that apartment as soon as things with Schneider imploded????

How is it that she could be aware enough of Schneider’s life to know his family/best friends, aware enough to be worried about his sobriety, and worried enough to decide they had no future, but not tell his family what was going on when she was clearly aware of it long before they were??

Even if she was unhappy and uncomfortable and didn’t want to get into relationship details with Penelope, she could have just mentioned the drinking part and cut off all further communication! She could have left a note at their door!! She works at Elena and Alex’s school teaching the little kids, presumably she might sometimes run into them on school grounds…and she never said anything.

It drives me crazy because maybe there’s a reasonable explanation for that, for all of it, but I would have no idea what it is, because all of that happened offscreen and wasn’t explored.

6. Why it matters.

With the family at the show’s core, and Schneider only recently included in that center, Avery falls in the outer ring. But because S3 tried to give Schneider more without giving the rest of the family less, there just wasn’t room to flesh out Avery enough.

If you compare her to Max in S2, we saw him interact with the whole family on multiple occasions. Because of that, we got to know him as more than just ‘Penelope’s casual sex buddy who she was friends with years ago.’ He and Pen weren’t my OTP either, but I genuinely liked them together because we understood why they worked. We saw them survive conflicts, face problems, have real conversations.

With Avery, we saw her and Schneider meet and then we saw them present fake bios to each other before the truth came out, and then we saw her be the perfect rich-son girlfriend before disappearing. Their conflicts were left to our imagination. Their deeper moments were left to our imagination. When they get back together, we see Avery after she’s already decided to try again, and Schneider apologizing for whatever exactly happened that we may never know.

As viewers, we can interpret that as generously as we want, but it still leaves us with a relationship that we’re told matters…because we’re told it does. Though I love Schneider and I hate seeing him in pain, ‘he’s sad without her’ is not a detailed case for why he belongs with Avery. And ‘because Lydia vouched for him’ is absolutely not a good enough explanation for why Avery belongs with him.

Even looking at it as though what we learned about her in the beginning holds true, we’re left to assume that Avery loves him enough to support him through his recovery and rebuild trust, because…they’re both pretty nerds with similar feelings about their family money? And he loves her so much he was in hell without her…because to him she’s a ‘perfect angel woman’ (which is so painfully idealistic of him, it makes sense for him but is also begging for him to be crushed again when she falls off that pedestal).

There are as many red flags in the screen time we do see as there are reasons to root for them. She claims to be miserable with inherited money just like he is, but she’s way more comfortable relying on it, talking about it in ways that we just don’t see Schneider do. And the whole point when Schneider’s father visits is that Schneider is not who Lawrence wants him to be–but as far as we know, Avery isn’t putting on an act to get along with him, the way Schneider does. She just IS enough like him. She’s very at ease on his level.

And don’t even get me started on Avery stopping Schneider’s joy over being an Alvarez to make him focus back on her. It’s a joke, but it’s also not a good sign for their future, if any part of her isn’t 100% comfortable with how important to him the whole family is.

7. My grand unifying theory.

I’m convinced that her lack of dimensions, and their relationship lacking depth as much as it does, is because writing Avery in involved bringing India on. I’m not saying I wish they hadn’t!! Again, I adore her. But it’s a problem, and here’s why.

Every serious love interest we’ve seen Penelope have, from Victor to Mateo, is in her orbit mainly, but also interacts with the rest of her life. Max got to know everybody, counseling Alex, being pestered by Schneider, flirted with by Lydia, etc. Victor was central to her life for a long time, so we learn a lot about him through his many family scenes. Mateo has scenes with Penelope mainly, but he’s around the family enough that we learn about him based on that proximity–how he feels about Alex, how his background compares to her family’s.

Avery is Schneider’s first serious love interest, and we see her interact with…Schneider. No conversations between her and Lydia, only one exchange with Penelope when Avery tries to mistakenly console her over being single, then they never directly speak again. Avery doesn’t ever talk to the kids, though they’re super important to his life.

As a show, ODAAT never made me consider the Bechdel test until I was trying to include Avery in an edit about the female character interactions and I realized that that one moment with Pen is the only one. As a character, her entire point, and focus, and existence even, is about Schneider. It wouldn’t be so weird if she were just another Stick Girl, but we’ve seen her included in family events. We know she knows the people in his life. We just don’t see her ever talk to any of them, and I don’t think that was a choice they made to keep her character secluded so much as it was a natural result of adding a character to the outer ring whose only purpose in the story is to date Schneider.

So they created a girlfriend for Schneider, and they worked her into the story enough to give them a relationship, and to make their breakup and reunion important plot points for Schneider’s S3 arc.

And because the show was more focused on the family, Avery’s character was only included where she absolutely had to be, to hit those plot points.

And because the actors have chemistry enough to sell it, ODAAT called that good enough for their characters and that relationship and kept moving.

It’s clear from social media that the cast and crew of the show adore Todd and India, and adore their onscreen relationship just as much. Because of that, I’m not sure if maybe they’re a little blinded to what the whole thing is like for the rest of us, who don’t know them personally, who don’t see Schneider/Avery first as an adorable ship starring these two cute dorks that so clearly are meant to be because the actors are.

But whatever the reason, I think a lot of the people involved in the show ship it harder than the viewers do. I ship Schneider/Avery because she makes him happy and the actors are fun to watch, but I hope they’re not endgame for all the above reasons.

Schneider deserves love and a future with someone, and even if he doesn’t end up with my personal choice for his ideal match, I still want that someone to make sense. I want to be able to root for them for reasons that exist in canon. If the show gets more seasons and we see Schneider and Avery work on/through some issues, if we see him start to treat her like a flawed person he loves rather than like someone he doesn’t deserve at all…if we get to see how the other important people in his life relate to her…then I’ll be more on board.

But after S3, all I can say with certainty is that Todd and India make Schneider and Avery watchable…but they can’t carry the whole relationship based on their chemistry alone.

[zenosanalytic]

THE SACRED TEXTS!!! EPISODE 3

I just finished the 3rd season of Clone Wars(2008) and I have Thoughts!

s3 is typically where I’ve seen ppl saying Clone Wars gets gud but, for the first half of the season, I was pretty skeptical. Until ~ e11 the season’s dedicated to filling in holes from the earlier seasons which, frankly, didn’t really need to be filled? Like: I’m not really sure WHO, in the audience, would be sitting around wondering “gee, I wonder what’s going on with Mandalore’s trade-policy during all of this?”?? Or “was a Republic Army sent to help Ryloth when it was first invaded, and what happened to it?”??? And most of this not only felt pretty unnecessary, but was also pretty Meh (:T There were good bits! Like, I didnt ACTL mind the Ryloth ep, and it acts as a declaration of sorts that it’s now both open-season on Jedi(yeah, technically Kit Fisto’s ex-padawan Vebb died in Lair of Grievous, but he was very much An Outlier), and more broadly open-season on named&faced humanoid characters.

To give an example: not ONLY does Domino Squad from Rookies in s1 get a fleshing-out backstory(which is... very Pat and derivative and convenient, but the characterization is ok given they’ve only got one 22min ep to do it in. & I liked 99′s whole role as basically surrogate dad to all the other clones), but pretty much ALL of them, I think, end up getting killed off during the season? Like I said it’s a clear statement they want to break with the past while building on the “hey fans: CLONES ARE PEOPLE! THEIR SITUATION IN THIS WAR IS MONSTROUS!!” message the series has been soft-peddling from the beginning, but I feel like they didnt really commit to it enough. Like: IF they had stuck with the Domino survivors throughout the season, if we’d gotten to see them in episode after episode, gotten to know them better alongside the other members of Rex’s ARC battalion, gotten to see them face dangers and survive them, only to watch, agonized, as they, and the rest of the Battalion vets, slowly get picked off in the increasingly dangerous missions of the second half of the season, then that would have made the message MUCH more effective, AND made the Citadel and Padawan Lost arcs much more tense.

And really all of the impactful deaths of the season sort of feel like that. Like: we get one episode to know Mina Bonteri(a human, of course) and her family before she’s killed off(though i did Dig how unceremonious and unsentimental it was; that really got across the stakes involved and the sorts of scumbags Amidala, and the audience, are dealing with). We get even less time with the Jedi killed by Oppress; a few seconds at most(and btw it’s kind of HILARIOUS how he just... bulls in there and wrecks em like it’s nothing, after two seasons of ep after ep of uneventful cat-and-mouse. Of course that’s undermined by him&Ventriss, then, utterly failing to be successful against Dooku, purely because the plot demands it |:T) Same with Master Piell. Ziro we know much better, but he was also a fairly annoying caricature and his final eps went out of their way to use him to introduce EVEN MORE annoying caricatures so, while his getting gunned down is successful in showing violence and violent death as sudden, unsentimental, and pathetic rather than heroic and worthy, we dont really care. And that’s further undercut, pretty seriously, by his being a caricature; pathos is hard to pull off with an object of laughter/scorn as it risks just making their suffering funny to the audience(which... is the OPPOSITE of what you want to accomplish). This isnt helped by having the Jedi who find him basically shrugging at his death before racing into a Cool Fight. The “Force Wielders” in the Mortis arc suffer from the same problems(and also: Force Dualism&”The Chosen One” Talk: BLEAGH!). The only one of these they manage to get right, to me, is Kalifa’s death in Padawan Lost which, due to us getting more time to see her sitch and hear her&the other younglings talk about it, genuinely ends up having an emotional impact(if still feeling super-convenient and a bit improbable)((also I love the inclusion of a predator ep, even if they’re cheap dime-story predators)).

The same goes for all the non-death falls and endangerments. The corruption of the Mandalorian Prime Minister falls flat because we barely know him, and he’s never been portrayed as sympathetic or, for that matter, as anything other than a factotum. The only Pantoran we know in Sphere of Influence is Senator Chuchi, and more than half the episode is dedicated to the Prime Minister, his Son, and his(interchangeable) daughters(and we never see any of these characters again in the season); the ep comes off as nothing more than an excuse to reference Greedo(and Im annoyed by him speaking common all of a sudden. Who watching CW would have a problem with subtitles?).

BUT! They’re trying!! They’re moving in the right direction!!! I’m happy about this ^v^ And the later half of the season, while I have my problems with certain episodes, and the continued non-human stereotypes, and the convenient writing, and the not-great(tho getting better!) dialogue, is actually kind of entertaining, and attention-bearing. Arc Troopers, the 2nd ep of the season, is Solid! The Mortis arc is good, overall! The Citadel and Padawan Lost arcs are Compelling!! I like the Witches of Dathomiir, even if their Arc is “Meh” because the series IMMEDIATELY undercuts their cool concept(aside from the laser-bows which are LEGITIMATELY Stupid. I’m sorry; I will not argue over this they’re Dum) by having their plans, and all the implication towards deep plots&cunning manipulation, turn out to be empty and fruitless(ie, Dooku totally should have been terribly wounded by all this, which would have also been cool re: Sidious, as it’d imply THAT WAS HIS PLAN ALL ALONG! TO WEAKEN THE GROWING POWER OF HIS APPRENTICE AND DRAG THE WAR OUT EVEN LONGER!!) Also: the Witches, rather than being “magic users” drawing from the “unique power” of their ~evil planet~(a swamp, of course, following long-established Magic the Gathering tradition u_u) should have just totally been a non-Sith(possibly Pre-Jedi) sect of Dark Side Force Users. I really like the idea of Non-Jedi/Non-Sith(since they’re literally just two sides of the SAME tradition; the Sith are literally Jedi Heretics) Force Traditions being out there in the galaxy, and this was a good chance to build on that which I felt they didnt do enough with, and hope they WILL do more with in future(I especially like the ideas of force-attuned poison? Like what if they could “poison” or “curse” people THROUGH the Force? That would be sweet as hell :3).

Another improvement is in the action in this season. It’s not at a level I’d call “thrilling” or anything, but it feels much less like stiff, rote, weightless FLUFF than it has in the two previous seasons. Frankly I think a lot of this is just their engine and how ppls joints just sort of SNAP into position during fights, and also the excessive acrobatics of the prequel-style, both of which makes it feel unnatural, predetermined, and performative rather than deadly and vital(like excessively practiced and robotically acted choreography, basically). But, having said that, you see ppl make mistakes, you see consequences FOR those mistakes, and thus there is SOME sense of danger and weight to it that makes it more compelling than it has been in the past, and this should be praised uwu

And I like that the Politics are a lot clearer and more forefronted in this season than previously! While the Corruption Arc on Mandalore did feel rather hollow, rushed, and After-School-Specially(and, I DEEPLY resent its peddling of offensive and baseless anti-Ophidian tropes >:( ), it’s core message abt the dangers of profiteering and the corrupting influence of profit-seeking(ie Capitalism) on politics and society is a good one and clearly delivered. The Amidala episodes in this season Knock it out of the park consistently, and especially on their messaging ^v^ ^v^ Also, I DIDNT MIND the very fillery C3PO and R2 ep! Yes: it was essentially a waste of an episode since Bane was working for the Hutts to spring Ziro in s1′s Hostage Crisis & there’s basically NO WAY they wouldnt have been able to provide him with a set of plans for the Senate building(and the prison, for that matter), but WHATEVER: it was Kind Of Fun and I like seeing those two be an old bickering married couple and C3PO freak out over getting praised; IT WAS FINE!

So, while there werent any standout ep that I REALLY ENJOYED like Trespass in s1 and R2 Come Home in s2, and I very much didn’t like the 1st half of the season, I think I do have to concede that s3 is An Improvement, overall. I’m actually a bit excited over moving on to s4, given the upward trajectory this season ends on quality-wise owo

Oh: and the Ahsoka redesign? Neat uwu uwu(if untentionally Hilarious since they havent been changing her model over time so she just... grows three feet and bulks out in, like, a single night, presumably. Togruta Puberty must be HELL :p :p :p)

[sol1056]

three anons: what the hell was all that in S7

Picking out the three that are most to the point for this answer, but I’ve got another dozen or so that overlap. Not sure I’ll have time/energy to answer the rest individually, so hopefully this meta will be sufficient. 

I mean it could be that they had different execs back then who were better at their jobs and kept Shiro around. No one disliked black paladin Shiro, even the DotU fans were ok with it, and the writing in s1-2 was mostly very good. Changing all that was a bad idea. I would have left on the spot if Shiro died or was benched, like now, I'm only around for closure. Maybe they were different execs with this decision & the EPs leaped at the chance. Well, we know who's also gonna be in trouble if that's the case.

With your theory on how storyboards were reused and characters shuffled around for cost cutting, might this not also partly explain the Adam flashback scene and how it was staged? I mean, they were originally supposed to be roommates and the scene was meant to appear in season 2 but got cut. What if they just reused the storyboard (or even animation, if it was already mostly done) the way it was and then just changed the dialogue? This could explain the lack of intimacy in the staging, too. Ezor and Zethrids interactions were more openly intimate maybe not (just) because they‘re villains who die immediately after, but because the decision to make them an item came before storyboarding was done, so the staging is more suggestive. I mean, if you think Shiro was mostly pasted in in the first half of s7, that might make sense.

If cost was the issue and they already had the black paladin Shiro version written, and got the greenlight to change it to Keith then things don't add up. Because they changed it once more! Which could have been avoided if they stuck to the Shiro one. And it goes without saying it would be better written to follow canon instead of the mess we got, like, I cant imagine this NOT discussed. So if it wouldn't be cost effective to change it again for Keith and it would be badly written, why did it happen?

Behind the cut: the most likely chronology of revisions, the clues in S7 as to its original form, and what this means for S8 and the Black Paladin position. 

This is everything I’ve been able to figure out between interviews, podcasts, tweets, plus researching the industry and a few reality-checks with friends more familiar. As always, any mistakes are my own. 

version 0: "five teenagers"

This would’ve been the first pitch after getting the green light, and probably only a loose synopsis, with just the pilot given a rough storyboard. A post-apocalyptic Earth conquered by the Galra, who are seeking Blue. The execs rejected JDS' mechanism for the discovery of Blue, in favor of simply having Keith ‘sense’ Blue. The execs also rejected the idea that Shiro would die only a few episodes in. This summary seems to be the basis of the "five teenagers" part of the teaser.

version A: "shiro kicks the bucket"

Timelines would've dictated moving onto an outline pretty quickly, detailed down to the episode level, including bits of dialogue, motifs, turning points or emotional beats. In this revision, Shiro dies/leaves at the end of S2 and does not return. This is the “originally we wanted him to kick the bucket” version, which the execs rejected.

version B: "shiro goes away for awhile"

If I'm interpreting the hints correctly, the "does Shiro die or not" question got tossed back and forth all the way into S1/S2 pre-production. Rather than rearrange everything, the easiest fix would've been to leave most of the story intact and write only a new ending where Shiro returns. The execs reject this rewrite, saying Shiro can’t be gone that long. This is the “we tried to just have him gone for awhile, but the execs said he had to come back sooner” version.

version C: "enter the clone"

Again, easiest fix is to insert Shiro/Kuron, remove Keith, and reverse that just before Shiro's return in version B. This impacts only the middle seasons (S3-S6); the clone compromise satisfies the execs. Kuron's characterization makes a lot more sense if it’s Keith, in visuals (ie Kuron leaning against the wall in Keith fashion), dialogue (fighting with Lance), and action (leaving without consulting the team). It's also why no one mentions Keith's absence. Because in the original version A, Keith was standing right there.

version D: "wtf is going on", aka Season 7

When JDS mentions having a full season written with Shiro as Black Paladin, it didn't make sense how they'd have a script and not use it. With @ptw30's visual detective work, I think I may've figured it out.

Technical notes: first scripts are all written for a season, then voices are recorded, and then the combined script+recording is used to storyboard. Production seasons are 26-episodes, independent of actual broadcast seasons; VA may be recording scenes across two 13-episode seasons completely out of order, since the recording schedule's going to be based on who's available, not chronology of the file numbers. The biggest staff changes are usually in April ('staffing season') when new shows get the greenlight and start sharking around to catch writers, designers, directors, etc.

In March of this year, S5 was released. At least some of the storyboarders were released in time for staffing season; in April, Hedrick moves to a new project. With S7/S8 being unchanged since version B, I suspect Hedrick delivered the scripts for S7 and S8 by winter of last year, at latest. Even that would be tight, since that's expecting animation to deliver 26 episodes in an 8-month timeframe. [edit: probably delivered much earlier, given the studio leaks show images we can recognize from S7/S8, so some amount of these seasons were in production by then.]

In June, S6 dropped, and a week later, Hamilton was announced as the new story editor via the Lets Voltron podcast. With the lead time required in production, there doesn't seem to be any reason to even need a story editor, at this point. All the pre-production work should be done.

In August, S7 dropped. Hedrick's editor credit is only for the first half of the season; Hamilton gets it for the second half. That means the last six episodes were written after Hedrick's departure. (May Chan's S2 script was reused in part, and she gains a belated co-writing script credit for that. Hedrick should've received the same; it's standard.)

Let's recap a few things we know (and a few we can intuit) about S7:

The season was already written with Shiro returning as Black Paladin, possibly also recorded and storyboarded. 

S6 reversed the S4-S5 trend, lending strength to exec arguments that Shiro is necessary in the story.

After S6 dropped, the EPs said the wolf's name was a spoiler. See this post from @pwt30; tl;dr is that perhaps the EPs intended the wolf to be Shiro's spirit. 

Despite Shiro's return, he's absent for the majority of the first half; when he is present, he barely speaks a half-dozen words, and none are plot-relevant. See @ptw30's post for more details. 

There's a glaring incontinuity when Allura says the paladin armor protected the team, yet Shiro is frozen with the other non-paladins despite wearing armor. 

Keith never offers for Shiro to pilot, nor mentions it, nor even seems to consider it an issue.

Not everything dovetails since I don't have the full picture, but here's my theory: S7 was originally outlined with Shiro's spirit in the wolf, rather than Black. I have no idea when/how JDS would've thought up the CA:WS parallels for his sole writing credit, but Shiro's "I died" and Lotor's psychotic breakdown are squeezed into S6E6, which was written by Josh Hamilton, Hedrick's later replacement. The only other Shiro-in-Black point is a few minutes at the end of S6's final episode. Shifting from Shiro-in-wolf to Shiro-in-Black really only affects one episode, with a bit of editing for another.

Anyway, S6 ends version C, and we segue to version B. For the first half of S7, the clone's body may have been in stasis while the team traveled through its various non-adventures. The episode we now know as S7E1 may have been the mid-point, with about six episodes of Shiro being unconcious. After watching the numbers drop from S3 to S6, the execs may've rejected another six episodes of where-is-Shiro and insisted he come back ASAP.

S7 only has two episodes that must be in order; the rest are pretty rearrangeable. All they had to do was insert Shiro into the background and record a few lines. (Several lines are pure voice-over, which also saves cost/time by not needing to animate moving mouth.) But the moved episode is only his memory/awakening, and the logical next episode would be Shiro's reconnection, and the rest of the season would roll from there. Without moving the entire second half of the season to the start, moving only his awakening episode would mean Shiro does nothing for 5-6 episodes and then abruptly reconnects.  

In a recent interview, JDS said at first the execs weren't enthused until JDS talked up the new mecha they'd give Shiro to captain. Honestly, there's no way JDS got to be EP without giving a really good pitch, but there may've been another element to his argument: nostalgia. The EPs seem certain everyone suffers from their same nostalgia dementia, which if you do, then you probably have been waiting for any glimpse of that og!Keith. If Shiro returns at the start of S7, then Keith's time in Black has been limited to a few disastrous episodes in S3, and a single big battle in S6. The beginning of S7 is the only time we'd ever see the Voltron84 formation working as a unified team, and returning Shiro too soon would defeat the whole purpose of showing how the team has grown in his absence.

The solution seems to have been to remove Shiro's reconnection completely, and keep Keith in Black. That would mean re-recording Shiro's lines from the midpoint onward, and editing in Keith over Shiro. The savings would be that only half the seaon would have to be reworked, not all. The loose end of the space wolf --- an artifact of version B --- was left in place.  

What I'm not sure of is whether the following are significant enough changes to warrant removing Hedrick's name and replacing it with Hamilton's. It could be, if supervising the revision process is enough to override the previous credits. I have no idea about that part of the industry, and it's the kind of edge case you're just not going to find a lot of blog posts about, so if you know, tell me. Otherwise, your guess is as good as mine.

Anyway, this would've meant Shiro was switched in for Allura, Allura was put back in a lion, and Keith was switched in for Shiro. This would explain why Shiro speaks as the leader of Voltron despite no longer being a paladin, and the uneasy sensations a lot of people got about the characterizations. It was most striking in the last three episodes: Shiro felt like Allura v2, while Keith felt like Shiro v2. And that further, the Altean-Earthian ship just 'lighting up' for Shiro --- and becoming that oversized white mecha --- may've meant as Allura's fourth (fifth?) deus ex machina.

I'd be willing to bet that mid-battle, Allura repeated her stunt from the end of S2, heading out to destroy Sendak's crystal by herself. She wouldn't need Sam to hack her brain, and then we'd also have a call back to when she got knocked down by the crystal-ball thing on Naxzela. If she was the one meant to go toe-to-toe with Sendak, that would explain the bizarre neutrality of Sendak's words --- he says nothing personal to Shiro, at all --- and the even more bizarre silence on Shiro's part. Allura's words wouldn't fit Shiro, so he's silent.

And lastly, it'd mean that the one leaping out of Black to cut down Sendak wouldn't have been Keith. It would've been Shiro.

Where would the story go from here?

If I look at the events of S7, the first half is terribly disjointed, really. If Shiro was supposed to wake at the midpoint, an episode (or two) is missing. One for him to reconnect with Black, and a second that would provide some minor conflict to settle him back into position. Those two episodes were likely replaced with the unexpected and frankly over-told two-parter of the Earth flashbacks.

Two problems with that, one technical, one structural.

First, the flashback two-parter has a lot of moving parts. Brand-new designs, characters, and backdrops. It's far too elaborate to be done in an ultra-compressed timeframe, not without several heart attacks and therapy bills on the part of the animation staff. (Plus, the US-based storyboarding team is already downsized, so fewer hands to do the work.)

Second, it doesn't make a lot of structural sense, especially against the big revelations in S6 of an existing Altean colony. Within the story, there's no reason to halt everything and travel across the universe to take however long to build a new castle, when the Altean colony question is far more pressing. Returning to earth also violates the structure, because it's really just a standard milieu: start on earth, head out to have adventures, and return home at the end.

But here, they're returning home and then possibly leaving again. That's just... a rather peculiar and imbalanced way to do it. It doesn't help that doing so means literally telling Romelle her people are just gonna have to rot, the paladins are certain they need the castle more. Why would you take one of the more compelling storylines you've come up with, only to background it again, and wreck the traditional bookending milieu structure at the same time? Especially if that means coming up with major set-pieces and brand-new designs in the space of several months, after a chunk of your core staff are already onto other things.

I think those two flashback episodes -- and the rewritten finale episodes --- may've been cribbed from S8. In other words, the second half of S7 was the original end of S8. That would mean repurposing already-created storyboards and animation artifacts, so there's a huge time savings there (not counting the need to re-record voices and edit the visuals to match the changed-around parts). 

[note: if there’s anywhere you want to frontload introductions for the spin-off, it’d be in the final season, not the penultimate season. Here it feels like a big honking distraction, rather than an organic segue into the next iteration.]

That change necessitated that utterly bizarro mecha that appeared out of nowhere with the most ridiculously impeccable timing. There needed to be a reason to pull the team back out to space to deal with Haggar and/or the alt-Alteans and/or Lotor or whomever else it turns out to be.

So... where we go from here depends on when S8 gets released, because that’ll tell us how much they did (or did not) edit the episodes. Another clue will be whose name gets listed as head editor for an episode; if we see Hedrick’s name reappear at the top, we’ll know we’re dealing with episodes that are enough unrevised to qualify as being Hedrick-edited, that it’s a version B episode. 

My expectation? They’ll move Shiro’s reconnection to the first part of S8, and add an episode or edit pieces of another, to blend it into what would’ve been the first half of S8 (probably with filler to mask the gap). Then add an episode to segue into the version B finale of S7, where we’d end with the original VLD lineup. With the time needed for animation, that’d be the easiest (if potentially awkward) way to repurpose as much as possible of existing artifacts. 

If we don’t get S8 in the next 1-2 months, though, all bets are off, and there’s a much greater possibility that the entire final season is being redone from scratch. I’d expect Keith to stay in Black, in that case, but I’m always willing to be pleasantly surprised.  

edited to add: see this followup for another detail that supports the reversed-seasons theory

[gch1995]

I want to watch new Drama/Fantasy TV series on Netflix and Hulu to get the bad taste that OUAT and TWD left in my mouth.

Here is what I want:

• A show that is more strongly driven by the characters consistently and believably, rather than half-cocked convoluted plots, and/or the creators/writers abrupt, blatantly biased, hypocritical, petty, and unfair preferential treatment of their favorite characters/ships, who they destroy other great characters/ships that they don’t care about as much to prop up their pet characters/ships up onto pedestals that they don’t deserve-

I dealt with six seasons of the continuity and logic of every rule of magic, relationships, storylines, and most of the timeline from S1 getting deliberately retconned left and right more and more inexplicably at the drop of a hat every season afterwards for (oftentimes disappointing) random plot twist convenience, and the writers completely stopped trying in 3B when they broke the rule of magic not being able to bring back the dead and decided “Fuck all the rules of continuity and realism in characterization and organic development in any of our remaining main characters, and fuck any and all sort of sort of storytelling integrity in writing a canon that consistently sticks to its timeline and rules of magic! We’re just going to reframe the entire narrative around Hook’s “redemption” arc and CS by ruining/retconning everyone else’s original characterization and development from S1-3A, and do whatever the hell we want with magic and the timeline on this show now because LOL, BOLD STORYTELLING! We’re really just too afraid to admit that we’re a team of horrible creative writers and show-runners, who didn’t know how to write more than two-and-a-half seasons of satisfying and original character development, who, thus, ran out of good new ideas for what else to do after 3x11, and who, thus,, would have done a lot better just ending the show with that episode because that’s clearly all we could handle before ruining everything that made this show genuinely entertaining to fans in the first place with our plot fuckery and character/ship favoritism!”

I quit watching OUAT after S5, but I still dealt with watching roughly four seasons of Rumple, Belle, Rumbelle, and Emma getting made OOC, and later on, outright destroyed in favor of cheaply emotionally manipulative “Gotcha” plot twists, and A&E and their team of hacks petty and hypocritical favoritism that led them to prop up Zelena, Regina, and especially Hook/CS onto pedestals that they didn’t deserve in their favor by ruining them to make them look better by comparison without really doing much to change them, or making them sympathetic characters in their own right, especially post 3A. I still kept up with the spoilers post S5, so I know about what they did to ruin all my faves to prop up Hook/CS, Zelena, and even the dark half of the EQ some more in 6A, past the point of no return this time around, basically.

It would be one thing if Hook/CS had always been a main character/ship on the show, and Rumple, Belle, Rumbelle, and Emma had always been framed/written as unsympathetic characters and a ship that the GA was supposed to consistently root against from day one. But that’s not how it was set up, no matter what A&E and these writers try to insist otherwise.

Hook was meant to be a guest villain, but A&E and these writers got distracted by him so much so that they decided to make him a regular by setting him up with Emma out of nowhere, having him take Neal’s place in the series, retconned the beauty of everyone else’s original characterizations, developments, and storylines on the show to make him look more “sympathetic” without actually doing anything to build him up that way organically post 3A, and made him the entire lead of the show.

Emma started out as a badass, compassionate, selfless, and sympathetic underdog for the little guy and the main protagonist on the show from day one until they forced her together with Hook, and ruined her to set them up post S3.

As for Rumple, he had always been written as a problematic fave from day one. I acknowledge that he had done horrible things that I could never realistically excuse, but from 1x08-3A there was a deeper sympathetic motive for why that was always explained on screen. He quickly became a fan favorite who the GA quickly sympathized with and rooted for as a sort of anti-heroic underdog, who with had a genuinely beautiful, believable, and consistent characterization and struggle for redemption that we saw, and expected to continue to see regularly once we saw his tragic and unfair backstory, and we learned about his love for Belle and particularly Bae and saw how everything he did he did out of love for them. We saw that he had a bizzarely adorable friendship with David, and we saw that he, Belle, and Neal were always willing to offer advice, compassion, emotional support, and understanding when he brokenly and honestly opened up to them for it by offering it in without enabling his bad choices, mercilessly judging him with negative assumptions without asking questions first, or giving him a chance to open up to them honestly, acting hypocritical, acting like they were so above him and incapable of having their own flaws and making mistakes, or making him feel guilty for not giving up magic for them. Belle had always had the short end of the stick on the show when they made her a regular because she often got fridged for Rumple’s man pain from S2-S3, but they outright destroyed everything that made her a great character to begin with from S4-S6 to prop up Hook/CS, Zelena, and Regina by turning her against Rumple, even when it didn’t make any sense for her to do so. When Hook/CS became the lead of the show, Neal was killed off. Rumple and Belle’s consistently sympathetic and complex original characterizations and development/redemption arcs in the narrative got so horrible butchered, and the two most important relationships in his storyline all got abruptly thrown under the bus and trashed on this show by A&E and these writers for roughly five seasons with bad writing, even in the final season when they decided not to fuck up Rumple’s redemption arc halfway through, just so they could prop up Hook/CS, Zelena, and Regina by shitting on him.

I don’t want to have to deal with watching another TV series where beautiful, complex, and relatable fictional characters and ships are abruptly made OOC, and/or outright destroyed in favor of stupid plot twists. I don’t want to deal with watching another show in which the creator(s), writers, and/or network have Gary Stu/Mary Sue pet characters/ships, who abruptly get unfair preferential treatment from the creators and writers in the narrative on the show with my personal favorite characters/ships getting abruptly, cruelly, and unfairly thrown under the bus for their benefit.

• A show that is run and written by a team of people, who don’t offensively enable, encourage, or casually dismiss ableism, abuse, rape culture, incest, racism, and sexism in the tropes they use in the writing for their individual characters, the relationships between them, the plot devices they sometimes make them use, especially if they let them get away with using them, and the plots they set them up in-

I had to watch every character and relationship on OUAT get tainted in canon with all of these offensively problematic issues in the the tropes in the writing for them in one way or another more and more from day one of this trash show of wasted potential in ways that disgusted me, including all of my faves, such as Emma, Rumple, Belle, and Rumbelle, just because A&E and their team of writers never learned from their mistakes, and refused to do so.

I don’t want to deal with that shit again on another show, or try to justify it, especially not in characters who often don’t get how problematic what they did or said is because the creators and writers behind them refuse to understand how problematic their writing for some of the things they make them do and say actually is in canon, and refuse to address it, no matter how many times the fans call them out for their shit.

I don’t want to have to deal with watching another TV series where beautiful, complex, and relatable fictional characters and ships are abruptly made OOC, and/or outright destroyed in favor of stupid plot twists. I don’t want to deal with watching another show in which the creator(s), writers, and/or network have Gary Stu/Mary Sue pet characters/ships, who abruptly get unfair preferential treatment from the creators and writers in the narrative on the show with my personal favorite characters/ships getting abruptly, cruelly, and unfairly thrown under the bus for their benefit.

• A show that is run and written by people who understand how to portray realistic reactions and fallouts to trauma and untreated mental illness in their characters by acknowledging that it exists and that it happened in the narrative, and allowing them to get help for it when they reach out for it. Instead of pretending that it never happened to vilify a character by refusing to allow them to get help, or emotional support from loved ones, even when they do try to reach out to them for it honestly, or work on being better to constantly make them feel like they have no choice but to revert back to self-destructive behavior, trying to prop up the character who traumatized them, or simply because the characters, who were traumatized in their narrative are the “good guys,” and the “good guys” aren’t allowed to have realistic reactions to trauma and mental illness because they are “strong” and the “bad guys” are “weak” from the ableist show-runners and writers point of view-

I dealt with watching this shit on OUAT for five seasons from season one, and from the spoilers I read about season six and seven after finally quitting, it didn’t get any better because A&E and these writers are hacks.

• A show run and written by people, who don’t make it so blatantly obvious that they are emotionally manipulating you with false hope by dangling a carrot before your eyes, only to abruptly snatch it away with a cruel “shock” value twist in their storytelling that becomes incredibly and disappointingly predictable when dealing with it as a viewer for five to six seasons-

Look, I get it, bad things happen in life. However, it becomes predictable bad writing and cruel storytelling when it becomes obvious that you are being emotionally manipulated by show-runners and writers with false hope for your faves. It becomes predictable bad writing and cruel storytelling when there is an increasingly obvious pattern in the narrative of the types of characters/ships that these writers abruptly and inorganically screw over out of nowhere after giving their fans false hope for them in the narrative, only to deliberately and cruelly screw them over for cheap “shock value, and/or to prop up their faves by displacing all of their shit onto their default scapegoat character through making him or her look bad without actually doing anything to have their Gary Stu/Mary Sue faves truly do anything to prove that they are reformed.

Were D&D and Scott Gimple too stupid to think to think that fans of their shows would ever realize that they often tended to abruptly kill off the purest living cinnamon rolls cruelly and abruptly in their show’s universe every season for shock value out of nowhere after giving their fans false hope on Game of Thrones and TWD?

Were Adam and Eddy too stupid to realize that Dearies/Rumbellers would ever realize that they abruptly and cruelly mostly turned their narrative against Rumple and his loved ones to prop up all their lame ass faves and CS after they killed off Neal and brought him back from the dead to make him an on-and-off-again trickster, even after spending the first two-and-a-half seasons of OUAT building up Rumple as a consistently sympathetic, emotionally complex, and redeemable character on the show?

• A show that is written and run by people who understand how to give their endgame romantic couples and familial relationships realistic, consistent, complex, healthy, in-character, and well-written conflict and resolution-

A&E and their team hacks often lacked the desire and ability to write realistic, consistent, complex, healthy, in-character, and well-written conflict and resolution between their characters, especially in later seasons. The only main living romantic couple, who remained mostly untainted in canon by their increasingly OOC, gross, unhealthy, and unrealistic character assassinating plot fuckery romantic soap opera angst in canon post 3A by S6, was Snowing, and that’s only because A&E and their team of writers didn’t care enough about them to give them any significany screen time, or any interesting storylines post 3A.

[themattress]

OUAT Season 5 - How It Should Have Gone

OUAT should have been a 5-season show (most serialized shows should only aim for 5 seasons, IMO).  As it stands, with three overall strong seasons in S1, S2, and S3, and three overall weak seasons in S4, S6 and S7, S5 stood firmly in the middle - a lot of brilliant stuff in it made it a solid season, but a lot of awful stuff in it dragged it down from its full potential.  Still, the season’s second half, 5B, was the strongest the show had been since the S3 finale, the best it was going to get past 4x11, and thus would’ve been the highest note to go out on if only they had made 5x22 and 5x23 a series finale rather than a mediocre Season 6 lead-in.  

But in this post, I’m gonna go even further and radically change much of the season to make it what I feel would have been an ideal final season for OUAT. In order to start that, the ending to the S4 finale would have to be changed: it would cut off at 1:27 here - the final shot of the season would be the heroes standing in the street, with Emma saying that the Darkness has surrounded Storybrooke. This means no bullshit sacrifice for Regina because “she’s worked too hard for her happy ending” turning Emma into the new Dark One. Dark Swan was a horrible idea for S5, a prospective Camelot arc was more than enough.

5x01 - No stupid opening with young Emma and Merlin, the first scene instead is the one with Arthur, Lancelot and Percival finding Excalibur, which transitions into a shot of the Dark One dagger, which is still being held by Emma and has no name on it. The heroes return to the Apprentice, who says that the Darkness cannot do much on its own right now, but that it will gain power as it spreads through more realms and absorbs their light, and that the only way to destroy it is by reuniting the dagger with the rest of Excalibur. He then gives them Merlin’s wand, which can be used to slow the Darkness’ progress if wielded by light and darkness of equal shares. This naturally means that it will be wielded by Emma and Lily. Yeah, Lily has a major role in this final season, and why shouldn’t she? She’s Emma’s dark counterpart, and the fact that she carries Emma’s original darkness which binds her and Emma’s fates together forever was commented on by Merlin himself in 4x19. Forget the mystery of her father - dropping Lily herself from the story altogether after all that set-up was terrible writing.

Anyway, Lily is conflicted about accepting this role because she thinks she’ll screw it up just like she has everything in her life. When she refuses to go along with it, the heroes turn to Zelena instead. Zelena pulls a fast one and makes an attempt to summon a twister back to Oz, but Lily steps in and defeats her, having decided to join in after all because it might be the best chance she has of ever finding her father. The heroes go into Granny’s and are transported to Camelot. When they arrive, they are confronted by none other than Rumpelstiltskin, who is an avatar of the Darkness who confirms the death of Mr. Gold, much to Belle’s grief. Emma and Lily use the wand to make Rumple disappear, but not before he promises that they can’t ever shake him off for too long and that he will return.  The episode ends with the heroes meeting King Arthur and being taken to the actual kingdom of Camelot.

5x02 - This episode would be all about the heroes adjusting to life in Camelot. They are shown Merlin’s tree and are told that there is no known way to free him, and that is what they will have to search for. There is a scene of Snow and Charming preparing Emma for the ball and teaching her how to formally dance (because really, why the fuck would it be Regina?) The ballroom dance, Henry and Violet’s first meeting, and the playing of Only You, basically the S5 theme song, is the same. Percival confronts Regina over the destruction of his village, with the backstory behind that event being this episode’s flashback. Percival is restrained rather than killed, Robin isn’t stabbed, and Regina has to confess to being the Evil Queen. She accepts being locked in the castle dungeon as punishment, but there is a scene toward the end of the episode indicating that Arthur isn’t such a pure ruler himself, and that he has his own plans. The episode ends with Rumple standing besides a moonlit lake, with a fog rolling in and Charon appearing on a boat. Rumple tells Charon that he’s going to need help, and asks him to relay that request to his boss, setting up the Big Bad of the season: Hades.

5x03 - The present-day plot is mostly the same as the flashback in the actual 5x03, but with the scene between Regina and Zelena gone and some new character-building scenes added in. The flashback is a full one of Arthur’s childhood, how he met Guinevere, how he first made contact with Merlin and learned of his destiny, and how he became a hero and a king who formed the Round Table. The phantom knights Arthur and Charming encounter on their quest are now the help that Rumple received from the Underworld, with Rumple himself being there and declaring that the Darkness gains strength through snuffing out the light, which is why all defenders and carriers of the light must die. The episode ends with Charming receiving the Siege Perilous just as Snow encounters Lancelot, who reveals that Arthur is really a villain.

5x04 - This episode is mostly unchanged, with the exception of the framing device with Dark Emma, the motive of helping save Emma, and Merida’s appearance, all of which are gone. Instead, the motive is still finding a way to free Merlin so that he can restore Excalibur and help them destroy the Darkness. Emma is still being haunted by Rumple, but because she is a beacon of light that he wishes to psychologically destroy, not because she is the Dark One. Lily has left to go searching for her father, so it’s up to Hook to help drive Rumple away from Emma. The flashback is the same. Arthur learns that the heroes have been holding the other half of Exaclibur (the Dark One dagger) all along and tries to claim it. Snow, Charming and Lancelot trap him, but Guinevere uses mind-control sand on Snow and Charming and has Lancelot arrested, the episode ending with him being put in a cell opposite to Regina’s. 

5x05 - Snow and Charming successfully take the dagger and give it to Arthur, who now holds both halves of Exaclibur. He now only needs to find the way to free Merlin and learn from him how to combine them, after which he plans on slaying Merlin as well as the Darkness and becoming king over all realms, the greatest king there ever was, delusionally convinced that his goal is a righteous one. The rest of the episode focuses on Lily as she searches for her father, with the flashback being a twist on the tale of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight - when Sir Gawain fails the Green Knight’s test, he is cursed into basically becoming a were-dragon, which leads to him exiling himself from Camelot for everyone’s own safety. Lily finds Sir Gawain, who is of course her father, and battles him in dragon form until she is able to get through to him and allow him to keep his mind and control even in that form. He promises to continue learning to control his dragon transformation and will return and help Maleficent teach Lily to do the same once he has mastered it. The episode ends with Lily returning to Camelot, only to overhear Arthur discussing his true goal, with her running to tell Emma. 

5x06 - This episode focuses on the other heroes working together to bring Snow and Charming back to their senses and steal the Dark One dagger back from Arthur, as Emma has used a magic dreamcatcher to see how Merlin was trapped in the tree to begin with and now knows that reversing it will require the dagger. Things are complicated by Rumple appearing to Arthur and alerting him to what the heroes are doing. Henry and Violet’s subplot is the same, except that Violet truly does romantically reject Henry and he just has to learn how to accept that. Merlin is freed from the tree by Emma, which forces Arthur and his men to retreat. There is no flashback in this episode save for the opening one with Merlin and the first Dark One. The episode ends with the heroes relocating to Granny’s, which has now been transformed into a medieval biergarten, and planning to break Regina and Lancelot out of prison, while Rumple reports to Charon that Merlin is free and that they need to get serious.

5x07 - The episode opens with Regina and Lancelot being sprung from prison by the heroes, largely thanks to Merlin, and joining them at Granny’s, which was the opening scene of the actual 5x06. The rest of the episode follows the actual 5x07 exactly, with the exception of anything involving Emma being the Dark One, of course. The flashback is of Merlin and Nimue’s story. Emma, alongside Merlin and Lily, go to get the Promethean Flame which can unite both halves of Excalibur, ending up facing the Darkness in its original persona, Nimue. Snow, Charming, Hook and Robin attempt to steal Exaclibur from Arthur’s castle, but Zelena sells them out. Arthur tethers Merlin to the hilt of Excalibur, which forces the sorcerer to appear before him and be his servant. The episode ends with Arthur coming for the Flame. 

5x08 - This episode mostly goes the same way the actual 5x08 did in its flashback, with the big change coming at the end. Emma unites the dagger and Excalibur’s hilt together, completing the sword that can destroy the Darkness. Only then does Hook start dying. Emma transports him to the flower field and, rather than force the Darkness on him, Emma uses Exaclibur to channel the Darkness and become the Dark One, who uses the power of the Darkness to heal Hook’s wound and save his life, but now the Darkness cannot be destroyed with Exaclibur as its is bound to it and to Emma, which also means that she and Lily can no longer keep it at bay. The flashback is a fragmented one - each time it flashes back, it is to the life of a different would-be Dark One, and we see the reason as to why they took on the Darkness. The episode ends with Charon’s boat carrying Nimue and all those Dark Ones to the land of the living and meeting with Rumple, an after-effect of the Darkness being bound to the full sword of Excalibur rather than just the tip, as they plan to finally snuff out the light. 

5x09 - Exact same as the real 5x09, but without Merida vowing revenge on Arthur. This is her only appearance, and is mainly there to set up Ruby and Mulan’s role later on down the road.

5x10 - As the newest Dark One, Emma can now sense that the other Dark Ones have arrived and are gathering their strength to attack Camelot. She asks Merlin to kill her and thus destroy the Darkness, but Merlin says it cannot be done now - if she was stabbed with Exaclibur, whoever killed her would only become the next Dark One. Lancelot says that they can at least destroy the physical bodies of the dead Dark Ones, mentioning that they came from the Underworld from a mystical lake, and that it’s the same lake his mother lives under and that she may provide the key to defeating them. The flashback is about Lancelot, how he left the lake and came to be known as the Leviathan, and how he met Arthur and joined the Round Table. At the lake, they find that Lancelot’s mother was actually part of the Darkness’ scheme all along, letting this lake be used for their purposes because she wanted Camelot destroyed in order to avenge her son, as she blamed Camelot for causing his exile and supposed death at the hands of Cora. Now knowing that he is alive, Lancelot’s mother is deeply regretful and tries to stand up to Nimue only to be killed by her. The episode ends with the heroes escaping and giving Lancelot’s mother a proper burial, while Nimue speaks with a disembodied voice within a blue flame (similar to how Merlin was in 4x19), promising him the souls of everyone in Camelot. The voice is, of course, Hades, performed by Greg Germann. 

5x11 - No flashbacks here, just an epic stand-off to decide the fate of Camelot. The heroes come in with Emma defeating and detaining Arthur and Zelena with ease now that she’s the Dark One, taking charge of the castle and kingdom as they prepare to defend it from the approaching army of Dark Ones. Even in this dark time, every hero gets a moment to shine, including Hook who gets to strike down Rumple, and Henry who defends Violet even while establishing that he fully accepts that he’s “just friends” with her...with this ironically actually causing Violet to develop some attraction toward him. Merlin researches in his library alongside Belle this whole time and discovers a means to destroy the Darkness - a way to channel it into someone else and then have that person be stabbed with the blade it is also channeled in. Merlin prepares to do this to himself so that Emma can stab him with Exaclibur, but Nimue kills him before he can finish the spell. Seeing no other choice, Hook steps up and completes the spell, taking on the Darkness and begging Emma to stab him. Through her tears, she does so, killing Hook and destroying the Darkness. Emma rightly blames herself for this happening, trying to save Hook’s life only to end up having to kill him herself as a result of it. But then, the heroes find a message from Merlin that he magically recorded prior to his death, with him telling them that as a former Dark One, Emma can now summon Charon and gain passage to the Underworld, and that they must go there and defeat Hades, the mastermind behind this whole thing. Emma realizes that while doing that, she can split her heart with Hook and revive him. The episode ends with everyone being transported back to Storybrooke except for Emma, Snow, Charming, Regina, Robin and Henry, who return to the lake and board Charon’s boat, Emma saying “Hook, I will find you. I will always find you.”

5x12 - When the heroes arrive in the Underworld, they are greeted by an unexpected guide: Mr. Gold. He tells them that even in death he was comatose until the Darkness / Rumple was destroyed and that he will help them get Hook back in order to repay him for that favor. Unlike in the actual S5, at this point it truly looks like Gold might just be a good guy now and that he actually wants to help out. The rest of the episode, however, is essentially the same as the actual 5x12, even down to the last scene featuring the physical debut of Germann’s Hades.

5x13 - The same as the actual 5x13, but without the insulting Regina/Snow “pep talk”.

5x14 - Mostly the same as the actual 5x14, but a difference comes when Hades abducts Gold and gives him the offer to join him. Gold adamantly refuses until Hades reveals his trump card: the Darkness, which had gone to the Underworld when it was destroyed. Hades tells Gold that he will give it all to him, making him the Darkest Dark One, if he joins him. Gold’s resolve crumbles and, like the selfish coward he is, accepts the deal and the Darkness. He proceeds to throw Milah into the River of Lost Souls and claim Hades did it, and allow Hades to write the names of Emma, Snow and Regina on grave stones so that they can’t leave the Underworld. The episode ends with the reveal of Belle being pregnant due to sleeping with Gold during Isaac’s AU in 4x21/4x22, and that Hades out-Rumpled him with this deal because he now has the contract from the shaman that he signed long ago.

5x15 - Mostly the same as the actual 5x15, but with some key differences. Hook is feeling down because of the psychological effect of Hades’ torture of him rather than because he had been Dark Hook. He believes that maybe, now that he’s dead, he should stay that way because it’s what someone like him, who committed so many bad deeds, deserves. His depression in the present and past is treated purely sympathetically and correctly, rather than the bizarre notion that it’s him being “inherently vulnerable to darkness”  and implying that he needs the love of a pure woman to redeem him. The entirety of the subplot featuring Henry, the Apprentice, Charming and Cruella is removed, having been moved to the next episode.

5x16 - This episode focuses on the Underworld and explores more of how it works. The stuff with Henry, the Apprentice, Charming and Cruella occurs here, with James also entering the picture as the antagonist for the main plot, trying to capture the heroes for the crime of bringing hope into the Underworld, which ends with a fight between him and Charming where James ends up falling into the River of Lost Souls.  Regina is also shown to actually be making amends to her victims, giving her legit redemption. The episode ends with Hades having Gold bring him Zelena’s baby from Storybrooke, which also brings Zelena and Belle.

5x17 - Mostly the same as the actual 5x16, but Dorothy is removed from the flashback and thus more time is spent actually developing the relationship between Hades and Zelena.

5x18 - The start of the episode is the final scene from the actual 5x17, where Ruby is transported to the Underworld. The adventure she had in Oz did not involve Dorothy, but instead was just her and Mulan, who developed feelings for each other. Mulan’s grandmother is in the Underworld in place of Auntie Em, suffering the same fate. Belle, feeling frantic after the revelation that she’s pregnant and reuniting with Gold only to learn that he is now the Darkest Dark One and doesn’t intend on changing, goes to Zelena and gets a Sleeping Curse to place herself under in order to stop her baby from being born, thus protecting it from Hades. The episode ends with Charming carving his name on the gravestone so that Snow can leave the Underworld with Ruby, both going to Oz where Ruby gives Mulan a TLK.

5x19 - Mostly the same as the actual 5x19, except that the James subplot has been cut due to James being dealt with in 5x16, and more meaningful character moments are in its place. 

5x20 - Mostly the same as the actual 5x20, except that the flashback is entirely different, focusing on Zeus and Hades’ backstory and showing just how evil Hades is with a heart.

5x21 - Mostly the same as the actual 5x21, except that Arthur outright says rather than visually implies that his big goal in ruling the Underworld will be to help the Lost Souls recover their identities and move on now that they are able to be free from the river, and Robin is NOT killed, with Zelena’s entrance back into the room happening before Hades can use the Olympian Crystal on either him or Regina, and Robin helps Regina talk sense into Zelena. The ending is the same, with Gold claiming the leftover fragment of the Olympian Crystal.

5x22 - As everyone celebrates Hook’s miraculous return to life, Gold siphons all the magic of Storybrooke with the Olympian Crystal. His plan is to then take it out into the Land Without Magic, which will create a magical paradox that will draw the magic from all magical realms to him. All magical realms will be destroyed, the Laws of Magic will be broken, and he can free Belle and their unborn child from Pandora’s Box (and also have everything). The heroes split up, some using Merlin’s wand to evacuate denizens of magical realms that are being destroyed to the center of all realms (as seen from using Jefferson’s hat), and others pursuing Gold in hopes of reclaiming and destroying the Olympian Crystal. Gold, meanwhile, is slowly transforming into full-on imp!Rumple as a side-effect of the magic paradox. It comes down to a battle between Emma and Rumple, which ultimately causes Pandora’s Box to fall through a portal into the center of all realms, where most of the other heroes and refugees from other realms are now stranded, as the destructive dark cloud draws nearer to them.

5x23 - Rumple is stricken with guilt, but still retreats and tries to go about reversing this disaster his own way, through a ritual using the Olympian Crystal. When this fails, he breaks down and returns to being Gold. Emma, Lily, Henry and Violet find him and convince him to help them, as they’ve found all sorts of notes on magic in Neal’s apartment that August had gathered in his travels and given to Neal. They reveal the way to end this crisis, which by this point is even threatening the Land Without Magic - the wielder of the Olympian Crystal must siphon their own life force to it and thus be able to shatter it. The magic stored in it will be released, but die out unless channeled through someone born of True Love, the most powerful magic of all, which will save magic and all the realms but might just kill the channeler. They all prepare to do this when Rumple, as an avatar of the Darkness, appears and tries to tempt Gold into not doing it, into just letting Belle and their unborn child die because once the Laws of Magic are broken, he can bring them back to life anyway. But Gold is finally able to resist, unable to let his loved ones die once even if he could bring them back afterward. He sacrifices himself, killing Rumple as well, and unleashing the magic which Emma then channels and releases as a wave of True Love, restoring all the realms and all of their friends, even freeing Belle from the box and waking her, and even erasing all of her natural darkness from Lily. Emma seems to die, but Henry’s TLK revives her. The show ends with a montage of everyone’s happy ending, foremost being Emma and Hook’s engagement and marriage. Heck, maybe even this plays. And of course, they all live happily ever after.