#last episode i love how it was the cavalry showing up

[catastrophicalcat]

I take back everything I ever said, I love WFA, please give us more!

Wayne Family Adventures #151

[apocalyp-tech-a]

Remember in Season 1, Episode 1 Aftermath, Tech says "I am merely stating a theoretical hypothesis based on factual data?" Well, that's what I did, I made a "logical conclusion." From Lama Su coming back when we thought he was dead to the infamous "domicile," it was all factual evidence that was meant to push us in a direction of hoping that Tech would return and that CX-2 could be the way he does it. I'm not stupid, and neither are you. There's an underlying reason that I love Tech not based on just his handsome looks. I don't claim to have an exceptional mind like him and I don't intend to convince anyone that CX-2 was Tech, but I do want to explain how it could be construed through the way that character was presented as well as the possibility of Tech's return in general, that he could have been and none of us were wrong or "losers" to think so.

45 70 Reasons and more well on the way, lol...

General reasons:

*Tech is never seen actually dying.

*Hemlock being untrustworthy source of death certificate.

*The return of many thought to be dead characters in past Star Wars from Darth Maul who was sliced in half to Lama Su - the door closed on him and we thought he was getting shot by troopers only to show up alive later and this happened in The Bad Batch itself.

*CX-2 is shown walking toward the 'light' after dropping off Omega, symbolically toward a future redemption. @astrovoidy

*Height change on starwars.com

*The word 'dead' danced around on official sites and by BB employees

*the similarities to Winter soldier @on-a-quest

*the cryptic tweets that showcased reborn characters like Gandalf

*The official poster of CX-2 shows him in 'good' light. @eriexplosion AND CX-2 is shown looking up and to the side the way the original CF99 members are positioned and facing in their poster as if CX-2 is also a CF99 member

*other people in professional settings like New Rock Stars on youtube thought the same exact thing as well as casual viewers

*the large focus on CX-2, over multiple episodes

*misleading title of last episode "The Cavalry Has Arrived"

*Tech being smart enough to find a solution

*If Season 2 could be compared to Empire Strikes Back, Tech was taken from us the way Han Solo was, but Han Solo was returned so surely Tech would be as well

*no one expected a main ensemble character permadeath

*the fight with Crosshair music had hints of "Plan 99" in it

*Tech’s whole big conversation with Romar was about culture and memory, and he helped Romar restoring a data repository. Between the implication that Tech would have lost his memories and Phee saying, “Tech’s brain was the databank, not mine,” you could easily see that as foreshadowing for Tech getting his memories back. @heyclickadee

*All the little one line reminders and goggles shots up through episode twelve only serve to make the audience want Tech back. They aren’t closure, they’re reminders of his absence. [Tech never being quite mourned.] @heyclickadee

*The goggles are lit, or look like they’re lit, in every scene they’re in except the last one, which sure makes all those earlier shots deliberate. @heyclickadee *CX-2 could have killed all of them at different moments, but chose not to (shooting pilot instead of Hunter for example)

Physical and character similarities:

*the shrimp posture

*the kick in the fight similar to droid kick in S1E1

*the similar hand to hand combat style

*the shooting accuracy- ipsium cave/ plan 99

*the elegant deliberate movement especially of hands and fingers

*the animated head and body when speaking

*the helmet – even has his hairline @jorolle

*the viewfinder similar to Tech's and utilized just as often

*the pouches(!!!)

*the limberness and agility

*the confident capability

*the crouching/getting on one knee - Tech is an infamous croucher!

*the deviant nature – ignoring orders

*the technology know how

*the flying – some say the turn on Teth was a Tech Turn

*the extraness of tool/weapon twirl

*armpad like Tech's datapad @wolveria

*CX-2's ship has similarities to the Marauder @wolveria

*Tech CC-9902 / CX-2 - both end in 2 @wolveria

*We are reminded this season that Tech was especially good at decryption. What do we see CX-2 doing on Phee’s ship? Yeah. @heyclickadee

*Season two went out of its way to establish that Tech has a high pain tolerance, is a good close range fighter (he won a life-or-death fight with a guy when he had that broken femur), quick processing speed, and is an excellent shot. All skills we see CX-2 exhibit. @heyclickadee

The 'British' accent, speech inflection, pronunciation. and vocabulary (this alone is enough to convince anyone...):

'You better get back HERE." - "I know the girl is HERE."

"The fifth IS Omega." - "The girl IS alive."

"Who are you?" - "Who are you?"

"Naveecomputah." - "Neveecomputah."

"DOMICILE." - "DOMICLE."

Cinematic framing similarities:

*the limping

*the coming out of the water @lilacjunimo

*hooking the rappel hook rappelling down was like dangling off the rail car

*the boulder moving

*helmet viewpoint from CX-2 in finale, only BB members ever had that

Conjectural situations of suspicion:

*the beef with Crosshair

*the constant surviving

*the pausing when choking Crosshair

*the pausing to look at Phee

*The implications that Crosshair seems to know something about CX-2 (he wants to get out of dodge when he knows CX-2 is coming), and the intense lingering guilt Crosshair feels—and which is never dealt with! It’s still there through the finale—implying he knows or suspects it’s Tech. @heyclickadee

*“Whatever they did to you, whatever you’ve done, you’re still one of us,” offered by Rex towards the CXs @heyclickadee

*Crosshair’s character arc this season being partly about realizing that anyone can change and that no one is really beyond saving, which would have continued going somewhere if he thought CX-2 was Tech and considered him beyond saving, but then changed his mind and realized he needed to try. Notice that he does not engage CX-2 in 11 like he did in 7, and that this comes after his revelation about giving people a chance in 9. @heyclickadee

*CX-2 is even more Tech like in 11 than he was in 6 and 7. This implies that he could be starting to wake up, and that almost killing Crosshair triggered that. He doesn’t kill anyone except one of his own guys on Pabu (or Phee) even though it would make his job much easier. He even has Hunter and Wrecker in his sights and moves his aim to not shoot them directly. @heyclickadee

*Crosshair has no way to know that the CX’d clones come out different and that their identities are erased unless it happened to someone we know. In fact, there’s not reason for the CX plot to exist unless that horrific thing happens to someone we know. @heyclickadee

*The first episode of the show starts out with Hunter covering for someone who supposedly died in a fall. In fact, there are direct parallels in the lines: “Where’s the Jedi?” “I stunned him when he jumped. He didn’t make it.” vs “Where’s Tech?” “Omega…Tech didn’t make it.” I’m not saying Hunter was covering for Tech; I am saying that is the only place in the script where we see those phrases matched up. @heyclickadee

*Tech being CX-2 would have fit in perfectly with each member of the batch experiencing a traumatic loss (and regaining) of agency that correlated directly to who and how they are as people. @heyclickadee

Foreshadowing lines:

*More machine than man, percentage wise at least.

*Better late than dead.

*See you around, Brown Eyes.

*Tech's not gone.

*The operative's gone rogue.

*Romar saying he's a survivor and Tech's look at him.

*Don't go running off with any pirates or smugglers. @heyclickadee

Abandoned storyline reasons:

*The romance with Phee, surely it wouldn't be abandoned!? 🙄😡

*CX-2's death being anticlimactic

*The finale seeming rushed and incomplete

*Actors saying there were script changes

*CX-2's accent in the finale was not only not like Tech's as it was in previous episodes, it wasn't even a clone accent (wtf was that) signaling a script change

@wolveria made a great analysis here with her Tech-Genda !

@heyclickadee gave a great analysis here and also great evidence, more in comments!

@vivaislenska has a list as well with some of these points!

@eriexplosion has a great analysis here!

Having said that, here are some reasons it may not have been him:

*Too many characters coming back from the dead.

*The way he says 'clones' in Infiltration was more reg accent.

*Tech's line in the cave to Omega which "was a big one to me” in retrospect: "I am aware that you miss him, but we have to adapt and move on."

As for the intentions of the writers to either have been forced to change the script, but can't admit it due to NDAs or if they truly meant for CX-2 to be Crosshair's foil which to me was unclear, especially with all of the evidence above, I don't know. At least they could have made CX-2 talk and move like a reg. Making him talk and walk like Tech was kind of cruel on top of a cruel we already experienced in Plan 99. I am not personally attacking the writers, I still love Season 1 and 2 and most of Season 3, but I wish I knew what happened behind the scenes with this and I know I'm not the only one. I think this is the last time I'll personally address Season 3 or the finale unless to support other commentators/creators and for my own fix-it and art and writing. And I look forward to seeing everyone else's works as well and hope no one gives up this beautiful Batch or fandom as I almost did. Canon seems done with him, he belongs to us now. 💜

And if anyone has anything I missed (I'm sure I'll think of more myself), feel free to comment or reblog with that addition or a link to your own post and/or I can edit the OP to include it and tag you. Also, don't feel like you can't make your own post about this subject! But I do hope this maybe helped anyone still dealing with the 'aftermath' like me, to know you're not alone, and you did not read too much into it.

(In retrospect, I can't believe they killed him though, lol. What the kriff were they thinking!?! #too handsome to die #too awesome to die)

[tvgirlsays]

Gil Galad and Elrond: Season 2

While Season 1 and the beginning of Season 2 were fraught with tension between High King Gil Galad and Herald Elrond, there were some interesting and subtle moments that seem to hint that we will be seeing them form a stronger bond as king and herald in Season 3. I would like to highlight those moments!

The first comes when Gil Galad places Elrond in charge of the company being sent to Eregion. Despite the disobedience displayed in Elrond's waterfall jump, I think Gil Galad respected his steadfastness to his convictions.

I think that's why he puts Elrond in charge of the mission. As Benjamin Walker stated in an interview, Gil Galad now sees Elrond as a "wild card" and someone is now coming into his own. Placing Elrond in charge is a huge show of trust and an opportunity for Elrond to explore his potential as a leader.

There is a subtle moment between them in the Battle of Eregion that I love: Gil Galad does not join the fight until after Elrond has been swiped by Damrod the hill troll. Did Gil Galad see this happen, and this is why he finally took action? It certainly seems that way.

Of course, Elrond is upset that the king has put himself in danger, to which Gil Galad responds "A king's place is whenever the need is greatest." And it's true. This is the moment that Elrond needs him the most.

Throughout the entire battle, Elrond's goal has been to reach the wall and the stop the ravager from breaching the wall. He starts off on horseback with his cavalry, then continues on foot with a small company, and finally reaches the wall alone, and damages the ravager on his own.

But it isn't enough, because the troll presents a new and even more dangerous threat. Arondir's arrows cannot kill the troll and Elrond cannot face it alone (although he likely would have tried). That is when Gil Galad arrives, helping both Arondir and Elrond to kill it. It's one of the best moments of the episode!

Then comes the moment when the Elves find out that the Dwarves are not coming... Elrond is in denial, clinging to the belief that his friend will come, despite being told otherwise.

Elrond is usually a very logical, very calm elf. Throughout the entire battle, from beginning to end, he is focused and resourceful, giving Adar more of a fight than the Uruk leader expected.

But in this moment, we see his human side coming through. He can't wrap his head around the fact that Durin is not coming and that the battle is lost.

Gil Galad clearly sees this and recognizes that Elrond is on the verge of emotional collapse. He knows how much the friendship with Durin means to Elrond (in Season 1) and he knows how eager Elrond was to save Eregion.

I think he also realizes that Elrond has been fighting all day and night (not to mention running to and from Lindon to Eregion) and is at the end of his strength.

So he takes command for the last charge and does not reprimand Elrond for failing to join the fight. I like seeing this dynamic between them on the battlefield, because it sets things up really nicely for their roles in the Battle of the Last Alliance.

Once the battle has been lost and the leaders taken captive, we see Elrond pleaded with the Orcs to spare Celebrimbor's collection of scrolls. They laugh in his face and burn them anyway. It is not until they hold a knife to Gil Galad's throat however that Elrond unleashes his fury on them.

It takes 2-3 Orcs to subdue him, and even then, he manages to kill one and injure several others. While Elrond is clearly distraught by the burning of the scrolls (his library of Alexandria), his rage is only triggered when his king is threatened.

Despite their differences over the years, he clearly feels protective of Gil Galad. I suspect Gil Galad's death in the Battle of the Last Alliance is going to truly destroy him for that reason.

In the final scene of Season 2, Gil Galad chooses "the sword" rather than the shield as he faces what remains of the people of Eregion. I love that the last person he looks to before raising the sword is Elrond, his faithful herald. My hope is that this is an indication of their relationship heading into Season 3.

Gil Galad gained a lot of respect for Elrond in Season 2, and Elrond came to see that Gil Galad would always there for him whenever "the need was greatest."

What's interesting about Elrond's position in this final scene is that he stands directly in Gil Galad's shadow and is apart from the rest of the group.

What does this mean for Season 3? Will Elrond's role as Gil Galad's second in command become more of a highlight? Will he be separated from the other Elves as he establishes Imladris?

What are your thoughts and theories?

[miimo96]

Thoughts on My Adventures with Superman S2 FINALE

This has me kinda scared because Normally when this happens, it usually means 2 thing's; 1 this is either going to be Very long episode or 2, Somebody's going to die, and with the way the creator's have been teasing us with Tweets about Kara's demise, I'm guessing it's the ladder, and if that's the case WTF DC

Also if had a nickel for everytime that a Giant spaceship threatened to Destroy Earth as a way to Rebuild krypton in a Superman story, I'd have 2 nickels, which isn't alot, but it's weird that it's happened twice

So lemme get this straight, this Lex is smart enough to build the parasite suit, have a fail safe for that, is able to frame Superman gaining Millions of followers and government access, infuse Kryptonite to Kryptonian built robots, but isn't smart enough to come up with a fail safe when said robots get hacked!?....yeah I call Bullshit

Hell yeah the Cavalry's here! oh, and Sam too I guess whatever, listen the FANS might've forgiven your ass for abandoning lois 6 episodes ago, but I sure as hell don't, in all seriousnes tho I am glad he got some sort of character development regarding his relationship with Superman, seeing it as how he is now trying to help him instead of ya know, Trying to Kill him 😅 btw I kinda feel stupid for asking myself how the heck they turned invisible, only to realize they were actually holding on to Only the character who Can turn invisible Lol 😅😅 also did anyone else immediately thought've Lobo when he said the Main man, no, just me

Wow I can't belive they actually gave Kara the Winter soldier treatment, from the brainwashing, Down to him effing reactivating it like freakin Zemo, Well looks like Clark's gonna have to fight his cousin again, hopefully he doesn't end up like last time, or if not maybe Jimmy can talk some sense into her, Seeing as how it was seeing a picture of Jimmy which resulted in her breaking free from Brainiacs control, maybe this where he can finally confesses his feelings for her, Omg I would love that ^w^

Wait you're telling me Brainiac Did it, that he's the reason why krypton exploded, that HE Killed clarks and Kara's parents!? Oh nah Brainiac gotta die now, also has anyone else how similar he is to Zod, from his reasoning, to his personality, to even this whole effing scenario, like This is some shit Zod would've done, and it's funny because I was actually thinking about this not to long ago about how we technically don't need Zod in this show because Brainiac fits that role perfectly, especially with how he's been depicted this season, Omg if this was an intentional Detail on their part, then it's official, this show never ceases to Amaze me

Uh oh scary Kara's back, Damn it Brainiac why you gotta be such a Bitch; Also it may be nothing, but the way those missiles were moving kinda reminded of the way Darksides Omega beams would move, which got me thinking about something; What if Kryptons technology is possibly made from Apocalypse

This shot is ABSOLUTELY Beautiful; from the colors, to the camera work, to even the Symbolism between him and the Sun, everything was just Screams Superman

Tbh out of all the anime tropes they've done this season, I gotta say Talk no jutsu the 1 was NOT expecting them pull, and ya know what, I'm actually kinda glad they did, because it just fits Superman's MO; Superman has always been represented for kindness not his strength, like even if you've done him dirty, he'll still always choose to help you because that's just who he is, hes the person who just wants to help, he'll carry the weight of the world on his shoulders, he's the person who will try to stop a threat with his words before having to result to violence, he's the Man of Steel not because of what he can do, but because of who he is and always will be, hence why this trope works perfectly for him, it's the Perfect representation of what he embodies, Compassion, That's what makes him Superman

Ok I have a few things regarding this scene, 1st off i Absolutely love my 2 star children, 2nd of all Kara don't throw him into the sun, that's how make Nuclear man 😂 3rd of all, in all honesty, I was not worried 1 bit when Kara got shot mainly for 2 reasons; 1 even tho she was clearly shot by Kryptonite, they were directly near the sun and if I remember correctly, the Sun is what gives them their power, granting them the abilities to heal from critical wounds as well as even more strength, and because 2, kryptonians have invulnerable skin meaning she won't burn up from the sun even if she falls into it, all in all touching scene but No stakes

Kara's lighting's, Kryptonite Saber, Clean animation, Super sayian references!? OMG this episode is AMAZINGGG!! Also Kara's lighting's Red!? Ngl but I SWEAR I thought it was gonna be yellow, not because it would only go good with her hair, but because it in my opinion, it just fits her better, plus we did see kinda of it Start to spark in her fight against Brainiac 2 episodes ago, and since Clark's is blue it would only just made sense for hers to be yellow, hopefully maybe it can like evolve in season 3 or something, don't get wrong I like the Red but in my opinion, it just feels like a missed opportunity, In other News

Eff yeah Brainiac's Dead! Be honest, how many of you actually thought kara was dead after that scene, because my heart immediately stopped after she passed out 😅

Also can we talk about how Amazing Kara's suit looks, like Omg this Has to be one of the best desings I've seen, I just love everything about it from the colors to the boots all the way to especially the Cape, like I just love how it looks like a scarf UwU

AH siblings being siblings 😊 btw Love how he still has the shirt from when he was kid, Such a full circle moment, also when it comes to Kara's, this Kara, the kara from injustice 2, the CW show and even The FLASH movie are All of my favorite Kara's, every single one of them EXPECT and I can't believe I'm saying this, the 1 from the DCAU, like I'm sorry but in my opinion she was just too much of a hot head, and she barely had any screen time in Justice league, like I don't understand how did we stray so far from God, also she was incredibly weaker when it came to her cousin, this 1 on the other hand can slap her cousin around like it was a normal Tuesday, So yeah that's my Hot take come at me In the comments I dare you

Well well well looks like instead of mommy dosen't need you anymore, it's more like We don't need Mommy anymore, hell yeah Lex's finally going to be the Villain next season and I soo can't wait, oh and what's this, it looks like slade is gonna be his right hand now, oh yeah Slex is Definitely becoming cannon

🎵 Super rizz, Super rizz, here comes Clark's Super rizz 🎵

And with that another amazing end to another amazing series, Overall this season was freakin Epic, from the animation, to the music, to the character designs minus the robots, everything was just epic, from Start to finish; only thing to do Now is wait for season 3, but I wanna know you're thoughts, What did YOU think of season 2, and what was your favorite episode or moment from this series, comment or just leave a like if ya enjoyed this Thoughts on series, and lemme know if I should do more of this, Anyway I'mma head out because this took a while for me to write and I'm feeling kinda burnt out, Anyway yeah thank you for reading and I can't wait to see you again in S3, and with that, Superman Saturday's has come to an end, well, for now anyway ^^;

[tenebraevesper]

Shadow the Hedgehog (Sonic Prime, Character Analysis - Part 8)

Welcome to Part 8 of what started as Shadow's character analysis, but also turned into analysis of Sonic in relation to Shadow, as well as me just gushing over the Sonadow ship coz I find it cute.

This post covers the finale of Sonic Prime, Episode 23: From the Top, but this won't be my last post, because I decided to make one more, featuring something of a Final Conclusion to Shadow's story in Sonic Prime.

Well, either that, or I'll just write a bunch of headcanons in regards to what happens after the finale.

So, let's dive in!

Starting from the last episode, the only thing that remained of The Grim is Nine's citadel, with Sonic still fighting Nine, only to finally realize what Nine had truly wanted, understanding his desires. He tries to talk things out with Nine, when suddenly, the cavalry arrives.

''It's over Nine!''

I mean, they didn't really have anywhere else to go besides into the citadel even if they weren't here to beat up Nine for what he had done.

''Get back! Don't make me destroy you all!'' ''Is that what you want? More destruction? Look outside!'' *Nine looks at The Void outside the citadel, devastated*

'I'm sorry for everything Nine. I missed my home so much and was so focused on getting it back that I didn't listen to what you wanted or appreciate what you were trying to do. I never meant to hurt you.''

Just like Shadow, Sonic too has completed his own character growth, admitting and apologizing for hurting Nine. He has learned a lot about communication and how refusing to listening to other people can have devastating consequences.

''Stop! Everyone stop! This isn't the solution!''

Sonic goes so far to protect Nine from his own allies, showing a great deal of maturity. He knows when he has to stop the battle, being the voice of reason by pointing out how they have no time left and there will be nothing to fight over. All he wants is for this to stop.

Nine also understands how bad the situation was, apologizing for what he had done and noting how, without a great sacrifice, reality as they know it will be over. As everyone mourns their loss, we see this little exchange.

''Not yet!''

While I'm not certain whether Sonic saw Shadow's little nod, I know that he is aware that there is one more thing he can do. He has the remaining Prism energy, and he is willing to sacrifice his own life to stabilize the Paradox Prism and fix reality.

''You'd do that? After everything I-'' ''What are friends for?''

Sonic assures Nine that it's fine, and what I love about this moment is how he looks over to Shadow, once again seeking assurance. This will be dangerous for him, and he needs support. One could even interpret this as ''If I'm gone, take care of everything'', with Shadow affirming that he will.

Sonic then begs everyone to leave Nine alone, while also telling Nine not to cause trouble anymore. Rebel agrees with this, knowing they have no other choice. Now, they have to trust Nine. However, if he removes the energy, Sonic might fall apart.

''What about Shadow?'' ''Shadow wasn't there for the shatter event. He blipped into this reality. But I shattered the Prism.'' ''And without the Prism energy binding him...''

Gotta love how Rebel is willing to throw Shadow under the bus. Admittedly, she probably was wondering whether he too had the same Prism energy, at least until Sonic explains it that, no, he doesn't. He then admits to shattering the Prism, taking responsibility for his actions.

I'm certain that in this moment, Shadow was quite proud of Sonic.

Nine then starts the extraction, and it's obviously quite painful for Sonic. Once it's complete, he faints, seemingly dead.

Look at Shadow's expression here. This is the look of someone whose heart has just been shattered in a million pieces. He just watched Sonic sacrifice himself to fix reality, not even knowing whether he will survive, and he couldn't do anything. Shadow genuinely cares about Sonic, reaching out for him, but when there's seemingly no response, his ears droop and he looks crushed.

Shadow knows that Sonic has been in many rough situations, but now, he doesn't even know whether he is alive or dead. Hell, maybe he was also dealing with flashbacks of another loss he had suffered. Who knows? But, it is certain that at this point, he cares so much about Sonic and he doesn't want to lose him.

Fortunately, Sonic is still alive, but only barely. The only thing that kept him like this was the Paradox Prism energy, but now that he's gone, he became similar to his friends at Ghost Hill. To make things worse, he is also fading, meaning he doesn't have much time left.

Unfortunately for everyone, the Chaos Council, being Eggman's Shatterverse Variants, decide to betray everyone.

''Stand down, edgelord!''

Of course they had to throw in at least one edgelord insult for Shadow.

Fortunately for everyone involved, all of the Chaos Council members have egos the size of a skyscraper, so they quickly get into a fight with each other.

''Hold on, Shadow. Let's see how this plays out.''

Shadow wants to throw down hands with the Chaos Council, but is stopped by Rebel, who basically tells him to kick back, relax and get some popcorn while the Chaos Council members fight each other. And Shadow actually listens instead of going for the violent option.

With Nine opening the portal to The Void and the Mr. Dr. Eggman starting to blast everything, it is clear that they need to just end this pitiful situation.

''How about now?'' ''Knock yourself out.''

I just love how Shadow respects Rebel enough to ask her for permission to go beat up the Chaos Council. He was so itching for this fight and it had to be cathartic for him.

With the Chaos Council gone, Nine fixes the Shatterspaces, and the Paradox Prism vanishes.

Green Hill, Sonic and Shadow's home, is back, and now, they have to leave as fast as possible, because Sonic's time is running out. After saying their goodbyes...

....and hugging Nine for good measure, Sonic leaves with Thorn and Birdie, who want to bring him home.

We then get this moment.

''Oh! I suppose you need a ride too!''

They frigging forgot about Shadow! *laughs her ass off*

I just love how Shadow just responds with a ''hmph'', reverting back to his usual closed-off self. Sure, he can show emotions around Sonic, but everyone else doesn't get to see the softer side of him.

That, and he probably didn't want to ask for help to return home.

Admittedly, it is good that Black Rose and Rusty Rose got the ship to get Shadow to Sonic and Thorn, since Birdie got injured from the crystals.

At this point, Shadow knows that they have not much left, as Sonic is barely holding on and Black Rose's ship can't get any faster.

''Black Rose! You've brought us far enough. I'll take it from here!''

Shadow is the only one fast enough to bring Sonic to the safety of Green Hill, finally getting to do his part in saving Sonic's life.

''Goodbye, Roses...''

I'm not crying, somebody's cutting onions!

When Sonic goes down, Shadow has no other choice but to carry him bridal-style, now speeding through The Void as fast as he can. He is determined to save him, and I'm certain that he feels that creeping sense of panic, his heart beating faster as he realizes that he only has seconds left.

''I never knew you were a hugger.'' ''Do you want me to save you or not?''

God, this scene would be so adorable if it weren't for the fact that Sonic is dying. Like seriously, I was in a state between ''Oh, no!'' and ''Just kiss already!''

It is just like Sonic to get one last quip in, even on death's door, and it's to basically banter/flirt with Shadow. Shadow responds, probably relieved to see that there is still a bit of life in Sonic left, and we can see Sonic smile for a brief moment at his response, before fainting, his arm falling down, now limp.

Shadow has a look of terror on his expression, realizing that he's losing Sonic and quickly speeds up.

''HANG ON, SONIC!''

Shadow creates at least four sonic booms with the speed he had managed to achieve, flying through The Void and towards Green Hill, tightening his grip around Sonic. He is not going to let him go, shouting for him to hang on.

Then, he enters the gateway to Green Hill, and we see only white.

Fortunately, they make it through, with Sonic finding himself just in the moment before he shattered the Paradox Prism, elated to see that everything had gone back to normal, and even hugging Dr. Eggman because, yes, he missed him too.

He also shows off what he had learned, sticking close to his friends as they fight Eggman, only to spot someone familiar at the entrance to the cave.

It's Shadow, and he's gotten back the Chaos Emerald he lost to The Void. I suppose this confirms that time has indeed been reset.

We also know that Sonic and Shadow have retained their memories of the Shatterverse, both communicating with just a look about their plan to protect the Paradox Prism.

''This world is mine!'' *Shadow Chaos Controls on top of the Paradox Prism* ''Huh? Shadow? What the heck are you doing here?!''

''I am the Ultimate Lifeform. I go wherever I want.'' ''Wh-huh?'' ''CHAOS CONTROL!''

And that's how Eggman's plan got foiled. Sonic mocks him, he curses the day and leaves, and Sonic's friends probably wonder what the hell had happened.

Gotta say, if Shadow and Sonic had communicated about this back in Episode 01, none of the Shatterverse Adventure would've happened... I guess.

Sonic decides to relax on the beach with his friends, only to deal with a new threat (probably Dr. Eggman coming back with a new scheme) and the adventure continues, while the viewers are left with many unanswered questions, like what did Shadow do with the Paradox Prism and moreover, does the Shatteverse still exist, because what happens here resembles a lot the events of Sonic the Hedgehog (2006), where the time has been reset.

Also, I wish that Shadow had been in this group shot, because he really deserved to be added as a member of Sonic's team. Or at least we could've gotten one more moment between him and Sonic where they reflect on their adventure.

Rest assured, this adventure was great and watching Shadow and Sonic both grow as characters, and show a new level of appreciation, care, understanding and respect for each other was amazing.

Not to mention all the Sonadow moments sprinkled in-between that left the shipping community quite satisfied, giving us enough fuel until the inevitable when we finally get to Sonic Movie 3.

Tune in next time for my Final Conclusion!

#Shadow the Hedgehog (Sonic Prime, Character Analysis - Part 7)

#Shadow the Hedgehog (Sonic Prime, Character Analysis - Final Conclusion)

#Sonic the Hedgehog Analyzer (Masterlist)

[clonebrainrot]

This is inspired by @marvel-starwarsfangirl and how much I love the bad batch, but still think it could have done more to make the final season better.

IMO the biggest thing is I think you needed to make “the cavalry has arrived” episode title make more sense. And I think there are two ways you could have done this.

Well it’s one way both done differently.

Have someone on Tantiss reach out to the wider galaxy. Have the fighting continue for a couple hours or so. Then have a bunch of people arrive on planet ala the rise of Skywalker. Basically a whole bunch of people that the batch has met over the three seasons. I think this would have made the final battle of Tantiss more impactful. You can have basically the rest of the episode play out the same. Hemlock can die the same way. Just adds probably an extra 10 minutes but it makes the episode that much better.

Also before I continue I say keep Tech dead. The more we leave the final behind us the more I think it was the right decision even if it breaks my heart.

Echo should have returned between the season 2 and 3 time skip. Unless they really are setting up a wider clone rebellion I don’t see how it serves the story to keep him gone so long in season 3. They made up for it in the last 3 episodes

Have one of the CX troopers be a clone we know. It will add more sadness to the episode and more stakes. Do not make it Tech though. My money is on Cody you can even have Rex kill him if we refer to my first idea. This can also be used to explain why Rex calls it a day. Echo does not.

They really needed to stick to Omega being force sensitive and I mean maybe she still is. But season 1 makes it pretty obvious that was the original plan. So stick to the plan. Although then again maybe she is.the show leaves this kinda open to interpretation.

One last one before I wrap up this post. Have crosshair kill CX-2. CX-2 was obviously a foil to crosshair so have that foil mean something in the final.

However that final scene? That epilogue. No notes on that. No notes at all.

[chonidale]

what are your top 5 choni scenes and why

was cleaning out my inbox and found this from 6 years ago lmao back when this would have been a lot easier to answer because they had a LOT less scenes. i really tried to sit and narrow it down to just 5 scenes, even if i couldn’t rank them, but it was really hard without setting some limits, so i’m going to make myself only pick one scene per season and list them in chronological order.

season 2: first kiss. just iconic, perfectly set up and executed. best first kiss on the show, hands down, was never topped. cinematic. honorable mentions to the scene at the bijou and their almost kiss.

season 3: their reunion in the finale. it’s a short scene, but so sweet. toni gathering the cavalry to save cheryl, the ‘baby?!’, the running hug and kiss, the sheer relief and emotion in toni’s voice, so good. honorable mentions to the 3.12 bed scene purely for how cozy it is and cheryl sacrificing herself to save toni at the farm, also so cinematic.

season 4: the couch cuddling scene post thanksgiving dinner. so comfy and sweet. i love a good cuddling moment, but add in a cute i love you exchange and a kiss? i’m happy. honorable mentions to the 4.08 pops scene and cheryl telling toni about nick, so much better than the garbage suicide attempt convo from s3 that was all about archie.

season 5: the pops convo from 5.05, nobody could ever make me hate that scene, the emotion and history and understanding and love there, just so good. forever mourning the excellent angst of those first two time jump episodes. what could have been if the rest of the season kept that tone. honorable mentions to the whole flashback sequence in 5.04 and the convo in 5.18. i do like their break up scene too but i’ll always be bitter about how much better it could have and should have been. deserved a last kiss or cuddle at the very least.

season 7: the music room convo in 7.10 is just so perfect, absolutely no notes. really sweet and mature and well written as a stand alone resolution to the plot in that episode, but even more satisfying and meaningful from a larger stand point, showing their growth from s3 and how they’re doing things right this time, etc. honorable mentions to the scene outside the school in 7.08 for some reason and the photoshoot, i think, but there’s so many i really love.

(no scene selection for s6 since i had to cut a season to narrow it down to 5 and most of the choni content in s6 is thabigail, but the bed scene from the finale is very excellent and bittersweet, even if i retroactively wish they had given us more since it ended up being the last interaction in the og timeline and there was a lot of opportunity for more closure there than what we got. and i think if they’d known they weren’t going back to the og timeline back then, we would have gotten more, but alas.)

[sshbpodcast]

Character Spotlight: Tom Paris

By Ames

Strap in and get ready to go fast! A Star to Steer Her By has Tom Paris in the driver’s seat for this week’s character spotlight. Tom is a solid character throughout all of Voyager, with many faults that leave him room to develop over the seasons. He starts off as kind of a badboy with a heart of gold and grows into a good friend, loving husband, proud father, and designer of the Delta Flyer… who occasionally still dabbles into badboy with a heart of gold for fun.

Lt. Paris has a ton of hobbies (perhaps too many hobbies) for the show to mine for plots, but deep down, he’s just a guy with a ton of pressure on his shoulders, looking to redeem himself from past mistakes, and I give Voyager some credit for the Best Moments we’ll explore below, and even for some of the Worst Moments too. So pick a character from The Adventures of Captain Proton and hop in the holodeck with us as we highlight all things Paris below and on this week’s podcast episode (speed over to 55:35). Invaders! Invaders!

[Images © CBS/Paramount]

Best moments

Am I discerning a personal problem here, gentlemen? We can’t be the only ones who hated the childish love triangle between Neelix, Kes, and Paris, and clearly the writers were sick of it too because they knew enough to fix it. Watching Paris and Neelix putting aside their differences in “Parturition,” while predictable and a little obvious, was exactly what their characters needed to get rid of that jealous rivalry no one asked for.

To infinity! And beyond! I will always defend “Threshold” … up until the last five or so minutes of the episode, which go off the rails. But up until then, we get so much great character work from Tom. His speech alone about how much pressure his father put on him to make something of himself and that’s why he needs to be the one to break the warp 10 barrier makes up for all the lizard babies out there.

Always make a pilot your wingman Paris is also just a good guy to all his friends on the ship, even the Doctor, with whom he’s constantly butting heads. So when the EMH is seeking advice for how to progress his relationship with Danara Pel in “Lifesigns,” Tom is there to suggest a trip to makeout point in the back of a Chevy convertible, which definitely does the trick!

There has been a spy aboard Voyager, but it isn’t Tom Paris While I was quick to give Tuvok some sass for how convoluted, dangerous, and bad his plan in “Investigations” was, Tom is what made it work in the end. He plays his part so well that he is able to foil Seska’s plan, expose the true traitor on the Voyager, and save the ship from attack by Kazons. And it is nice of him to apologize for all the insubordination part of the plan.

The cavalry’s here! Speaking of foiling Seska’s plans, Tom gets to save the day from her and the Kazons yet again in “Basics”! Where Chakotay was always too trusting of that secret Cardassian, Tom knows exactly where to tell Seska to shove it. His efforts allow him to escape the commandeered ship to bring back Talaxian reinforcements, sneak a message to the EMH, and thwart the Kazons for good!

I’m telling you again, he’s mine The friendship between Tom and Harry starts all the way back in the premier and comes a long way throughout Voyager, but it is on special display in “The Chute.” Tom protects Harry when he first arrives at the Akritirian prison, even getting stabbed to try to get them a chance at escaping, all while resisting the clamp that was agitating all the inmates’ minds.

Sexy, in a Howdy Doody sort of way You either enjoy or get fed up with the antics of an episode like “Future’s End,” but you’ve got to admit that Tom had chemistry like whoa with Rain Robinson. Watching two B movie fans geek out in the SETI lab was just endearing, and it makes me kinda wish we could have kept Rain around a little longer if only so she and Tom could play something silly on the holodeck.

If you let these instincts take over now, you’ll hate yourself We’ve scolded both Tuvok and Torres for their rapey actions in “Blood Fever” (and here’s an extra scold for Vorik, that dick), but the crew member who treats the situation correctly is Paris. He rightly declares that he will not take advantage of a person who has no ability to consent due to the pon farr, which should be a bar low enough for most people to easily clear.

You’ll miss the whole point of what it means to have a family Again we see Paris being a supportive friend in “Real Life” when the Doctor declares he’s shut down his holo-family program. Tom provides the human perspective that the Doc has needed and convinces him to let the rest of the story play out in a really lovely little peptalk. EMH really seems to get something out of experiencing both the good and the bad sides of real life.

Does the name Captain Bligh mean anything to you? While we were torn in our assessment of Chakotay’s handling of Annorax in “Year of Hell,” we know exactly where we stand on Tom’s approach: a standing ovation. Tom sticks to his guns in refusing to help the Krenim mess with the timeline, getting more blood on their hands. Instead, it’s his provoking Obrist to mutiny that ends up allowing Janeway to take them out in style!

Heavy is the chest that wears the puppet Though we’ll see in a moment that Tom does a lot of dumb things in his relationship with B’Elanna, they’re also a great match and truly love each other. We see this in “Nothing Human” when Torres is stuck under a puppet the entire episode, and Paris is at her bedside pretty much the whole time, being with her and keeping her spirits up.

I hereby reduce you to the rank of Ensign We, and many many fans apparently, have a jaded view of the Prime Directive sometimes. Tom is fully for breaking it in order to save the Moneans’ water planet in “Thirty Days,” standing up supportively for the little guy. So we frankly applaud his efforts, even if certain captains ensured they’d fail, when he tries to do what was morally right even if it breaks a frequently stupid rule.

—

Worst moments

At least he’s a step above Nick Locarno When we first meet Tom Paris in “Caretaker,” he’s in a Federation penal settlement in New Zealand, serving time for covering up a pilot error that caused the deaths of three other officers, which is a coward’s move even if he eventually fessed up to it. This sets him up for a character redemption arc, which I’ll at least say other Robbie McNeil–played characters don’t deserve.

Isn’t there some Indian trick where you can turn yourself into a bird and fly us out of here? What’s less forgivable is this line from “Caretaker” in which Tom makes some racist comment about Chakotay’s indigenous heritage that just comes off as crude. This line insinuating that Chakotay can turn into a bird comes absolutely out of nowhere and probably only serves to remind the audience that his character is Native American, and also that Tom is a tactless pig.

Birds of a feather, stick together On the subject of birds: whatever relationship Tom had with Lidell in “Ex Post Facto” was a terrible idea. Janeway talks so much smack to Harry when he has a consensual adult relationship with Tal in “The Disease,” when really she should have gotten on Tom’s case for having an affair with this molting bird woman who acts like a femme fatale out of a noir.

A whole crew full of women and I have to fall for the one I can’t have Another woman whom Paris really shouldn’t have gone for was Kes. We really don’t know what the writers were thinking with this love triangle, as it makes Tom look like a sleaze and Neelix look like a brute. Tom buys Kes a necklace in “Twisted,” when it was inappropriate as hell. And then “Parturition” starts with him moaning about his crush and being a big baby about it.

The house always wins Tom continues to look like a sleaze when he starts a sort of gambling ring for replicator rations in “Meld.” Tom’s sure got a lot of room to grow in this show because he does start off as this ne’er-do-well character, who is clearly taking advantage of his crewmates and pocketing all the replicator rations for himself because there’s never a winner of their little lottery pools.

Go, grease monkey, you’re burning up the quarter mile At some point, the show just decides Tom is going through a perpetual midlife crisis: adopting more hobbies than any other crewman; neglecting his duties, friends, and girlfriend; and generally seeming like a douche. And the episode that exemplifies this is “Vis à Vis,” in which he gets so fixated on fixing up a ‘69 Chevy Camaro that he becomes insufferable to everyone.

Building a new vessel from scratch, that’s an engineer's dream come true As I said last time, I mostly like Tom and B’Elanna as a couple, but every so often you wanna smack him for how oblivious he is. So while he does create the Delta Flyer in “Extreme Risk,” Paris ends up so distracted it makes him look like a buffoon because he hasn’t noticed that his partner has been having a crisis ever since learning months ago that her Maquis friends died.

The rain in Spain falls mainly in my brain This one’s mostly on the Doctor, but in case we don’t bring it up in a couple weeks when we spotlight his character, let’s blame Tom a little bit for this one too. The two of them make that inconsiderate bet about Pygmalion’ing Seven into a lady in “Someone to Watch Over Me,” and ya know what: she’s already great! Why these two men feel they need to fix her is frankly brutish.

Go ask Alice when she’s ten feet tall... and also a ship We remember from earlier in the show (and in this list!) how fixated Tom tends to get on his hobbies, bordering on obsessive behavior especially when it comes to cars and ships. So even though the eponymous ship in “AIice” is messing with his noodle a little, it’s still a bad look for Paris to get so fully infatuated with yet another piece of technology vying for his attention.

Party until the cows come home This is just a little moment, but I feel like including it. It’s just kinda mean for Tom to trick Harry into kissing a cow in “Spirit Folk.” Not only is it disrespectful to eavesdrop on his date, even if it is with a hologram (especially if it is with a hologram!), but Harry is making himself vulnerable for Maggie the Irish lass only for Tom to point and laugh at him. Be a better friend, Tom.

I didn’t think you liked the mushy stuff One more example of Tom being a dick to his girlfriend (I swear, I do like them together!) is how he constantly neglects her in “Drive.” They’re having a visceral fight about their future as a couple and B’Elanna has been earnestly planning to break up with him. So when Tom proposes, it really does feel like it’s just to get out of the argument and not because he really wants it.

The silent treatment The whole show, Tom’s character arc has focused on his desire to make his father proud of him. So you’d think when they’re finally onscreen together in “Pathfinder,” this’d come up. But no. The two characters have exactly no lines together. Even in the series finale “Endgame” when Voyager gets home and Tom has a daughter to introduce to her grandfather: still nothing! WHY?

—

We’re coming in for a landing in shuttle bay. Thanks for joining us on that little joyride around the Delta Quadrant. We’re back next week with more character spotlights here on the blog, and more Enterprise watchalong episodes over on the podcast (which you’re surely following on SoundCloud or wherever you podcast). You can also hail us on Facebook and Twitter, and remember: two Delaney sisters are better than one.

[notallthoseinheadspace]

Some long rambling speculation on the last couple episodes of The Bad Batch below the cut.

(If any of it doesn’t make sense please forgive me, today’s round of chemo fucking flattened me.)

Going off my other post about how I do suspect CX-2 is Tech and Omega is Force-sensitive (I don’t know how to embed it and I’m too tired to figure it out right now, I can edit this when I don’t feel like I could be slipped through a letter slot) I’m caught on how Omega said that last time she escaped she had help. That was Crosshair.

She doesn’t know he missed, but she has to know there’s a chance. Even though his hand was steady after he started meditating with her, that sort of problem doesn’t get fixed overnight. So I’m still wondering if she had a backup tracker on her that wasn’t scanned - or, in a callback to the scene in the mine, she and CX-Tech had a heart-to-heart in the ship. Maybe she knows she has help coming separate from what we the viewers know.

The previews showed Hunter in what looked like a single-person vessel (the one they were in didn’t have a fully glass cockpit? Well, transparisteel. You know what I mean.) which suggests to me that they get into the base and wind up in the base’s fighter craft somehow?

(I’m fully expecting Hunter to do a sacrifice play. I hope he doesn’t succeed. I want the whole Batch together and happy again.)

The Cavalry mentioned in the last episode title seems like it would be a callback to their first appearance in TCW - Wrecker says ‘the cavalry has arrived!’ as he’s stepping off the ship to greet Cody and Rex - which gives me hope that the cavalry in question is not only the reunited Bad Batch but also Rex and Cody coming to their aid.

Another scene I can imagine happening and would love to see: Crosshair taking a shot at CX-2, who falls, helmet dramatically rolling away to reveal a scarred Tech - who, after a long moment of shock and horror, opens his eyes to groan out ‘Crosshair, you missed.’

Presumably the station on Tantiss will be destroyed - by the Zillo beast we saw the shadow of? By Wrecker and Crosshair planting explosives and then detonating them with one of the signature ricocheting shots? (Please not by someone pulling a Hevy. I am tired and everyone has enough trauma, Echo especially.)

Ideally the Batch would be presumed dead and Hemlock and all his research would be destroyed so there’s no reason for the Empire to continue searching them out, and they can retire in peace (although I do see Omega seeking out more training and involvement with Rex’s clone rebellion once she’s older - and I really fucking hope we get a series of that. Echo is my favorite, I would genuinely like to see him onscreen more. Also, we never did have the story behind how Rex, Wolffe, and Gregor wound up in their mobile fishing home. I’m fairly sure it’s horrible and tragic and I want it anyway.)

What they’re going to do with Rampart is baffling me - he doesn’t seem to have realized that his surviving this escapade is entirely reliant on Crosshair’s goodwill. Y’know, the guy he relentlessly dehumanized and never let eat a full meal and seems way too comfortable casually pushing around. (What is the way Crosshair is holding him when he stumbles in the ‘negative’ scene? It would make sense for Cross and Wrecker to be restraining him but it’s so weirdly tender?)

So, in very rambly conclusion, my speculative theories:

- CX-2 aiding Omega and revealed to be Tech

- Callback to the mine cave scene with Omega and Tech talking

- Cavalry is Rex, Cody, Gregor (and possibly Wolffe? Unless they are giving us a Clone Rebellion series and Wolffe joining Rex is covered in that)

- Crosshair’s tremor comes back, but as a positive (doesn’t kill his brother!)

- Deaths include Hemlock and Hunter (I don’t want Hunter to die. I just have a feeling. They’re not going to kill Omega and killing Crosshair at this point in his character arc would just be bad writing. Redemption equals death is a sloppy, lazy trope and it doesn’t work when someone’s already doing the work to redeem themselves. I’m unsure about Wrecker, but I can see him pulling a Hevy to let the others escape.)

- Emerie turning on Hemlock enough to help the children escape but not escaping with them. I have no guesses on Nala Se. TBB has pushed to make her a more sympathetic character, but it also seems like her imprisonment is weakening her a great deal. If I had to guess, she will try to tell Omega what Omega’s mutation is but die before she can finish, setting up Omega to research/train etc in any possible sequels/later appearances.

If this makes no sense blame the Taxol, if I’m right about anything blame the dodgeball.

[jessiebanethedragon]

Good Soldiers

Empire!Crosshair x Reader

a/n: takes place after the events of the first episode so SPOLIERS

warnings: kissing, idk angst

Word count: 1749

The Green Visor stares at you menacingly. Even though it is not powered up, nor is it being worn at the moment. Having wrenched it off of the sharpshooter whilst clambering over him as Wrecker held him at bay. The scratches on your face, the busted lip and bruises littering you body are proof of the intense fight you’d been a part of. To say you were grieving might not be too much of an overstatement.

To be honest, all of you were grieving.

The damage the five of you had to do to Crosshair just to sedate him so that he couldn't hurt anyone else was enough to give you all nightmares for years to come. You did not feel like you were crying, crying implies you almost had control over the tears on your face. These ones started falling before you were conscious that they had started.

The rest of the batch only had an inkling of what the sniper meant to you. Their proximity to the two of you made hiding your feelings impossible, but to the exact degree, no one knew quite how deep these feelings went. They could see his eyes soften when he looked at you, the lingering touches and prideful smirks. They could see you bat your eyelashes at his scornful glare when you asked for something, and they could glance at a smile only reserved for their brother.

Hunter, Wrecker, Tech and Echo never heard the whispered ‘I love you's’ in his bunk, nor did they know that you knew how his ungloved hands felt on every part of your body. Rough on the surface and soft underneath, just like the sniper himself.

You clutch your necklace in your hands as you cry. Aggressively wringing the chain through your battered hands in hopes the pain grounds you. But it couldn’t deny the truth. Crosshair was no longer the man you loved.

He’d shot Wrecker, electro shocked Echo, busted Tech’s glasses, and even though Hunter said he was unscathed, he was twitching at every noise.

“Hey.” It was Tech, moving to crouch down to your level from where you sit on the floor of the Havoc Marauder.

“Can I see him?” You ask, sniffling up the tears in an effort to look more like the warrior the men know you to be.

“I don’t think you want to.” Tech says while scanning you over with the handheld medical-whats-it. Nothing serious is wrong, and yet at the same time, everything serious is wrong. “He’s still… restrained.” Tech explains slowly. “There hasn't been a change in his disposition yet.” the scanner beeps as it delivers its report.

“So you mean he’s still on a homicidal rage to kill us all.” You simplify bitterly.

“When you put it like that he sounds exactly the same as before the chip.” You try to manage a fake smile at that, but even with all your acting skills piled together the curve only makes it halfway. It drops so quickly when you hear the sound of struggle followed by an anger induced scream that sounds too familiar.

The havoc marauder does not have a set of barracks or prison cells so the only way to keep Crosshair safe from himself and to keep you safe from him was to magnetize a pair of cuffs to the metal of the bunks, three sets total, one for his hands and one for each foot. You shudder at how dangerous he really is, and how you never noticed.

You’re making your way into the bunk area before Tech can stop you and you rush through the doorway, wisps of hair surrounding your dirty face and heaving chest.

Through the glare, he grits his teeth. Sitting with his hands pinned above him to the metal frame of the second bunk. Forcing him to sit on the edge of Tech’s bed.

“You’re clever traitors, I'll give you that.” He says, words slithering out threateningly. The commotion that caught your attention has bought the other four into the doorway as well.

“Ohhhhh,” he taunts. “The cavalry has arrived hasn't it?” you blink. A lot. Because if you blink fast enough the image blurs enough so that it looks like the man you love. Gingerly you step towards him, ignoring the hand that reaches out to stop you. You sit yourself on the bunk opposite.

“Do you… do you recognize me?” You ask, still clutching your necklace. He shifts as best he can in the cuffs and doesn't answer. “Crosshair…” You whisper hopelessly.

“CT 9904.” He corrects. You raise an eyebrow, and decide to switch tactics.

“So CT 9904 what do you make of CT 9903, CT 9902, and CT 9901?” you gesture to Hunter, Wrecker and Tech respectively.

“Enemies to the empire.” He states,

“You can’t reason with him with the inhibitor chip still inside.” Tech chimes in, making you sigh and look away from the prisoner on the bed and back at your necklace.

“Do you recognize this?” You ask softly, holding it out to him. His eyes narrow as he looks at it - but stays silent.

It’s a tense moment, the rest of the batch also analyzing the rough gem wrapped in leather that you’ve been wearing for as long as any of them can remember. How Crosshair would have a connection to it, they’re only just realizing. He was never one for much romance, but this gift was different. Given to you on shore leave far away from prying eyes, and confirmation that even though you could never tell anyone, he’d always be yours. The necklace was confirmation of a secret relationship and the only public display of affection either of you could show.

“Crosshair.” you press desperately, “do you recognize this?” His breathing becomes a bit more laboured, more stressed, more like he's fighting something.

“Good soldiers follow orders. Good soldiers follow orders. Good-”

“Tech scan him again.” you demand watching as he begins to struggle against the bindings. Tech presses his way in the room.

“Hold his head for me,” he says before beginning a scan with a specialized tool that he's been young with for some time. You rest your hands on his face, one cupped behind and one so that you can rub calming circles on his cheek. It's the same way you used to hold him after missions that had gone less to plan.

“Good soldiers follow orders.” He says over and over as his eyes glaze over and become unfocused.

“Tech,” you say worriedly, desperately trying to coax Crosshair back to life and calm him down.

“Good soldiers follow orders.” He says with his head falling back, and you do your best to keep him supported.

“I’ve got it!” Tech shouts, looking at the left side of his temple. “Everyone out! I need to sedate him.” Your head flies up, you’re not keen to leave him, not when he's in this state.

“Good soldiers follow orders.”

“I can't leave him…”

“Good soldiers follow orders.”

“Wrecker get her out now!” Tech shouts and you feel arms like tree trunks around your middle and you can’t do more than wriggle as your hands slip from Crosshairs face as you're dragged out of the room.

It’s not too long later when Tech re-emerges but it feels like a lifetime to you. And before you can even get a word out he places a petri dish on the table, before leaving to go into the fresher. You rush back to find Crosshair laying on the floor, one hand still magnetized to the leg of one of the bunks. You doubt the cleanliness of the operation but if there's one thing the bad batch had in great supply it was Bacta and antibiotics.

There's a patch of shaven hair by his temple with a small bandage over it, and the drugs seem to be wearing off quickly because he's already shifting. You run a soft hand over his stubble. You’re scared to wake him, because if he wakes and it isn't the man you know under his eyes, you don’t know what you’ll do.

He groans, it's long and deep like the kind you're used to getting in the early hours of the morning when you get up to sneak him out of your bed and back into his bunk. Your name slips past his lips, and his eyes flutter open.

You’re ready to jump away, scared even though he's still bound. And you recoil when his arms reach for you and get stopped by the binder. He looks confused for a moment before his eyes meet the metal restraining him.

His eyes meet yours with tears falling from them.

“Crosshair?” you ask, “I need to know it’s you.”

“The necklace, I gave it to you.” He says, but you remain far from his grasp still. “It was the last day shore leave, at your-our place. We were in bed, the sun was rising, it was the first time I told you I loved you.” He says slowly, deliberately, in a soft voice he only uses around you. Unconsciously you move to him, his freehand wraps around your waist as he buries his face where your shoulder meets your neck. You pull him away only to press your lips to his in a kiss that’s a mess of tears, teeth and a need to be close to one another.

“I’m sorry.” He gasps when you break away the breath. “Maker, mesh’la i’m so sorry.”

“It doesn’t matter.” You tell him, unlocking the binder so he can hold you with both hands, before kissing him again, this time it is somehow more needy than the last, you can't get enough of Crosshair because now you know what it is like to lose him. Your hands reach under his empire blacks, partly because you want to burn every part of the empire to the ground and partly because you're desperate to properly feel him again. You feel his warm hands up your back as they go under your tunic and you keen into his touch.

Hunter clears his throat from the doorway.

“I was on my way to check on you.” He says after the two of you break away. “But it seems you two are getting on just fine.” Your face flushes bright red as Hunter turns away. “Good to have you back Crosshair.” Hunter says firmly.

Crosshair presses a kiss to your neck before smiling.

“Good to be back Sarge.”

[samanthaswishes]

Agents of SHIELD Rewatch Season 3B (ep. 11-22)

Here's my commentary on my rewatch of Agents of SHIELD Season 3 Episodes 11-22. This may not be the best commentary since these are just the thoughts and opinions that come to my mind as I watch the episodes rather than a full-blown analysis, but I'm just having fun with it!

3x11 Bouncing Back

YOYO EPISODE FINALLY!

Also ominous 3 months from now screen. It’s kinda sad rewatching it, knowing what results from it.

THERE SHE IS

Elena Rodriguez, I love you.

This is also an Elena “Yo-Yo” Rodriguez appreciation blog.

“He didn’t want to invite us to his house”

“You have people?” “Sort of. Not really.”😭😭

Also wish we got more of the friendship between Lincoln and Jemma. Being doctors, it definitely had potential.

Not Hunter and Bobbi trying the fish oil pills, or thinking about it.

If this was a soulmate AU, this is when Mack and Elena’s would have shown.

This is also an appreciation post for Yo-Yo’s Doc Martens.

Still find it funny yet badass that Elena was able to knock out and kidnap Mack all on her own.

“How do you lose someone as big as Mack?”

Love you Mack, but this is karma for what you did with Hunter last season😅

Coulson’s still sort of off the deep end. I mean the memory torture machine? Really? I understand the need to get to Malick, but it’s pretty inhumane.

Elena’s piercings! Ugh, she’s so pretty!

“Like a yo-yo” 🥺🥺🥺🥺

Don’t show him humanity. That’s how we ended up with Ultron.

Mack and Elena’s very first conversation is one of my favorite scenes.

Mack’s little proud moment to be Daisy’s partner😁

Also love that we got a whole episode of Elena getting to speak Spanish. Really great to see her speak in her native language.

“Kinda sexy” Sorry Hunter, she’s Mack’s girlfriend.

“You’re enjoying this” “Mm, maybe a little”

Hive in this episode is really uncomfortable to watch.

I understand Lincoln’s hesitation.

I love the character development that Elena went through in season 7, but I really liked the restraint on her powers, having to snap back to one place. I feel like it added something unique to a commonly used super power.

“You’re my new best friend” WHY SHOW DID YOU HAVE RUIN THIS FRIENDSHIP IN SEASON 5!😫

Elena’s power is just so fun. And her little smiles when they are attacking the police station🥰

And even from her very first episode, we see how Elena can be impulsive, thus forcing herself to snap back.

NOT THE HAND

Why does Hydra have elevator hold music?😂

Sad that this is the only episode Elena was in with Bobbi and Hunter. Bobbi and Elena would have been such a badass pair, and I feel like Elena and Hunter would have had a fun, bouncing off each other type of relationship.

“Don’t look at me like that” YOU LOVE HER MACKKKKK

SHIELD Apple Watch

Daisy and Joey already see the relationship haha.

YOYO YOYO YOYO YOYO YOYO YOYO

They’re so soft. Lincoln and Daisy🥺

“You joined the cavalry”

Of course, Talbot lol.

3x12 The Inside Man

Hive is disgusting.

I mean, I’d be pissed if my son was in trouble because of my husband’s job too.

“Shake n Bake”

Again, Daisy is right. It’s all “bad people can be inhuman too” but she brings up the point “there’s bad humans too, but you don’t see anything against them.”

May says Lincoln’s joke was not funny, but I believe she laughed a little.

CREEL!

May just stole some innocent guy’s crowbar💀

“Michilan Man”

Would have been good to mention Creel was there, Talbot.

A symposium on how to handle inhumans without an inhuman present in fear of “offending” them? Bullshit.

I get May’s anger at Hunter. Really, I get it. However, I don’t think it was fair of her to speak to Hunter the way she did. Hunter does actually care a lot for the team. Yes, Bobbi is his reasoning for most things, but he really does love this team.

Talbot’s character in this episode is just him being racist/xenophobic.

“Cure needs a disease” THANK YOU COULSON.

Also, does Talbot know about Daisy’s powers? Like, I don’t think he was ever formally informed of it.

Okay, but this training scene is hot😳

PONYTAIL MAY

They still have Daisy’s blood from 2 years ago? Then again, Jemma did take so many vials of it after she got shot.

I do agree that becoming inhuman should be a choice and some might actually want a vaccine, but Daisy does have a point that the government would most definitely make it mandatory, exterminating the inhuman race.

“I love you” “I don’t hate you as much”

Classic May. “I’ll handle the kid”

Low blow Lincoln. Low blow.

Also, Lincoln makes it out to be his powers that scared off Daisy. Really, it was the dig at her past that she had to do to survive.

“Don’t get to kill people in cold blood, but we have a good retirement plan”

Is it weird that I wish we got to see more of the character’s bedrooms? Lincoln’s isn’t that decorated but I’d like to see how other characters like Daisy, May, or Mack have personalized their spaces.

Now they’re really Shake n Bake😏

Also, as someone who has worn many sports bras, how the hell was Daisy able to take hers off in one swift movement?

And while I enjoy the staticquake sexy time, the door is literally WIDE open. Like, okay I guess?😂 Fitzsimmons and other agents are still on base. And Mack isn’t in this episode, so he might be there too. Though I feel like he’s had his fair share of walking/hearing in on Bobbi and Hunter and later Fitzsimmons.

3x13 Parting Shot

Okay. I’m ready for pain🙃

Bobbi is a mood. I’d too ask for a burger and curly fries if I was being interrogated.

Bobbi’s code name for the Zephyr being “Bird”🥺 Is that the only time they really refer to her as “Mockingbird”?

“Able to spout absolute nonsense with such ease” Well, that’s Hunter for you.

“Pretty sure that’s gonna be a no” “It’s a big no”

“Hi” “Hi~”

Hunter’s responses to each of the past vacation possibilities. “Visiting your mum doesn’t count” “That wasn’t me” He’s impulsive but I miss him.

Mushrooms

For soup

Love how Daisy just nods off like “Cool. That isn’t weird at all”

“Mine’s not fluent” “Mine’s nonexistent” “I dated a Russian hacker once, but I only learned the dirty words”

You can’t just leave us with that, Daisy. Tell me more about this Russian hacker that is most definitely a her.

Daisy’s resume: can hack the Pentagon and shake the Earth.

“New Hampshire with legs”

This scene is so important, but I can’t get over the blooper of the guy snoring in the back😂

“Spasibo, Daisy” “Denada” “Pretty sure that’s not Russian”

Shadow Man

Hunter: “I have an idea but it involves May hitting people” May: 😏

“FoR mOtHeR rUsSiA!” *dies instantly*

“Ready, sestra?” “Da” YEEEESSSSS

Bobbi’s concern for Daisy🥺

“There’s no cheeseburgers where we’re going”😭

It really is Coulson’s brand to step into the light from a shadowy place, isn’t it?

“It’s a Spy’s Goodbye”😭😭😭😭😭😭😭

Pretty sure every Shield fan is traumatized by the Spy’s Goodbye score. It’s definitely one of the most beautiful scores, but it’s just so sad.

3x14 Watchdogs

Love that we got a pretty good amount of background of Mack’s family life. Brother, Mom and Dad, Ex-Wife, Late-Daughter.

Ruben, you seem really cool! Don’t follow the Watchdogs.

I just wanna say that I love Daisy’s leather jacket this season. Probably my favorite one.

“Thank you, nerd herd”

iT’s A bUiLdInG

May is best mentor/teacher.

Love the Jemma and May dynamic this season.

Jemma, you are amazing with your own amazing skills.

I understand both sides of this argument, but I kinda have to side with Daisy. The Watchdogs are taking extremes. Why should they just wait around when people are dying? Like Daisy said, they have to save lives.

So did none of Mack’s family know he’s a SHIELD agent?

Just climbs into a Watchdog’s car to shake him. I love you Daisy😂

I get why Fitz and Mack have their reservations, wanting to be the bigger person and all, but Daisy doesn’t “hurt” people for no reason. It’s never her intentions to hurt people, but she does need to get through the people who are intentionally hurting innocents. Lives are at stake. That’s what Daisy’s focus is on. The Watchdogs should not be given a single inch to do more harm.

“What does he think you do?” “Insurance” “Well, not anymore”

It’s not something I see often, but I have seen people blame Daisy for what happens to Mack and Fitz in this episode, which is just stupid. The Watchdogs are at fault. Just want to make it clear: what happened to Fitz and Mack were not Daisy’s fault.

Coulson wasn’t the one who made Deathlok, Blake. IT WAS FREAKING JOHN GARRETT AND HYDRA!

Lincoln’s little chuckle when he realizes it’s a hologram🥲

“We brought him Daisy” And both Lincoln and Coulson are immediately on the move.

Well guess what, now you’re blindsighted. By the Watchdogs.

NOT THE DOG STATUE

Make shift Shotgun Axe!!! Don’t worry Mack, only 8 more episodes.

ALFIE

Mack named himself after Ruben🥹

Mini Mack

3x15 Spacetime

Time for my favorite episode of the season, and one of my favorites of the whole series!!!!

Robin’s theme🥺😭 Definitely one of my favorites next to the Quake theme.

Lincoln, poor baby😂 Is this his first gun fight?? Looks completely scared and confused.

Here comes Hive with that Aladdin cape thing.

Jemma sitting next to Daisy to provide comfort🥺

I can’t imagine what Daisy might be thinking when she thought Coulson was shooting at her.

The fact that this episode sets up SO MANY things for the future of the show. Lincoln’s death, literally the plot of season 5. So many things are a result of this episode.

“You’re hurting my brain”

“I’ve never seen the original Terminator” “You’re off the team” Is that a requirement for the team lol?😂

“Real feat would be changing the past” WELL GUESS WHAT YOU GUYS DO IN SEASON 7

Plot hole: Robin is described to be 18 months old prior to season 3 (1.5 years old) then suddenly she’s like 7 years old in season 5, which is only 2 years later??

The Hinton story is just so sad. Charles left to make sure Robin never saw a death only for her to get precognition like him and see even more bad things.

I love that May never doubts Daisy’s abilities. She always believes in Daisy, but I believe she was okay to take her place and agree with Coulson because, not only could that change the future outcome, but because she wanted to protect Daisy from the harm that could have been caused. Especially given that there would be a death happening, there was definitely a chance the death Daisy saw was her own.

“I refuse to believe anything is completely inevitable” season 5 proves this belief, but your actions in season 5 totally disregard this belief.

I love Daisy’s season 3B hair. It’s slightly longer than it was in season 3A and has a curl to it. I love it!

“Skye, come home.” 🥺😭🥺😭

Andrew I love you

“You’re still the center of the best moments of my life”😭

ANDREW GARNER IS THE BEST LITERALLY

He and Daniel have set my standards for future partners.

“And maybe what we see here won’t make any sense-“ *cue Hive Grant Ward*

Chloe absolutely nails these one shot fights!!

And there’s why it needed to be Daisy.

THE CINEMATOGRAPHY OF THIS SCENE ON THE ROOF!!!

Again, the Hinton family story is so sad.

Here’s the ominous quinjet again

Everything about this episode is just amazing from start to finish. The way it starts and ends is just so good. The entire cast and crew really did amazing with this one.

3x16 Paradise Lost

I already didn’t like this episode, but season 7 made me dislike it even more.

Funny how my favorite and least favorite episodes of the season are back to back.

Hard to believe just a little over 2 years ago, I felt bad for Nathaniel Malick. Now, fuck him.

“You said you killed him” “I did” “Well, you didn’t kill him hard enough”

And there’s the infamous bleeding cheek scar on Daisy that never seems to go away.

SCREW YOU WHITEHALL

So did the Chronicoms change the beliefs of Nathaniel in season 7? Cause in season 3, he seems to heavily believe Hydra then in season 7, he says he doesn’t “worship a space octopus”

This season is just the season of guilt, isn’t it?

“We shouldn’t use our powers” AND what does Daisy do in like 2 minutes?

gIrL pOwEr

It’s also crazy to hear Gideon and Nathaniel talk about their dad and actually knowing and seeing who this guy is.

I also think I don’t like this episode because it reminds me of 1x21 (but that episode at least has some redeeming qualities) By that I mean 1x21 I feel like tried to build sympathy for Ward, who at that point was revealed to be Hydra. I feel like this episode is trying to make me sympathize with Malick, which I sure as hell do not.

Getting locked in a room with Melinda May. That’s either a dream or a nightmare depending on how you look at it.

Another thing that’s important in season 5.

“Birds can be scary” As someone who got chased by geese at a park/lake when I was like 8 or 9, I agree.

I like that Coulson acknowledges that he did go off the deep end before.

Again, I used to feel bad for Nathaniel, but I guess Gideon did something good by sending Nathaniel through the portal. (I’m not sure if I mean this sarcastically)

Isn’t Nathaniel’s memory in Hive? And Hive is now kissing Malick’a daughter?? This is weird.

So when did Gordon show up for inhumans? Is it more so if they’re in trouble? Cause he picked up Lincoln when he almost killed his ex. He picked up Daisy when she was being chased by real shield (which makes me wonder if he knew if she was Jiaying’s daughter given he could’ve easily found her and brought her to her mom years ago)

I’m glad Daisy at least told someone about the vision instead of bottling it up and keeping it to herself.

“That’s not good” No shit, Fitz

How did Giyera know exactly where the Zephyr would be landing?

“Let’s call them in” YAYYYYY

3x17 The Team

Joey with his boyfriend and Elena learning english for Mack🥹

One of my favorite bts photos will always be the secret warriors in the harnesses pretending to sky dive.

I love the little banter Elena and Joey have with one another.

Ugh this scene is so cool but so hurts when you realize this is when Hive took control of Daisy.

“If not, we’ll all go blind” “Wha?”

Joeyyy you did good.

“Hello~?”

“May, you can’t even walk” “But I can still fly”

Also love Daisy’s maroon sweater. It’s so cute.

I wish we got a full episode of the Secret Warriors and not just the start of the episode. Was really disappointed about that.

AND MACK LEARNED SPANISH FOR HERRRR🥰😭

I LOVE MACKELENA

LINCOLN AND DAISY AND SOFT FOREHEAD KISSES🥰🥰

The way May swats Lincoln’s hand away is just funny to me. Probably cause my mom did and still does the same thing😅

“I hate this hospital gown” “You think?” Daisy’s just like “you know how many times I’ve had to wear this the last 3 years??”

What was Elena doing in the hangar? Was it just scoping out the place?

Fitz and I have the same reaction to gross things like the inside of the human body.

May’s seen Daisy ICE herself, which is why she makes of face that says she doesn’t want to ICE the inhumans.

SHIELD and the team really did go about this wrong. They should have been notified immediately instead of leaving them in the dark. Things probably wouldn’t have been as bad.

WHY DID THEY START SHOOTING?

This is what I mean. Daisy looks almost scared of herself when she quakes Joey against the wall.

“We’ll be stronger next time. You’ll see” has different implications when you think about Daisy being under the sway.

Chloe really does play the crazy sway well.

The May and Coulson realization that it’s Daisy🥺

3x18 The Singularity

The Mack and May banter in the beginning is great.

“It’s risky and irresponsible” “Then why are you smiling”

Coulson’s reminder to everyone: Daisy is a HOSTAGE. Hive is USING HER. This is for everyone in the back WHO THOUGHT SHE PURPOSELY BETRAYED THE TEAM WHILE SHE WAS FUCKING BRAINWASHED!

Daisy used to drive her van up to overlook the city to sleep at night🥺

“You mean once we have sex?”

Again, love the May and Jemma dynamic this season.

“I don’t have parents anymore”😭😭

Yeah you do, Daisy, and they are working hard to get you back.

Cutting off Talbot mid sentence will always be funny.

NOT DAISY LEANING ON HIVE. UGH I HATE THIS I HATE THIS I HATE THIS.

Again, Coulson going slightly off the deep end (hence the murder vest). I know it’s over Daisy (which is understandable) but I am glad he does get called out for it. If only Fitz got the same treatment when he makes rash decisions for Simmons and makes decisions that risks other people.

“Hang tight, Lincoln, I’m almost there” May says this with such a maternal tone. I love some Mama May. I also wish, again, we got more of the Lincoln and May dynamic.

I forgot Dr. Radcliffe referred to himself as The Doctor.

“You’re not the only one who cares”😭😭😭

“Phil, you’re not her father” “No. But she’s the closest thing I have to a daughter” BRB CRYING

I get they have to wait, but is now… when your best friend is currently mind controlled and you need an instant cure… the time to talk about your romantic relationship?

“We’ve done more questionable for our employer”

Enter Holden Radcliffe. Not one of my favorites but he is a little fun.

THE SHIELD!!!!

Again, NOTHING DAISY DID WHILE UNDER THE SWAY IS HER FAULT!! The amount of people that actually blame Daisy for choking Fitz against the wall and use it as an excuse for the bad things that happen to her is insane.

I will be the biggest Daisy advocate if I have to be.

Mack knows all. He knew about Fitzsimmons and he knew about Dousy.

I’m trying not to be over critical of Fitzsimmons but I can’t help it😅 Is now really the best time for sex??

Also, this is the moment Mack will be regretting when he gets stuck in the 1980s with their grandson.

3x19 Failed Experiments

Oh yeah. This is the Kree episode.

“If this was a competition then I would win” You tell him, Simmons😂

I forgot how disgusting and creepy Hive’s inhuman process is.

PIPER!!! PIPER PIPER PIPER. I LOVE HER!

Piper already has her sass😝

“If I need a gun, I’ll take one” “No, you’re taking this one”

“You’re being a lovesick fool trying to make a grand gesture” I agree with Simmons but she seems to be quiet when Fitz does the same.

Daisy’s teasing has very Skye vibes and i’m about to cry🥲

Mack just loves calling James a blowhard.

Love it when May gets to manipulate stupid people.

BEAT HIS ASS MAY!

“I’ve seen that writing before” I missed it, but was it the alien writing?? OR (though this came out before Captain Marvel) could Coulson remember when he first saw Kree on the 90s?

Alisha got sliced😳 Always forget that’s how she went out.

Ugh this Mack and Daisy scene😭😭

“What does that make us? Friends?” BROTHER AND SISTER DAISY. MACK IS THE BEST BIG BROTHER😭

Daisy and Mack (along with May) are really the mvps of the season.

The shouting “He’s coming! He’s coming”😂

The Worried Mom look May has😭

May’s look also is probably not only because she shot Daisy, someone she loves like her own kid, but also because she had to leave her in the hands of Hive, which of course has the face of the guy that had kidnapped, manipulated, and essentially abused Daisy.

This episode hurts

3x20 Emancipation

Sokovia Accords/Civil War mention. Also, this show is the reason why I am Team Cap.

Where exactly is the Playground. Like at least give me a state. We at least knew the Lighthouse is in upstate New York.

How many times does Daisy get her blood drawn in this show??

“Time for your feeding”

And this whole time May was working with Lincoln so that they could send Lash to save her.

“And eat something” still the Mama May

You can never really stop Daisy from hacking into systems.

“Electro Boy”

YOYO

Always love a little sassy Elena.

“You’ve had an index” “Which is how I know this won’t end well” THANK YOU COULSON

Fuck the watchdogs.

Daisy, you gotta be creepy with the hacking now??

Daisy🥺 I hate when she looks so weak.

They’ve all been losing their minds over Daisy as she seems to have a special connection with every single person there.

“Though this was a germ free zone” about Talbot.

This Mack and Elena scene🥺🥰

Also because I go to a christian university, I’m required to take religious classes and in one of them, we had to write a paper about echoes of the bible in media, and I chose these last 3 episodes of the season, and I actually quoted this Mackelena scene. I got an A on it.

Talbot’s dialogue is hilarious😂

May choosing to lie to Talbot for Daisy.

Ghost Rider tease🔥

The realization of using Daisy’s blood could potentially kill her.

May obviously knew it was Daisy because she is not that stupid to look straight at the camera and not notice anything else.

“Swaisy Daisy”

So Daisy can autopilot a quinjet but not actually fly? I mean I guess it makes sense.

I rewatched a convention panel recently and Henry said after getting electrocuted by Lincoln, Mack was supposed to get knocked out, and he said hell no because Mack has been knocked out all season😂

“Our children” NOPE NOPE NOPE EW GROSS GROSS

Seeing Lash would have made me shot myself.

“Excuse me for doing my job” YOU ARE APPRECIATED MACK

“Who international names these thing” Thinking the same thing Talbot😅

“Now, you’re free”😭😭😭😭😭😭

Rest in Peace Andrew. You were a great character.

YOU CAN CLEAR AS DAY SEE HER GUILT AS SHE DOESNT WANT TO LOOK AT ANYONE😭

“Nobody goes in there” Daisy is proved to be free of the sway. And everyone wonders why Daisy left. She was left alone to get through this. No one actually tried to help her. A little support and empathy could have kept her from leaving.

THE NECKLACE

UGH when watching this the first time, it had my mind racing even though I was spoiled on who died.

3x21 Absolution

“You always know how to survive” DAISY’S CHARACTER IN A NUTSHELL

It makes you think the quinjet was in space only for them to be under water WHICH IS STILL COOL.

They’re literally treating her like a criminal while forcing her to speak about things she most definitely has PTSD about. She was shown no comfort or support after being a victim of trauma.

Everywhere they go, there’s just barely enough land to land a quinjet.

What’s with using harsh tones with Daisy, Jemma? She’s giving you information you asked for.

I feel like Fitz was an aspiring actor at one point😅

“Everytime I see his face, I want to punch something” ME TOO MAY

WHY IS THE CODE SO LONG LOL

Of course with less than five seconds to spare.

“This isn’t about super speed, this is about your turtle speed” I LOVE YOU YOYO

“No one blames you” then why are you guys not comforting here? She’s probably only saying these things cause of how you all are treating her.

Also does shield just not have other therapists on hand after Andrew??

Gotta really hand it to Brett this episode when he’s having all the memories.

“Turtle man wishes for me to hurry”😂

THANK YOU MACK FOR AT LEAST SHOWING HER CONPASSION

This scene always hurt😭 The way Mack just holds Daisy.

Jemma, you tease.

Mack and Daisy is literally the best friendship in the whole show.

Not Hive quoting Skye.

Also Chloe said in a panel that the time difference between the end of this episode and next is actually 2 weeks.

Ugh i’m ready for pain next episode😭

3x22 Ascension

“Something pretty, not like the sky, like a flower”

The Daisy vs Hive fight is one of the most badass fights. it really showcases Daisy’s abilities with her powers and as a fighter.

At first, you’re like “NO MACK” but then you’re like “NO YOYO” again, painful episode.

“Electric Company”

This little horror esc scene with Jemma and the primatives.

How many times are the agents hiding for their lives in the base??

May always knows the right thing to say.

MAY WAS ABOUT TO TELL DAISY THAT SHE CARES ABOUT/LOVES DAISY VERY MUCH UGH. WHY WAS THAT TAKEN AWAY FROM US😭

At least Fitz and May started to care about Daisy’s physical health.

“This is as far as we got” That’s usually my mood with plans.

“What comes after Homeland?” “Just say shield!”

It’s not you, Daisy. It’s not you. You’re not gonna like who it is.

Ew. Did not want to see Hive’s true form. Gross.

“Help me Obi-Wan Kenobi. You’re my only hope”

Oh Coulson, you’re such a dork.

Daisy’s brief smile before everything goes to shit😭

Jemma and Fitz’s looks give the impression they knew he wasn’t going to make it.

This is how I feel about StaticQuake. Neither were ready for their relationship. They both had issues that needed work. They had their cute moments which made me love it before, but knowing what I do, it’s clear as day how their relationship wouldn’t have worked. Maybe in another universe, but not this one.

SHOTGUN AXE SHOTGUN AXE SHOTGUN AXE

THIS GROUP FIGHT SCENE AHHHH LOVE IT

^^Wish we had something similar in the series finale.

LINCOLN NO!

Also, is Elena at all upset about losing the necklace that once belonged to her grandmother?

CHLOE’S ACTING!!

UGH MY TEARS😭😭

This finale is probably one of the deepest endings.

BUT THE AGGRESSIVENESS OF THAT SIX MONTHS LATER CARD💀

It’s crazy how the last scene has such a season 4 vibe. I don’t know if that makes sense but it feels like a season 4 scene.

SEE. Daisy’s just helping inhumans and those with connections with inhumans.

Again, Daisy is so sweet with kids.

Also the goth look.

Daisy wanting to introduce Polly and Robin to Cal😭

And the introduction to AIDA, one of my favorite villains.

[canmom]

Animation Night 110: Berserk

That manga... No... too large to be called a manga...

Hello once more my friends! Happy Thursday. It’s finally time for Berserk!

So. Today we’re going to be looking at one of the adaptations of Berserk - not the renowned 90s TV show, although I will tuck in an episode of that, but the movie trilogy by Studio 4°C that ran from 2012 to 2013. But first! Let’s talk about the manga...

What has not been said about Kentaro Miura’s genre-defining epic? Probably very little, but that’s never stopped me before!

So. Berserk is a ‘dark fantasy’ manga series that ran from 1989, when Kentaro Miura was just 23, until his death in May last year - a span of 32 years. At this point I have read up to

The story has gone, as you’d expect, many different places, but broadly it is a projection of the horrors of the European Wars of Religion into a heightened fantasy world - all centered on the character of Guts, a badass traveling swordsman who, marked for demonic sacrifice, persists in the world out of sheer stubbornness and battles the demonic ‘Apostles’.

The real meat of it begins with the Golden Age arc, the point where we see just how great a storyteller Miura really is. He precisely lays out a kind of grand Shakespearian tragedy, following Guts’s growth to adulthood with a mercenary band led by the iconic ambitious (evil) femboy Griffith, and the grand betrayal that set him on the present path. Even though we have some idea how it will end, the story rolls on with a feeling of terrible inevitability.

One of the great strengths of Berserk is the sheer variety of emotional tones Miura can convey. It is of course best known for its incredibly vivid and detailed battle scenes, the splattery panels of people being hacked apart by swords - and certainly Miura is one of the best at composing action, and a ludicrously methodical illustrator. Berserk loves to deliver the spectacle of, say, a massive cavalry charge...

(Look at all these horses in distinct, active poses and dynamic perspective, the use of value in the composition to make sure it reads, the sheer amount of effort put into precise hatching around the muscle shapes of each horse. I can only imagine how long it took to draw just this one panel.)

But more than that, Miura is capable of portraying moments of painful tenderness and wicked humour. The Golden Age arc wouldn’t work nearly so well if we didn’t feel the sense of camaraderie in the Band of the Hawk, watch Guts warm up to them, or even ourselves come to believe in Griffith’s dream. The horror of the eventual climax at the Eclipse depends on all of these moments leading up to it.

Yet that’s only the first quarter 100 chapters or so of a manga that has so far reached around 364 (with Miura’s assistant Kōji Mori now set to continue). Following this point, the story enters the Conviction arc, beginning with relatively self-contained stories but building up into a new story about a depraved inquisitor. Miura has a good eye for turning these stories into not just a monster of the week, but compelling self-contained story in its own right (usually a very sad one!), embedded in an overall arc of the traumatised Guts cracking his cynical shell and slowly growing to once again accept connections to other people and become more of a protector figure.

So by the following Falcon of the Millenium Empire arc, the central cast has expanded considerably: Guts, now on a mission to heal his wife Casca who has been traumatised to the point of taking on a totally childlike demeanour, gradually finds himself joined by a whole party. Puck the elf (here more like a fairy than a LotR elf) is a fourth-wall-breaking Greek chorus present from the start; alongside him arrive Isidro, a young boy who idolises guts and tends to form the comic relief; Farnesse, once an aristocratic witch-hunter fascinated by flames; Serpico, her loyal retainer and secret brother; eventually even Schierke the young apprentice witch and her own elf companion Ivalera.

One of the biggest concerns of Berserk is to show how these various characters came to be as they are, and show the events unfolding as a chain of causality. Every so often, we’ll dive into a flashback to flesh out one of the central characters, and honestly these tend to be some of my favourite parts of the story.

This idea of causality is actually explicitly discussed by characters like the mysterious Skull Knight, implied to be something of a predecessor to Guts who seems to have a sense of how the plot will unfold; Guts is described as existing outside the chain of causality by virtue of being sacrificed - and though he has become a kind of homo sacer to be killed with impunity by demons, this also gives him the opportunity to intervene in events. But how is in question; Guts is torn between two impulses: his desire for revenge on Griffith, his desire to protect Casca and the others who came under his wing, mixed his fear about hurting people in rage and bloodlust during fighting.

All this must sound very macho, and yeah, it often is - but right from the very start of Berserk it’s balanced by symbols of effeminacy as well, whether in the form of Puck the neotenous elf (who the camera loves to linger on) or, of course, Griffith - and the relationship between Griffith and Guts is very heavy on sexual tension...

So, wherever did all this come from?

Prior to Berserk, I don’t believe this particular kind of fantasy manga was well-established. Certainly pretty much all subsequent works in the ‘dark fantasy’ genre, from other manga like Claymore (2001-2014) to games like Drag-on Dragoon (2003) and Dark Souls (2011) cite it as a massive influence.

In the 80s, Western fantasy works were enjoying a wave of popularity, particularly in computer RPGs attempting to capture the experience of D&D - which of course ended up with quite a different lineage in Japan (a divergence exemplified by the Wizardry series, which spawned a completely different line of sequels in Japan and the West). And by this point, Dragon Quest (1986) and Final Fantasy (1987) were on the scene; there was a big interest in fantasy art. However, the tone of these games was quite different, targeted much more at children.

Here we’ve got to tread a little carefully to avoid muddying the picture! When we talk about the ‘grimdark’ movement of Western fantasy novels that kicked off with A Song of Ice and Fire in 1996, there’s a narrative that claims all prior fantasy was highly moralistic and full of uncomplicated romantic heroes, but thanks to authors like Martin, there was a turn to cynical realpolitik, bloody violence and torture, and sex (and in particular lots of rape). But it’s not true; this narrative erases the whole ‘sword and sorcery’ and ‘dying earth’ subgenres from existence; in fact there has been ‘dark fantasy’ pretty much from the start, at the very least from the 1960s. Such works, particularly the writing of Jack Vance, Poul Anderson, Michael Moorcock, and (sigh) yes Lovecraft and Howard formed a major part of the fabric of D&D in 1974.

And indeed, Miura cites two major sword-and-sorcery works as part of his inspiration for Berserk’s setting: the 1982 film adaptation of Howard’s Conan the Barbarian (featuring Arnie!) and Moorcock’s Elric of Melnibone series. I think the Elric connection would be very interesting to develop, because Moorcock was definitely interested in the same sort of grand themes as Miura, but I’ll have to actually read it first lmao...

Alongside this, Miura cited some other works from the West, namely the films Mad Max (you can kinda see it) and Star Wars (bwuh?).

Of course, Miura also had plenty of influence within manga. Buronson and Tetsuo Hara’s post-apocalyptic fighting manga Fist of the North Star (北斗の拳, 1983-88) frequently comes up as a big influence, and we can certainly see the resemblance between Kenshiro (above) and Guts, as well as the general post-gekiga art style full of heavy hatching and intricate, thin lines that Miura would pick up so well.

Alongside that, Miura’s demons unsurprisingly owe a lot to Go Nagai; he also heavily praises Osamu Tezuka’s historical manga Dororo. But there’s actually another line of influence that may or may not be surprising: shōjo manga, particularly that of the Year 24 Group...

Miura commented about the influence of shōjo manga on the series, stating that it is about "expressing every feeling powerfully."[17][23] Particularly, he mentioned influence from Yumiko Ōshima,[17][23] and that the anime adaptations of The Rose of Versailles and Aim for the Ace!, both directed by Osamu Dezaki, inspired him to read The Rose of Versailles manga and the works of Keiko Takemiya, notably Kaze to Ki no Uta.[16][24]

Dezaki we covered previously on Animation Night 95, and we watched the anime adaptation of foundational yaoi manga Kaze to Ki no Uta back on Animation Night 69 - and, like, yeah! You can certainly see how Griffith in particular, with his flowing curly hair and pouty lips, looks like he comes straight from a shōjo manga - something perfectly fitting the larger-than-life charismatic hero role he assumes. And in general, this old school shōjo approach to storytelling proved an absolutely perfect fit for the quieter, emotional parts of the story: repeated lines to establish a certain cadence, panels which don’t show events but just establish mood, a certain wistful beauty.

It is the contrast between these two elements that makes Berserk sing. It invites you to indulge in its gleeful fascination with fever-dream ultraviolence but it’s also very determined in observing its consequences on the survivors.

Surely the most controversial aspect of Berserk is how frequently it portrays rape. Make no mistake, it is quite a lot, and if you do not want to deal with that, just don’t read Berserk.

So, how exactly does it go about this? Notably, the main three characters of Berserk are all survivors of sexual violence. Guts was betrayed by his father-figure early in life; Casca was rescued from rape by a noble by Griffith; a young Griffith did deeply traumatising sex work for a different noble to fund the Band of the Hawk in its early years. All three of these events, while they might be a bit absurd and melodramatic on some level, are treated with a great deal of care and gravitas - in particular, the arc of Guts and Casca sharing their respective stories and growing closer together and creating a more positive form of sexuality is one of the most affecting parts of the Golden Age arc, frankly the best het scene I’ve ever read lmao.

Furthering that approach is effective use of rape as an element of horror, namely the climax of the Golden Age arc, where (spoilers) the tortured Griffith, rescued from the king’s dungeon but too injured to ever carry on his rise as a mercenary leader, chooses to sacrifice the entire Band of the Hawk to demons in order to make himself a kind of demon lord. Most of them are torn to pieces, but Casca is raped, first by tentacle monsters and then by Griffith himself while Guts looks on powerlessly. The manga forces us, like Guts, to watch; it is one of the most viscerally upsetting scenes I’ve read in manga, even by contrast to the blood and guts and deaths of beloved characters throughout the rest of the eclipse.

At the same time, there’s a lot of rape or attempted rape that’s just kind of... there, part of the broader texture of violence that fills the series. Our actual and would-be rapists include mercenaries, apostles and at one point monstrous trolls; Casca in particular gets the absolute worst of it, with many attempted rapists showing up both before and after the eclipse. The first time I read Berserk, I felt strongly about such portrayals and couldn’t read much further than the Golden Age arc - now I’ve evidently changed my mind about what’s appropriate to treat in fiction in general.

At this point I think it’s up to each person to decide what they’re comfortable reading and all I can do is just, tell you what you’re in for.

Perhaps it’s worth digging into what role this serves. Berserk is of course deeply concerned with the subject of violence in general. Guts’s defining feature is his connection to violence; he has killed hundreds if not thousands of people and is separated from the rest of the world by the fact he’s attacked nightly by demons. It does a good job of depicting violence as both alluring and repulsive and in many ways, nihilistically treating it as just natural; we’re often reminded that the people slaughtered for Griffith’s dream or because they got on the wrong side of Guts are often just people, other mercenaries, who probably followed their own charismatic leader or just went to war because they had no other way to make a living. Moreover, it is very interested in notions of domination and powerlessness, and this is where the sexual violence fits in. And honestly, these kinds of ero-guro elements seem appropriate for what this story is about.

And yet, the way it treats rape is curiously... limited. It seems even a giant monster completely divorced from humanity will only ever get the tentacle dick out because they see a woman. Casca is often quite awkwardly depicted as ‘the girl one’, with most of her conflicts stemming from that - there’s even a plot point where she goes into battle and can’t fight as effectively because she’s on her period. Often it seems like the only way Miura can think to give a conflict to Casca is by having someone try to rape her. (By contrast, women who appear later in the story like Farnesse and Schierke tend to get very different conflicts - as much as even early Berserk features brilliant writing, I think Miura surely matured while writing it.)

One possible explanation I’ve heard is that Miura’s editors at Young Animal magazine knew that the sexual violence sells, so they would pressure him to put in things like rapist trolls to satisfy that side of the audience. Right now I don’t really have any evidence to confirm this one way or another.

So... all in all, it is what it is I guess. Know what you’re going in for and make your decision appropriately.

Berserk has been adapted to animation three times. The best known one is the TV adaptation by Oriental Light and Magic (OLM), best known for their adaptation of Pokémon(!), which actually began at the same time as their Berserk in 1997. It’s hard to imagine two more completely different franchises. Their adaptation, and in fact subsequent, focused on the Golden Age arc - unlike the manga which introduces the Golden Age as a flashback, it starts the story from the beginning.

This 90s anime series, although inevitably limited by the bounds of TV animation, was very well-loved and was for many people the first introduction of the series. Even with two cours (25 episodes) to play with, it had to cut a little, and due to TV censorship I’m told it ends rather abruptly in the middle of the eclipse sequence.

Notable is the soundtrack by Susumu Hirasawa, who would later become famous as the composer for almost all Satoshi Kon’s films (Animation Night 16, Animation Night 42). It’s got that classic 90s end-of-the-cel-era look, with muted colours and frequently impressively detailed drawings. It’s of the kind of vintage where encoders will be quite particular about preserving film grain or not!

However, two cours of anime is too much for Animation Night, so this is not the version of Berserk we’re going to cover. Instead, we’re going to look at Studio 4°C’s take, a trilogy of movies released 2012-2013.

Here, I may refer you to youtuber SteveM, who made a good retrospective on the trilogy in the context of 4°C’s broader work:

The impetus for this one comes from Lucent Pictures, who approached 4°C after seeing their work on films like Tekkonkinkreet and the Animatrix. Producer and 4°C cofounder Eiko Tanaka was actually unfamiliar with the work at the time; the decision to focus on the Golden Age arc comes from the screenwriter. First came a pilot in 2008, which earned Miura’s approval; the subsequent single movie ended up splitting into three to contain the material, and still cuts a lot compared to the pacing of the TV series.

4°C’s overall approach was to combine cel-shaded CG with traditional animation, an approach which would allow them to take on the enormous battle scenes and complex suits of armour. As SteveM describes, the result is... a bit of a mixed bag, visually speaking. 4°C are definitely one of the best when it comes to merging 2D and 3D, but this time they were applying it to living creatures rather than environments or machines for the first time. The results often looked awkward and uncanny in motion, with the attempt to animate the CG on 2s to mesh better with the 2D frequently ending up with the worst of both worlds. This was improved a lot by the time of the third movie, but still an unfortunate weakness.

Despite this, this is anything but a passionless project; they got in HEMA practitioners to choreograph the fights and went to considerable effort to include historical armour and weapons - perhaps a misguided effort since historical accuracy was never especially the point of Berserk, but definitely a sign of something. And at least going by the reactions of critics, the troubles were largely ironed out by the third movie, which finally got to deliver the Eclipse sequence in its full horrible splendour. In the comments of that video, there are some interesting discussions of what 4°C did better: some people point to the romantic scenes between Guts and Casca, the moment where Guts accidentally kills a child, and the amputation scene in the eclipse arc.

I don’t have an opinion yet! Right now I’m purely a manga reader and haven’t seen any adaptations of Berserk. So I’m looking forward to seeing how all this hangs together in full tonight. Berserk is something that’s impossible to adapt without some sort of compromise, so the strength of an adaptation will be what it chooses to make of the material.

And oh, god, look at the time - that’s about all I have time to write. Thanks for bearing with me. We’ll be starting the Berserk movie trilogy very shortly, at our usual spot, twitch.tv/canmom - hope you can join me, I’ve been looking forward to this a while!

[alyblacklist]

So about that kiss...

I apologize for ignoring a whole bunch of asks this weekend, but I wanted to share my thoughts on that emotional, beautiful, bittersweet, angsty scene on my own terms and not in response to an ask. Because wow, it’s been a long time coming. And yes, it was worth the wait.

It is so typical of the plight of a Keenler shipper to have Ressler and Liz’s first kiss delayed 8 months by a pandemic, and then filmed only under COVID restrictions because what - we’ve only waited seven years, right? Patience is always required when it comes to Keenler and this time was (and is) no exception. 

Overall, I thought the scene was beautiful and that Megan and Diego did an incredible job conveying the message that the emotion between Ressler and Liz that led to the kiss was absolutely genuine despite Liz’s play at the end with the gun. (Something later confirmed by the show runners, but that wasn’t a confirmation I needed - I thought it was obvious from how they played the scene). Anyone who insists these two are nothing more than good friends is watching a different show than I am, for sure. I feel like this was a turning point for the writers to finally acknowledge that, and I can’t wait to see how it plays out over the rest of the season. This was the kind of moment that a lot of Keenler shippers wished for back in S3 between them before she went on the run and while I don’t think Liz “on the run” is going to last very long based on the promo pics for next week, her abandonment and betrayal of the Task Force may not be so easily resolved.  

Let’s start with the meeting. Liz texted him and asked to meet in person. Why? She could have talked to him on the phone and asked him for time. Instead, she chose to take the risk of an in-person meeting and trusted him enough that he would show up alone and without the cavalry in tow. And no, I don’t think it was for the purpose of seducing him or nabbing his gun - she had her own weapon when she was driving the transport van with Dom, she didn’t need his except to prevent him from following her. And I’m sorry, but I just have to shake my head at the idea I have seen floated by some that Liz was somehow emulating her mother in that moment as if the tale of a 15 year old forced to sleep with American soldiers somehow inspired this?  Please. I think Liz asked to meet with Ressler in person because she knew she had seriously betrayed his trust by lying to him and she knew she needed to see him in person to try to convey that. I think that’s evident in the early part of their conversation as she sees the hurt on his face and she tries to explain herself. 

I don’t think she headed into this meeting intending at all to kiss him. I loved how they built up the scene between them slowly, and I thought Megan and Diego played their characters’ emotions perfectly. In fact, it was Ressler who stepped closer to her first (and it looks like he took her arm or her hand?), pleading for her to come with him and telling her he’ll back her no matter what.

You could tell how much that meant to her, and I loved how her lip trembled as she admitted that while she still needs the favor, she also needs him to keep believing in her. Because that matters to Liz, and it always has.

In fact, her reaction reminded me of the moment in the SUV on the way to the courthouse in 3.09 (also a Cerone episode) when she reacted to him telling her that, for what it’s worth, he believes she was framed. Both times, she had tears in her eyes.

Except this time, he does too as they have that long pause before she finally leans in to kiss him.

And I loved how he gently snaked his arm around her waist to pull her closer to him during the kiss.

And afterwards, his first words are "I won’t give up on you.”  That’s it - that’s setting the stage for the rest of this season.  He meant it when he said “not on my watch” in Brothers. He’s not going to let her slip away permanently into the darkness. But at the same time, he reminds her that he still has to do his job, although you could see on his face how much that pained him. And he’s back to calling her Keen instead of Liz, despite the kiss, already putting some distance there.

And I think this is the moment where Liz decides to take the gun. Not when she first decided to kiss him, but when he reminds her that he can’t just let her go. Because she didn’t have to kiss him to get close enough to take his gun - and certainly not on the lips as she did.  Moreover, if the purpose of the kiss was purely to get the gun, she could have disarmed him mid-kiss instead of waiting. She took it only when she realized she had to in order to prevent him from coming after her - they’ve been down this road before. 

And she knows as she does so, that she has hugely broken his hard-earned trust once again as she slips away into the night. The regret is palpable on her face.

So - where do we go from here? I think the writers have set Ressler and Liz up for a lot more short term angst and eventually a beautiful reconciliation. It was so typical of The Blacklist for their first kiss to come at precisely the wrong moment, but that’s also why it happened because it finally got them to cross that line. I am curious to see if Red and Ressler work together to bring Liz back from the brink. Red knew in S3 that Ressler had feelings for Liz - I don’t think it’s going to take long for him to figure out the current lay of the land. And especially not if Dembe is in fact returning Ressler’s gun in 802. 

I’d love for Ressler for once to tell Liz how her betrayals have affected him, to really call her out and for Liz to feel what it’s like to not always have him at the ready. But I also look forward to seeing how they interact with each other now that they have both mutually acknowledged feelings that go beyond simple partnership and friendship. I have a feeling their next kiss - and there WILL be a next kiss someday - will be very different. 

And on that note, the logistics of how they performed the scene honestly did not bother me - mannequins for the close ups, and live photo doubles (or “stunt kissers” as Zee called them) for the distance shot - they did the best they could in the world what we live in right now and I thought Megan and Diego sold the scene beautifully with everything that came before and after.  Of course we’d all rather have seen Megan and Diego do the whole thing but none of that takes away from the fact that the *characters* of Liz and Ressler had a “real” kiss no matter how it was filmed, and that moment is canon. If COVID restrictions get lifted, they can go back to filming like usual. If they don’t, I’d much rather see the actors play it safe than put themselves at risk for a little extra fan service. And to those gleefully mocking the mannequin moments - all I can say is laugh away, because we both know that if it was a different ship, you’d be lighting off fireworks in celebration no matter how it was filmed.

I’m still pinching myself that we got canon Keenler in the very first episode of the season! Looking forward to more - much more - to come as it sounds like their story will be a big part of this whole season. I still believe the ultimate outcome will be a good one for them - they have endured so much and come so far. Thanks to those who made it this far.  

[lyesander]

I'm g2b soon so I might not see your answer until tomorrow but since you want to talk Mash and I'm curious: who's your favourite character and why? And what would you say is your favourite season overall?

Incidentally we seem to have a few similar slightly niche opinions lol, I was just saying the other day that I don't take the 11 years of actors aging as diegetic canon and I have a few posts about how frustrating The Price and Your Retention Please are too (though I didn't realize the Korean war hero was in a Japanese uniform in The Price, oof). So I'm looking forward to seeing more of your takes on the show.

I'll admit, I didn't know what a Japanese cavalry uniform looked like until I watched that episode, but it seemed a little off, so I did a bit of digging and yeah, Japanese, not Korean. Which isn't too surprising for M*A*S*H, but it definitely helped shift my general ambivalence towards the episode to outright dislike. It's one of the few that really can't be redeemed for me, even though the concept of Hawkeye trying (and failing) to keep a draft dodger out of the ROK is interesting.

I'm far more indifferent to "Your Retention Please." It's not a great episode, I don’t plan on rewatching it, but that’s just because it doesn’t really do much for me. It reads as a really washed out commentary on military retention (re-enlisting Klinger while he was down on his luck about his ex was kind of laughable to me; predatory enlistment has way more to do with socioeconomics than it does, uh, boohoo my ex-wife is still shitty), but that's it's biggest sin.

The calvary stuff is definitely my biggest costuming gripe, but I do remember at one point Mulcahy comes on screen wearing a collegiate hoodie and I had to restrain myself from yelling "THEY DIDN'T START PUTTING COLLEGE LOGOS ON HOODIES UNTIL THE 60S!" As though that matters to anyone except me, haha.

If you want, DM me the posts you're referring to and I'll send you my thoughts. I've been binging the series for the first time over the past week, and just wrapped up the finale yesterday, so right now I'm still kind of processing.

As for my favorite characters, I usually gravitate towards the leads. Hawkeye's definitely my favorite. I appreciate how overtly anti-military he and Trapper are, while both still retaining a lot of period typical flaws you'd see in most mid-century, white American males. It’s particularly apparent Hawkeye's misogyny, the cognitive dissonance he seems to face when he’s confronted with the fact that no matter how much he hates it, he’s still part of the war effort, etc. But his character development remains fairly consistent for being a non-chronological show.

I really like characters who desperately try to be good people, but still fail in many ways, whether it be through their own, unconscious biases, egos, or faulty coping mechanisms. Putting them in a high stress situation, like war, makes those idiosyncrasies stand out all the more. Hawkeye is full of idiosyncrasies. The episodes that explore his more manic moments are some of my favorites. There are a couple of particularly underrated scenes in "Stars and Stripes" where he's desperately cramming a scrabble board under the noses of anyone who looks at him for more than two seconds. By Depressing News, we see ten seasons worth of trauma start getting to him, but like Sidney said, he'd be crazy if it didn't.

He's also just a very charming, funny person. He holds a lot of love for his friends. Henry wasn’t wrong in saying "Hawkeye's kind of the heartbeat of the 4077th." Which is another interesting side to Hawkeye's character - while he likes attention, he obviously doesn't like people regarding him as someone worth looking up to. It’s why he thrives on goofy antics in post-OP and around camp, but gets viscerally uncomfortable when he’s, say, swarmed by reporters like in “Heroes” or put on a pedestal like in “Fallen Idol.”

Second favorite is probably Charles. Despite being the last of the main crew to become a regular cast member, I think he has the most character growth of anyone in the show. His episodes were definitely some of the most emotional for me, even beyond Hawkeye's breakdown eps. There's something just very poignant about watching Charles be quietly humbled. "Actually no, that thought hadn't occurred to me. That would be interesting, wouldn't it?" and "Those men weren't soldiers, they were musicians" are two of the most haunting lines of the show.

I do like Frank, but my appreciation for him is more as a narrative foil for Hawkeye and Trapper than it is as a character or person. He's very funny, he does a good job portraying what he's supposed to, and he has absolutely no redeeming qualities. At best, you pity him.

Margaret and Klinger tie for third. Margaret’s another character who exhibits a lot of growth over the course of the series. She’s still a bootlicker, but seeing her develop into her own person outside of Frank or any of the shitty men she finds herself tied to is extremely satisfying. I like it when she’s able to pal around with the others. Klinger would have beaten Margaret but I don’t really enjoy his character arc. I understand it, but his gradual acceptance and indoctrination into the military reads as a tragedy to me.

Henry and Trapper tie for forth. Henry takes a very, very slight lead just because he's such an endearing little doormat to me, but had Wayne Rogers gotten his wish and had Trapper become a more fully rounded character, he'd probably win out.

Third and fourth places are very close. I actually struggled with which ones I wanted to put first.

I have surprisingly few thoughts on BJ, for someone who typically enjoys musing about characters with issues. He’s fine, I guess. I like that he’s got a manipulative streak. Sometimes watching the girls fight is enjoyable, sometimes it isn’t. He clearly cares for his friends, but he’s terrible at showing it. He expresses himself through concrete actions, not vulnerability. I really wish Farrell had been more open to letting BJ be the fall guy every now and then, like Hawkeye and Charles. I think I’d have liked him more if there had been any sort of acknowledgment by the narrative that BJ struggles with his own internal biases, because he totally does; it’s just never talked about. I prefer thinking up meta on BJ, but I prefer watching Trapper.

Favorite side character is Flagg. He’s one dimensional, but also a total riot.

Least favorite character is Potter. I went from liking him, to feeling conflicted, to actively disliking him over the span of a day. Go figure.

As for my favorite season, I’m not sure I have one. I pick and choose my favorite episodes. I think the only season I struggled to pull three solid eps from was season eleven, but I honestly enjoyed the finale and that’s like four episodes rolled into one, so I dunno. I wasn’t huge on season ten, either. 

If I had to pick a favorite.. prooobably season three? You start getting glimmers of the more dramatic, character driven episodes, but Trapper and Henry are still there and you have a lot of the really fun, early season antics. Because it’s still, you know, the early seasons. 

I actually do appreciate the tone shift from a thematic perspective. Something, something, losing your innocence, blah blah blah. Not that the early episodes were particularly innocent, but M*A*S*H does a hard swing from satirical comedy to character driven tragedy (with comedic elements) as the reality of the crew’s situation really starts sinking in.

[ariainstars]

Thank You, Disney Lucasfilm… For Destroying My Dreams

Warning: longer post.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

So… I watched The Rise of Skywalker on Disney+ a few weeks ago. Again.

Sigh.

I guess it has its good sides. But professional critics tend to dislike it and even the general audience doesn’t go crazy for it. I wonder why?

  The Fantasy

When his saga became a groundbreaking pop phenomenon in the 1970es, George Lucas reportedly said that he wanted to tell fairy tales again in world that no longer seemed to offer young people a chance to grow up with them. The fact that his saga was met with such unabashed, international enthusiasm proves that he was right: people long for fairy tales no matter how old they are and what culture they belong to.

“Young people today don’t have a fantasy life anymore, not the way we did… All they’ve got is Kojak and Dirty Harry. All the films they see are movies of disasters and insecurity and realistic violence.” (George Lucas)

I’ve been a Star Wars fan for more than thirty years. I love the Original Trilogy but honestly it did not make me dream much, perhaps because when I saw it the trilogy was already complete. The Prequel Trilogy also did not inspire my fantasy.

The Last Jedi accomplished something that no TV show, book or film had managed in years: it made me dream. The richness of colorful characters, multifaceted themes, unexpected developments, intriguing relationships was something I had not come across in a long time: it fascinated me. I felt like a giddy teenager reading up meta’s, writing my own and imagining all sorts of beautiful endings for the saga for almost two years.

So if there’s something The Rise of Skywalker can pride itself on for me, it’s that it crushed almost every dream I had about it. The few things I had figured out – Rey’s fall to the Dark, Ben Solo’s redemption, the connection between them - did not even make me happy because they were tainted by the flatness of the storytelling reducing the Force to a superpower again (like the general audience seems to believe it is), and its deliberate ignoring of almost all messages of The Last Jedi.

Many fans of the Original Trilogy also were disillusioned by the saga over the decades and ranted at the studios for “destroying their childhood”. Now we, the fans of the sequels and in particular of The Last Jedi, are in the same situation… but the thought doesn’t make the pill much easier to swallow. What grates on my nerves is the feeling that someone trampled on my just newly found dreams like a naughty child kicking a doll’s house apart. Why give us something to dream of in the first place, then? To a certain extent I can understand that many fans would angrily assume that Disney Lucasfilm made the Sequel Trilogy for the purpose of destroying their idea of the saga. The point is that they had their happy ending, while every dream the fans of the Sequel Trilogy may have had was shattered with this unexpectedly flat and hollow final note.

I know many fans who dislike the Prequel Trilogy heartily. I also prefer the Original Trilogy, but I find the prequels all right in their own way, also since I gave them some thought. However, it can’t be denied that they lack the magic spark which made the Original Trilogy so special. Which makes sense since they are not a fairy tale but ultimately a tragedy, but in my opinion it’s the one of the main reasons why the Prequel Trilogy never was quite so successful, or so beloved.

Same goes for Rogue One, Solo, or Clone Wars. They’re ok in their way, but not magical.

The sequel trilogy started quite satisfyingly with The Force Awakens, but for me, the actual bomb dropped with The Last Jedi. Reason? It was a magical story. It had the spark again that I had missed in the new Star Wars stories for decades! And it was packed full of beautiful messages and promises.

The Force is not a superpower belonging solely to the Jedi Anyone can be a hero. Even the greatest heroes can fail, but they will still be heroes. Hope is like the sun: if you only believe in it when you see it you’ll never make it through the night. Failure is the greatest teacher. It’s more important to save the light than to seem a hero. No one is never truly gone. War is only a machine. Dark Side and Light Side can be unbeatable if they are allies. Save what you love instead of destroying what you hate.

Naively, I assumed the trilogy would continue and end in that same magical way. And then came The Rise of Skywalker… which looks and feels like a Marvel superhero story at best and an over-long videogame at worst.

Chekov’s Gun

“Remove everything that has no relevance to the story. If you say in the first chapter that there is a rifle hanging on the wall, in the second or third chapter it absolutely must go off. If it’s not going to be fired, it shouldn’t be hanging there.”

(Anton Chekov, 1860 - 1904)

If you show an important looking prop and don’t put it to use, it leaves the audience feeling baffled. There is a huge difference between a story’s setup, and the audience’s feeling of entitlement. E.g. many viewers expected Luke to jump right back into the fray in Episode VIII, because that’s what a hero does, isn’t it? The cavalry comes and saves the day. And instead, we met a disillusioned elderly hermit who is tired of the ways of the Jedi. But there was no actual reason for disappointment: in Episode VII it was very clearly said (through Han, his best friend) that Luke had gone into exile on purpose, feeling responsible for his failure in teaching a new generation of Jedi. It would have been more than stupid to show him as an all-powerful and all-knowing man who kills the bad guys. Sorry but who expected that was a victim to his own prejudice.

A promise left unfulfilled is a different story. The Last Jedi set up a lot of promises that didn’t come true in The Rise of Skywalker: Balance as announced by the Jedi temple mosaic, a new Jedi Order hinted at by Luke on Crait, a good ending for Ben and Rey set up by the hand-touching scene which was opposite to Anakin’s and Padmés wedding scene. Many fans were annoyed about the Canto Bight sequence. I liked it because it felt like the set-up for a lot of important stuff: partnership between Finn and Rose whom we see working together excellently, freedom for the enslaved children (one of whom is Force-sensitive), DJ and Rose expressing what makes wars in general foolish and beside the point. So if we, the fans of Episode VIII, now feel angry and let down, I daresay it’s not due to entitlement. We were announced magical outcomes and not just pew-pew.

The Star Wars saga never repeated itself but always developed and enlarged its themes, so it was to be expected that delving deeper, uncomfortable truths would come out: wars don’t start out of nowhere, and they don’t flare up and continue for decades for the same reason. In order to find Balance, the Jedi’s and the Skywalker family’s myths needed to be dismantled. Which is not necessarily bad as long it is explained how things came to this, and a better alternative is offered. The prequels explained the old political order and the beginnings of the Skywalker family, and announced that the next generation would do better. The sequels hardly explained anything about the 30 years that passed since our heroes won the battle against the Empire, and while The Last Jedi hinted at the future a lot, The Rise of Skywalker seemed to make a point of ignoring all of it.

  The Skywalker Family Is Obliterated. Why?

Luke was proven right that his nephew would mean the end of everything he loved. The lineage of the Chosen One is gone. His grandson had begun where Vader had ended - tormented, pale and with sad eyes - and he met the same fate. Luke, Han, Leia, all sacrificed themselves to bring Ben Solo back for nothing. Him being the reincarnation of the Chosen One and getting a new chance should have been meaningful for all of them; instead, he literally left the scepter to Rey who did nothing to deserve it: merely because she killed the Bad Guy does not mean she will do a better job than the family whose name and legacy she proudly takes over.

I do hope there was a good reason if the sequels did not tell “The New Adventures of Luke, Leia and Han” and instead showed us a broken family on the eve of its wipeout. It would have been much easier, and more fun for the audience, to bring the trio back again after a few years and pick up where they had left. Instead we had to watch their son, nephew and heir go his grandfather’s way - born with huge power, branded as Meant to Be Dangerous from the start, tried his best to be a Jedi although he wanted to be a pilot, never felt accepted, abandoned in the moment of his greatest need, went to his abuser because he was the only one to turn to, became a criminal, his own family (in Anakin’s case: Obi-Wan and Yoda) trained the person who was closest to him to kill him, sacrificed himself for this person and died. And in his case, it’s particularly frustrating because Kylo Ren wasn’t half as impressive a villain as Vader, and Ben Solo had a very limited time of heroism and personal fulfilment, contrarily to Anakin when he was young.

The impact of The Rise of Skywalker was traumatic for some viewers. I know of adolescents and adults, victims of family abandonment and abuse, who identified with Ben: they were told that you can never be more than the sum of your abuse and abandonment, and that they’re replaceable if they’re not “good”. Children identifying with Rey were told that their parents might sell them away for “protection”. Rey was not conflicted, she had a few doubts but overall, she was cool about everything she did, so she got everything on a silver platter; that’s why as a viewer, after a while you stopped caring for her. Her antagonist was doomed from birth because he dared to question the choices other people made for him. It seems that in the Star Wars universe, you can only “rise” if you’re either a criminal but cool because you’ve always got a bucket over your head (Vader / the Mandalorian) or are a saint-like figure (Luke / Rey).

One of Obi-Wan’s first actions in A New Hope is cutting off someone’s arm who was only annoying him; Han Solo, ditto. These were no acts of self-defense. The Mandalorian is an outlaw. Yet they are highly popular. Why? Because they always keep their cool, so anything they do seems justified. Young Anakin was hated, Jake Lloyd and Hayden Christensen attacked for his portrayal. For the same reason many fans feel that Luke is the least important of the original trio although basically the Original Trilogy is his story: it seems the general audience hates nothing more than emotionality in a guy. They want James Bond, Batman or Indiana Jones as the lead. Padmé loved Anakin because she always saw the good little boy he once was in him; his attempts at impressing her with his flirting or his masculinity failed. Kylo tried to impress Rey with his knowledge and power, but she fled from him - she wanted the gentle, emphatic young man who had listened to her when she felt alone. Good message. But both died miserably, and Ben didn’t even get anything but a kiss. Realizing that his “not being as strong as Darth Vader” might actually be a strength of its own would have meant much more.

The heroes of the Original Trilogy had their adventures together and their happy ending; the heroes of the Prequel Trilogy also had good times and accomplishments in their youth, before everything went awry. Rey, Finn and Poe feel like their friendship hardly got started; Rose was almost obliterated from the narrative; and Ben Solo seems to have had only one happy moment in his entire life. Of course it’s terrible that he committed patricide (even if it was under coercion), but Anakin / Vader himself had two happy endings in the Prequel Trilogy before he became the monster we know so well. Not to mention Clone Wars, where he has heroic moments unnumbered.

The Skywalker family is obliterated without Balance in the Force, and the young woman who inherited all doesn’t seem to have learned any lesson from all this. The Original Trilogy became a part of pop culture among other things because its ending was satisfying. We can hardly be expected to be satisfied with an ending where our heroes are all dead and the heir of their worst enemy takes over. What good was the happy ending of the Original Trilogy for if they didn’t learn enough from their misadventures to learn how to protect one single person - their son and nephew, their future?

For a long time, I also thought that the saga was about Good vs. Evil. Watching the prequels again, I came to the conclusion that it is rather about Love vs. War. And now, considering as a whole, I believe it to be essentially Jedi against Skywalker. The ending, as it is now, says that both fractions lost: they annihilated one another, leaving a third party in charge, who believes to be both but actually knows very little about them.

Star Wars and Morality

After 9 films and 42 years, it still is not possible to make the general audience accept that it is wrong to divide people between Good and Evil in the first place. The massive rejection of both prequels and sequels, which have moral grey zones galore, shows it.

It is also not possible without being accused of actual blasphemy in the same fandom, to say the plain truth that no Skywalker ever was a Jedi at heart. As their name says, they’re pilots. Luke was the last and strongest of all Jedi because he always was first and foremost himself. Anakin was crushed by the Jedi’s attempts to stifle his feelings. His grandson, too. A Force-sensitive person ought to have the choice whether they want to be a Jedi or not; they ought not to be taught to suppress their emotions and live only on duty, without really caring for other people; and they ought to grow up feeling in a safe and loving environment, not torn away from their families in infancy, indoctrinated and provided with a light sabre (a deadly weapon) while they’re still small. A Jedi order composed of child soldiers or know-it-all’s does not really help anybody.

The original Star Wars saga was about love and friendship; although many viewers did not want to understand that message. The prequels portrayed the Jedi as detached and arrogant and Anakin Skywalker sympathetically, a huge disappointment for who only accepts stories of the “lonesome cowboy” kind. The Last Jedi was so hated that The Rise of Skywalker backpedaled: sorry, of course you’re right, here you have your “hero who knows everything better and fixes everything for you on a silver platter”. The embarrassing antihero, who saves the girl who was the only person showing him some human compassion, can die miserably in the process and is not even mourned.

Honestly: I was doubtful whether it would be adequate to give Ben Solo a happy ending after the patricide. I guess letting him die was the easiest way out for the authors to escape censorship. (I even wrote this in a review on amazon about The Last Jedi, before I delved deeper into the saga’s themes.) The messages we got now are even worse.

Kylo Ren / Ben Solo

A parent can replace a child if they’re not the way they expect them to be. A victim of lifelong psychical and physical abuse can only find escape in death, whether he damns or redeems himself. An introspective, sensitive young man is a loser no matter how hard he tries either way. A whole family can sacrifice itself to save their heir, he dies anyway.

Rey

Self-righteousness is acceptable as long as you find a scapegoat for your own failings. Overconfidence justifies anything you do. You can’t carve your way as a female child of “nobodies”, you have to descend from someone male and powerful even if that someone is the devil incarnate. You are a “strong female” if you choose to be lonely; you need neither a partner nor friends.

In General

Star Wars is not about individual choices, loyalty, friendship and love, it is a classic Western story with a lonesome cowboy (in this case: cowgirl) at its centre. Satisfied? 

The father-son-relationship between Vader and Luke mirrors the Biblical story of Cain and Abel, saying that whoever we may want to kill is, in truth, our kin, which makes a clear separation in Good and Evil impossible. The “I am your father” scene is so infamous by now that even non-fans are aware of it; but this relationship between evil guy and good guy, as well as the plot turns where the villain saves the hero and that the hero discards his weapon are looked upon rather as weird narrative quirks instead of a moral. 

In  an action movie fan, things are simple: good guy vs. bad guy, the good guy (e.g. James Bond may be a murderer and a misogynist, but that’s ok because he’s cool about it) kills the bad guy, ka-boom, end of story. But Star Wars is a parable, an ambitious project told over decades of cinema, and a multilayered story with recurring themes.

A fairy tale ought to have a moral. The moral of both Original Trilogy and Prequel Trilogy was compassionate love - choose it and you can end a raging conflict, reject it and you will cause it. What was the moral of the Sequel Trilogy? You can be the offspring of the galaxy’s worst terror and display a similar attitude, but pose as a Jedi and kill unnecessarily, and it’s all right; descend from Darth Vader (who himself was a victim long before he became a culprit) and whether you try to become a Jedi trained by Luke Skywalker or a Sith trained by his worst enemy, you will end badly?

Both original and prequel trilogy often showed “good” people making bad choices and the “bad ones” making the right choices. To ensure lasting peace, no Force user ought to be believe that he must choose one side and then stick to it for the rest of his life: both sides need one another. The prequels took 3 films to convey this message, though not saying so openly. The Last Jedi said it out clearly - and the authors almost had their heads ripped off by affronted fans, resulting in The Rise of Skywalker’s fan service. It’s not like Luke, Han and Leia were less heroic in the Sequel Trilogy, on the contrary, they gave everything they had to their respective cause. They were not united, and they were more human than they had once been. Apparently, that’s an affront.

The Jedi are no perfect heroes and know-it-all’s and they never were, the facts are there for everyone to see. Padmé went alone and pregnant to get her husband out of Mustafar - and she almost succeeded - although she knew what he had done and that he was perfectly capable of it (he had told her of the Tusken village massacre himself) because she still saw the good little boy he had been in him; Obi-Wan left him amputated and burning in the lava, although he had raised Anakin like a small brother and the latter had repeatedly saved his life. But Padmé was not a Jedi, so I guess she still had some human decency. Neither Obi-Wan nor Yoda lifted a finger for the oppressed populations of the galaxy during the Empire, waiting instead for Anakin’s son to grow up so they could trick him into committing patricide. Neither Luke nor Leia did anything for their own son and nephew while he became the scourge of the galaxy, damning his soul by committing crime after crime. On Exegol, Rey heard the voices of all Jedi encouraging her to fight Palpatine to death. After that, they left her to die alone, and the alleged “bad guy”, who had already saved her soul from giving in to Palpatine’s lures, had to save her life by giving her his own. The Jedi merely know that “their side” has to win, no matter the cost for anyone’s life, sanity, integrity or happiness.

Excuse me, these are simple facts. How anyone can still believe that the Jedi were super-powerful heroes who always win or all-knowing wizards who are always right is beyond me. Luke, the last and strongest of them, like a bright flickering of light before the ultimate end, showed us that the best of men can fail. There is nothing wrong with that in itself. But it is wrong and utterly frustrating when all of the failure never leads to anything better. If Rey means to rebuild the Jedi order to something better than it was, there was no hint at that whatsoever.

  And What Now?

The Last Jedi hit theatres only 2 years before The Rise of Skywalker, and I can’t imagine that the responsible authors all have forgotten how to make competent work in the meantime; more so considering that Solo or The Mandalorian are solid work. Episode IX is thematically so painfully flat it seems like they wanted us to give up on the saga on purpose. The last instalment of a 42-year-old saga ought to have been the best and most meaningful. I had heard already decades ago that the saga was supposed to have 9 chapters, so I was not among who protested against the sequels thinking that they had been thought up to make what had come before invalid. I naively assumed a larger purpose. But Episode IX only seems to prove these critics perfectly right.

The last of the flesh and blood of the Chosen One is dead without having “finished what his grandfather started”?

Still no Balance in the Force?

And worst of all, Palpatine’s granddaughter taking over, having proven repeatedly that she is not suited for the task?

Sorry, this “ending” is absurd. I have read fanfiction that was better written and more interesting. And, most of all, less depressing. I was counting on a conclusion that showed that the Force has all colours and nuances, and that it’s not limited to the black-and-white view “we against them”. That’s the ending all of us fans would have deserved, instead of catering the daddy issues of the part of the audience who doesn’t want stories other than those of the “lonesome cowboy” kind. I myself grew up on Japanese anime, maybe that’s one of the reasons why I can’t stand guys like James Bond or Batman and why I think you don’t need “a great hero who fixes the situation” but that group spirit and communication are way more important.

It was absolutely unexpected that Disney, the production company whose trademark are happy endings and family stories, would end this beloved and successful saga after almost half a century on such a hollow note. Why tell first a beautiful fairy tale and then leave the audience on a hook for 35 years to continue first with a tragedy (which at least was expected) and then with another (unexpected one)? And this story is supposed to be for children? Like children would understand all of the subtext, and love sad, cautionary tales. Children, as well as the general audience, first of all want to be entertained! No one wants to watch the legendary Skywalker family be obliterated and a Palpatine take over. The sequels were no fun anymore; we’ve been left with another open ending and hardly an explanation about what happened in the 30 years in between. If you want to tell a cautionary tale, you should better warn the general audience beforehand.

The Original Trilogy is so good because it’s entertaining and offers room for thought for who wants to think about its deeper themes, and also leaves enough space for dreams. Same goes for the first two films of the Sequel Trilogy; but precisely the last, which should have wrapped up the saga, leaves us with a bitter aftertaste and dozens of questions marks. 

We as the audience believe that a story, despite the tragic things that happen, must go somewhere; we get invested into the characters, we root for them, we want to see them happy in the end. (The authors of series like Girls, How I Met Your Mother or Game of Thrones ought to be reminded of that, too.) I was in contact with children and teenagers saying that the Sequel Trilogy are “boring”; and many, children or adults, who were devastated by its concluson. There is a difference between wanting to tell a cautionary tale and playing the audience for fools. This trilogy could have become legendary like the Original Trilogy, had it fulfilled its promises instead of “keeping it low” with its last chapter. Who watches a family or fantasy story or a romantic / comedic sitcom wants to escape into another world, not to be hit over his head with a mirror to his own failings, and the ones of the society he’s living in. Messages are all right, but they ought not to go at the cost of the audience’s satisfaction about the about the people and narrative threads they have invested in for years.

This isn’t a family story: but children probably didn’t pester the studios with angry e-mails and twitter messages etc. They simply counted on a redemption arc and happy ending, and they were right, because they’re not as stupid as adults are. I have read and watched many a comment from fans who hate The Last Jedi. Many of these fans couldn’t even pinpoint what their rage was all about, they only proved to be stuck with the original trilogy and unwilling to widen their horizon. But at least their heroes had had their happy ending: The Rise of Skywalker obliterated the successes of all three generations of Skywalkers.

If the film studios wanted to tease us, they’ve excelled. If they expect the general audience to break their heads over the sequels’ metaphysics, they have not learned from the reactions to the prequels that most viewers take these films at face value. Not everybody is elbows-deep in the saga, or willing to research about it for months, and / or insightful enough to see the story’s connections. Which is why many viewers frown at the narrative and believe the Sequel Trilogy was just badly written. This trilogy could have become legendary like the Original Trilogy, had it fulfilled its promises instead of “keeping it low” with its last chapter. As it is now, the whole trilogy is hanging somewhere in the air, with neither a past nor a future to be tied in with.

The prequels already had the flaw of remaining too obscure: most fans are not aware that Anakin had unwillingly killed his wife during the terrible operation that turned him into Darth Vader, sucking her life out of her through the Force: most go by “she died of a broken heart”. So although one scene mirrors the other, it is not likely that most viewers will understand what Rey’s resurrection meant. And: Why did Darth Maul kill Qui-Gon Jinn? What did the Sith want revenge for? Who was behind Shmi’s abduction and torture? Who had placed the order for the production of the clones, and to what purpose? We can imagine or try to reconstruct the answers, but nothing is confirmed by the story itself.

The sequels remained even more in the dark, obfuscating what little explanation we got in The Rise of Skywalker with quick pacing and mind-numbing effects.

Kylo Ren had promised his grandfather that “he would finish what he started”: he did not. Whatever one can say of this last film, it did not bring Balance in the Force. What’s worse, the subject was not even breached. It was hinted at by the mosaic on the floor of the Prime Jedi Temple on Ahch-To, but although Luke and Rey were sitting on its border, they never seemed to see what was right under their noses. It remains inexplicable why it was there for everyone to see in the first place.

We might argue that Ben finished what his grandfather started by killing (or better, causing the death of) the last Jedi, who this one couldn’t kill because he was his own son; but leaving Rey in charge, he helped her finish what her grandfather had started. The irony could hardly be worse.

Episode IX looks like J.J. Abrams simply completed what they started with Episode VII, largely ignoring the next film as if it was always planned to do so. We, the angry and disappointed fans of The Last Jedi, may believe it was due to some of the general audience’s angry backlash, but honestly: the studios aren’t that dumb. They had to know that Episode VIII would be controversial and that many fans would hate it. The furious reactions were largely a disgrace, but no one can make me believe that they were totally unexpected. Nor can anyone convince me that The Rise of Skywalker was merely an answer to the small but very loud part of the audience who hated The Last Jedi: a company with the power and the returns of Disney Lucasfilm does not need to buckle down before some fan’s entitlement and narrowmindedness out of fear of losing money. And if they do, it was foolish to make Rey so perfect that she becomes almost odious, and to let the last of the Skywalker blood die a meaningless death. (Had he saved the Canto Bight children and left them with Rey, at least he would have died with honor; and she, the child left behind by her parents, would have had a task to dedicate herself to.)

The only reason I can find for this odd ending is that it’s meant to prepare the way for Rian Johnson’s new trilogy, which - hopefully - will finally be about Balance. We as the audience don’t know what’s going on behind the doors. Filmmaking is a business like any other, i.e. based on contracts; and I first heard that Rian Johnson had negotiated a trilogy of his own since before Episode VIII hit theatres. Maybe he kept all the rights of intellectual property to his own film, including that he would finish the threads he picked up and close the narrative circles he opened, and only he; and that his alleged working on “something completely different” is deliberately misleading.

Some viewers love the original trilogy, some love the prequels, some like both; but I hardly expect anyone to love the sequel trilogy as a whole. What with the first instalment “letting the past die, killing it if they had to”, the second hinting at a promising future and the third patched on at the very last like some sort of band-aid, it was not coherent. I heard the responsible team for Game of Thrones even dropped their work, producing a dissatisfying, quickly sewn together last season, for this new Star Wars project and thereby disappointing millions of GoT fans; I hope they are aware of the expectations they have loaded upon them. George Lucas’ original trilogy had its faults, but but though there was no social media yet in his time, at least he was still close enough to the audience to give them what they needed, if not necessarily wanted. (Some fans can’t accept that Luke and Leia are siblings to this day, even if honestly, it was the very best plot twist to finish their story in a satisfying way.)

I’m hoping for now that The Last Jedi was not some love bombing directed at the more sentimental viewers but a promise that will be fulfilled. “Wrapping up” a saga by keeping the flattest, least convincing chapter for last is bad form. Star Wars did not become a pop phenomenon by accident, but because the original story was convincing and satisfying. Endings like these will hardly make anyone remember a story fondly, on the contrary, the audience will move to another fandom to forget their disappointment.

On a side note, I like The Mandalorian, exactly for the reason that that is a magical story; not as much as the original trilogy, but at least a little. Of course, I’m glad it was produced. But it’s a small consolation prize after the mess that supposedly wrapped up the original saga after 9 films.

We’re Not Blind, You Know…

- Though Kylo Ren (Ben Solo) has Darth Vader’s stature, his facial features are practically opposite to Vader’s creepy mask. This should have foreshadowed that his life should have gone the other way, instead of more or less repeating itself. - As a villain Kylo was often unconvincing; by all logic he should have been a good father figure. (Besides, Star Wars films or series never work unless there is a strong father or father figure at their center.)

- Like Vader, Kylo Ren was redeemed, but not rehabilitated. Who knows who may find his broken mask somewhere now and, not knowing the truth, promise “I will finish what you started”. - The hand-touching scene on Ahch-To which was visually opposite to Anakin’s and Padmé’s should not have predicted another tragedy but a happy ending for them. - The Canto Bight sequence was announcing reckoning for the weapon industry and freedom for the enslaved children. It also showed how well Finn and Rose fit together. - Rey was a good girl before she started on her adventures. Like Anakin or Luke, she did not need to become a Jedi to be strong or generous or heroic. - Rey summons Palpatine after one year of training. Kylo practically begged for his grandfather’s assistance for years, to no avail. Her potential for darkness is obviously much stronger. - Dark Rey’s light sabre looked like a fork, Kylo’s like a cross. - The last time all Jedi and Sith were obliterated leaving only Luke in charge, things went awry. Now we have a Palpatine masquerading as a Skywalker and believing she’s a Jedi. Rey is a usurper and universally cheered after years of war, like her grandfather. - The broom boy of Canto Bight looked like he was sweeping a stage and announcing “Free the stage, it’s time for us, the children.”

Rey failed in all instances where Luke had proved himself (so much for feminism and her being a Mary Sue): - Luke had forgiven his father despite all the pain he had inflicted on him. She stabbed the „bad guy”, who had repeatedly protected and comforted her, to death. - Luke never asked Vader to help the Rebellion or to turn to the Light Side, he only wanted him back as his father. She assumed that you could make Ben Solo turn, give up the First Order and join the Resistance for her. She thought of her friends and of her own validation, not of him. - Luke had made peace by choosing peace. Rey fought until the bitter end. - Luke had thrown his weapon away before Palpatine. Rey picked up a second weapon. (And both of them weren’t even her own.) - Luke had mourned his dead father. Rey didn’t shed a tear for the man she is bonded to by the Force. - Luke went back to his friends to celebrate the new peace with them. Rey went back letting everyone celebrate her like the one who saved the galaxy on her own, she who were tempted to become the new evil ruler of the galaxy and had to rely on the alleged Bad Guy to save both her soul and her body. - Luke had embodied compassion when Palpatine was all about hatred. Where he chose love and faith in his father, she chose violence and fear. - Luke had briefly fallen prey to the Dark Side but it made him realize that he had no right to judge his father. Rey’s fall to the Dark Side did not make her wiser. - Rey has no change of mind on finding out that she’s Palpatine’s flesh and blood, nor after she has stabbed Kylo. Luke had to face himself on learning that he had almost become a patricide. Rey does not have to face herself: the revelation of her ancestry is cushioned by Luke’s and Leia’s support. Rey is and remains an uncompromising person who hardly learns from her faults.

This is cheating on the audience. And it's not due to feminism or Rey being some sort of “Mary Sue” the way many affronted fans claim. Kylo never was truly a villain, Rey is not a heroine, and this is not a happy ending. The Jedi, with their stuck-up conviction “only we must win”, have failed all over again. The Skywalker family was obliterated leaving their worst enemy in charge.  Rey is supposed to be a “modern” heroine which young girls can take as an example? No, thank you. Not after this last film has made of her. Padmé was a much better role model, combining intelligence with strength and goodness and also female grace. The world does not need entitled female brats.

Bonus: What Made The Rise of Skywalker a Farce

- The Force Awakens was an ok film and The Last Jedi (almost) a masterpiece. The Rise of Skywalker was a cartoon. No wonder a lot of the acting felt and looked wooden. - “I will earn your brother’s light sabre.” She’s holding his father’s sabre. - Kylo in The Last Jedi: “Let the past die. Kill it if, you have to.” Beginning with me? - Rey ends up on Tatooine. - The planet both Anakin and Luke ardently wanted to leave. - Luke had promised his nephew that he would be around for him. - Nope. - Rey had told Ben that she had seen his future. What future was that - “you will be a hero for ten minutes, get a kiss and then die? (And they didn’t even get a love theme.) - “The belonging you seek is not behind you, it is ahead.” On a desert planet with a few ghosts. What of the ocean she used to dream about? - Ben and Rey were both introduced as two intensely lonely people searching for belonging. We learn they are a Force dyad, and then they are torn apart again. - Why was Ben named for Obi-Wan Kenobi in the first place, if they have absolutely nothing in common? - The Throne Room battle scene in The Last Jedi was clearly showing that when they are in balance, Light Side and Dark Side are unbeatable. Why did the so-called “Light Side” have to win again, in The Rise of Skywalker, instead of finding balance? - Luke’s scene on Ahch-To was so ridiculously opposite to his attitude in The Last Jedi that by now I believe he was a fantasy conjectured by her. (Like Ben’s vision of his father.) - Anakin’s voice among the other Jedi’s. - He was a renegade, for Force’s sake. - The kiss between two females. - More fan service, to appease those who pretended that not making Poe and Finn a couple was a sign of homophobia. - We see the Knights of Ren, but we learn absolutely nothing about them or Kylo’s connection with them. - Rose Tico’s invalidation. - A shame after what the actress had gone through because for the fans she was “not Star-Wars-y” (chubby and lively instead of wiry and spitfire). - Finn’s and Rose’s relationship. - Ignored without any explanation. - Finn may or may not be Force-sensitive. - If he is: did he abandon the First Order not due to his own free will but because of some higher willpower? Great. - General Hux was simply obliterated. - In The Force Awakens he was an excellent foil to Kylo Ren; no background story, no humanization for him. - Chewie’s and 3PO’s faked deaths. - Useless additional drama. - The Force Awakens was a bow before the classic trilogy. The Rise of Skywalker kicked its remainders to pieces. - The Prequel Trilogy ended with hope, the Original Trilogy with love. The Sequel Trilogy ends on a blank slate. - “We are what they grow beyond.” The characters of the Sequel Trilogy did not grow beyond the heroes of the Original Trilogy. - The Jedi did not learn from their mistakes and were obliterated. The Skywalker family understood the mistakes they had made too late. Now they’re gone, too.

  P.S. While I was watching The Rise of Skywalker my husband came in asked me since when I like Marvel movies. I said “That’s not a Marvel movie, it’s Star Wars.” I guess that says enough.

P.P.S. For the next trilogy, please at least let the movies hit theatres in May again instead of December. a) It’s tradition for Star Wars films, b) Whatever happens, at least you won’t ruin anyone’s Christmases. Thank you.

[lizacstuff]

I really enjoy the fact that Serkan can’t say no to Eda, but I saw some people on twitter saying it’s not fair and that Serkan needs to win one at work sometimes. What do you think?

Listen, Serkan Bolat's win is that Eda Yildiz gives him the time of day. That is all the winning he needs. 

No, but seriously that opinion doesn't make sense to me. Serkan doesn't need a "win" at work, because Serkan doesn't lose at work (the latest sabotage notwithstanding) and he holds 100% of the professional power not just in their dynamic, but over everyone in the company. 

Serkan is uber successful, the top of his field, and the boss. He's not some poor, meek schlub whose will is being run over by a strong woman. He's not a woobie or a pure sweet cinnamon roll that needs protecting, Serkan is the alpha in every room he enters. Just look at how he is with Efe, not conceding one inch to him. Serkan gets his way, period.  Before Eda came along, everyone in that office was too scared to even oppose him, let alone subvert his wishes.  

He owns the company so if he really didn't want to drive out to a job site because an employee wanted to save a tree, he wouldn't have. Full stop, period. That's why many of us find it so utterly charming and romantic when he lets his guard down and allows Eda to "win" when no one else would have. 

Whether it's personal or professional, the fact that she gets her way so often is a very sweet aspect of their relationship. It's also not a question of support, we saw in the last episode when push comes to shove, no one trusts or believes in him more than Eda does, which is also heart-meltingly romantic. Conversely, we see that when Serkan doesn't want to give in, he doesn't. The current situation springs to mind. If Eda was getting her way, she'd know the real reason Serkan broke up with her. But she does not. 

Serkan is a very rigid, disciplined person whose well-ordered world has been completely upended with the appearance of this woman in his life. So all the things he says 'no' to, but then does anyway-- whether it be walking up 15 flights of stairs or sending in the cavalry (after he teaches her a lesson) to finish the requirements for the singer-- show his affection for Eda and how he just wants to make her happy. They also illustrate his growth as a person being pushed out of his comfort zone for the first time, and being willing to cede some control to the person he's deeply in love with. All these acts show he's a person who is willing to make room for her, he's willing to change, and he's willing to be the guy who will build something new with her. 

I think it's beautiful.