#maybe rewatch chicago hope

[h0tch-r0cket]

also….from the archives??? his hair?? hello???

[thefreakandthehair]

a little fluff for @starrystevie's birthday! hope it's the absolute best day! ✨

Eddie misses Steve.

It's equal parts cute, and maybe a little pitiful because it's only three days in Chicago for his friend's Bachelor Party, but it's already been two days and he misses Steve. Bandit digs his claws into Eddie's thigh as he makes biscuits and begs for pets, curling up comfortably next to Eddie's lap and leaving Steve's side of the couch overwhelmingly cold and empty.

"I know, kid. I know," Eddie coos, scratching their cat behind the left ear as he purrs.

He's glad that Steve had been able to get the time off from work to go, and he's glad that Steve's made friends on his recreational basketball league, and he's not jealous. At all. Not even a little bit.

... Okay, maybe he is a little bit jealous that Brandon gets to see him sweaty and gross in the June heat, running around doing whatever jock-activity they've planned in the backyard of their rented house all weekend, but who can blame him? Steve never gives him a reason to feel insecure so he knows this isn't about Steve. It's not rooted in anything even remotely related to him or their relationship— it's all about Eddie and the nasty voice in the back of his head that pulls out a bullhorn and screams not good enough on a loop.

Condensation from the beer in his free hand drips down his wrist as he rests his elbow on the arm of the couch. It's not the first time he's felt this way, and Steve himself has admitted to feeling the same way from time to time, so he knows that it'll pass. He just needs to focus on something else: DND campaign planning, sketching, writing, cracking out the ol' guitar. He could rewatch Howard the Duck for the hundredth time, or maybe even Labyrinth—

Buzz, buzz, buzz.

Eddie's phone buzzes on the coffee table and he fully expects it to be Gareth or Jeff, or maybe Robin. They have plans later that night, both of them missing Steve and all. What he doesn't expect is a series of text messages and 19 photos from Steve.

How funny. It's been five years since they'd become EddieandSteve but seeing Steve's name and smiling photo on his phone sets his little hummingbird heart aflutter even still.

steve 👑: it's so goddamn hot here steve 👑: we're playing cornhole now and just threw a football around steve 👑: sweating all the beer and vodka out as a I go, that's healthy, right? don't worry, I'm drinking a shit ton of water.

Steve includes a selfie of himself, smiling closed-lipped with a baseball cap on backwards and the neck of his tee-shirt drenched in sweat. Eddie wants to lick him dry and that's a thought he'll never tell a living soul, probably not even Steve. No, no definitely not Steve. He'll never live that one down.

steve 👑: oh, and fishing was good! we made some bets on who could catch the most and then who could catch the biggest. I tied for first place for the biggest and I caught 17. brandon got 20 so he won that bet. I'm only letting it go because it's his bachelor party lmao

Eddie swipes to the next photo, one of Steve and Brandon holding their two biggest catches. Steve's sunglasses are sliding down his nose, no doubt from the sun warming his glistening skin, and he's smiling wide against the railing of a boat. As much as he misses him, Eddie can't help but mirror his smile. Call him lovesick or 'down bad', as Robin says, but seeing Steve happy makes him happy.

He continues swiping and reading the little blurb attached to each photo, some of which don't even include Steve but Eddie appreciates them all the same. They don't include Steve, but it feels a lot like Steve trying include Eddie in the weekend. The last picture is one of the entire group, all dozen or so guys lined up on the ship. Brandon stands in the center surrounded by the rest of the group with Steve shuffled in no meaningful spot but to Eddie, Steve is the center of every photo, every moment, everything.

Eddie starts to type a response when his phone dings again. This time, Steve sends a voice message and Eddie presses play so quickly, he nearly knocks poor Bandit off his lap.

Hey, takin' a break from cornhole. I won, by the way, had to make up for losing to Brandon in the fishing bet.

Steve laughs and Eddie's stomach flips. Robin's right. He's down very, very bad for this man.

But I just uh, I miss you, and I know maybe that's sorta lame but I do. The party's great and all, but I can't wait to get back home tomorrow. Tell the kid I said hi. I love you, Ed.

He replays it a few times and shamelessly taps Keep so it doesn't disappear before sending his own voice message.

It's no more lame than me sitting here with Bandit sharing how much we miss you, so you get a pass. I mean, you get a pass on everything all the time, but don't let that go to your pretty head, okay? I'm so fucking glad you're having fun and sowing your jocky oats, but selfishly, I can't wait for you to get home. I'll make it worth your while.

He huffs air through his nose and laughs low in his throat.

Oh, and Robin's coming by in a little bit so I'm gonna grab a bottle of wine. Don't be surprised if you get a FaceTime call later. I love you too, Stevie. So goddamn much.

Eddie sure does miss Steve, but it stings a little less knowing that Steve misses him, too.

[seliasvault]

because i apparently now have the writing itch thanks to the increase in free time, here's a classic book trop drabble with a sprinkle of fifty shades of grey cause i just rewatched that movie, very unorginal but i eat this trop up everytime time. might just continue this

if you have any ideas or asks, leave a request!

meet cute

ceo!ghost x reader

ceo!ghost: who met you one day when you were in a hurry.

Moving to a new city isn’t easy, and job hunting certainly isn’t either, so finally landing an interview at a respectable company was a blessing.

What wasn't ideal was being late to said interview, a chain of events led to you leaving the house merely 20 minutes before you had to be there.

Rushing to get coffee you join the line while going over the details of your resume and talking points. You put in your order, wait, and pick up. Your nose still buried in your phone you don't notice as you open the door to leave the man walking in.

Of course to add to your luck you crash chest-first into him, spilling the contents of your drink onto his white button-up and suit. With the difference in temperature and liquid staining your shirt you're pulled out of the shock and filled with a high amount of embarrassment and guilt.

"oh my god! I'm so sorry, I-" You move the cup, upright so it can stop spilling onto both you and the man you've so graciously made sticky. Simon who, very much did not expect to be covered in coffee before work, makes a noise of acknowledgment.

"I-let me pay for the dry cleaning, that suit must cost a lot and-" You pause quickly thinking of ways you can remedy the situation. "let me buy you a coffee, a coffee and pastry, they have really good Danishs." You say a little nervously, hoping he takes you up on the offer.

The man responds his voice deep with an accent uncommon to find in Chicago.

"s'alright, no need for that." he clears his throat, he can't say this hasn't happened before, but he will say it was the first time he met someone so apologetic.

"no really, let me buy you something and here" You get out your wallet, pulling out two 20s, yes you were short on money but no you were not just going to hand this man a 20 to cover what looked to be a very expensive suit. Extending a hand you open your palm, waiting for him to accept it.

"Trust me I don't need your money sweetheart " his tone is flat, unimpressed.

"maybe you don't but it would make me feel infinitely better, so take it and let me get you a coffee." You try and make your voice sound firm and commanding, but it doesn't quite come out that way.

You're stubborn, a good trait to have but he didn't need your money, he could very much buy 1000 of these suits and still never see a dent in his wallet. He was running late and needed to cut this short.

"just the coffee," he grumbled out, heading inside.

You followed suit, glancing at the time, you had 10 minutes, following through with your word you bought him the coffee, after he begrudgingly gave you his order. And as promised a cherry cheese Danish to accompany it. Glancing at your phone to peek at the time, you cut the interaction short.

"I'm really sorry again."

"s'alright watch where you're going next time." "will do." You give him a small smile, walking out and half running to your car.

[unlikelyjapan]

s2e1 rewatch notes

I had some wine tonight, but by the grace of God I had the wherewithal to wait a few hours to post my notes:

The forcefulness of Fak telling Carmy "It's a facelift AND a gut" is obviously needling us about how the character development on the show is going to roll, to varying degrees. The fact that Carmy is the one to be dismissive about the statement is foreshadowing I guess?

The same foreshadowing goes with Richie & Carmy - "I've got no purpose" and "you're going to wake up and drop my ass" fears are inverted between them by the end of the season.

Marcus and Sydney have honest heat/tenderness/tension in the first episode as she checks in on his mom - her own mother issues make it super awkward as the interaction closes, but it gives me more understanding as to why Marcus erupted as badly as he did in Ep10 (not like it was excusable, just relatable) - he's in a vulnerable state where her inquiries could definitely feel like overt cues.

Cicero totally looks like he knows what's happening between Carmy and Syd as they bicker during the pitch for more cash - Oliver Platt can play a smart (smug) motherfucker like no other, and I'm weirdly attracted to that.

Cicero was really ready/itching to tell them "the story of complete and utter failure" when Carmy cuts him off with the spontaneous '18-months to pay-out" deal during the same pitch. Knowing the Gonzalez/Bartman story was at the ready in episode 1 - and that, instead, we got Claire'd - is going to haunt my dreams for a while.

Syd asking Tina if she wanted to be her sous felt like the first time she was earnestly asking another woman to have a connection with her, and that earnestness was rewarded threefold *tears*

I love Ebra's consistent tenderness with Marcus so much - I hope they explore that bond more in season 3, as they've always been so gentle together. You can tell Ebra is very invested in Marcus' future, even though it's so divergent from the path he sees for himself at his stage in life.

Syd really needs Carmy to take the lead at the lockers when she says "Uh....what are you going to do?" - she lacks the emotional bandwidth to deal with the ambiguousness of "I have no idea", even though it's such a loaded statement coming from Carmy. He also says "I have no idea" to Claire in the next episode, when she asks "how's your life been, Berzatto?" but, of course, Claire DOES have the bandwidth/game to respond.

The exact lyrics when Sydney walks away from the lockers are talking about "transcendental blues" - I am deceased now.

Furthermore, the fact that the episode (at the point where they've constructed the new 3-month opening plan) is the first time we actually hear the lines from Refused's "New Noise" punctuate an episode with "Can I scream? Good frames won't save bad paintings" - ugh.

Afterthought:

Do you think any of anti-hero character development on the show echoes back to "The Adventures of Augie March" by Saul Bellow? I haven't read it in ages, but it's the most Chicago story ever, and Storer is SO REFERENTIAL about anything literary/cinematic to do with the city that I thought.....maybe kinda.

[go-to-two]

I am kinda new to the whole Chicago PD thing. Fell in love with Upstead and love both Hailey and Jay (and Tracy and Jesse).

I was watching the one where they get together (Tender Age - 8x03) and I tried to understand the whole conversation between Hailey and Jay and I can't. Why does he say 'I am practicing self preservation here' ? The whole dialogue seemed off - idk. Maybe I am not able to understand. Could you analyse it for me?

Ohhh that's actually one of my favorite parts of that scene! Though let's be real, the whole scene is my favorite.

Just for my own reference, the scene was...

"you can tell me you don't want me to take [the FBI job]"

"I want you to do whatever you want to do. I'm just practicing self preservation here."

To me, this was Jay acknowledging that he had been burned by people leaving in the past, and Hailey leaving had the potential to hurt a lot worse. Once they admitted their feelings, there would be no going back. They were all or nothing in the sense that they would either be together for good or their partnership would never be the same. At that point, Jay knew what he wanted, but he also wanted Hailey to be able to make her own decision. That "I'm just practicing self preservation" is, in my opinion, a vulnerable mixture of knowing what he wants but also not wanting to influence her while also acknowledging that he's been hurt before, and he wasn't equipped to handle being hurt by Hailey in that way. It's a lot of things, and the shy yet hopeful delivery of the line gets me every time. I might need to go rewatch that scene. Darn.

[gyllenhaalstories]

presumed innocent finale rewatch word vomit? yeah i think so <33

knowing who did it made it more obvious as i rewatched the entire season but especially with the finale. the way jaden looks so dissociated the entire time, how you can clearly tell she has not slept in ages and she's been eaten alive by this. the hugs with rusty... it's obvious. but wow i literally believed every single possibility except her. if i learned one thing from this show, it's that i am as stupid as rusty and that is deeply upsetting.

i haven't watched the movie (i want to though!) & the other productions, i haven't read the book so like... what the hell happens with rusty? i know the series is doing it differently so comparison is almost pointless. i guess maybe we might get crumbs about what happened to some of the people involved with season 2 although it's a new case and we don't know much about who comes back (i saw peter wasn't coming back as tommy, jake is likely to only be back as a producer). but what happens?

is rusty unemployed? he was suspended with pay i believe, but like, he's not going back there to work like it's a regular monday right? does he find a firm in chicago to work form, more lowkey? more paperwork, more like lawyer you call for contracts and minimal public exposure? does he change careers? does he just... live as a pariah for the rest of his life? what! does! he! do! i wonder. all we know is that he's incredibly dumb but he's law smart. he can throw a punch, he can swim and run on a treadmill. where the hell does that take him. he has no credibility, he might be excellent at his job (he said it himself that he doesn't know what it feels to lose a trial, not even his own... wow), but take the job out of the man and what is he left with? i just want to know. i'm so curious. i want all the details.

barbara had a suitcase packed. she basically had a foot out of the door before jaden explained what happened. does she stay and become even more miserable to protect her children? that stare they exchanged at the last second of the finale is so charged. do they get divorced? i hope so, perhaps after jaden moves out and kyle too if barbara can stand it that long. i hope they divorce, as fairly and smoothly as possible. it will inevitably create a great divide, i see jaden siding with her father and kyle with his mom. i think barbara's compulsion to forgive and to protect her family will be shattered and altered forever. i hope she finds someone who's artistic like her, who's loyal and who loves her the way she deserves. i hope she gets a proper art studio that never turns into a storage shed, perhaps she quits working for galleries and instead shows her art to the world. i see rusty attending the exhibition. how lovely aww <3

no but let's take a moment for barbara and rusty. they met when they were twenty, in college she studied art and he did law which is like so different. surprise pregnancy 6 months later. they still finished school. it's safe to assume kyle was born around that time. barbara going to school pregnant! rusty and barbara raising jaden and reading her bedtime stories in between important schoolwork! and after that they just... they just kept going. they had a kid at about 21, two before 25 and they had amazing careers after that. i know i know that's the life of many people i don't care let me be amazed by barbara and rusty for one moment thank you. their whole lives... all they know is each other. barbara mentioned clifton's phd in art so casually, does she have that too? two kids and a phd? and was an art gallery the future that barbara wanted? she's so talented. did she want to become an artist, was she an artist at some point but she diverged to work at a gallery for a seemingly more stable revenue? did she have to settle so rusty could aimed so high? i imagine he would have succeeded to raymond. in the next election, he would be taking his place. that's crazy!!! no wonder why they drifted apart.

the kids will be forever messed up oh my god. jaden? how is she supposed to move on from that. i wonder what the future has to offer to jaden and kyle.

raymond retires, absolutely wonderful. does he stay friends with rusty? i think he would, but i don't think lorraine would support it. and between lorraine and rusty, there is no doubt who he chooses considering who almost killed him during this trial.

so rusty has 0 mistress 0 best friend 0 wife and a broken family. he probably doesn't even have the house because i doubt he can afford it without a big fancy job as a big fancy chief deputy prosecutor and the big fancy paycheck that comes with it. he has nothing. he did not know what he was willing to lose. he's so dumb. he lost everything because he couldn't keep his pp in his pants... might be worse than actual jail for him. hmm, deserved.

WILL TOMMY'S CAT BE OKAY!!! I'M ASKING THE REAL QUESTION!

[kolbisneat]

MONTHLY MEDIA: November 2023

Ooooooh it's getting cold and snowy out here in Ontario! Perfect weather to stay in, curl up, and read/watch/play something.

……….FILM……….

Bottoms (2023) The heightened reality could've been made apparent a little sooner but other than that, no notes. Weird and fun in a way I haven't seen in a while. Big fan.

How The West Was Fun (1994) It took me about 1 hour and 10 minutes to get into this but it finishes strong. And so many great jackets! Ugh I love a good belt buckle.

……….TELEVISION……….

The Crown (Episode 6.01 to 6.02) Okay this is my first dip into the series but having lived (just barely) through a lot of this, I feel like I got caught up fairly quickly. Really feels like the focus is on Diana instead of the Queen, yeah?

Scott Pilgrim Takes Off (Episode 1.01 to 1.06) Not what I was expecting and really refreshing for it! The animation varies wildly from episode to episode and I assume it's intentional buuuut sometimes it doesn't quite work for me. If I finish it and enjoy it enough to warrant a rewatch, I'll definitely try it with the Japanese dub.

……….YOUTUBE……….

Mosa Lina by Caleb Gamman This looks like a fun game and, more importantly, the video is a thoughtful divergence into the topic of "genre". Gonna be thinking about the ideas in here for a while. VIDEO

This Woman Deconstructs 100-Year-Old Books To Restore Them | Obsessed | WIRED by WIRED I could watch book restoration all day and I hope this becomes an ongoing series or she starts her own channel. VIDEO

7 Deadly Art Sins by CJ the X Vital watching for any creative type. Don't compare yourself to others (different from learning from others), don't hesitate starting that project you have in mind, and don't be afraid to create stuff you don't like cause it's an opportunity to reflect and grow and move towards making something you do like. Also promise me you won't call it content. VIDEO

Chicago Doesn’t Own Its Own Streets | Climate Town by Climate Town If you ever hear a city councilor mention selling public infrastructure to a private company, send them this link or vote them out. VIDEO

……….READING……….

A Few Fiends To Tea by Virginia Coffman (Complete) Picked this up secondhand for the cover (obviously) and the promise of a dying man using his remaining time to enact some vigilante justice on serial killers. Pulpy fun, right? Well it mostly reads like a mid century romance with a few interesting exchanges peppered throughout. Oh well.

Silver Surfer by Slott & Allred Omnibus by Dan Slott and Michael Allred (Complete) This is what comics can be. Funny, sad, silly, and sincere, all while telling superhero stories that don't exclusively rely on punching to solve conflict. This reads like the best of Doctor Who and I love it all the more.

Delicious in Dungeon Volume 1 by Ryoko Kui (Complete) It seeeeeeeeems like the series is wrapping up so while I wait for the final volume's release I figured I'd start a reread. Knowing where it's going it's fun to see how established the setting and characters are right out of the gate. Just so great and I can't recommend it enough.

……….AUDIO……….

Wag the Doug (Podcast) This is for a very specific audience (folks living in Ontario, Canada that are invested in provincial politics) but if you're a part of that demographic then it's a great way to loosely keep up with what's going on.

……….GAMING……….

Oz: A Fantasy Role-Playing Setting (Andrews McMeel Publishing) The Mof1 Crew is infiltrating a funeral where they know Princess Ozma will be attending. I think their plan is still stuff from the coat check but maybe they'll change course along the way. Never know what I'm going to get with this crew.

Wonderland: A Fantasy Role-Playing Setting (Andrews McMeel Publishing) Got to run this quite a bit this month and testing is going well! Similar tone but very different sort of play from Oz and Neverland and I feel like that's a good thing.

And that’s it. See you in December!

[meri-meri-mwah]

Was rewatching the second trailer for RE4R and I noticed Ada said, "Leave the girl. She's lost, no matter what." Like it makes me wonder if Ada is aware of Ashley's condition becoming worse or maybe she's testing Leon to see if he'll leave the president's daughter behind (in this case, he can't because he's already infected). I can't remember if Ada was aware that Leon was infected in the OG game before she got choked out when the plagas took over Leon for a second.

(If Separate Ways drops with the launch, I hope Capcom improved the Krauser and Saddler boss fight in her campaign cause I thought they were bleh. But everything else in Separate Ways is chef kiss! OH, and if they include Assignment Ada, that better get an improvement, too. I played it once just for the Chicago Typewriter and didn't bother going back to it, ngl.)

[birindale]

She-Ra: Progressive of Power

Episode 1: “The Sword of She-Ra” - Introduction

I’m really bad at consuming podcasts, but being able to read along helps. It makes things easier to find later on when I tune back in after getting distracted, or weeks later after I inevitably forget when things were discussed but want to double check something. And this podcast has a few interviews with crew members on top of its premise generally appealing to me, so. I’m making transcripts, I’m posting them here, if this isn’t of interest to you go ahead and blacklist “progressive of power”. If this is of interest to you, please click through the above link and support the hosts directly.

... and I annotated it. sorry. at least it’s footnotes this time?

Narrator from The Secret of the Sword (1985)(Which for series purposes is referred to as The Sword of She-Ra as it’s made of the first five episodes squashed together, I promise that’s relevant): [the She-Ra: Princess of Power theme plays behind him] Where darkness rules, fights the champion of light. Where hope seems lost, there rides the Rebellion. Together they stand ready against the dark, evil warriors of the Horde and their leader, the terrible Hordak. The Rebellion, armed with hope and ancient powers against the force of an intergalactic army. This is the story of one who will become leader of the Great Rebellion. She-Ra: Princess of Power!

ERIC: Hello everybody, my name is Eric.

LAUREN: My name is Lauren. It's nice to hang out with you and talk about a cartoon from... the year I was born I guess?

ERIC: Whoa! The year after I was born, so yeah this is the pilot episode of She-Ra: Progressive of Power. This is a rewatch podcast with a political twist. We're going to watch episodes of the She-Ra animated series which is now on Netflix and kind of look at the ways that it both holds up and then fails a modern day progressive agenda. And I'll talk about why I wanted to do that in a minute. But first I thought we should maybe get into just a little bit about who we are because nerds love to gatekeep. I might edit that line out. But I feel like we should just give some context to why we are two people who are qualified to take on this project. So first off, both of us are political volunteers for a very progressive Illinois campaign.

LAUREN: A certain progressive Illinois campaign.

ERIC: Yes. Maybe gubernatorial in nature. Maybe if you watch our Facebooks it’ll become clear. But either way, you know, we're both on that side of the political spectrum and we're both very nerdy. I make podcasts for a group of people called The Nerdologues, and... I don't know, this show has always been a favorite of mine. I saw Wonder Woman and I thought, “Wow, Wonder Woman is amazing! I want to watch another thing with an amazing female lead. And then I'm like, oh, I love She-Ra. Hey, it's on Netflix!” Now, FYI, I have the DVDs, but they're buried away. I dug them out to watch the documentaries for this podcast, though. But I'm like, ooh, Netflix is easy. And I started watching it and I'm like, “This feels... maybe too relevant.”

LAUREN: Netflix is just successfully making every other form of media irrelevant. Like, well, you have the DVDs, you don't need them.

ERIC: Yeah, but so Lauren, you have never seen She-Ra before.

LAUREN: Right, and that's kind of why I agreed to this. Otherwise, I think pretty niche-y premise. So, I wrote the blog Geek Girl Chicago for a solid five years or so. I've kind of backed off of that, mostly because when I was very small and into science fiction and comics and geek culture, it was an underground kind of, uh... subculture. And now it's just culture. You know, I was just downtown and went into Uniqlo with some friends after going to Starbucks. And all of Uniqlo was like Nintendo shirts and Disney. And my friend goes, “It's like we're at a convention except it's just downtown Chicago. It's not... it’s not geeky anymore.” So I hate to be that elitist dork who's like, “I don't like it anymore because it's mainstream.” But I was really excited to maybe talk about something that everyone has heard of, and watch something that I've actually never experienced before. I also cosplay. I have worked on other podcasts such as Our Fair City and I don't know. I'm a dog person. We’re... We're here with Eric's dog, and she definitely smells my dog. And I find her very distracting, because that's a big part of my personality these days.

ERIC: Yeah, P.S. my dog’s name is AC, short for I kid you not, Adora Corona. So clearly the She-Ra fandom is big in me. But yeah, you'll get to know Lauren and I through the course of this show. Let's dive into She-Ra. So we're going to cover a different episode or a different set of episodes every week. Today we're talking about the... the first five, which is kind of the pilot of She-Ra. It's called the Sword of She-Ra. And uh, this is gonna be more of a top level discussion, I imagine, than what eventual episodes will end up being. Because I don't want to get into as much plot specifics as just kind of like the creation of this character and why she exists. And yeah, we'll talk about the five episodes and stuff. But I think the background of She-Ra is really fascinating. So if I may, I will lay the groundwork, and then, I am so excited to hear what you thought about this.

LAUREN, laughing: It's on your face. He's smiling so big right now.

ERIC: Oh my God, this is great. Because well, I asked Lauren, “What do you know about She-Ra?” And she's like, “I've seen girls cosplay as her and that's it.“ And I'm like, “You don't know her story at all.”

ERIC AND LAUREN: “No.”

ERIC: Okay, so, clearly there's a big twist in the Sword of She-Ra, and Lauren didn't know what it was until she watched these episodes. So we're going to get there. But let me talk about the background of the show because I think it's interesting, and it's going to inform our discussion about pro--like the progressive values of the show. So this is 1985, and He-Man, which I'm sure a lot of you guys are familiar with, at least in passing, that's all you need to be, has been a show for two years. And the production company that makes it has reached the point where they have so many episodes that they would actually be losing money to produce new episodes, like it was just in their advantage to sell it to syndication. And so they're looking for the next show to do. So Lou Scheimer, the guy who runs the company, wanted to do a show for girls, the reason being he had worked a long time ago on a show called The Hardy Boys and his daughter said to him, "Dad, why do the girls always trip and fall?” and so Lou said, "I wanna make a show where it's the men who trip and fall." [[1]] And initially th--Filmation was going to produce a Barbie show, and Mattel said, "No thanks,” and this is the actual quote, according to Lou, which is very creepy--the Mattel exec said, "Because Barbie already exists in the mind of a child."

LAUREN: What?

ERIC: Which is a weird reason to deny a business partnership. But so Lou and--and his crew were thinking about the success of He-Man, and a couple of the better writers from He-Man, because that show certainly had ups and downs--but a couple of the actual consistent writers had this idea to like, what if, what if he had a sister? And what if no one knew? [[2]] So that's the basic plot of the Sword of She-Ra is that He-Man is summoned to go to this strange world he's never been to before, and he takes this sword with him, and the sword is designed for this woman who works for the bad guys, the Evil Horde, who ends up being his sister. And so you find out that Hordak, the leader of the Horde, took her as a baby from her parents and then like, hid her away. And the pain of that memory was so great that the Sorceress on Eternia on He-Man's world made everybody forget except for her parents and the Sorceress herself, which is like fucking traumatic and still that plot gives me chills.

But what we have here is an action show with a female lead, which already is pretty... pretty irregular and that was something that the creative team was very aware of. Staff writer Francis Moss, I have some quotes from some documentaries on the DVD. He said, from page one, “We're empowering girls. I don't know about proto-feminism, but it certainly was female empowering.” Staff writer J. Michael Straczynski doesn't hesitate to use the F word. He said it was feminist from the go. So this is very consciously a female-centric show. A lot of the staff shied away from calling it feminist, because that was the time. But you know, it's not really any different now.

People still don't like to use that word necessarily. But... more than that, it's kind of this story... You know, in He-Man, it's the typical 80s cartoon setup where the good guys are reactive. So the bad guy does something, and then the good guys are like, “You can't do that. That's against the social order.” And then he comes and stops them. But She-Ra, it's the inverse where these guys called the Horde have been ruling this planet for--according to the series Bible--20 years. [[3]] And they--they are the status quo. And the heroes are the Rebellion fighting against the status quo to make that change. So the heroes are proactive in the show. And I mean, not to get--Well... I'm gonna have to not say ‘not to get too political’ on this podcast. Cause it's political.

LAUREN: We have the word progressive in the title.

ERIC: Right.

LAUREN: I think you're stuck.

ERIC: This is a political show. It felt... It's not a one-to-one correlation, but watching the pilot again on Netflix, I'm like, this feels... this is too real right now. This idea of like an evil empire that controls basically everything from, you know, taxation to... to free speech, and the people are subjugated and some of them don't even know. It's just really... It feels more relevant than it probably has in a while. And I want to read,before I turn it over to Lauren, what J. Michael Straczynski--who by the way, you guys will probably note is the creator of Babylon 5, so he went on to have a wonderful career after She-Ra--What J. Michael Straczynski wrote in the series bible for She-Ra, page one. He says, “The time for words is past. It is the time for action. A time for the taking of vows, the forging of alliances against tyranny. A time for leadership. For over 20 years, the evil horde has ruled Etheria with an iron fist and cruel calculation. Their rule has gone largely unchallenged, until now. A band of patriots brought together by their love of freedom have pledged their lives and their swords to bring down the dark dictators from another world, willing to tackle impossible odds in their quest for an ideal: Freedom. Leading this band of patriots is She-Ra: Princess of Power.”

And so... even though a lot of episodes of the show did devolve into standard 80s cartoon fare, I think it is baked into the very premise of the show. Like these writers are very conscious of the fact that this is at its heart a political struggle, a band of women fighting an oppressive militaristic regime led by an evil pig man. And that just feels so relevant. So, Lauren Faits.

LAUREN: Yes.

ERIC: What did you think of the first five episodes of She-Ra?

LAUREN: Oh my gosh, what a ride. So I do need to point out that before I started watching She-Ra, um, I had not watched He-Man either. And Eric gave me an episode of He-Man to watch. And, uh, you know, it was charming. I joked that just the--the background music was always just He-Man over and over and over. It was just so pumped up and masculine the whole time that I'm thinking gosh, you know is this She-Ra show just going to be this in pink and purple and light blue and I--I mention the color palette because honestly... oddly enough, that was the first thing about this show to really strike me. In addition to there being so many women on screen all the time, we live in this era, still, today where toys are us and Target have these like pink aisles where... that's the girl stuff and that's where you go to look for girl toys, and She-Ra and the Rebellion and all the villains, they don't stick to that color palette. It is a wonderfully just, colorful show and it's not screaming ‘princess, pretty, feminine’ the whole time, and yet it manages to be feminine, and that's pretty exciting to me. Um. Some of the things that surprised me from the get-go, uh-- I wasn't expecting a male narrator, in the beginning of the theme--

NARRATOR: Where darkness rules--

LAUREN: But, you know, all right, cool. And um... in one of the first scenes--so they’re clearly, they're trying to sell She-Ra through He-Man, like He-Man’s super popular I guess in 85?

ERIC: It was, uh, for its second season, I think, it was the highest rated show in syndication.

LAUREN: Yeah, wow, and so... They really make it He-Man's story for one to two episodes, but also they you know, they show him cooking, they show him having relationships with his mom, and like the women in his life, and he's, you know, not as bloated and masculine a character as I expected them to present him as? This show is very 80s, though, and I loved watching how some of this animation was so intense--You see Battlecat leap forward in this like, very violent and action-packed way, and then a monster grabs him and throws him, and the sound effect is still like ‘boing’! [laughs] They're just--the 80s were this time when cartoons were still for kids. There was no acknowledgement that cartoons can really be for grown-ups, so all the voices on this show are so goofy, all the sound effects are so goofy, and anytime it just starts to take itself seriously-- [affects a stupid cartoon voice] someone comes in with this voice! And you're like, oh, hello 1985.

Some of the things I want to talk about that you brought up--I I love. I'm so interested in that quote that calls the rebellion a band of patriots, because the one quote that I wrote down, was in episode one Bow, who is the token man who's costume I love, and I'm going to Dragon Con in September and if I don't see at least one I'll just cry--uh, the quote was:

[audio clip from SOTS]

HORDE SOLDIER: Surrender, citizen!

Bow: [chuckles] I'm not a citizen. I'm a rebel.

[end clip]

LAUREN: --and I--I’ve--I've been thinking about that for the last like 12 hours or so, because I would argue... that a patriot, who's fighting for justice and equality and freedom, is like... the ideal citizen? But this Rebellion is so disconnected from... the Horde, and the establishment, which I guess has been around for 20 years that they don't even call themselves like citizens of that regime, and I think that’s... that's striking, especially if you're talking about our current political climate? I think that's an accusation, often, that comes from both sides. If you're not--I'm going to say the T word--if you're not a Trump fan in 2017 you're not a patriot, but then the other side says, if you're supporting the tyranny of this, then you're not a patriot, and uh... these people in the Rebellion are patriots, but don't consider themselves citizens, and I want to hear what you think about that.

ERIC: Well, first of all, I like that you uh, caught that quote because I also--I just read the series Bible for the first time last night, and I had never... thought to refer to the Rebellion as patriots, and I think that that also kind of has... because you know under eight years of Obama-- that was what all the... angry people on the far right, ‘oh we're patriots’ and so I bet now... I mean I don't want to put too much on JMS's politics, but he probably was pretty lefty to to write the series Bible for this show. He might not use that word ‘patriot’ and I also think... First of all I really want to talk about Bow, and maybe this isn’t the episode for it, but just in general like that character of the token male and his crazy outfit and his-- his weird relationships. There's that moment in episode 3 where Adam's like oh I'm gonna go to the Fright Zone and find Adora, and he's like “Godspeed you on your quest, Adam!” and Adam's just kind of like “... Yeah cool man. Anyway I'm gonna go bye.”

[clip from SOTS]

BOW: You are a brave man, Adam. I salute you. Good fortune speed you on your mission.

ADAM: Yeah, uh... well thanks.

[end of clip]

LAUREN: He's just too extra, even for He-Man.

ERIC: Side note, Larry DiTillio in the series Bible mentions that Bo is kind of supposed to be the Adam figure on Etheria. Not the He-Man but the Adam, the kind of, ‘oh he he jokes around, he kind of slacks off, and he may be a little too earnest and he can't always back it up’... Anyway to the quote of “I'm not a citizen, I'm a rebel”. Yeah, nowhere in the show does it ever say ‘the Horde's been here 20 years”. It's just kind of an indeterminate amount of time. And there's episodes we'll watch later, where it seems clear that they are ‘the establishment’ and I think maybe that's the difference between the show and--well, that's clearly a difference between the show, and where we are in the world is you know the horde is -- they're straight, like -- they're not even making runs at being a democracy, like it's straight up tyranny. Uh, so I guess in that sense I think Bow’s quote is legit, but I think that's probably a way that, yeah, it is disconnected from... from the modern times, we are all still citizens even if we consider ourselves resisting the current power structure.

LAUREN: Right I feel like we all still believe in America, and our version of what America could be, at its best, and we all want to live in that place. You hear people who are like ‘well if you don't love it you should leave it’ none of us want to leave we just want this place that's our home to be better and include everyone. [[4]] And I'm--I--I guess in the end--not to skip way ahead, but that's She-Ra's choice as well. She's given the option to go to, sort of this idealized place, where the good guys, uh are already the force in power. In Eternia, He-Man's family is getting to rule--I mean they're--they’re menaced all the time by Skeletor, but they're... that's the king and the queen and... the good guys kind of make the government if you will. And She-Ra's like, no I can't stay, I'm choosing to go back to this tyrannical miserable place because my job there's not done, so I guess she is a citizen, she kind of insists she is.

ERIC: Yeah and I think that's really the crux of what drives this show, and you know we're gonna do an episode later on the-- the Price of Freedom, which if anybody listening is a She-Ra fan you'll be like ‘yeah that's the episode you have to do’ [[5]] but yeah that's the key difference in the show right is like She-Ra... she gets a taste of home in, I think, a very sweet moment and I also think a moment that if you are a He-Man fan kind of closes off--because even in the one episode you saw, you know there's this through line in the series, Prince Adam is always a disappointment to his dad because he can't let him--it be known that he's He-Man. So he's just kind of this jokey prince. And then he brings home their lost daughter and King Randor is like ‘you've made me so happy’ and I think all right, Adam's arc is done, like... he has fulfilled his job and completed his family. And Adora gets a couple days on Eternia and then Skeletor and Hordak come and try to take her away and she realizes she--if she if she stays, she's doing a disservice to the people who really need her, and I think that is it's awesome, like it's a great choice and it gives her so much more responsibility than than He-Man. And you know something that the writers keep noting is that whereas Adam and He-Man are two very different characters, Adora and She-Ra are basically the same. They're both very like duty-bound and honorable and uh, and noble.

LAUREN: I did notice that, which as a total newbie to this series brought about one of my major questions, which is: Why does her identity need to be a secret? I find Adora and She-Ra to be so similar and really the stakes--at least in this pilot--seem so low and it's... I don't know who else the Horde could think this mysterious warrior woman is, they're like ‘ah the princess escaped... and it's this lady's fault!’ and I [laughs] the--the--you really have to suspend your disbelief to like, let the alter ego thing even slide

ERIC: Oh I mean yeah, there's no way that the rebels shouldn't have figured out that Adam is He-Man okay. Prince Adam shows up he's like, ‘I have a friend who could help you fight!’ and then He-Man shows up, they rescue He-Man oh then Adam's back! And then He-Man comes back--it doesn't make any sense. I mean I guess if you really--because clearly the answer is that it’s the superhero trope, right.

LAUREN: Right.

ERIC: But if you really want to find an in-world answer, maybe it's to protect Adam's identity? I don't know. It--or maybe I mean if you want to dig psychologically, ‘cause Adora kind of doesn't have her own life, and so maybe she's trying to claim one for herself, to have her own identity and not be She-Ra, and there actually will be an episode we'll watch later that is about that duality.

LAUREN: I can buy that. I can buy that. Um. Speaking of the life that she doesn't have, one of the [laughs] most stone cold plot holes in this whole thing for me was that four people were allowed to keep the memory of Adora's existence, and everyone else didn't. So poor Teela is like, ‘no, who is this though’ and no one ever really like... stops to convince her or check in with her. There were two times during this pilot that I laughed just out loud by myself and that was one of them, because she really got a bad deal.

[clip from SOTS]

RANDOR: Well Adam we’ve done as you asked, now where is the surprise of yours? Must we wait all day?

ADAM: All right, you can open your eyes now.

TEELA: Who's that?

MAN-AT-ARMS: By the ancients!

RANDOR: It's about ti--[gasps]

MARLENA: Adora!!

ADORA: Mother! Father!

MARLENA: My daughter! Oh, my dear sweet daughter.

TEELA: Daughter?? [laughs uncertainly] I don’t understand.

MAN-AT-ARMS: Why, she’s Adora! Adam’s twin sister. And she’s back, after all this time!

MARLENA: Look at you! How lovely you are!

ADORA: Oh, Mother. I’m so glad Adam brought me here!

RANDOR: Son, I want you to know that today you’ve made me the happiest man on all Eternia. The royal family of Eternia is whole once more, and by the Ancients I swear that nothing shall ever separate us again.

SCENE TRANSITION: SHE-RA! [musical sting]

[end clip]

ERIC: What was the other time you laughed?

LAUREN: The other time I laughed... was the first time the horse... transformed into the Pegasus-unicorn. Is it Swift Wind?

ERIC: Swift Wind, yes.

LAUREN: And Swift Wind could suddenly talk. And had the--and had another goofy 80s voice. He's like, [affects a goofy 80s voice] ‘now, I'm Swift Wind’ and they go flying.

[clip from SOTS]

SWIFT WIND: I am Swift Wind, my dear friend.

LAUREN: But what made me laugh, not only was his voice, but the fact that it doesn't appear that he can talk when he's not transformed [laughs] and uh, and Battle Cat can. And so it's just another like raw deal that a character gets. [laughs] Like, ‘I lose my sentience when I'm not transformed’. Oh, my gosh. Poor Swift Wind. [[6]]

ERIC: I do want to say as far as the uh, the voice casting goes... So there's only six actors who work on the show. And one of them is the producer, and one of them is the producer's daughter. [[7]]

LAUREN: They really go for it.

ERIC: Yes.I--I appreciate the challenge. And, you know, everyone always kind of looks at these shows and say, ‘oh, these are the cheapest cartoons of the 80s’. And actually, the opposite was true. Filmation was the last studio to do all of their animation in America. And so it was very cost-prohibitive to hire a big voice cast, because they had to pay like, American wages to their animators and not just ship overseas.

LAUREN: You could see, though, where the great care was taken in the animation, and then sort of, where it wasn't? So similar to other 80s shows, like if you imagine Scooby Doo, and you see Shaggy and Scooby running, and the background is repeating itself over and over, um, in the like, Slave People. Those are the same slaves walking by over and over. And yet when He-Man disguises himself in a robot body, they take the time to draw like little tups of hair sticking out of his uniform. I was like, ‘oh, see, they had a budget. They just invested it in very specific places.’

ERIC: I love that that's a plot point, too, is that He-Man's hair gives him away at one point. I thought that that was so funny.

LAUREN: And it busts him really fast. I was expecting them to like... give him the benefit of the doubt and let him sneak around a little bit. And the second they see him, they're like, ‘that's He-Man. What an idiot.’

ERIC: Yeah. Fun f--I don't know if you or anybody listening will care, but Filmation had a--a system called Same-As. Same dash as, and it was their stock animation system. So anytime someone animated something they like, they would put it in like a file, and then they would use it in later episodes, again, because they thought, oh, this is a really great piece. We can keep using it and then we can, you know, put our efforts into something else next time. So that is why you saw like scenes of slaves just over and over again. So I want to know just at the very base level, like, did you see the twist coming about Adora's identity, and what did you think?

LAUREN: By the twist, do you mean, literally, that it's He-Man's sister?

ERIC: Yes.

LAUREN: So I thought it was pretty obvious, considering like one of the first scenes is the baby getting stolen. Like, who else would that baby be? I was actually more surprised when she was introduced as a bad guy, and I was trying to figure out, is she legitimately a bad guy who's going to need to go through sort of a massive change of heart, or is this just like a hypnosis situation? And the answer was both.

ERIC: Yeah.

LAUREN: It's both.

ERIC: Yeah. And I think, I think it says something, you know, probably for our purposes, one of the more interesting sequences is after He-Man is in prison--which by the way, there's a lot of being imprisoned, a lot of metaphors and literal imprisonment in this five part episode. When He-Man is at the--in prison and he tells Adora, ‘hey, just go see for yourself like what the world is like’, you know, she's like, ‘oh, I haven't really left the fright zone, but Hordak tells me that we're the rightful rulers and everyone likes us.’ And He-Man's like, ‘well, why don't you go see?’ I thought that was cool, even though the scenes of her investigating are sooo dramatic and like it's, you know, like an old guy who wants water and a trooper throws him in a lake. Like, yeah, that's horrible, but also it's like not really grave social injustice. You know?

LAUREN: Yeah. It was really on the nose in a way that, I mean, I loved, but was also so over-the-top because... one of those scenes is like an airplane just comes rolling up. And She-Ra’s like, ‘what's happening?’ And these two citizens in just the most exposition heavy dialogue are like, ‘well, John here was talking about how the taxes are way too high. And an evil robot overheard him and here comes an airplane to blow up his farm.’ [laughs

ERIC: Yeah, I was like, let's get this in really quick. Like 10 seconds in, Adora gets it.

[clip from SOTS]

ADORA: What's going on?

VILLAGER: Lars said the hordes taxes were too high and a trooper overheard him. Now they're going to destroy his home.

[explosion noises]

[end clip]

ERIC: Something you said at the beginning of our conversation that is really true. You know, as you pointed out, this is She-Ra's story. The whole kind of five-part pilot is about giving her control of the narrative. It's basically He-Man passing off the the torch, or the sword, as it were. And that had real-world implications as well as you deduce. It was a way to... because She-Ra clearly is marketed towards girls, but the people at Filmation really wanted boys to watch it. So they're like, all right, if we put He-Man in, maybe we'll trick the boys into thinking this is cool. And it totally worked. And I remember as a kid, I liked this show way more than He-Man. Even then, I deduced, like, this show... it's just richer. Like, it has this background--having the Horde and having the bad guys win. It's such a more interesting uh, background on which to tell different stories. So She-Ra was the second highest rated cartoon of the year it debuted, right behind G.I. Joe, which was a new show. It had a 4.3 share, which I think means 4.3 million people watched it every week, which is pretty good.

LAUREN: Yeah.

ERIC: So it totally worked. And I definitely at some point want to talk about the show's marketing of the toys, and how much of a failure that was. But as far as just on the show, like, I think it's pretty uniquely positioned to appeal to all genders.

LAUREN: Absolutely. And I'm interested in seeing where it succeeds and where it fails, as a feminist piece. Because even in this pilot, there were moments that were so strong and there were moments that totally whiffed, because there'd be quotes like, ‘that's not very ladylike’ or ‘just like a woman’. And I would say they were like 50-50 for, ‘no, you're supposed to think that's evil and dumb’. And then suddenly, like, He-Man would put his finger to She-Ra's lips and you're supposed to be like, ‘oh, that's okay’. And it's not. It's just like weird and sexist. And so they're trying so hard, and I want to see kind of what their success rate is going to be throughout the series, because it's bumping along.

ERIC: I completely agree, and I knew you were going to bring up--it--it is--And I just said it was one of my favorite scenes. And yet I still regret the unfortunate dialogue that's ‘not very ladylike, but then again, you're not much of a lady anyway’. [laughs] Although Scorpia of all the Horde villains, my least favorite. I do not like her. That voice, [affects a Scorpia voice] ‘oh, she talks like this, like she's from Brooklyn kind of’.

LAUREN: The vill--the side villains, I kept... I mean, all the side characters, so many mascots, which was very 80s, we got to make as many potential toys as possible. But so many just like... Catra: She's a cat. Angel-la: She's an angel.

ERIC: Broom is a broom.

LAUREN: [laughs] Yeah. There was also, the other like--most 80s thing about this was how violent, but nonviolent it was. There was some violent animation happening. But it was like, ‘they're just stunned’. The one guy whose powers is just eye beams? He has the eye beams that threw off He-Man's sense of balance. And I was like, either he is just like messing with He-Man's inner ear a little bit, or he's giving him brain damage. And I don't know, like [laughs]

ERIC: It's such like Warner Brothers style violence.

LAUREN: Well, right. And this, the big ‘Magna Ray’ was apparently going to affect an entire forest, but is also stopped with a rock.

ERIC: Yes.

LAUREN: And I'm like, all right.

ERIC: And then Hordak has enough power for a second shot, which was never mentioned before, because he drained just enough to get it to work one. I don't, there's a couple subplots, like I love the overall through line of He-Man finding She-Ra. The Magna Beam, the harpies. Oh my God, that harpy scene. I do not like it at all.

LAUREN: No.

ERIC: Um. Too--Earlier, you mentioned, you know, 50-50 on the dialogue being either they're calling out sexism, or it's just casually sexist.

LAUREN: Yeah.

ERIC: The other example you mentioned that wasn't He-Man, I think is really interesting because there's a lot of that in the scene when Adora is captured by Skeletor, and she's in Snake Mountain. And then as She-Ra, she fights her way out. And I--I almost feel like that scene, it's at the start of the fifth episode--To me, it's like almost consciously, and maybe I'm giving the writer too much credit--bringing femininity to Masters of the Universe, because it's so on-the-nose.

[clip from SOTS]

SKELETOR: And now, princess, I must decide what to do with you.

ADORA: [fake swooning noise as she fake passes out]

BEAST MAN: Uh. She’s fainted.

SKELETOR: Hah! Just like a woman!

[end clip]

[start new clip from SOTS]

BEAST MAN: You’re sure a pretty princess. [gross laugh] It’s too bad we have to lock you up in the dungeon.  

[end clip]

ERIC: Like, it's just so creepy. And then... and--when she's busting out She-Ra goes, ‘no one around here knows how to treat a lady’. And of course, the scene is capped by a true 80s villain defeat. Everyone is just laughing at Skeletor as he says, [affects a Skeletor voice] ‘ah, a female He-Man--

ERIC AND LAUREN IN UNISON: [both doing Skeletor impressions] ‘This is the worst day of my life!’

ERIC: And like, that's the end of the scene. That's like, no, he's a criminal.

LAUREN: Yeah [laughs]

ERIC: Why aren't you doing anything?

LAUREN: He's the big bad of this universe.

ERIC: Right.

[clip from SOTS]

TEELA: Hmph. I don't believe this.

SKELETOR: Neither do I. A female He-Man. [pitiful whining] This is the worst day of my life!

TEELA AND MAN-AT-ARMS: [laugh at Skeletor]

[end clip]

LAUREN: I was trying to... also decide, and I think this is something I'm going to wrestle with through most of this show. Uh, because my personal brand of feminism really tries to live by... a woman can be whatever she wants. If she wants to show her body, if she wants to cover it up, it's all fine. If she wants to be promiscuous, if she wants to be conservative, it's all fine. Be a mother, don't, get married, don't, I don't care. Feminism is, you're supposed to be able to do just whatever you please, because you're free. And I feel like pretty often we scoff at, when a woman is stereotypically feminine, and I think that's a mistake. And there's a moment where a big skull falls on top, it's like an animal skull falls on top of Skeletor. The thing that She-Ra says is like, ‘well, I think that's an improvement to your look’ and I'm like, wait, why is she concerned with aesthetic? Like why is she making like, cute jokes? And I struggled with it for a second, and then I went, no, it's great that she's feminine. It's great that she feels empowered in being a little bit about aesthetic. Like that's fine. And I feel like I'm going to have that conversation with myself a lot while watching this.

ERIC: I do not think you are wrong about that. Maybe it will make you feel better to know--And again, you know, I'm of the critical school of thought that intent only means so much. It's a window into something, b--into interpretation but it's not the be-all end-all. That said, I did find it interesting to see how keyed-in these writers were to the things that we would be talking about. So here's a Larry DiTilio, who again wrote four fifths of this pilot said: “I think the way you make things girl-friendly is you don't worry about the fact that she's a girl. You let her do what everybody else does. Everybody was equal on the show. We wanted a show where many times women were not only the equal of men, but the superiors of men.” And that's something that Lou Scheimer also echoes, like, his whole point ‘wasn't feminism’--which I disagree with--but he just wanted to show that women could do anything that they wanted. And I think that you do see that in the show. I think there's a huge variety of women characters of all types.

LAUREN: Yes, absolutely. And I'm glad to see so many female characters, on the good side, on the bad side because it gives them the chance to have diverse aesthetics, diverse intention, diverse personality. And I mean, that's sort of... I guess my final observation is how many things She-Ra IS being successful at that we're still struggling with today. Uh, when I went and saw Star Wars Episode 7, I remember feeling so moved by how many women I just saw standing in the ranks of the Empire, and standing in the ranks of the Rebellion, just existing within the space of this world, and how especially in... sort of geek culture things that's still sometimes rare. And this is so many years later, and the second we see the Horde, there's girls. And the second we see the Rebellion, there's girls. And this is a very action packed show, you know, girls punching, kicking, flying, riding. And... the fact that I feel like marketing professionals in toys and media today are still questioning whether or not young women can enjoy that is shocking. Because this, you know... this was literally before I was on this earth, this show started.

ERIC: It was 32 years ago, which is crazy. And it... Yeah, just kind of, I don't want to say effortlessly, because that takes away from the work of people who, you know, put the effort in. But seemingly easily is perfectly integrated. It's great. Now that--there is a huge caveat, and we're going to do an episode on this, but I need to mention it now, because I know someone's going to bring it up. She-Ra is super hashtag white feminism. This is a very white show. Now the series Bible even mentions that there should be ‘people of all colors’. And I don't know whether it was the animators, or just something at loss in translation, didn't happen. So there's an episode that kind of head-on deals with taking away a black character and making her a pink character. [[9]] We'll talk about that later.

LAUREN: People of all colors, you know, like purple and green.

ERIC: And that's kind of the fantasy trope that is unfortunate about She-Ra, right? That's one of the very 80s things is like, yeah, they’re all--there are all colors, but not real life colors. You have white, and then you have fantasy colors.

LAUREN: Yeah, I mean, 80s nostalgia is really hip right now. You have your Stranger Things and your Glow. And I've watched Glow very recently too. And sort of remembered that... in the late 80s, early 90s, there was this message of equality and freedom and like, togetherness. And it was like, ‘yeah, racism is over’. And then you realize like, no, the way society presented race was far, far from perfect we’re far from done with it. And so I think there's a lot of difference between saying ‘our show is for everyone’ and actually creating a show that is for everyone.

ERIC: 100%. And you know, I would still argue that She-Ra's heart was in the right place and compared to the other--like Transformers, G.I. Joe, He-Man, Thundercats, it did better, you know.

LAUREN: Mhm.

ERIC: But it still had a long way to go. That said, I'm really glad that you found... that you saw what I saw in this show. That it has troubles, but... It's pretty good, right?

LAUREN: It is!

ERIC: It's pretty good.

LAUREN: I'm going to DragonCon at the end of August and I was like, ‘is anyone cosplaying She-Ra? There's an 80s cartoon photo shoot. I should go talk to those guys. I mean, I wonder if there's going to be a She-Ra’. And that was after one sitting with this show. [laughs]

ERIC: So, yeah, I guess, like I said, this episode is going to be longer than the others, because we're just getting into it. But to close out, I'd like to know like, are you looking forward to exploring the rest of the show now?

LAUREN: I am. I'm looking forward to especially meeting more characters because I believe the implication was, we freed one castle, but there's going to be more kingdoms, with more people. And I did some spoiler-free googling and there's like a mermaid and an ice lady. And for one, I was like, ‘oh man, look at all these toys they could manufacture’. But on the other, I was just excited to see, you know, we already have so many female characters and the show is going to give us even more and I'm stoked to meet them.

ERIC: Yeah, absolutely. So I will mention, kind of the plan for this show going forward is after my Wonder Woman binge, I went through and I have an embarrassing amount of books on He-Man and She-Ra. So I read through and I'm like, OK, this seems like this would be good. So we're going to talk about episodes that kind of directly address progressive issues first. And then... I think if you guys like this show, Lauren and I talked about going back and doing all the episodes. It's 65 episodes on Netflix. That's a lot. So hopefully you guys like this and then, uh... we'll have a lot of fun. And I do want to point out even in the episodes that are directly addressing issues that we care about, there's a lot of failures and we're not going to sugarcoat things. But I think that when we really get to the dregs of She-Ra, that might be when the really... like, the claws come out. So we'll see where this show goes.

LAUREN: Well, I do believe that you should be critical of the things that you love. And so I'm sure there will be moments that I sound like I hate this, but I--I really only give even the time of day to things that are worth it. And this seems like it's going to be worth it.

ERIC: 100 % agree. And you know, I told Lauren when we were planning, I don't want this to fall into the unfortunately gendered dynamic of like, ‘guy likes it, lady nags on it’. And I don't think that's what's going to happen because I think we're both being pretty real about the show.

LAUREN: It's going to be ALL nagging, all genders, all nagging.

ERIC: But like, I don't know. I mean, you--you just experienced this in 2017, right? And you are a professional woman, got a lot going on. You're an established person, and you like the show. And to me, that says even 32 years later, this has some potential.

LAUREN: Yes. And you know, when I'm watching it and my husband walks into the room and just out of context, he's a muscly He-Man like tied to a table and he's like, ‘what are you watching?’ That just that that alone was worth taking on this project.

ERIC: So much bondage. All right. So next episode next week, we're going to do Duel at Devlan. So please feel free to follow along on Netflix. We'd love to hear your thoughts. We actually don't have anything set up to do that at this point, but we'll post some way for you to get at us, uh, when, you know, with the episodes. So, yeah, talk back to us as long as you have constructive things to say, good or bad, we'd love to hear them.

LAUREN: Yeah, this was awesome. I can't wait to watch the next episode. Thank you. Thank you for this idea.

ERIC: Yeah. Thanks for doing it. Hell yeah.

[clip from SOTS]

HE-MAN: Farewell, She-Ra, Princess of Power.

SHE-RA: Farewell, He-Man, dear brother.

[end clip]

LAUREN: Do we do we have a moral today?

ERIC: Oh, yeah. So that's something that's going to be coming up is uh, moral segments, because as you know, these 80 shows like typically have morals at the end. The pilot forgoes morals. So there isn't one baked into the show, but I don't know, if you were to assign a moral to today's episode, what would you say?

LAUREN: Oh my gosh. I think, I mean, this is so cheesy, but that's the 80s. I think the moral would be... be open to everything, be willing to try new things and confront new experiences with an open mind, because when Eric presented me this idea, I literally was like, ‘that's the weirdest thing I ever heard. I have to sleep on it’. And by morning, I was--I was ready. And I'm just so glad to say yes. I'm so glad to be open to a new experience.

ERIC: At first I thought you were going to relate that to like Adam's experiences of like, you know, ‘he did it with the Sorceress and it worked out’, but I like that it was a real life moral too.

[EPISODE OUTRO]

Thanks for listening to She-Ra, Progressive of Power. If you like our show, you can write and review us on Apple Podcast. We'd super appreciate it. You can also send us any feedback you have, add it to our email address, progressiveofpower@gmail.com, or as a comment on our website at progressiveofpower.wordpress.com. And make sure you listen to the show all the way through to the end. In future episodes, we're going to use this space to promote progressive organizations and causes we like a lot, related to the topics we're talking about, that can help make the world a better place. But for now, just enjoy this rad theme music.

[outro to "I Have the Power”][[10]]

ERIKA SCHEIMER AND NOAM KANIEL: [As She-Ra and He-Man] For the honor of love, we have the power so can you.

ANNOTATIONS

[[1]] This is an anecdote from Lou Scheimer: Creating the Filmation Generation, page 230, about his approach to creating female characters in general. Erika Scheimer, the daughter referenced, went onto work for Filmation herself, and in 2007 came out as a lesbian, calling Filmation “one of the gayest places in town”.  

[[2]] This is actually where things get complicated, because multiple people have claimed responsibility for the ‘long lost twin’ element, including Lou Scheimer on the very page cited in footnote 1. We know on the Mattel side at least that she was initially slated to be Teela’s long-lost twin, not Adam’s, which further tangles the narrative on the Filmation side. Larry DiTillio also claimed credit for the twin plot point, though he described it more as ‘filching’ from Star Wars. He and J. Michael Straczynski developed the world of She-Ra, so I think we can safely afford them the bulk of the credit, but Lou Scheimer had long wanted to create a female-led action show, and to build off of He-Man’s success--while on the Mattel side of things, Janice Varney-Hamlin had been trying to get a female action figure line greenlit for some time. She claimed it was her idea to build off of He-Man but there’s little (no) evidence of that and she’s... a gifted marketer, shall we say.

[[3]] This reactive vs. proactive bit is a reference to something Larry DiTillio has said a few times, about his intentions for the story. I just like that they did research for this podcast it makes me really happy. Here’s a link to the series bible.

[[4]]

[[5]] The Price of Freedom is one of a handful of episodes that make you ask, “the censors wouldn’t let them hit people but they were allowed to do this?” Basically, the Horde attacks Dryl. She-Ra calls the Sorceress for backup (He-Man), but they can do little more than evacuate the villagers into the nearby mines. She-Ra leaves to get help, because now they’re pinned there and Dryl itself is burned to the ground, but naturally Hordak blasts the shit out of He-Man and traps everybody in the mines. They start getting testy when their air starts running out, some of them are like ‘where the hell is She-Ra’, but one of the villagers gives this big rousing speech about how they can’t always rely on She-Ra and He-Man to fix all their problems, and they dig to safety. Or, they would, except they cause a cave-in, which is less a metaphor and more a reason for She-Ra to return (without any help).

[[6]] It could be worse! In the German audio plays, he couldn’t even talk as Swift Wind. But don’t worry, Filmation dropped the restriction pretty early on & we got the goofy 80s voice talking horse we all wanted.

[[7]] The aforementioned Lou and Erika Scheimer.

[[8]] Larry DiTillio said this on the 2007 BCI DVD’s "Documentary Feature - The Stories of She-Ra Part 1″. And boy is it concerning I recognized it so quickly.

[[9]] I think he means Huntara? ‘Pink’ is kind of a stretch but she was originally supposed to be black, per both Larry DiTillio & the character design sheet. They were going for a Grace Jones vibe. I guess we’ll find out in a later episode.

[[10]] Official theme song of the Secret of the Sword movie. There’s a music video and it’s incredible. Fair warning this gets stuck in my head constantly so if you’re susceptible to that... tread carefully. I linked you to the version with Erika Scheimer explaining the background of the song to force you to learn <3 don’t skip ahead that’s cheating

[sarah-dipitous]

Hellsite Nostalgia Tour 2023 Day 42

Hollywood Babylon/The Idiot's Lantern

"Hollywood Babylon"

Would I Survive the First Five Minutes??: These people are definitely actors...and I mean that the characters are actors, and bad ones at that. Well, I'm not on a film crew, so I guess??

Dean. ARen't you waNTed bY The FBI??? Why are we on a studio lot tour???? Though the "maybe we'll see one of the stars of Gilmore Girls" from the studio tour guide was well placed.

What if this was the genesis of Matt Damon getting bit roles as a surprise? Like, not that he's actually IN this episode but he gets mentioned...he could still be in this episode, honestly. There's like 35 minutes left

You know, maybe the Dean from Sam's memories in Tall Tales wasn't completely inaccurate. He's quite literally stuffing his face with the sandwiches at craft services...which, I can't blame him for, but it's still funny

OMG Dean geeking out about bit actors in movies is adorable

Ugh, is this the kind of thing my brother has to put up with?? Like, when Dick Wolf actually goes to Chicago to check up on things, is he that controlling and...what's the word, genre ignorant?

Dean is SO into this. He's fully embraced life on set, and I couldn't be happier for him. Wish he could always be this happy...

Man, I bet the director is next...he's not makin it out alive or he's the one that the boys actually save.

...I don't like being wrong, guys, especially so soon after making the prediction. The other writer was the one they end up saving from the original writer

OH GOD. THE WAY THEY OF COURSE ADDED WHAT JUST HAPPENED INTO THE MOVIE.

"Been On My Mind...": (Prediction: nothing. Bet Sam's still reeling from having to kill the last girl he slept with) 0 for 2 today. Look at you, Dean. This has gotta be one of the best stretches of days he's had.

"The Idiot's Lantern"

And now we move from movies to TV. It's weird how they keep doing this...

Should I have started with this one? Because after watching spn, it does feel weird to watch them mock me for having watched TV whereas I could have watched spn in defiance of them mocking me

Omg...I love tenrose. They're so cute.

What a year to be doing this rewatch, what with this episode focusing on Elizabeth's coronation. Would have been mildly funnier last year, but I wouldn't have KNOWN at this point last year.

Oh fuck. I forgot how terrible this guy is.

The angles they sometimes shoot from are...baffling. They're all off kilter, and for what purpose??

This family is about to learn Baby's First Feminism.

Okay but what do these aliens have on this guy? Because right now it feels like some trolley problem shit. If the...if the alien in the television is hungry and needs whatever it's getting from humans to live, but then those humans get rounded up and put in pens after their faces disappear. No, it's NOT like the trolley problem because the person the trolley would hit if you flip the switch isn't actively harming the other five. So the must have SOMETHING on Mr Magpie because otherwise he's just some guy.

Going FERAL over Ten saying there's not a power on this earth that can stop him [from saving Rose and everyone else but mostly Rose].

I hope Rita gets a fucking divorce and keeps the house or sells it, whatever she wants. This man is...fucking disgusting. HELL YEAH RITA!!!! GET THAT DIVORCE, GIRL!!!

Is it really so boring as "she let me keep my face" that Mr Magpie betrayed every single person on earth?? And then to die for all that...not heroically, begging.

Oh, Rita. Good for you. Standing up for yourself, your son, and your mother.

[h0tch-r0cket]

you remind me of chicago hope — whenever i see ur posts it just makes me want to watch chicago hope and fangirl over danny nyland😍

haha danny nyland is my favorite fuckboy that’s for sure!

maybe a rewatch is in my future👀

also the way i 100% intended to upload the HD quality but just never had time to do it

[into-the-center-of-things]

day six: art institute of chicago part three!!!

After the Georgia O Keefe exhibit we had about an hour or so to kill. So we went into the Clown Torture exhibit, which I was kind of excited about. When we entered the hallway leading into the exhibit two girls burst through the doors exclaiming "don't go in there its horrible!" which @germfreeadulthood and I took as a sign that this was exactly what we were anticipating. So went in we did.

There were two projections and two TV screens depicting different looping scenes of clowns in various stages of discomfort—shouting, screaming, dropping things, sitting on the toilet. It was honestly super funny and cool to see and I respected the multisense level of chaos it was attempting to bring forth. I imagine it worked for a lot of people—there were two girls behind us who came in, saw the screens, and immediately left.

We ended our visit at the Christina Ramberg retrospective. It appears she does a lot of microportraits of body parts, especially torsos and women's hair. The doll wall was lowkey kind of creepy and the description said it captured the race and gender stereotypes of the time—which I do agree with, a lot of very dated depictions from dolls that were to be given to children, to teach them to become accustomed to said stereotypes.

Then we said goodbye to the Art Institute of Chicago—we definitely didn't get a chance to see everything but I liked what we did get a chance to look at...and since the exhibits rotate I bet the next time I visit it'll be all different stuff!

Then we checked out the Chicago Cultural Center before we went home. The shop had art pieces and zines and stuff being sold by local artists and activists, which was cool. Most significantly however was the exhibit deeper inside...it was focusing on queer experience and AIDS—a lot of material from the late 20th century, pamphlets, magazine articles, photographs, newspaper spreads, projects, poems, print outs, etc...

Again, we didn't get to see all of it because we came when they were like 50 minutes before closing, but this is definitely somewhere I'd want to visit again. We took the bus back afterwards and I, once again, fell asleep for almost an hour once we got home.

I don't know why I keep falling asleep. I'm not usually so dizzy and low energy. I have been napping more than usual, even when I taught mroning classes. It might be a caffeine thing, it might be a hormonal thing, maybe I'm just homesick (and I'm starting to feel like that, homesick I mean...) I don't really know but I slept and slept and when I woke up I felt better and @germfreeadulthood made us mushroom miso pasta and we watched a shitty horror movie called The Devil's Hand that was supposed to be a horror movie about Amish people (because, for fuck's sake, I can't stop thinking about those goddamn Amish people!!).

It was very bad but hilarious in terms of the bizarre writing choices, not scary at all, the end..

...which lead into us talking about the movie I Saw the TV Glow, which I feel like is a movie a lot of people in my circle hated, but I lowkey kind of liked? So it was nice to hear @germfreeadulthood's perspective on its tackling of the topic of transitioning and race (or lake thereof) because those tend to be things that I don't think a lot about. I don't really think critically about movies, I think I have an initial reaction but I have to rewatch them a few times to really garner some sort of critique since I don't have any kind of background or understanding of how film criticism works—books are a lot easier for me because I can't finish them in one sitting, for example, I have more time to marinate on that gut reaction which lends itself to a more cohesive critique of the media overall...

Anyways...I showered and I feel better...I'm hoping my nap doesn't fuck up when I fall asleep but I feel exhausted just writing all this out...but we are going to go swimming in Lake Michigan tomorrow, then Tuesday we go to Indiana, then Wednesday I'm on the train home to California...

[notebookmusical]

Hey! I love that pink heart you chose! Unfortunately I didn't end up seeing the movie last night but maybe I will go sometime next week. I haven't really gotten any spoilers but probably wouldn't care anyway. My favorite movies are mostly musicals..like I will watch any musical. That and teen movies are what I would rewatch the most. I watched Schmigadoon/Schmicago recently and I just finished Ted Lasso. Central Park is another musical show that's animated I'm watching. The Summer I Turned Pretty is definitely on my list and also the new season of the Bear. His other show called Shameless used to be one of my favorite shows. I never finished the last season but would still recommend. I will also watch any teen drama..like Gilmore Girls The OC Gossip Girl..I am in the middle of these but it's been years lol. I am not really a horror fan unless it's Stephen King I guess. That's probably my least favorite.

Any surprise song I will be fine with basically. But since you asked me what I would or wouldn't prefer..that would be my answer lol. I know some people like Closure too. I would probably prefer Me and I know some people hate it lol. I guess it's true what people say.. about every song being someone's favorite song and that's what makes it fun..and she still has a lot of songs left too. I know she probably won't play Mary's Song or Renegade but I'm still hoping. It's not something I'm worried about though. I'm sorry you didn't get Foolish One at your show. I'm just so excited for everything..including seeing the costumes and sets. Haha I stopped watching livestreams after the first show but me and my sister still try to guess the surprise songs every night and now this next show we will be there. One time I guessed You all over me cuz of the June lyric and she guessed I Wish You Would and got it right..and the next night she played You All Over Me..and that was the closest we ever got. I think I got I Think He Knows right too. We will probably try not to make any guesses for our show though and I hope I didn't jinx anything lol..unless it's one I really want lol.

yay!! i'm so glad you liked the pink heart i picked! i hope you get to go to barbie soon!! i haven't seen schmicagoon yet but i really want to!! i've heard good things, and it just look so fun! plus i have a soft spot for a lot of the cast. i've never heard of central park, but i just looked it up and it looks super fun. what are some of your favorite musicals? i know you like les mis <3 (i actually had a dream last night about getting a les mis tattoo, which ... may be a sign) i've been meaning to watch the bear for molly gordon, but i've heard everyone hates her character :( i really love molly though, and the plot of the bear sounds really interesting to me, so i think i'll watch it when i'm back from chicago! i never really got fully into gilmore, and never watched the OC but i have fond memories of watching gossip girl with my friends from high school back in the day! i still have very strong gossip girl opinions to this day, for someone who hasn't actually done a proper rewatch since the finale aired. okay but me! would be SO fun acoustic. i've been begging her for that! i just think everyone's opinions on it would change after hearing it on guitar or on a piano. i was telling my friends we need a like "sad girl autumn version" of it. i normally only hop on for surprise song o'clock — i missed a few when i was in europe in may, but aside from that i've managed to hop on for most of them. it helps a lot that i'm over on the west coast, i think! i watched almost the entirety of the first livestream ( i missed parts of lover ), and then for the most part haven't watched livestreams before surprise songs (aside from when we were waiting to see if she'd do anything different for speak now (tv)). and it's okay that i didn't get foolish one; i still had a blast and i can't wait to hear it on a livestream somewhere! i am so bad at guessing things; my friends and i did swiftball at our preparty on saturday and i lost sooooo badly. but a lot of my guesses came true the next day, so i guess i was just early in my predictions haha. you're going to have the BEST time i'm really really excited for you!!! happy thursday! 🤍

[ereardon]

My friend said the same thing after the 6-month mark - too much travelling and she's sleepy now. Though I guess all jobs have a downside because you'll NEVER catch me willingly going to speak to a large group of college students and I used to work in student affairs, maybe a group of 15 max 💀. Mentor a few students sure but public speaking will be thrown out everytime.

You would also think the tutoring situation would be great but, I find myself getting bored easily. (It was meh before my hours got moved to zoom because my campus expanded sessions to other schools). I've watched and rewatched the kdramas on Netflix and Hulu, homework is always done, had groceries delivered, so I guess I'm being productive today.

Omg sorry this got left in my ask box when I went offline all weekend!! Traveling for work is literally never as fun — one of my clients asked me to come to Chicago in a few weeks for a meeting and you just know I'm going to see more of O'Hare than Chicago itself lol.

Honestly hit me with your kdrama reccos?? I feel like that's a genre I'm totally lacking knowledge in but I think I'd love it because I am a sucker for drama and cheesy romances. That sounds like a super productive day!!! I just saw my dad off to the airport and I have the day off so I'm going to go fix a broken nail at the salon (RIP my dip), hit up Trader Joe's and the mountain of laundry that has some how accumulated in like 4 days lol.

Hope you're having a good day! xx

[oh-yeah-i-exist]

Molten Gold - Chapter 6

Synopsis: Druig & Nara - best friends, pen pals, and idiots too stubborn to admit each other’s feelings. She assumes he doesn’t care, he assumes she’s found someone else. For over 500 years, he’s kept her letters, while she resists the urge to send more. Hopefully, the end of the world might knock some sense into them both.

Chapter: 6/? (Chapter 1; Chapter 2; Chapter 3, Chapter 4, Chapter 5)

Pairing: Druig x OC!Fem!Eternal (named Nara)

Warnings: Physical violence, minor angst/unrequited feelings but also fluff!

Word count: ~2000

A/N: I swear, I don't hate the Eternals movie, but as I rewatch it to write this fic, I realize how often many characters are just standing there, not having anything to do. There are just too many characters, and there's no real way to include them in every scene and to make their actions make sense in the overall narrative, which is a major problem people have with the plot. Anyhow, I did my best. Feedback totally welcome!

As soon as Sersi and Ikarus came back from Chicago with Phastos, they jetted off to Iraq where the inventor unearthed their long dormant starship.

“A foreboding atmosphere fills the air,” narrates Kingo into Karun’s camera, as they enter the Domo’s maze-like hallways.

Nara traces a finger along the pulsating golden lines in the walls. Deja vu.

“Would you quit that?” Phastos swats the movie star out of the way. Seconds later, he steps on a bag of chips, and a high-pitched scream escapes his lips.

“As you can see, we Eternals are not immune to human emotions,” says Kingo, “such as cowardice.”

The corridor leads to a spacious common room––or at least, what used to be spacious, before someone filled it up with centuries’ worth of collectibles.

“This is Makkari,” introduces Kingo, “Or should I say Ms. Havisham?”

“Is it time to go home?” The speedster beamed, closing the book she’s been flipping through.

Ikarus snuffs out her hopes with a shake of his head. Kingo decides to sit her down for a quick catch-up.

“So you’re telling me that I’ve been waiting for all this time, but Olympia doesn’t exist?” The dark-haired woman signs, brows furrowed.

“And the world is ending,” Kingo stresses.

“At last, my boredom is ending.”

The others roam around, trying to reacquaint themselves with the place they once called home. Sprite rummages through piles of books; Thena retrieves Excalibur from a random corner and gives it a whirl. Druig exchanges a box of Twinkies for an emerald tablet from Ikarus.

Nara makes a beeline straight for Makkari, giving her a tight embrace. “It’s been too long.”

“Five centuries,” the speedster signs back. “Where have you been? I waited for your letters.”

“Here and there.”

“So,” Druig sneaks up behind them. He holds out the tablet, not letting Makkari wrestle it out of his hands. “How did you end up scoring this emerald tablet, my beautiful, beautiful Makkari? Did you miss me?”

There it is. The heartache Nara thought she’d buried decades ago. Her smile dies on her lips, and she averts her gaze. Kingo and Phastos remain ever oblivious, their jokes sounding muffled to her ears.

“Phastos!” Druig, on the other hand, has not forgotten why they are all here. “I need to control the mind of a Celestial.”

“Right,” the inventor nods, walking briskly over to his laboratory. Calling up holograms, elaborating on potential solutions. The Uni-mind, he calls it. A mechanism for the Eternals to combine their celestial energy and magnify Druig’s telepathy. A promising idea, and Nara has no doubt that Phastos can make it work. It’s Druig who she’s concerned about, but she makes sure to stay away. Can’t get close again. Not now, maybe not ever.

And he does notice, despite her absolute conviction otherwise. His piercing blue eyes follow her from across the room. Even as the rest of the Eternals debate how best they should proceed. Space colonization, or trading human lives for those of billion others––weighing up all the lives that will be lost if the Emergence succeeds, against all the lives that might never come to exist if it doesn’t.

“You should really talk to her,” Makkari pulls him aside after the meeting.

“What might you mean by that?” Druig falls back on his usual pretenses.

“You and Nara,” the speedster presses, “I think you’ve really upset her. She doesn’t know what’s really going on between us. Honestly, even I didn’t get it back in the 13th century.”

“Oh, you didn’t?”

“Stop it,” Makkari maintains a straight face. “I love her, and I love you, and I hate to see you guys doing this to each other.”

Druig’s coy facade falters. Clasping his hands together, he drops his voice to a whisper. “I might die tomorrow, Mak. It’ll only hurt more if I tell her.”

The gravity of his words gives Makkari pause. She raises her hands to gesture an argument, just as Sersi bursts into the room.

“The Emergence, it’s begun,” announces the new Prime, white as a ghost. Right as Phastos’s hologram of the Earth starts beeping and flashing red.

“How’s the Uni-mind?”

“I haven’t figured out how to connect us yet. But I’m very, very close,” replies Phastos, feeling a headache come on.

“How much longer?”

“I don’t know!” The inventor snaps, nostrils flaring. He presses a small tracking device into Makkari’s palms. “Find the point of the Emergence,” he says, almost as a prayer. It takes no further prompting for Makkari to commence her search.

None of them, however, are aware that only one room over, their biggest obstacle yet looms.

“Don’t hurt them!” Wails Sersi, chasing after Ikarus, who’s donned his full armor, as he blows Phastos’s working model into smithereens. Phastos himself is knocked off his feet.

All four of the remaining Eternals spring up, instantly alert.

“Boss, what’s going on?” Kingo is the first to confront Ikarus.

“I’ve let this go on long enough,” the blond declares.

“He lied to us!” Sersi reveals, glaring at the man she once loved. “He knew all along. About our mission, about the Emergence.”

“No, he didn’t,” Kingo denies. Ever the faithful follower.

“Ajak told me everything when we left Babylon,” Ikarus confirms, no trace of emotion in his tone despite the weight of his crimes.

“If Ajak wanted you to lead us, why did she choose me?” Sersi demands of him, teary-eyed.

In the back of the room, Nara struggles to keep her emotions in check. Then Druig speaks aloud exactly what she’s come to realize. “You killed her.”

“I had to,” says Ikarus. Too far gone. Nara stops listening. Her hold over the flames within coming undone.

“Born or made, I do not exist for Arishem! I exist for my family!” Phastos bellows, stepping up to Ikarus. Nara advances along with him, palms glowing with barely contained power.

Ikarus shows no hesitation, staring his former comrades down.

“No!” Kingo moves before he can even think twice about it, taking a hit for Makkari who’s zipped into the room with new information from her scouting. A blast from Ikarus’s eyes sends him crashing to the floor, scattering loose sheets of paper left and right.

“That’s fucking it,” Nara growls, her spear fully formed. Effortlessly deflecting the traitor’s laser beams. Keeping her distance, while taking fast stabs, like a snake striking and then whipping back out of reach. Until Ikarus, sufficiently peeved, grabs ahold of the spear and flings it aside.

Not enough space between them now. Both resort to punches. Blocking each other’s bone-crushing blows in quick succession. When Ikarus manages to lock her fists, Nara slams her head against his.

They break apart. Poised to come bouncing back at each other, if Sersi hasn’t placed herself squarely between them and yelled at the top of her lungs. “Stop!”

“Gilgamesh is dead because of you,” Nara snarls.

To her right, Kingo’s charged up his energy bolt, as though he’s finally taking a side. “You do not turn against your family,” he chokes out.

“You won’t succeed against me,” Ikarus warns, still cold and disconnected, as he sizes each of them up. “And I will kill every one of you if I have to.”

Nara feels Druig’s hand close around her wrist. He takes his place beside her, and they make eye contact for the first time all day. She can see the resolve in his eyes. And he in hers. There’s no going back now.

火

Don’t worry, Sersi, I’ve got this.

The rational part of Nara knows Druig was just trying to calm Sersi down. Just trying to be nice to their leader, who was a sobbing mess after the group splintered off – Ikarus and Sprite hell-bent on fulfilling their original purpose, Kingo hell-bent on not hurting his family because of his beliefs.

Yet the other part of her, the part that feels too much and cares too much, causes her to hide away in her old room. Ripping off her dusty sweatshirt, as if that will ease the turmoil churning in her heart. Staring at the mirror, bringing her own trembling hands up to touch the healing scar on her abdomen.

Knock, knock. Somebody’s at the door.

“Who’s there?” She swallows, pushing down the panic attack like a ball of bile.

“’s me.”

She recognizes that Irish lilt. For someone who can read minds, Druig has terrible timing.

“Gimme a sec,” Nara throws on an old, worn-out tunic.

“May I come in?” The corners of his lips turn up as he catches a glimpse of her through the open door. Wordlessly, she steps aside and grants him entrance.

“I have something for you. From Phastos,” he presents what he’s been holding behind his back. Two brass-colored metal rings, about the size of a grown man’s palm, laid out neatly in a box.

“Oh, thank you,” says Nara, eyeing the peculiar machinery. “Must be the wheels we’ve been talking about. I thought he forgot.”

“Wheels?”

“Yeah, it’s sort of a stupid idea, but we thought if I could have something through which to channel my flames, it might allow me to fly like Ikarus? Never really panned out.”

“Seems like he’s worked it out. Like he’s doing with the Uni-mind.”

“How’s that coming along?”

“I think he’s about to pull that orb out of Sersi.”

“Neat,” says Nara, less than enthusiastically. Druig sets the box down on her bedside table. She turns her head away from him, hearing the mattress creak under his weight as he sits down on the edge of her bed where she’s deposited herself.

“Look at me,” he places a finger under her chin to turn her around. His heart sinks when he notices how red and puffy her eyes are. “What’s happened?”

She looks down, fiddling with a stray thread on her blanket. “Why’d you come here?”

Druig slips his hand into one of hers, refusing to leave any room for ambiguity. “I was talking with Makkari earlier,” he tells her, not missing the way her shoulders deflate at the mention of the speedy Eternal. “And she was telling me that I needed to talk to you, because I may have upset you. And I’m thinking maybe she’s right.”

“Why does she think we need to talk?” Nara asks, growing anxious. It’s not like Druig to fumble over what to say. And when he hesitates, she moves to put some distance between them yet again.

“I can’t do this anymore, Dru,” she confesses, gripping her hair, pacing around the room, her heart breaking in her chest. “We didn’t communicate for nearly a century, and then all this happens, and Ajak and Gilgamesh are dead, and now tomorrow you might just get killed.”

“Nara…” Druig stands after her. Breathing a heavy sigh, he comes clean. “Nara, I went to Shanghai. In 1952, looking for you.”

She’s rendered speechless, allowing him to reach out and hold her still. Somehow he finds the courage to keep going. “I found you, in that bar you used to sing at. And I was going to come see you and tell you everything. But then, I saw you with somebody else. And… And I just thought maybe you’d be better off without me…”

“Tell me what?” Nara murmurs, as his hands come to rest on either side of her face. “What did you want to tell me?”

He’s so close that their noses almost touch. “That I love you. That I’m terrified to have you and then lose you. I was terrified then, and I’m terrified now.”

Nara’s heartbeat is hammering in her ears, but her gaze never wavers. Before Druig can process what is about to happen, she meets him halfway.

Druig freezes. A spark comes to life somewhere deep inside his chest, warmth spreading throughout his body. When her lips move gently against his, the spark only grows, and the world around them melts away until he can think about nothing besides kissing her back.

[wafflesetc]

this our second chance

A/N: A series of missing moments from S5 and onwards. The things we wish we’d seen to the things we wish they’d done. As I’m rewatching, I’ll be doing sporadic little missing moments of our favorite duo from strangers, to partners, to friends, to lovers. I hope you enjoy the ride as much as I do. XX. 

Inspired by this fanvideo by @ilithiyarys // AO3

5x02: 

She finds him at Molly’s, sitting at the bar fiddling with a beer bottle between his fingers.

“Atwater said I’d find you here.” She swings onto the barstool next to him, “Can I join you for a drink?”

It’s hard joining a new department- it always is. It’s even harder joining one of the most elite units in all of Chicago and being the only other detective. But there’s something about this unit. It’s what drew her in when she first walked into the bank. It’s the way Voight offered her the job- because she’s heard of Hank Voight. And getting a personal invitation into his unit, well that’s an honor. The kind of honor that she’d be plain stupid to turn down. Even if it scares the hell out of her.

It’s the fact that the desk sergeant downstairs at the 21st district is the same woman who inspired her to become a cop.

Hailey has never been one to believe in the stars aligning, because her life never worked that way, but maybe, just maybe, this is it. This is where she’s supposed to be.

And Jay Halstead… She barely knows him. She’s picked up some chatter through her contacts. She knows he’s a good cop, been in Intelligence for half a decade and that he’s a veteran. But that’s about it. The rest is going to be up to her.

Making a partnership work isn’t easy. And she has plans.

She’s worked hard to get to this point in her career. Worked to build a reputation for the name Upton that isn’t tied to her father. So somehow, she’s going to make this work. She’s going to make them work. Even if she’s not sure how.

Because there’s something about him. He’s hardcore on the outside, she can see that. Sense it radiating from him. He’s not afraid to be the first one in the door, to stare down the barrel of a gun. She barely knows the guy and she’s not afraid to admit to herself that she’d trust him with her life. That she’d follow him blind into something.

But that’s not the kind of thing she can admit to Jay Halstead, yet. Because they’re new. This partnership is fresh. And she may not know his background, his story, knows what makes him tick or how he likes his coffee yet, but she has eyes. She can tell this case got under his skin.

And maybe this is her olive branch- sticking her nose in his business when she shouldn’t… But Hailey Upton has always been down for a good challenge. Somewhere in her gut she knows that her and Jay, they’re two pieces to a good puzzle. They're different around the edges, police in different ways, but they fit.

So, this is her trying.

“Tough case.” He says, giving her a soft smile. “Brought up some things I’d forgotten about.”

“Hmmm.” She says, raising her hand to the bartender signaling for a beer.

They sit there, drinking their beers in silence. Because she’s not one to pry. She never has been. And she knows Jay isn’t going to open up to her overnight but this is her trying. This is her olive branch- her way to say I’m here if you need me. I’ll listen if you need me. I’ll just sit with you if you need me. Because she could say those things, but she has a feeling Jay is a lot like her- a person more of action than of words. So she'll show him, through the only way she knows how that she's there for him. She's in this partnership.

So that’s what she does, she shows up. She's here, she's trying. She's going to support him, even if he wants it or not.

And somewhere, deep in her gut, Hailey has a good feeling.

This might just become their thing.