#not really ship-related this is more about the dynamics... why am i defending myself | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

macgyverseries · 4 years ago

Text

rebutting and debunking frequently used arguments against macriley

I made this 10-page google doc rant a while ago, but I never ended up posting it. Today, however, I woke up and chose violence. So here it is: my thoughts on frequently used arguments against macriley.

I took some quotes and arguments that people put online (reddit, tumblr..), and I debunked them all :p I feel like I always see the same arguments all the time, and I’m honestly getting a little tired of hearing them. I’m here to settle this once and for all.

and yes, i did manage to cut down the google doc by 3 pages :D (but it's still long af so rip my brain)

1.”Mac and Riley are siblings because Jack is their father”

I can (mostly) get behind the argument that Mac and Riley shouldn’t be in a romantic relationship because of their super strong friendship. Some people really value that sole platonicness, and I get that.

But the argument that I can’t get behind is that: Mac and Riley are siblings because Jack is their father figure”

If you google the definition of “father,” the first result that comes up is: “a man in relation to his children.”

Now, Jack was definitely the father figure to Riley, and I would consider her his child. He raised her. He helped shape her ideals and upbringing.

Mac only met Jack when he left MIT. So it was pretty much after Mac was raised (by Bozer’s parents haha), that Jack really came into his life. Mac already became his own person. (also, I always saw Mac and Jack as more of a bromance)

So because Riley and Mac met Jack at different periods of their lives, and they were raised differently, I wouldn’t say that they were siblings who were raised by the same father.

2. “The show writers left the impression that there was a huge age gap between them”

I understand this a little. I do think Riley was introduced as pretty young and idk naive? Because she was literally in highschool, and then she went to prison, and then she got released into the wild. Personally, when I started watching the show, I googled the whole cast. So I started the show knowing that they were the same age.

And also, the more I got to know Riley, the more that I thought that Riley was more mature and had an old soul herself. I think it was because she was just a dynamic and round character, who is well-developed.

But, I get first impressions. I feel like once you get stuck on an impression, it’s hard to go away from that.

Also, Jack would’ve totally shipped macriley, and you can’t change my mind.

3. "Riley isn't ready for a relationship"

I honestly think that this argument should be more geared towards Mac. He needs to figure himself out and go to therapy ffs. However, this person targeted Riley (the literal queen), so I shall defend her:

I understand wanting Riley to take some time off, and figure herself out before going straight into another relationship with someone. But here’s the thing. Throughout the first few seasons Riley’s character was very well established, and she didn’t have any partners during that time. She has proven that she is a strong, well-rounded, independent woman (with or without a partner). So i think it is valid to say that she isn’t just some girl who only has boy toys. She is much more than that.

My next point is that Riley has made it clear that she wants a lasting relationship with someone who will support her. When talking with Mac in 4.04, we see her express her interest in a stable, healthy relationship. It’s not wrong to go out and look for that potential partner. This applies to everyone (not just fictional characters): It’s going to take a few relationships and self-discovery, to find a good relationship, and people shouldn’t be shamed for searching for that.

Riley has only ever had two major boyfriends that I remember. First was Billy; she took that relationship very seriously. She really did seem happy with him. It was a shame that he cheated on her. Second was Aubrey. She also took that relationship very seriously. She had been living with him for six months (and they even had the cutest date nights!) So I wouldn't say that Riley only has boy toys. She has meaningful relationships.

Lastly, I think this was written when season four started airing, but it’s been over a year (and a pandemic) since Riley has dated. I think enough time has passed.

*4. I had to split this one up because, oh boy, there is a lot to unpack here.

4a. “If that was the direction they’d chosen to take with that relationship from square one… My issue with it is that Mac and Riley were presented to us as friends/ found siblings for three years. There were NO romantic vibes to speak of between them..”

I actually felt the same way about macriley. The thought of them being together in season one, made me want to throw up. I don’t think the writers intended on having macriley, and I was perfectly fine with that.

I know that people look for different things when they ship. Some really like having instant gratification with the spicy, hot, sexy parts of a relationship, like macdesi (which is why I was fine with the idea of shipping macdesi in the past).

I always wanted to see macriley do more: have hot, flirtatious banters/interactions. it can be hard to ship people who seem to be missing that part of the love equation. So i agree. It's definitely strange. And I understand if you genuinely have a hard time seeing the romantic potential of macriley, when the writers have only dragged out and shown us the platonic potential of them.

Also, the reason why it is difficult to see macriley as romantic, was because they ALWAYS PRIORITIZED AND WERE DRIVEN on their friendship. A partner should be friends first, and then makeout buddies second.

But just because people start off as friends, doesn’t mean that they still don’t have that potential to be lovers. Because guess what?! Feelings change. It’s now canon that Riley has feelings for Mac, and Mac always had feelings for Riley (but never acted on it).

I'm sorry, but you like a boomer when you say “bAcK iN mY dAy, tHeY dIdN’t HaVe fEeLiNgS fOr EaCh oThEr.” like okaAAAyyYYyYY????? We are not “back in your day” anymore. We are in the present. We are in today. And today, macriley is real :)

4b. “There’s the incredibly tired trope where long-term coworkers suddenly catch feelings for each other out of nowhere”

Personally, I will never get tired of the friends to lovers trope. I think the fact that Mac and Riley had such a strong friendship and foundation is what makes them perfect. Again, I know that some people just like instant gratification, but I love when a couple can take their time to have depth, emotion, and realness in their relationship.

Obviously I am biased because I have so much love for this trope, it's my favorite trope, but I don't see why you would use the “it’s overused” as reasoning to hate a ship. Just because a trope is used a lot, doesn’t mean it is bad (that’s probably why it is so good lmao). I can understand getting tired of it, and growing a dislike towards a trope. For example, I have grown an extreme dislike towards the love triangle.

A bit of a tangent: But the difference between overusing love triangles and overusing friends to lovers, is that love triangles aren’t just commonly used tropes. They are cliches. They cause unwanted drama and unnecessary hurt to one character. Whereas friends to lovers doesn’t involve as much drama and pain for a character. It is more of just angst between two people. And we know that they will get together eventually with a happy ending. So it was never really problematic.

And even then, the great thing about overusing or utilizing tropes, is that they can act as a guide. It allows the show writers and cast to make it personal, make it their own, adding their own special flair to it

I just don’t see the “this trope is used a lot” as a valid reasoning for disliking a ship .It just seems like this commenter doesn’t like the friends to lovers trope for the sake of not liking it.

I could be very wrong in my assumption of this person’s thoughts on friends to lovers, maybe there is a deeper reasoning as to why they don’t like it, but the tone that i interpreted when i read this section, was that they don’t have a real reason to dislike it, it’s more of just because.

4c.“then there's the fact that Riley had a mostly single Mac in her life for 3-4 years and she never even considered him romantically until he was with someone else”

First: Riley didn’t CHOOSE to fall in love. You may recall that “emotions aren’t a science. You can’t control them.”

Second: Mac was broken up with Desi when she caught feelings for him. Plus, the moment Riley saw that Mac and Desi were getting happy together, she moved out and gave them space. She sacrificed her own feelings for his happiness, despite the fact that her heart was breaking.

4d. “and finally, Mac not only still doesn't seem to even have Riley on his radar in that way but he literally told another woman that he loves her just last week. Neither of them look particularly good here if they get together now.”

I'm assuming that this was written when 4.12 first aired. I'm also assuming that this comment was more directed towards the idea of Mac and Riley getting together immediately at the end of the season, rather than later down the road. I always saw of macriley as more of endgame material. That i would see them get together sometime in the future. So I agree. Macriley getting together during that time period, would be too rushed and unsatisfying.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

So those were most of the supposed arguments that I saw for people who were against macriley, but I also wanted to provide some really good examples of people who were very respectable, and actually had valid reasoning for disliking them.

1. they just don’t like shipping in general

Ships can be annoying af. Seeing people ONLY focus on the ships is sometimes tiring. I, myself, even feel a little guilty making this post, because I need to chill and mind my own business lmaooo. I really should let people do whatever they want to do with their lives, and not get caught up in the ships, but here I am :p

Anyways, I know that there is a lot of unnecessary drama that comes with shipping, and it's tiring to see people constantly go on and on about romance, when there are other perfect things about the show.

2. No matter how hard they try, they just feel it.

This is literally so dumb (and a little hypocritical/self-contradictory), but if you have a gut feeling, and you just can’t get yourself to ship it, I get it. If you truly and genuinely believe that they are best platonic friends, I can't change your opinion. And I have respect for you (if you say it in a kind manner).

Here is a nice example of a person who expressed their opinion in a nice way, with no BS.

So the moral of the story: I can't control your deepest thoughts. I can't control your gut feelings. And that’s okay. But the moment that you start backing up your thoughts and insights with BS reasoning, is the moment that I lose respect for you.

#macriley #macgyver #sorry that was so freaking long

30 notes · View notes

jcmorrigan · 4 years ago

Note

001 - Kingdom Hearts

Favorite character: On the villain side: VEXEN IS BEST ORGANIZATION XIII MEMBER. Shoulda stayed evil, though. I like it when he complains and screams about everything and hates everyone. He's one of my favorite villains, just, like...in general. So fun to write. Also attached to Demyx, but I actually liked him more in III than II because it reminded me of my rawr lolspeek weeb days when I f/o'd him without knowing what f/o'ing was and then transitioned this to shipping VexDem like heck. On the hero side: MY GIRL KAIRI! But honorable mentions go to Sora, Riku, Aqua, Ven, Terra, Xion, Roxas, Lea, Ienzo, any Disney character I loved beforehand (this is way too fuckin many to list), Merlin (OKAY I WILL SINGLE HIM OUT), Yen Sid (I'LL SINGLE HIM OUT TOO), you know what let's also single out the Mickey+Donald+Goofy power trio...just...any KH hero who isn't part of the Yozora stuff or the KHUX stuff. ...Except I also LOVE Strelitzia, and she is the only KHUX-exclusive kiddo I care about but I care about her MANY. (Oh, and there's a least fave I have who's a "hero" but that's a debatable label). I would go on about why I love all of them but...that's too many characters to elaborate on

Least Favorite character: See, I think the real answer is Yozora, but the thing is I just tend to forget about him or not care (unless I'm doing a weird AU where he's Noctis' bratty Nobody, don't ask). He kinda represents the Shark Jump and I don't like watching that scene where he literally petrifies Sora for not being strong enough. But again, I can just kinda forget about him if he's not fed to me through a social-media unit. The one I LOVE TO HATE is Master Eraqus. The man actually triggered me back in the day. He is purity culture. He is the overbearing parent who will not accept you unless you are perfect. He is by and large the reason VAT didn't communicate with each other properly. He was the one who taught Aqua to think in absolutes. He lied to Ventus for years and then insisted to kill him was the only option, and then, when Terra tried to defend his brother figure/friend without knowing WHY Eraqus was doing such a thing, Eraqus didn't offer an explanation and instead switched targets to Terra citing that the problem was Terra's lack of OBEDIENCE. Eraqus is just very "my way or the highway" and uses his moral high horse to justify doing things that utterly lack compassion in any regard, which is something that GETS to me on a deep level, and let me tell you, I hated him for so long until I realized he was actually a super fuckin fun guy to imagine as a Bigger Bad in AUs that either have the KH protags teaming up or have villain protags needing a "greater good lawful evil" figure. And I just have found too many good memes about him cheating at chess and killing children. I have to laugh. Making fun of him is fun. He's a ridiculous character. That said, this recent trend of "erase everything bad he ever did and paint him as the ultimate hero of the saga" makes me raise eyebrows for SEVERAL reasons

5 Favorite ships (canon or non-canon): VexDem, SoRiku, Kairi x Jaune Arc (RWBY), Aqua x Rosalina (Super Mario Galaxy) x Bayonetta, IsaLea, Ventus x Papyrus (Undertale), that was six but they all needed to be mentioned

Character I find most attractive: Ienzo. HOO BABY he is adorable. I saw someone make a Valentine's Day gifset of KH and FF characters shortly after III dropped and seeing his smiling face paired with a romance quote made my heart FLUTTER

Character I would marry: Probably Ienzo, see above. He's also a very kind guy. Favorite redemption in the modern era.

Character I would be best friends with: I hope the Destiny Trio would adopt me into their friend circle the way they've tended to do with every other inter-world denizen they've come across. I would love to have them as my positivity squad. Or, y'know, two positivities and one "it's okay to screw up" guy. Just. I would love to hang out with them. I often worry that I'm unlikable to my faves, but even though I would usually prefer to hang with the villains, I can pretty much guarantee these three would be open-minded about me. (Do I kiiiiinda wanna be friends with Vexen though? Of course I do. He'd hate me but maaaayyyyybe he would see me as one of his pet idiots who makes him look smarter, and we could bond over our fragile egos?)

a random thought: You ever think about that one NPC lady in Traverse Town who refused to tell you where she was from because it was none of her business? You ever wonder where she WAS from? What her world was like? How she ended up being the survivor of the Ansem Apocalypse when it hit her? All I know is that when I read her lines out loud (I used to read KH speech balloons out loud all the time), I gave her a Southern accent for no discernible reason and I stand by it. That woman has a twang.

An unpopular opinion: I don't want KHUX to be canon because I feel it's smaller-scale and takes a lot of mystery out of the worldbuilding. I always assume that the KHverse just includes ALL worlds in fiction, and that includes their thousand-year histories, meaning the Age of Fairy Tales should've happened long long long LONG LONG LONG ago and not five generations. And whatever screwed up the world should've been more than just five people having a fight, and whatever saved it should've been more than just five people getting along, and Daybreak Town really suffers from having to stick to mobile-friendly graphics and therefore is the least aesthetically attractive KH town ever, and I don't like that Lauriam and Elrena used to be such selfless people. I do still love Strelitzia because she's shy and relatable and quirky (sitting on the roof) and she questions authority and if you go with shipping subtext she's probably bi (or pan?), but I don't like the "Lauriam's dead sister for his arc's drama" bit. I liked when Marluxia was angry because he wanted to run Organization XIII but it was in the hands of an idiot who wasn't him. And more than anything I just like imagining that the Age of Fairy Tales was something bigger, further in the past, and more mysterious than something designed for a mobile game. Scala ad Caelum, however, I like a lot better because there IS a lot of mystery there and also it's a very pretty town with an amazing design.

my canon OTP: I really only count the Disney couples as the "canon" ones, so this is a question of picking my favorite Disney couple that shows up onscreen. I hope I'm not forgetting an important one, but I think the title has to go to Aladdin/Jasmine, which is always perfect in everything. (This would be an ENTIRELY DIFFERENT STORY if KH had ever adapted Treasure Planet, and if it ever gets the mind to adapt Treasure Planet then even if I don't care about that game I will immediately declare that Amelia/Doppler takes the KH canon OTP crown. *taps watch* Get on it Squenix)

Non-canon OTP: SoRiku, which I counted as "basically canon" after DDD until III decided it wasn't sure. But I'm just a sucker for how DDD is the two of them all "HE'S GOT MY BACK AND I'VE GOT HIS AND I'D DO ANYTHING FOR HIM SO LONG AS HE'S HAPPY." It's just the best kind of Friends-to-Lovers, except when you take all canon into account it's Friends-to-Rivals-to-Enemies-to-Friends-to-Lovers and that's a very juicy dynamic. BUT ALSO: VexDem, which is a nostalgia ship SO STRONG I had to accept that it eclipsed my former Vexen ships by a mile and I wanted to go back to my roots. That one, I have a much longer essay about that I'll just have you refer to so I don't repeat myself for pages. To make a long story short, their scene in III was JUST DELICIOUS.

most badass character: OOF THEY'RE ALL BADASS but in the end it's between Sora and Aqua, because Sora gets the widest RANGE of abilities across the series that he masters while Aqua gets the most POWERFUL abilities due to her Mastery (Command Styles seem like they'd be the most OP things ever in-universe and I'm here for it because flashy battle moves make brain go brr).

pairing I am not a fan of: SOKAI, Xehaqus, RikuNami, Vanitas/anyone not evil

character I feel the writers screwed up (in one way or another): OH BOY. KAIRI THE MOST. YOU ALL KNOW WHY: lack of screen time, Fridging for drama, forced romance to invite death flags (they really wanted to milk that death to get people talking didn't they?), giving Alyson Stoner ZERO direction to actually follow up on Hayden Panettiere's performance. But then I remember that they made Vexen redeem and lose his entire personality and I just...uuugghhhh. I can't believe he died twice in this series. And then Demyx is FUN but also I know he's flipped sides as well, which means he won't be fun much longer! Xehanort seems to switch motivations to whatever makes him the biggest threat (and several of Eraqus' old flaws seem to be mysteriously glued onto him), Sora isn't a motormouth anymore, Riku just doesn't get anyone who cares about him anymore because everyone's distracted by Sora and Kairi, IS ANYBODY GOING TO ADDRESS THE ACTUAL ISSUES THAT DROVE THE WAYFINDER TRIO APART, oh God Marluxia and Larxene you're good guys now what have they done to you

favourite friendship: I really like each of the trios. But you know what's even BETTER than the trios? If you put...all of the trios together...meaning Sora, Riku, Kairi, Mickey, Donald, Goofy, Aqua, Terra, Ven, Roxas, Xion, Lea, Hayner, Pence, Olette...and then you added Isa back in there...and you gave them Ienzo...and you brought back Naminé...and you say that Subject X is Strelitzia and you have her turn back up so she can have justice done...AND YOU HAVE AN ULTRA KEYBLADE GROUP OF FRIENDS. As for Vexen, any purely platonic relationship I have for him is a crossover but trust me I have many crossover pals for he

character I want to adopt or be adopted by: See everyone I listed above in the friendship question. They can either mentor me or let me be their big sis/mom. But also, I will GLADLY be Merlin or Yen Sid's daughter. (But also would I kiiiiinda wanna be a VexDem daughter? This is the worst idea. Still wanna try)

#kingdom hearts

8 notes · View notes

kiss-my-freckle · 5 years ago

Text

Shippers make up the biggest portion of the fandom that slam my theories, which makes no sense when you think about it. I didn’t continue watching this show because I ship - or that I even care to ship. I’m here for the puzzle. Well, the violence is definitely good too, but mostly for the puzzle. I remember posting a short bit back when I first started trying to put the puzzle pieces together. This was somewhere around 2x19. It was a simple post where I basically questioned whether or not I should be a Keenler shipper because I’m not much of a shipper. That’s not why I watch tv. I may ship couples when I see them happening, but I find myself attracted more to other dynamics. Relationships like Ressler and Red or Ressler and Dembe. I'm drawn to the skill and creativity of writers, which is why I was truly excited when they chose to go with animation. So anyway, that’s why I posted my short bit back then. Because I saw Keenler in S2 and have been seeing them since then, and I wasn’t sure whether or not I should become an actual shipper. When I tossed the “I wonder if I should ship Keenler” in a post, I was greeted by a shit-ton of wonderful Keenler shippers telling me I should. I’d say I truly and completely started shipping them when Ressler allowed Liz to escape the Post Office. Until I started theorizing and shipping, I was deep into Daddygate. It was the only thing I cared about.

I didn’t really see the show as a puzzle until Red gave his little speech to Liz about why he hired Tom. This was in 2x19. Probably because I believed Red was her father, so I didn’t see it as something I felt I needed to figure out. It was what it appeared to be to me - a story about a father trying to protect his child from his criminal life. Similar to that of Ian Garvey and Jennifer, but with Red being biologically related. That’s not to say certain things didn’t stand out to me and make me question why the writers did certain things, but I excused them for the sake of the Daddygate ship. But it’s that type of excusing that becomes an issue for a lot of shippers. As with any ship, even when one ships familial, the excuses don’t stop coming. As a Keenler shipper, I never felt the need to excuse the way I did with Daddygate because what I see with them is honest. They are exactly what they show them to be on screen. Daddygate took a lot of excusing. Tuck this in here, cut this out there. When they revealed him an imposter, I chose to set the excuses aside and really dig into that side of the story, but it wasn’t until then that I truly dug into that side of the story because I’ve always been a Daddygate shipper. I always thought that was their endgame. So from 2x19 to S5, I theorized the rest of the show because I saw a puzzle, and I shipped Keenler because that’s what they were showing me.

Since then, I’ve been slammed for my Tom theories with claims that I am obsessed, while I have yet to see a Keen2 shipper slam me for my Daddygate-turned-Rederina obsession or for my Keenler obsession. Hell, they don’t even slam me for my theory obsession. Nope, just my Tom obsession. Apparently, that’s the only obsession Keen2 shippers seem to have a problem with. I’ve been told I’m seeing things, allowing my life to cloud my judgment, told I’m mentally ill so I’m mentally incapable of seeing things as they are. Understanding that if a puzzle is based on what is shown, then I’m basically being slammed for my perception with insults that speak more to obsession than perception. So rather than insult my eyesight, instead of telling me I need glasses, they tell me that I’m obsessed.

From Daddygate and Rederina shippers, I’ve been told I have no evidence to back up my theories when I do, that I’m connecting things that I shouldn’t when I should, that I should excuse this or ignore that because if I do - then everything will fit perfectly. Yes, let me do exactly what I did with Daddygate. Let me excuse and ingore because if I do - then everything will fit perfectly. I started theorizing when I saw a puzzle to be put together. If I saw a puzzle to be put together where Tom is concerned, but didn’t see that puzzle until 2x19, that should fucking tell you something. I’ve also been slammed for being Daddygate or Rederina with claims that I’m an ageist, that I only care about biological families, or that I’m only Rederina because my Daddygate theory didn’t work. And the biggest chunk of this shit comes from the other side of the shipper fandom. Because ships are huge in shows. Apparently, the only reason to watch tv these days. When asked for evidence to support Rederina, it gets shoved aside. Apparently, I’m to do the same as Keen2 shippers ask of me. Excuse this or ignore that and I’ll see how perfectly they fit as a non-biological romance. A mutlitude of people telling me Red is the most manly man there is when I see quite the opposite. I’ve been told this surgery is impossible and that surgery is impossible and no one would be that desperate. I’m not calling incest shippers incest shippers because they’re shipping incest. I’m calling them incest shippers because I’m seeing a familial relationship, so people can stop defending their incestuous ships with.. well we don’t see them as familial. Well, no shit. I’ve had people tell me that I need to rewatch the show or that I haven’t been watching the same show. I am going by what I see. By what the writers show me. Trust that I have time. I’ve had enough time to watch this show at least 8 times through. I’ve even read the scripts at least four times through. Trust that what I’m seeing is what I’m seeing from my own perception.

I refuse to do what I did for the sake of Daddygate. I’m not gonna excuse this or ignore that for the sake of pleasing you. I’m going to include this and include that and make sure EVERY LAST PIECE fits. Because that’s how puzzles are put together. Because that’s EXACTLY why I was wrong about Daddygate. Here’s what I do know. People who follow my blog despite hating my theories have no reason to bitch. I tag everything so that one can block and scroll with ease. For those who CHOOSE to follow my blog and CHOOSE to view my theories and still CHOOSE to bitch about the theories I post, you’re no fucking different than the theorists who create 20 fake accounts to dig into my theories for the sake of bitching and insulting. Drama for the sake of drama, bitching for the sake of bitching, choosing to hang around because you’re fucking bored with your life. If you don’t like what I post and yet choose to view what I post, don’t think you have room to bitch here. Just get the fuck off my page. I refuse to be the cure for your boredom blues. I am perfectly fine with debate. I am perfectly fine with answering questions. But I’m not here for you to piss on. I’m here for me. This is what I do with the shit-ton of details that swim through my head.

#Anti-Tom Keen #Anti-Keen2 #Rederina

6 notes · View notes

mianmimi · 5 years ago

Text

I think we see him changing throughout the film, with him finally letting go of things beyond his control and accepting where he is in life. When it comes to his love life though, I think he’ll have a harder time being mature about it XD He’s got a very firey heart that wants what it wants.

I don't think he changed that much, though? And I like that? And I can't stop making every sentence a question? This is how I talk in real life, actually? I am sorry?

I like that he keeps certain character flaws that don't make him obnoxious or unlikeable, but that actually make him more sympathetic. I can relate to being fiery and with being sort of in love with the past, having trouble letting go and accepting that some things are out of my control.

I think Stephen is one of those people that will never give up on something. It's his greatest flaw in the comics, too. He just can't quit anything in the middle, he has to satisfy his curiosity and see what's at the end of the line.

It's the reason he'll never get over Mordo in the MCU. Like, romantically or not, he'll torture himself with useless scenarios of what-could-have-been or where he "saves" Mordo from himself.

I get very irritated whenever I hear people saying that Mordo’s jealous of Stephen.

People say WHAT now?

When was that ever conveyed in the movie?

nev•er nĕv′ər

adv.

Not ever; on no occasion; at no time.

adv.

Not at all; in no way; absolutely not.

Mordo never wanted to be the Master of the NY Sanctum. Nor did he ever want to be Sorcerer Supreme. There’s nothing indicating that Mordo wanted anything for selfish reasons. If people really watched the movie and paid attention they’d realize Mordo’s actually the most selfless character there :( Baby baron deserves more love than to be reduced to a jealous rival. There’s no basis for that claim at all and it digs a knife through my liver whenever someone suggests it’s why he left.

SAY IT LOUDER FOR THE PEOPLE IN THE BACK

Mordo was distraught and confused because the Ancient One's plan when she names Stephen the Master of NY Sanctum looked to him like she wanted to use Stephen as cannon fodder. He looks at her with a face that says What? Why're you using him like that? It further cements doubt in his head that she's shady. Which she is and that's why we love her.

Did people even watch the fucking film? Or is it racism? It's probably racism. Yes, bringing the race card. Mordo is Black, so he must be angry and jealous at all times. Y'all... I can't with these people lmao

Mordo IS the most selfless character. YES! I will wilfully ignore the post-credit scene, as I've done for years now, and ain't nobody stopping me. I am a Karl Mordo apologist.

This blog is a beacon of positive energy, y'all. I don't worry about characters of colour any more, knowing there's places like this blog that don't drink the Kool-Aid. Mordo, baby, fans of colour and the gays got your back 👏🏽👏🏽👏🏽

And the image of Stephen cockblocking Loki is hilarious. Especially if it’s clear that Mordo’s just being professional and polite and Stephen’s already growling at Loki to take a step back

Alpha!Stephen growling at Loki, who can change dynamics like its clothes (the omegaverse version of genderfluid, maybe?) but at that moment is an alpha just to fuck with Stephen and totally hit on Mordo, and Omega!Mordo being embarrassed yet also feeling cute, like, "Stephen, you're acting like a fool..... I didn't say stop."

Sorry, but Loki being Mordo's ex-bf is just so funny and hot to me. Loki meets Mordo when Mordo travelled to Asgard with the Ancient One, he started courting him, Mordo was young and naive, they had a fling... I imagine them having a long-distance relationship with Mordo sending Loki the most melodramatic, ridiculously romantic letters. It's a short-lived romance filled with perfumed letters, bad poetry, and sexy yet classy nudes.

When they see each other again, Loki is a bit surprised by how much Mordo has physically aged, sadden by Midgardian's short lifespans. But then he's like... DAMN. You look even better than before! You're ageing like fine wine, baby.

(Stephen, in the background: BABY? DID THIS MOTHERFUCKER CALL YOU BABY? OH, IT'S DOWN. Magic duel. You. Me. Now.)

Mordo is probably embarrassed by it all, will blush before talking about it. Loki never got over Mordo, though. He points at Mordo and says, "That Midgardian right there? The only one who deserves to live in this mud planet of idiots."

The offer to be Midgard's Queen still stands, Mordo!

_________________________

Ohhhh my goodness sweet Nonny! Thank you for such a wonderful response! I really enjoyed reading it, and that lovely gif is just perfection! ^^ I feel like this blog has gradually become more Karl Mordo focused, which I absolutely have no problem with. I love Strordo as a love team/ship but if I had to focus on one, it’ll be Karl. I just wanna give him so much love 🥺 He’s my favorite though so that’s my personal bias hehehe. I’m a very hardcore Mordo apologist myself. Like c’mon....if Loki and Tony can have redemption arcs, then Mordo can too. And if people can defend their favorites, then so can I.

Omg those scenarios of Loki & Karl having a fling and Loki never really getting over it...perfection! I love how jealous Stephen gets here. As if Karl won’t be able to defend himself. Now I’m chuckling at the thought of Loki & Stephen legit fighting and Karl knocks out both to stop it, dragging an unconscious Stephen by his Cloak while apologizing to Loki. Just imagine Loki sending gifts to Karl randomly & Stephen whining about it. Karl would tease him about it, but also clarifies that Stephen’s his man. No need to fuss my love 😉 😘

Also...I often fantasize of Karl just....ugh, just growing up in a happy family that spoiled him rotten with love. I mean, the multiverse is a thing right? At least one of the those verses would have the Mordos and Krowlers absolutely adoring the hell out of him. Can you imagine there being a Krowler who loved him as much as canon!Krowler didn’t? Someone who would be mortified to learn there’s another version of him that tried to sacrifice his precious grandbaby? Idk why, I just love this little fantasy that somewhere in the vast multiverse good!Krowler is wrapped around Karl’s little finger. Like alright darling boy, stop crying, it’s only a papercut *tosses book into the fire for the crime of making Karl bleed*

#ask and answer #nonny submits #strordo #stephen strange/karl mordo #otp feels #karl mordo #doctor strange #loki #submission

2 notes · View notes

beansthembo · 5 years ago

Text

I need to do a bit of a vent about the new Star Wars movie. Spoilers below.

I’m having some trouble processing what happened. If you’re reading this, you probably are interested in my opinion on it, and you probably also know that I was a big fan of The Last Jedi. By no means was it a perfect movie, but it took the chance of distancing itself from the rest of the series by springing off of what was established in TFA and building something new. A lot of people weren’t too pleased by this, and there are plenty of legitimate criticisms, but being completely transparent, I can’t listen to most critics of it because most of the people I know in real life who didn’t like it are racist or misogynistic.

TLJ tried to introduce people to the idea that, in reference to the new canon, just because it’s new and different, doesn’t mean that it’s bad. Kylo’s/Ben’s line, “Let the past die. Kill it, if you have to,” finds meaning in this, though a bit extreme. TLJ was going to learn from the past films and move on, for better or worse. TROS is determined to wallow in its past. As a lifetime fan of Star Wars, I can’t bring myself to hate it outright, like many vocal critics of TLJ, but I find myself severely disappointed by the decisions made in it.

I’ve honestly spent too much time composing those last paragraphs, as if I’m a legit critic or reviewer. I’m just kind of going to present my nitpicks and criticisms as they come to me.

So, first a few nitpicks:

-The opening crawl seems... poorly composed to me. The first line is “The dead speak!” Correct me if I’m wrong, but they don’t usually use exclamations in the opening crawls. I know I just spent the last couple of paragraphs defending new ideas, but the opening crawl always seemed as though they were meant to present information formally from a neutral perspective. Not a major criticism, but it did bother me a bit.

-What happened to Kyle’s TIE Silencer? I mean, it could’ve been destroyed in the previous movie, but I don’t really remember that happening. Either way, it seemed to me that they made the decision to make his ship more similar to the Interceptor, as, like, a ‘safer’ choice, but I don’t see why they couldn’t have just had the same ship.

-The Falcon has a round dish again? You know, now that I’m thinking of it, the dish may have been blasted off in TLJ. I just was surprised by that.

I may add to that list later. the actual problems I had were:

-Rey is sort of obsessed with ‘earning’ Luke’s (and Anakin’s) old lightsaber. Which has been repaired, by the way. She doesn’t actually ‘own’ it, even though she’s been using it for the past two movies, she’s just been borrowing it from Leia. I was really looking forward to seeing her make her own (or already have her own) lightsaber, which she does, but she waits until the end of the movie to show it off. And it’s rad as hell! Wtf? why couldn’t she have been using that the whole time! It’s one of my favorite lightsaber designs now and they show it for a whole two seconds!

-They finally give Snoke a backstory, and it’s... that he was Palpatine’s puppet the whole time. I’m gonna say, not the worst backstory they could have done, but they really tried to make him just not matter at all. I mean, yeah, the way he was done off with in TLJ was pretty unceremonious, but I always felt that meant that the real big bad was meant to be Kyle all along. Instead, the Skywalker saga becomes the Palpatine saga. I’m not opposed to the concept of Palpatine surviving and attempting to resurrect the Sith, but that’s something I’d expect from a novel, not the main story of the final movie in the franchise. And, honestly, regardless of whether or not Snoke was secretly Plagueis, I always thought he was supposed to be some other ye olde sith master, not just some sort of failed clone(?)

-Kyle rebuilds his fuUcking helmet. Why? What purpose does it serve? He doesn’t even wear it most of the time. The longest period he wears it is when the First Order officers comment on it. He’s just being dramatic. Which, I suppose, would be in character, but after the scene in which he shatters it in TLJ, it seems pointless.

-Another nitpick, but when they expand upon Rey and Kyle’s ability to connect through the force, it seems a little... disjointed. I do like that they took the time to expand upon that, even though I thought Rey closing the Falcon’s ramp on him at the end of TLJ was symbolic of her cutting him off, the way they presented it seemed, well, off. Like, it makes sense if you take it at face value, but if you start to think about it at all, it sort of... weird. I dunno how to describe it. Like, they interact with each other’s environments, but can’t see what they can interact with until they interact with it, and they can trade items, and... yeah.

-The big one... Rey’s a Palpatine. Her father was Sheev’s son. (When did that happen, huh? Who’d want to get with that wrinkly mess?) Why the everloving fuck couldn’t Rey just have been Rey? Why did she have to be related to someone existing in the franchise already? JJ’s going around saying that this was his plan the whole time, which is bull fucking shit, because otherwise they would have communicated this to Ryan, and I’m pretty sure TROS was originally going to have another director in the first place, and ALSO I’m pretty sure JJ did say at some point that Rey’s parents only mattered to her. While I’m on the topic of fan theories and origins, nobody in the movies was ever concerned about who Snoke really was. They knew who he was-the Bad Guy. Nobody ever cared who the Emperor really was in 1983, so why was Snoke’s death and non-explained origins such a big deal? I have more conflicted thoughts than I can even put down, so i’m gonna move on.

-Oh, before I forget, they just completely write off Rose. She’s present, but they minimize her screen time. I get that a lot of people didn’t like her, and there are some valid criticisms of her that aren’t completely rooted in racism and misogyny, but I never found any problem with her. I actually felt she was pretty relatable. She meets a hero, trips over her own words, and then learns why you should never meet your heroes. Disillusioned, she’s about to turn him in but they come up with another plan, and together they visit a world full of people she joined the Resistance to get away from. I’ve got that same feeling about those sorts of things-while I do enjoy a decent amount of privilege, I still, you know, fight against the system that gave it to me. And I can’t stand to see people abuse others just because they don’t have that privilege, so hearing her speech about wanting to punch a hole through that city did mean a lot at some level. Then, at the end, when she’s like, “this is how we win. Not by fighting what we hate, but saving what we love,” I can even relate to that. It’s when, like, you explain to a kid how you hate something, and they jump on the bandwagon, and get real angsty, and then you’re like, “no no no that’s not what I wanted you to learn!” It’s hard to describe it with my rapidly deteriorating attention, but I never thought she was a bad character.

-DJ wasn’t in it! I mean, he wasn’t the most important character, but I still wanted to see him again.

-They have this fake out where they pretend Chewie was dead for a whole 20 seconds. I totally called it, too-the ship he was supposedly in blew up (or rather, Rey blew it up with force lightning accidentally), but since he didn’t die on screen in front of us, I knew it had to be a fake out. And it seems like the only reason for that was so they can find out that Hugs was the traitor, who is only betraying the First Order to see Kyle lose, which I mean fair, but then he’s unceremoniously killed off by the new big officer guy who we’ve never seen before but was supposedly one of the Emperor’s top men. I don’t think his name was even mentioned in the movie-or if it was, it had zero staying power. Also, they have this part where Threepio had his memory erased for a while before being backed up by Artoo. The lead up to it was very dramatic- Threepio’s generally been a comic relief character up to this point, and now he’s got to give his life for the cause (He had a translation of some Sith runes in his memory, but his programming prevented him from saying the translation aloud, and his memory needed to be wiped in order to access it), but as soon as his memory is wiped they do not give two shits that one of their best friends basically died right in front of them. Then Artoo brings him back and still no one cares.

-Poe and Finn do have a nice dynamic in the movie, but then we find one of Poe’s exes and he starts flirting with her and its like no Poe your husband’s right tHERE POE DON’T DO IT (and don’t dismiss this as shipper nonsense because John Boyega and Oscar Isaac both wanted FinnPoe to be a thing and acted through the movies like it was already don’t you say this is the first you’re hearing of this)

-The way that Rey defeats Palpatine is by crossing lightsabers in front of him to deflect his lightning?

-Reylo is canon NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO (Insert the gif of Vader yelling no at the end of ROTS)

-Also why does it always have to be a planet destroying superweapon? I know legends did that a lot but there doesn’t always have to be one for there to be stakes.

I think there was other stuff, but my brain is too scattered at this point to make any more cohesive thoughts. I mean, there was a lot of stuff I did like about it- Lando’s back! And i think Wedge is too, but he was on screen for about a second and a half, so I couldn’t tell. It was confirmed that Leia had force training, and even had a lightsaber! And I do like that they’re taking some inspiration from Legends, but I’m pretty sure Dark Empire was not one of the most popular series’ from it. I also did like Ben seeing a vision of Han; It’s not entirely clear if it was a force ghost thing (I am of the belief that Han was at leas a little force sensitive) or if it was just Ben sort of coming to terms with his actions, but the scene was pretty well done in my opinion. Also, Rey taking the name Skywalker at the end. That was nice, like she chose her family.

Now I just remembered a couple of things-Finn was basically confirmed to be force sensitive, but the way they did it felt very ham-fisted. Like, they weren’t like “he felt a disturbance wink wink nudge nudge,” they were like “HERE IS SOME SUBTEXT THAT ISN’T ACTUALLY SUBTEXT SEE HERE” like they never outright say it but it would have been less insulting if they did. Also, they introduced a force healing thing, which has been a more of a thing in the games, but we’ve never seen it on screen before. But like, Rey dies at the end and Ben brings her back and then [REDACTED] and then he dies, even though, like, a lot of things. I don’t know I’ve been typing for way too long I need off.

Anyway, it felt good to vent, thanks for reading if you did. I give TROS 6.5/10.

#Star Wars #star wars spoilers #the rise of skywalker #the rise of skywalker spoilers #vent

6 notes · View notes

catgirlxox · 6 years ago

Text

Re: Ben 10′s Harem - Concerning the way part of this fandom sees shipping dynamics...

The only thing that has been stopping me from writing this until now is that it may offend some people. Not in the sense that it is discussing an extremely sensitive topic, just that I don’t mean to sound as if I am blaming people.

As anyone who has read my essays knows, I’m very passionate about defending my favourite character and setting the record straight about how his characterization is interpreted. And, the “bad boyfriend/long list of love interests“ debate (a hot topic in this fandom) is something which relates to this and something which I have already written about extensively as well.

I have a theory.

There are some of us in this fandom who enjoy shipping Ben with certain female characters. Even if I personally may not agree that every pairing is that great, I can’t physically stop them from shipping whoever they want. They’re entitled to that, I guess. The same goes for shipping Ben with a harem/multiple girls.

There is this one essay I wrote quite some time ago which has gotten some attention from those who do support the harem concept involving Ben. And in that essay, my main point was that, as presented in canon, namely the literal harem episode “The Most Dangerous Game Show”, Ben does not seem too fond of the idea of having a harem, therefore he should not be blamed for the reckless and immature nature of those female characters who have been paired with him in the series.

I also outlined some of the good qualities, skills, and personality traits Ben possesses, which have led him to become who he is today, and explain why anyone who has been shown having any kind of feelings for him have tried to pursue him since they recognize his value and potential as a partner.

If you take a moment to look over the page, you might notice that those who comment and like the post seem to be under the impression that they “agree” with me. Forgive me if I did not make myself clear enough in what I had stated in that essay, but I do not think that they really understood what I was saying.

I appreciate any support my writing may get, regardless of what you ship. However, I’d argue it is quite hypocritical to support an argument when you actively support the opposing argument as well.

If Ben is seen as a valuable partner to many of the girls who were paired with him in the canon series, but they often times gave him mixed signals or red flags of not being a great partner towards him, and because of this, he did not show much of an interest in continuing to pursue any of them, why would you continue to make him look bad by portraying him as some kind of philanderer, womanizer, or player who wishes to posses all these women at once?

I assume if you hold this character dear then you would understand what his life entails, correct?

In Ultimate Alien’s “Fused”, it was shown that he doesn’t get enough sleep and often pulls multiple all nighters in a row, due to alien criminal disturbances and nightmares. Not to mention this is happening during his very demanding full time job.

Gwen: “How many all nighters did you say you pulled in a row?”

Ben: “Two? Okay, three. Maybe four. Anyway, I’m good for another one.”

In Omniverse’s “The More things Change”, it was shown that he didn't even have a chance to eat something until the every end of part 2, implying, again, that his job is very demanding.

And, in Omniverse’s “It’s a Mad Ben World”, he stated that it was his “first afternoon off in weeks” and all he wanted to do was play a video game and take a break.

During all this, he is also blamed for being a terrible boyfriend. He couldn't even be the guy his ex girlfriend wanted him to be because he had very little time to be with her like she expected.

He let her have her space and pursue what made her happy instead of complaining that tennis took up all of her time and that she was away from him for so long because he probably felt like it wasn't his place to demand such a thing.

The boy apparently doesn’t even have much time to thoroughly take care of himself because he has dedicated so much of his time to protecting the whole entire universe, and you think that he apparently has the time to pursue a relationship with every female person or alien he comes in contact with.

The sad thing about this is that, instead of realizing the facts of Ben’s reality that I have just outlined, many people who consume fan made media depicting harems or shipping Ben with various female characters end up with the impression that he is “sexist” and “objectifies women” instead. Then they spread around that idea without realizing that it was implied from a work of fan fiction, not canon source material.

Observe:

(The source for the comment above is a rather NSFW work of fan art depicting Omniverse Ben and two female characters.)

What hurts me the most is the implication that this conclusion can be drawn from the idea that if someone draws a certain character acting a certain way, then that mirrors the way they have been portrayed in canon. But that kind of thinking ignores the fact that people can misunderstand or misinterpret other peoples’ ideas or intentions, and then, as I stated previously, spread around false claims without re-evaluating their clouded judgement.

Or, perhaps more simply, just voluntarily use him as a self insert puppet and chose to portray Ben however fits their specific fantasy best, stripping him of his character development, characterization, and moral values, because, let’s not forget, he was written to be a superhero.

Again, I did not chose to write this in order to blame people for the flaws of the Ben 10 fandom. I only want to bring this possibility to light since it is hard to believe that the writers of a children’s television series had the intention of creating a protagonist which showcases all these bad traits rather than one who can inspire and connect with his audience on a personal level.

#if I still haven't made myself clear then I just want to make sure u guys know I'm not trying to attack people who support the harem stuff #that's your business #it only concerns me that people are getting the wrong idea about Ben from fan works giving him a bad name #he doesn't deserve that #ben 10 #ben 10 omniverse #ben 10 alien force #ben 10 ultimate alien #ben tennyson #ben 10 harem #ben 10 shipping #essay files

41 notes · View notes

glacialispictorem · 5 years ago

Note

(Grunkle asking ;D) G, L, A, C, I, S, P, T, O, R, E, M

Whoa… this is gonna be a lot! I’ll assume this is for Rainbow Six: Siege so…

G - Have you ever had an OTP? If so, do you remember your first one? Who was in it?

> I don’t have an OTP when I first entered the Rainbow Six: Siege fandom. As of this writing though, I incline towards Thermite/Hibana.

L - Say something genuinely nice about a character who isn’t one of your faves. (Characters you’re neutral about are fair game, as are characters you merely dislike. Characters that you absolutely loathe with the fire of ten thousand suns are exempt, as there is no point in giving yourself an aneurysm over a character that you hate.)

> Caveira, for someone that I once thought was totally ruthless… but when I saw her genuine smile in the Six Invitationals, I actually have decided to dig up her lore, that’s when I find out that she had been through a lot and I can tell she actually has a hidden heart of gold somewhere. Caveira may have left a negative first impression on me, but that all changed after the Six Invitationals…

… that however doesn’t stop me from being wary of her during rounds.

> Kali also left a negative impression on me but that’s due to her unfettered and brazen nature but look past that… you can see a woman who is willing to tear down barriers and show the world that’s she not to be underestimated.

A - Ships that you currently like a lot. (They don’t have to be OTPs because not everyone has OTPs.) Friendships, pairings, threesomes, etc. are allowed.

> As stated earlier, my flagship pairing for Rainbow Six: Siege is Thermite/Hibana. For power trio, just add Pulse in the mix. I am also cool with Vigil/Blackbeard (Platonic flavor though, but that’s because Vigil… I can relate with him as I am a frequent loner in real life). I still need to explore enough of the fandom so I can start getting ships that I can be interested in.

C - A ship you have never liked and probably never will.

> Not in a negative sense but more like because I just can’t find enough stuff about them… that would be Pulse/Hibana.

Also not exactly fond of Buck/Jackal but that’s due to the pairing sometimes gets in my way of searching for some content I want.

Honestly though, I don’t actually hate a ship… more like just a little annoyed during my bad days.

I - Has Tumblr caused you to stop liking any fandoms, if so, which and why?

> No, not at all. I just roam across my many fandoms. As of this writing, I have eight fandoms total. (Final Fantasy, Fire Emblem, Axis Powers: Hetalia, Resident Evil, Aero Fighters/Sonic Wings, Marvel Comics/MCU, Pixar and being the latest is Rainbow Six: Siege)

S - Show us an example of your personal headcanon (prompts optional but encouraged)

> Oh good grief, I’m bad at headcanons… uh, maybe Warden can be very chatty to the point that he might accidentally tell an embarrassing story that happened to him some time ago?

P - Invent a random AU for any fandom (we always need more ideas)

> For Rainbow Six: Siege… give me Medieval AU because I am a sucker for medieval settings. Also HEAVY ARMOR TACHANKA INCOMING!

T - Do you have any hard and fast headcanons that you will die defending?

> Not yet, I’m studying all of the headcanons I’ve seen so far.

EDIT: Anything that is a wholesome headcanon such as platonic or family dynamics, I’d gladly defend them to the end.

O - Choose a song at random. Which ship or character does it remind you of?

> Wendy Clear by Blink 182. The particular line “And I’d play with a nuclear device” reminds me of Thermite given how he’d like to blow things up!

R - Which friendship/platonic relationship is your favorite in fandom?

> Already mentioned, in Siege… I actually like Vigil/Blackbeard due to how I see my similarities with the Korean operative; being us both recluses who distance from others but opens up only to the right person. Sledge/Thatcher and Caveira/Twitch are starting to pick up my interest but I haven’t explored them enough.

As stated earlier, I am fond of the Power Trio that is Thermite/Hibana/Pulse due to the Easter egg in the Fortress map. Probably the most wholesome content you can see in-game.

E - Have you added anything cracky/hilarious to your fandom? If so, what?

> I’m still completing my compendium of blursed content. Coming soon!

M - Name a character that you’d like to have for a friend.

> You all have probably seen this one coming. Easily, it’s Thermite. He’s a jokester and a social butterfly. I am a loner and a perpetual frowner. I can see him cheering me up on my rainiest days or trying to get me out of my lonely shell. I’d think of him as that “lovable goofball of an older brother figure”.

I will also admit, whenever I play as him in multiplayer modes, a sense of worry grows within me whether I can make it out alive and take the win at the end of round.

I guess… he really left a big mark in my heart… “The flame that touched an icy heart”

I can also see myself getting along with IQ, Blitz, Blackbeard, Castle, Amaru and Hibana. For IQ, we are birds of the same feather as we’re both perfectionists. For Blitz, he’d turn my frown upside-down with that contagious optimism of his.

As for the remaining four, they would lend an ear whenever I need to vent out my frustrations, a shoulder to cry on during my darkest hours and ensure that I won’t spiral down into a nervous wreck or a revenge seeker.

Wamai is another one that I have in mind. He’s stated to be poetic from what I heard. He’ll cite his poetry while I’ll happily illustrate them.

Other folks that I have in mind are also Warden, Tachanka and Maestro since we’d probably have long hours of chatting and exchanging stories. I also won’t mind having Jackal as a friend; he would need someone to stand by him in his restless moments but also, we share the same problem with Insomnia except mine is caused by my lack of self-confidence.

Good gravy, this took me a lot of thinking. xD

#Askbox Responses #Meme Responses #Replies #laminath #grain-crain-drain

4 notes · View notes

spockandawe · 6 years ago

Note

For the fandom/ships meme: B, D, I, J, K, Q, T, U, V, W, X, Y. (I mean, I like everything you say on fandoms, so you knew this would be fairly comprehensive.)

B - A pairing–platonic, romantic or sexual–that you initially didn’t consider, but someone changed your mind.

Oh man, there are lots for sure!! I’m a sucker for a well-written crackship, and I know I have fun writing them too :P From the last ask, starscream/optimus and jazz/soundwave were both things I’d never considered until I read a really amazing fic, and now I adore them both. Or ratchet/skywarp. That fic didn’t even GO there, but now I have a wip of my own and have already been experimenting with drift/ratchet/skywarp because why make any sense at all when i could so easily make LESS sense :P

I do it to myself too, I tossed off the idea of cyclonus/starscream as a joke, my “friends” encouraged me, and oh god suddenly I’m two fics deep in a series with at least four separate fics planned for the future. Oooh, or in a different fandom for a change, @veliseraptor threw me RIGHT down the steve/loki pit, and I’m never leaving, this is where I live now.

D - A pairing you wish you liked but just can’t.

HMMM. I think... I don’t dislike many ships in the franchises like homestuck or transformers, where there’s a giant cast to mush up against each other. I guess I wish I had a bit more natural enthusiasm for brainstorm/perceptor. It’s really cute and I definitely do like it, I just can’t muster up much enthusiasm for perceptor in general, which puts some damper on it. I do like it a decent amount, I just wish I liked it more.

I - Has Tumblr caused you to stop liking any fandoms, if so, which and why?

It’s made me... wary of some fandoms. Or fandom in general, in some ways. Steven Universe, if I get involved with that again, it’s going to be art and no words, because the moral policing atmosphere is just getting to be Too Much. If I wasn’t rolling around in a universe populated by nigh-immortal space robots, I’m sure there would be other stuff too, but I’ve been pretty sheltered.

J - Name a fandom you didn’t think about until you saw it all over Tumblr. (You don’t have to care about it or follow it; it just has to be something that Tumblr made you aware of.)

Boku no hero academia is the most recent one, I think. I don’t know if I’ll ever participate in things, but I finally read the manga and loved it a lot! I caught the edges of the buzz about the Imperial Radch books, and I don’t know if I would have ever read them if I hadn’t had prior awareness when my friend brought them up, and these are some of my favorite books EVER, so I’m glad tumblr clued me in XD

K - What character has your favorite development arc/the best development arc?

Oh no, this is HARD :c The trouble with casts of thousands is that nobody can dominate the focus too hard. But when a story is super-focused on a character and how they Develop, I tend to drift away. Umm. Cyclonus and Whirl both hold a special, special, special place in my heart. Megatron probably has one of the more dramatic development arcs, even though Cyclonus and Whirl both own my heart.

Or. I know it’s not the real question. But I love characters where the story WRECKS them, even if it doesn’t quite follow through on putting them back together again. Whirl is a long ways from where he used to be, but still definitely has issues. But oh man. Prowl. STARSCREAM. The transformers comics took two proud, cold, capable assholes and broke them DOWN. And it was GLORIOUS. It’s not really the same as a development arc, because they’re both still... not in good shape. But I wouldn’t care so much if I hadn’t seen where they started and what happened to do this to them. It’s negative development, but it’s so tragic and tasty and gives me such interesting material to think about!!

Q - A fandom you’ve abandoned and why.

Ahh... Avatar, probably. Of all the fandoms I’ve participated in on here, that’s the one I’m least likely to return to. I think the problem is that after I did Avatar, I rolled around in Homestuck. I moved from there to Transformers. I dabbled in Marvel. The Avatar universe is very interesting, but the cast is much more limited, the universe is more constrained, and there’s One Canon.

Canon doesn’t necessarily mean that much to me, I’ll cheerfully multiship no matter what. But it’s different thinking ‘well this is canon, but what if... Other Thing’ versus ‘lmao does anyone even know how many separate continuities there are at this point’. It breaks my brain wide open. I don’t start from canon and branch out. I think that ‘well, optimus and megatron have classically had characters and shippy dynamics shaped like X, Y, and Z, so I can pick and choose bits and pieces of settings, scenarios, backstory, supporting cast, the possibilities are ENDLESS--’ Homestuck plays a lot with the idea of continuity and comics universes are one of the closest parallels I can think of to the mess that is transformers. I just don’t know how I’m supposed to go back to playing in smaller sandboxes at this point XD

T - Do you have any hard and fast headcanons that you will die defending?

Autistic Cyclonus. Fite me.

Or, Starscream with his history and current mental health reflected in disordered eating and sleeping, with a persistent food-hoarding habit. I would say fite me, but actually, read my stories where I stick it right in the text and see how nicely it works.

U - Three favorite characters from three different fandoms, and why they’re your favorites.

Different fandoms? DIFFERENT fandoms?????? D:

1. Transformers: Starscream - he’s just... the complete disaster package. He’s vain and egotistical, competent and dangerous, but never manages to succeed and make it LAST. In IDW, he beat out massive odds to get where he is, and survived by the skin of his teeth, and has struggled and STRUGGLED and is prone to being his own worst enemy, and has sabotaged himself enough that he’s barely staying afloat despite sincerely wanting to try his best. I’m weak against all of these things.

2. oh god how am I supposed to pick a favorite homestuck character this is CYBERBULLYING. Okay. Um. I’m going to say Equius. There’s something about the Zahhaks being so stiff and cold and rigid and distant, but also somehow way too close, and swinging between antagonistic and desperate to please. I’ve done better words about Zahhaks in the past, and I’m starting to get sleepy right now, but I am ALWAYS a sucker for the characters who are a mess of contradictions and prone to sabotaging themselves :P

3. Steven Universe: Jasper - Ahahaha, one last self-sabotaging love of my life. She’s different from those others, because she’s been pretty much at the top of her game until very recently. But her issues!!! Everything to do with being the Perfect quartz (from a failed colony, belonging to a dead diamond). The pride and self-doubt are a delicious combination, especially once she gets a taste of fusion and the sense of belonging that comes with it. If I ever did write steven universe, it would have to be about here. Those contradictions and the way they pull you apart, that’s the same thing that draws me hardest to starscream, but it’s hard to do justice to the emotions when you’re writing about them, it’s got so much more impact when you show them directly instead.

V - Which character do you relate to most?

Ooooooh. This. Is tough. Ironfist is the melancholy answer, Nautica is the upbeat one. They’re both spergy engineer types with interests all over the place, who get so ENTHUSIASTIC and excited, and I’m not nearly as outgoing as either of them, but god do they ring familiar to me XD Or, Cyclonus is also a very valid candidate. Internet spock is an uncommunicative recluse, but that’s still a lot more outgoing than irl spock, and Cyclonus is many emotions turned RIGHT inward, even when it would be really, really useful to express them just a LITTLE. And all the plot that goes down between 47-55 with Cyclonus, god, it’s not like I’ve ever done anything like that, but it hits me right in the weak spot.

#spock replies #long post/transformers #starscream #steven universe #jasper #homestuck #equius zahhak #solluxisms

5 notes · View notes

texanredrose · 7 years ago

Text

Voltron: Legendary Defender S1

So... I’ve made a few posts about how I grew up with the 90′s run of Voltron, and I have all the GoLion episodes, and maybe I’ve mentioned I have editions of some of the comic runs, and I’m pretty much really into Voltron, y’all. Of course, I’ve been watching the reboot. And I just- I want to rant a little bit about this show, okay? Below the cut is a reaction to the first season (I’ll probably do one for each season) because I wanted to rewatch the series anyway.

But y’all gotta know. It’s long. Because I can talk about some Voltron, y’all.

Okay, first off, if you’ve never watched the 90′s run of the series, or the 3rd Dimension, or anything other than this new run, understand that S1 was mostly me fighting my nostalgia. I’m very familiar with these characters and they generally have the same characterization across incarnations... until this one, and I, for one, am so okay with that. Let’s take a look.

Lance, Hunk, and Pidge: Okay, being introduced to Lance, Hunk, and Pidge first, separate from the others, is a nice change of pace. They also seem younger in a sense; I’m not going to bother looking up ages, but the 90′s run always had the Pilots acting as adults, occasionally goofing off, but serious more often than not. As much soldiers as space explorers. So seeing Lance be excitable, Hunk as a genuine expert in things (not just related to food or lifting heavy stuff), and Pidge as being secretive with ulterior motives- that’s all interesting. You can’t really knock the original run because, hey, it was technically made in the 80′s, imported in the 90′s, and defined by the tropes of that era. Hunk and Pidge, especially, were one dimensional, while Lance often functioned as a background character, except for that one time he went to a special world in blue lion- I don’t remember the episode exceptionally well (gimme a break, I was, like, nine at the time, it was twenty years ago) but I remember he had some sort of love interest on the planet, there was a pouch of seeds, had to save the Princess, but that’s the only time I recall him having a solo journey. All in all, the original trio functioned to support Keith and Allura and to stand as a contrast to Lotor. Having them be the first characters we’re introduced to, aside from allowing them to exist as characters first within this series, worried me that they would just be a vehicle until we could meet the rest of the main cast. I’m pleased to see that their characters continue to grow throughout S1 and that Hunk even gets a somewhat solo journey relatively early on in the series. VLD!Hunk is just so much more of fun now that he has a clear heart and soul to his character. Lance, while I’m not a fan of the flirt archetype, is still pretty fun, and Pidge is just awesome all around. These three possess far more depth this go around, not just establishing that they had lives before Galaxy Garrison, but also delving into their homesickness and ultimate decision to stay.

Keith: This is probably one of the bigger surprises, at least in the first few episodes. Originally, Keith was the cool and calm leader that was a quintessential part of any 90′s team. Now he’s, like, this rebel with a secret cause (which doesn’t come around until S2, but I digress), which makes him feel so much younger in comparison. He’s hotheaded and kinda arrogant (Lance too, but he kinda always was) On the one hand, yeah, he’s not a blank slate to shout the appropriate catch phrase, but it’s weird to see a character I associate with strong, dedicated, almost single minded adherence to what is “right” walking more of a grey line. I mean, original Keith was definitely lawful good, and to see this version’s chaotic good is both refreshing and weird. Also, I just realized it’s never really explained in the show how Keith and Shiro knew each other. It’s clear they have some sort of history but it’s never stated, just kinda hinted at being mentor/mentee and then developed in that vein along the way.

Shiro: ... who are you... while it’s been an adjustment to get used to the other characters, Shiro being essentially a brand new character threw me for the second biggest loop in the first season. He’s very much what I expected of Keith but in a more... subdued manner. Keith at least yelled in cheesy 90′s fashion when he charged into a fight, whereas Shiro’s more apt to be tactical. On the one hand, good to see that leader role filled by a similar archetype... but like... ass in the whole Galra arm thing and the amnesia thing and just... Shiro... who are you...

Allura: Where do I fucking start? Unlike the other characters, the differences between original Allura and this Allura gradually became more evident. At first, she pretty much is the support Princess who cheers on the pilots and worries for them and all that, Team Mom and such, The Chick, all the usual tropes, but as early as the second episode, she’s showing herself as a headstrong, assertive taskmaster, which, honestly, was hilarious. But where Allura in the original run fulfilled the role of damsel in distress more often than not, this Allura is very much a fighter, and she reflects a history of being raised amid war. She’s decisive once she’s made her decision but shows hesitance in trying to balance her father’s and people’s ways with her new reality. Unlike the original, Allura is one of the last remaining members of her race- oh, and quick note? Love her fucking character design. For the first time, she actually looks like an alien, which I adore- and tries to be both the fighter needed to take down the Galra Empire and the peaceful ambassador that Alteans have always been. Her most decisive moments in S1 are when she’d hellbent on saving the Balmerans and the Balmera, and she shows hesitance when it comes to actually trying to tackle the war with Zarkon, and bringing back King Alfor as an actual AI instead of just a vision she sees is a nice touch. Her decision to infiltrate the ship in disguise is also one of the times she’s decisive and that one, again, doesn’t directly involve fighting. I really like how Allura shows the challenges of being both dedicated to peace and being forced into a position where fighting must occur. She’s also equally assisting in getting the castle running again, showing that she’s a talented enough engineer in her own right to actually do the work without Coran’s supervision. She’s smart, she’s strong (lemme tell ya, when she was disguised as a Galra? Fucking, end me, that was beautiful, be honored Shiro that you bore witness to that), she’s certain of the outcomes she wants but shows a very mortal fallibility in attempting to reach them. She’s not just the Princess; she’s so much more, she’s a rebel leader, a fighter, a daughter trying to continue and protect her father’s legacy, her peoples’. Out of all the cast, Allura (alongside Pidge and Hunk) is one of the few characters I don’t find myself missing from the original run. Sometimes, I miss how Keith was the calm one and Lance was supportive of him rather than their constant bickering (it’s funny, don’t get me wrong, just a different dynamic than I expected) and so on, but I don’t find myself missing Allura’s almost Disney Princess archetype from the original. The fact that there’s a somewhat sensible canon reason that she can communicate with the Space Mice, for instance, is nice. Which, on that note...

The Space Mice: Oh God, you assholes are back... thankfully in a reduced capacity but still...

Coran: Okay. This... took an adjustment. The biggest adjustment, honestly. In the original, Coran was the older, calmer, steady hand who helped guide the pilots and Allura through trial after trial. Collected and certain, he rarely faltered, and would chide people for their mistakes the way a father figure would. New Coran is... a complete and utter goofball and I love him. As much as I hate to use the word, I’ll admit I did cringe at the first few episodes, purely because every time Coran was on screen, I was reminded very much of how the original Coran would handle the situation. At least in the other characters, there are shades and moments where they behave just like their original counterparts (Allura with the Space Mice, Keith tackling problems head on, Lance being a bit of a flirt, Pidge using her size to her advantage, Hunk and food, and even Shiro shows some commonalities with Sven) but with Coran, there’s no real moment when he behaves exactly like his counterpart would. He’s always dropping little one liners or making offhand comments that strongly remind the audience that Alteans are an alien race with alien customs and alien words, even when he’s fulfilling his role as pilot/co-pilot of the castle. It took some time to grow on me, and I’ll be honest in that I don’t always enjoy his character the way I’ve come to enjoy everyone else’s, but it is purely because of nostalgia. I’m aware enough to realize that, when I completely check out and don’t think about the original, I do like his character, and I do find his scenes to be funny more often than not. But- like in later seasons- there are times when his antics get to a point where I’m genuinely missing the old Coran. I think it’s mostly because the stakes in this version just seem so much higher- the Drule Empire seems almost harmless in comparison to the Galra- so not having that consistently steady hand is almost a step backwards in being prepared for the fights. However, I’m also acutely aware of why Coran is written in this way in the new version, and that’s because...

Nanny: ... is not fucking here and thank fucking god. Always my least favorite character and she came off as a caring but ultimately flat stereotype rather than a character in and of herself. I realize the new Coran is basically old Coran and Nanny rolled up into one and that impacted my view of the new Coran but, if I had to pick, I’d take new Coran over Nanny any day.

The Lions: I didn’t think I would ever have to do this but I actually have to do this and I love it, honestly. The Lions themselves are actually characters, albeit subtle ones through the course of the show. In the original, the Lions didn’t so much as have their own personalities or ‘talk’ to the pilots; they were just giant mechs. But in this version, they do have their own personalities and characterizations, and it wasn’t until the second viewing of S1 that it started to make sense. At first, I took the Lions’ independent actions- telling the pilots about weapons, moving of their own accord, etc- to be functions of Rule of Cool and simple plot vehicles to advance the action. Now, I’m rethinking that. Coming back with the knowledge of King Alfor being the former Red Lion paladin, I understand why Red brings out the big gun at the height of the S1 climax; it’s not just Keith trying to stop Zarkon, it’s Red, who watched what Zarkon became firsthand, who lost his previous Paladin to Zarkon, who wants to stop him, too. Being in sync like that is what allows the Paladins to unlock the Lion’s abilities. I understand why Black Lion was so eager to connect with Shiro, who arguably made the strongest attempt at connecting with his Lion, and what that meant to the Black Lion; though Black Lion and Zarkon still share a connection, Zarkon is augmenting it with quintessence, and Black Lion is trapped in this unhealthy bond that it wants to break, as evidenced by connecting with Shiro and coming to save him, but is also partially powerless to do so without Shiro’s help. The Black Lion is trying to do what is right and help but is also collared by Zarkon and trying to break free of that bond. The Lions have their own personalities and quirks, but as silent and mystical robotic creations, their characterizations are far more subtle, and I think that’s a super neat way of both supporting the mystical power being built around them within the lore and expanding on the Voltron legend itself. My memory is really fuzzy, but I don’t remember there being a concrete explanation for how Voltron came to be originally. I remember the legend about it being torn apart by a space witch, but that’s about it. In fact, I think early on in the series, it’s implied that Voltron wasn’t five separate parts but a single whole, and then adapted to being five separate parts later, but that could also be a different version as there are some Lion specific roles that seemed to be designed, so I might be getting my continuities mixed up. Bottom line: the new lore surrounding the Lions is fantastic and I love it.

Zarkon & Haggar: I’ll talk about these two independently at a later point- because dear lord do I love what was done with their characters- but in S1, they behave much like I expected of them. Zarkon’s far more serious, to the point, and built up as being both a terribly powerful fighter in his own right as he is a ruthless dictator. Original Zarkon was more... like the original Rita Repulsa, but with slightly less cackling. Again, 90′s cheese, and in spades. Considering the more serious air, this version of Zarkon is everything I expected, but weaving him in as a former ally was a nice turn. Haggar being... well... Haggar also carried with it no surprises, except in the resentment shown by others towards her. In the original, Haggar just kinda did her own thing but was obviously part of the Drules; in this one, the hostility shown towards Haggar is both a function of others’ lust for power and her possession of Zarkon’s favor and the, at that point, subtle disdain for those not of Galra blood. Something I noticed while rewatching is that, at this point, before Zarkon’s been megainfused with quintessence, he’s very calm, logical, and driven, Haggar constantly refers to Voltron as being “ours” when she talks about capturing it, and they have a relatively calm and healthily evil relationship, considering they’re both main antagonists. Zarkon’s not demeaning towards Haggar in S1. As the seasons progress, and more quintessence is used on Zarkon, this changes drastically, but here in the first season, it’s very easy to see why and how Zarkon’s empire grew to this point over the past 10k years. As Voltron begins to liberate planets, however, Zarkon and Haggar’s bond begins to erode, and I think it’s a very nice touch to show both how things ran smoothly before Voltron returned to the fight and how things started going terribly wrong as both the resistance grew and the bond began to deteriorate.

Okay, so now that the characters are out of the way, there’s something I want to address about the first season that is probably a big difference for me versus a fresh viewer, and that’s pacing. I'm really not sure how it came off to a new viewer but, as someone who’s seen the ‘find the lions, form Voltron for the first time’ schtick done several times, the fact that they’d managed to do it in 2 episodes was such a relief. Compared to the first, like, ten episodes of the original run that it took just to get to Arus, it felt like a lot of the filler was trimmed down. In fact, almost all filler is absent; there’s not a single episode in the first season that doesn’t contain something interesting and/or plot related. Also, this run has a plot, as opposed to the monster-of-the-week style of the original run. Imagine my surprise- I sometimes forget that shows nowadays actually do have plots rather than just a gimmick.

All in all, I had intense mixed feelings over the first season. On the one hand, I could appreciate the new and inventive directions and designs for the characters and the universe. On the other hand, however, I loved the original run and the intense bout of fighting nostalgia really made enjoying it difficult. On the second run, though, I can honestly say I enjoyed the first season much more. In a lot of ways, it feels like canonized fanfiction of the original series- an AU that really focuses on fleshing out the Voltron universe- because of all the little nods and renamings to reference the original material.

Also, hands down favorite thing introduced in S1? Actual fucking aliens. I... honestly can’t remember a single “alien” race in the original that didn’t look straight up human, aside from the Drules (Galra) and even then, censorship made more than half of them robots. So, like, seeing actual aliens with alien customs in this universe is just, 10/10, excellent improvement.

#Voltron #Voltron spoilers #Only if you haven't seen the first season though #TRR reviews

10 notes · View notes

elizabethrobertajones · 7 years ago

Text

13x01 Watching Notes

The common pronunciation around these parts for “Nougat” is "Nugget" FYI

There's a secondary mission here to find out WHY DID DABB TWEET "BUTT SHAKE"?

Expectations: I'd say a good 95% new plot action nonsense to 5% mourning and we've seen all of it in fragments because they're spoiling the good stuff to lure us in; we're doing well as a season if Asmodeus isn't horrifically hammy and looks like he'll be able to carry all the Buckleming episodes they'll surely shove him in, and Jack is either not a pillock or is clearly *supposed* to be a pillock and the writing reassures us of that, although I did start to warm up to him in those tiny glimpses of promo stuff so we might be good there.

Aside from that I'm so superbly chill about this season (not worried about Cas, assuming Mary needs to get back as well, I'm just going on trust that Michael is well cast based on the actor's fanbase after scrolling his twitter the other day and the fact he seems cool in the promo stuff in a way that does not make me nervous unlike the other 2 new characters, and like no preconceptions about what I need this season to be) that I've actually achieved what scientists may have thought was unpossible... I made it through an entire hiatus embedded in the heart of a wanky fandom and I don't really have strong opinions or needs for about what's to come :P

FUCK ME UP, DABB.

OH THE TITLE CARD IS GOING TO BE GOOD THIS YEAR

I say after just seeing "the road so far" because that looks classic. I can't remember which other season it most looks like because I'm way too hype but it looks good.

Gah I have the Worst Song Comprehension in the entire world WHAT IS THIS? There's just a montage of TFW hugs of various types going on and

"I never opened myself this way" and Dean in 12x22 opening up Mary and then the FREAKING GRENADE LAUNCHER MOMENT okay so the recap definitely is telling us the meta theme of season 12 in case we missed is so we're all on the same footing for season 13. This family loves each other a lot and we're busting down walls.

I watched the rest of the "road so far" then said out loud, "No. NO." as it wound up nursery first, because "no" are they not even going to show - OH SHIT IT'S THE SAME VIDEO AS THE ONE IN THE SUMMER. NO. We're ending this thing on dead Cas and Dean.

If this is how they mean to play it, I think I wanna take back that "fuck me up Dabb" from the previous point.

OH NO I got tagged in a post like this last week about the bit in 8x19 where Sam goes into Hell and there's the woman there in one of the cages who is like "we've been waiting so long! You finally came!" and like... did I think she meant she was mistaking Sam for Lucifer, and I always think YES that is a GREAT reading for that scene and fuuuuuuck me I should have reblogged that post and gone looking for links to some of the other cool posts about that because that's like one of the small redeeming things about 8x19 to me, because that is just such a good creepy amazing Sam thing and also I am still so freakin bitter that Lucifer was Nick in the cage because he should have looked like Sam and 11x09 and 11x10 should have been Sam v Lucifer!Sam moments because where the FUCK did Nick come from...

Anyway you can probably guess exactly how far I've got into this episode aka 1 entire one word line but it's already completely fucked me up.

If you all don't remember my season 12 experience, yes I am the biggest Destiel shipper on the planet but I actually get super hype for good Sam plot stuff and I dug every moment of the season 12 Sam stuff about his powers and everything and this is a confrontation that *I* personally think was built up and due because of the evolving way it's going - they confronted his past, the parts he had no control over happening to him in season 12, and I surmised that season 13 ought to be about the parts that WERE in his control, and Sam coming to terms with some other old mytharc stuff that happened to him, the way he managed to fuck up the world on a cosmic scale that Jack will have to come to relate to and he can use to guide Jack...

So yeah, this is not the first time this has happened to Sam, but this is definitely the much much better, more potent way it's happened and I am DELIGHTED and we're 1 word into the season :D

*Dean stares at Cas* *stares at Cas* *stares at Cas* Yep I need to go shoot something.

YEAH GIANT FLOATING EYEBALL TITLE CARD I KNEW IT.

Sauron is the big bad, but where is the one ring.

More seriously fuck yeah that gives complete continuity between my watching notes from 12x23 to this one because I am pretty sure I stopped them (aside from final whimpering notes to wrap up) thinking about Sam and Jack with yellow eyes and how this all looped back to the start. And how that was the key visual imagery, the way that Jack had yellow eyes and Sam's whole legacy of that stuff - things I've been screaming about since 12x12 and how it all came back into the story. I mean the scream I made in 12x12 when Ramiel flashed his eyes is a noise I've sort of low-key been making right until this point and I'm just so delighted about this imagery being given such a central place because it's not JUST Jack's eyes, even though he obviously has the most terrifying yellow fire floating around in his eyeballs, the colour is a motif that takes us right back to the beginning in terms of the story...

HECK YEAH MARY -

wait

this isn't a recap going to a Mary scene

LOL SUBTLE DABB

This nursery, as we were saying after season 12 ended, is just *soaked* in the vibes of the original nursery from the show... I kinda think the bad energy in that place would probably have given Dean that nightmare ANYWAY but it's symbolically super relatable to everything that's going on, especially as he's got to deal with re-losing Mary, and Sam's dealing with the massive heap of themes about trauma from the Pilot onwards...

I'm sort of vibing with 6x01 re-doing the burning on the ceiling thing to re-start from the start (8x01 also re-started from the start but borrowed different imagery and also addressed Sam's arc through the Trials stuff hence the 8x19 thing and also him talking about how pure he was in 8x21) - obviously we have been saying this all seems like a season 1 re-do in a weird way, especially taking the Winchesters back to basics (but in an awful way), and I think for Sam, just meeting Jack under those circumstances we ended the season on were enough to loop him back to the start, because baby in nursery and yellow eyes blah blah, but for Dean his trauma in the Pilot was Mary specifically (and 1x01 separated out him and Sam that his trauma was Mary, Sam's was Jess - which 8x01 borrowed for Kevin and his girlfriend, because Kevin was always a Sam mirror and had glowing golden god power eyes when he was activated in 7x21)...

So yeah Dean just got a top up of Mary trauma because the fucking WEATHER around here is pilot mirrors.

I would assume also probably maybe that was a semi-magical nightmare but I would not fucking put it past them to just show us Dean having a bunch of nightmares and like 7x05 maybe where he woke up from a dead Cas dream, we get stuff like that to show his absolutely wrecked mental state so I'll hold out hope it was kind of just Dean's imagination tormenting him, because we've only seen his nightmares extremely rarely in the absolute worst situations.

Just as a "the show is about more than sam and dean" stance, fuck the shipping, it needs to be so obvious on screen that Dean is suffering from losing Mary AND Cas in a way where it's obvious the dynamic can not just be Sam and Dean any more.

OH NO SEAGULLS

(Uh, I mean, they are by a big lake, but yeah they are a bad bad omen. I think there was meta about them circa 10x14, to give an idea of how bad hearing seagulls is.)

Wow Sam and Dean are having a lot of bad sleeps now.

"Wait, was that -" "Lucifer's son." look, Sam knows how Jack started his life. That he has the concept of "father". That it's about all he's said and all he's motivated by right now apparently. Sam sounds pretty freaked out and putting a LOT of weight on that concept - not "Kelly's son" or "the nephilim" - the fact Jack was born, and asked about Lucifer, and then walked buck naked out of the room and now we ain't got jack on Jack, like... This is a Lucifer related PROBLEM.

I just say, because I am pretty sure Sam's gonna be defending the kid in a couple of minutes so I need to lay out all the thoughts on what Sam knows and his headspace I possibly can as I go.

Oh nooo Cas's truck.

And I tell you what, I wrote a meta after 12x23 about how it was impossible to work out where Cas's truck was parked in the entire final conflict, and there was no fucking WAY the Impala and the truck were within shot of each other. Well guess fucking what. They are easily contained within frame now. I know you could just say minor continuity error but that's not why I'm yelling :P

I'm yelling because I was writing about how the placement of their vehicles shows their closeness to each other or other metaphorical things (such as the no personal space parking job from 9x10 where Dean then pulled away and left the pimpmobile behind) and aside from the super dusty car, I am pretty sure I am saying that Cas's truck has appeared in visible shot because now it's not getting in the way of the action they can use it to symbolically show that Dean and Cas's vehicles are basically flanking the shot - but also they're so far apart and the house, representing Jack, and Kelly, and how Cas died, is between them.

(This meta business is like riding a bike :D)

Nakey Jack getting the same walk shot as Amara did.

Amara got it because creepy feet.

He's getting it because penis.

Hey there's the pirate place Dean's going to punch.

Holy shit I have never laughed so hard at the show in my entire life. I had a coughing fit that's scared the neighbour's dog.

(wait, good laugh - 10x15 still owes me a drink)

Salty Butt Combo sounds good anyway.

(this must be why Dabb said "butt shake", the fucker. The absolute fucker. I am going to kill him.)

I'm laughing on a meta level too (I mean, hysterically, out loud, but also meta) because especially in season 8 burgers were connected to humanity and Dean's return from Purgatory, and Dean has a history on the show of eating cheesebutts all the time for various reasons... I mean... This is liiiitterally turning Dean's favourite, metaphorically significant, food into butts.

I mean... do I just... run with it? I mean like... is this the new meta thing? We now have to associate Dean digging into a burger with eating ass? I mean what are you doing Dabb?

I actually have a headache now because I laughed too hard and too loud.

Please please tell me Jack comes into this place, accidentally kills these dudes, and leaves a trail of destruction that when their supervisor gets to the store to deal with it, the police are like... trying to deal with the bodies but also cracking up a little and finally she looks up and it's like... HIGH SEAS BUTT COMBO

I mean that's going to make it into the newspapers

Oh wait, the inventor of the Buttshake is the guy from the police station that was talking to Jack so he's going to at least make it out of this scene.

See, that picture of Jack with pants on was in the PR photos and I was like "naaah" and defended that Jack did not have pants on and people didn't believe - no one understood. I knew this was gonna happen and because I don't lay down too much spec and what good would "Jack wanders around buck naked for like the entire first quarter of the episode" have done anyway so I was just making fun of him for being fully grown and naked in the hope that the fact he was naked was a major character trait because it was one of like 2 we knew about him... Yeah I'm feeling vindicated on a crack spec I can't really prove, especially as I was joking that Sam shames him into manifesting pants but I mean... I knew. Guys, I knew.

This has gone from horror to stoner movie classic in about 2 minutes flat.

I fucking love this show.

ALL THE CREATIVE WAYS THEY HIDE JACK'S NAKEDNESS THOUGH.

I am gonna make a gifset if I can stop cry-laughing for long enough

"Hi baby! .... *How naked*?"

Yep.

I mean I think it's adorable that Jack wandered down to the nearest place with more people to make enquiries but this is also wigging me out a bit because I thought that the smart thing to do would be to give him like all the functioning knowledge for this world (I do remember a post going around Tumblr that babies learn like 6x Les Mis amounts of words in the womb) BUT start him from scratch but that it would be super hard to pull off, and essentially they've decided to do exactly what I thought was going to be the most intelligent handling of the situation but not exactly the easiest, and he seems to really have been born with a single motivation and the most basic understanding of the world that his little baby cosmic supercomputer brain is going to have to piece together the entire world from context cues and natural intellect to deal with the rest...

I'm all for it as long as they handle his progression well. And don't use him as the ... butt ... of the joke.

I assume we all know the butt thing was because Jack is naked and it was joking about the fact he's wandering about butt out but they can't show it so they're just like butt butt butt on the menu board instead.

Promo scene! Oh no! We're not thinking about it. Not over it from last night. Dean is piiiissed.

Sam saying he had it under control is interesting now we have seen the actual scene in question. Sam did not really have it under control. He was babbling uncertainly like, no I'm not your father and also btw that freaks me out because he HAS possessed me before and being mistaken for him is SUUUPER uncomfortable and he's the reason for like 100% of my trauma past and present, and you're freaking me out... And yeah, between scenes he's decided they can't hunt Jack, that even if he seems to be laser focused on finding his father there has to be hope for him. This context is important: That Sam knows Jack's motivation and what it MEANS on a deeply horribly personal level and is defending him anyway. (I mean that "anyway" in the context of what Sam might think or feel rather than from my perspective where I can see it all from space and obviously Jack is not just any of this and anyway he'll be hunting with them sooner or later and there's presumably hope for Jack in this world...) But yeah, Sam knows how it is, searching for your father, for one thing. Which, interestingly, costuming aside, I don't think there's been MAJOR John and Lucifer parallels (hilarious that Lucifer changed his clothes just in time) in the same way that like, God and John were paralleled at a major narrative level. But now Jack wants to find his dad, which is the season 1 motivation for Sam and Dean, and that makes Lucifer and John narratively paralleled.

I don't think Sam is necessarily defending that Jack came out the womb with a one track mind to find Lucifer (maybe he wants to kill him, we haven't asked the guy his opinion yet) but that of course he thinks Jack can be reasoned with, saved from himself, and Sam relates heavily to being given powers beyond your control, and that there's hope for Jack to have a normal-ish life etc. None of which can be accomplished by just killing him outright.

Dean's just mad because Cas is dead and none of this would have happened if not for Jack

There's literally NOTHING TO META over on the Destiel side of things

I am feeling the void that they just left Cas there while rushing out to deal with Jack but I guess he's such an urgent problem Cas can wait and the house is remote enough that the milkman isn't likely to come round and see Cas lying dead in the back garden.

"Before he hurts anyone else" - he barely hurt you guys, it's more like he banged you up a bit and it was obviously a terrifying display of power and you don't want him to do *even that* again but - I mean - Dean, honey.

those words are going to be my approach to him for a while I think :P

That sheriff car really pushing the Twin Peaks vibe just because of the mountains on it... Was comparing it last season... Watched Twin Peaks for the first time shortly before the finale and caught Dabb just outright stealing an entire line from one of its episodes.

Either the police station is super close or Jack has been unintentionally terrorising the guys in the pirate restaurant for like an hour while just staring at the sign. He's thinking really hard about ordering the salty butt combo.

So we're really pushing how creepy Jack is. I mean, duh, it's the first episode and the first like 5 minutes of his screen time so he'll smile scarily for us.

They definitely cast him well for looking like Kelly but also having a really evil looking smirk.

Oh no. Cas.

They said Dean put the sheet over him and he's indoors so I guess that scene just happened in between things although right now we have no context for that so unless the angels say they didn't move Cas inside and put a sheet over him we don't have anything but actor confirmation this was a thing that happened, which is, of course, meaningless currency but makes for good headcanons...

I mean I paused it on his dead face and went "waaaah" so I need to watch the rest of the scene but this is where I'm at going into it anywho.

Nope, one angel had to ask which means they are investigating the house which meeeeans that this was how Dean left Cas and it's implied by the subtext that this is what happened in one of those "the subtext isn't an ineffable cloud of possible happenstance, they just didn't show it on screen so this fills in the blank for us" ways and I am not okaaaaaaaaay

Also we have them as our straw man angels - one saying he deserved better (LOL I HOPE ALL THE CAS STANS ARE HAPPY THAT'S BEEN SAID IN THE STORY) and one who is saying he didn't. Representing that Heaven is conflicted about Cas's actions and that some still revered him and some still loathed him.

Also the one who hated Cas called Kelly a "Brood Mare" so he's a dick and I hope he gets stabbed pretty soon because we know there's angel stabbings in this episode, and I just was not paying any attention whatsoever to them in the spoilers.

So the clothes Jack ended up in were spares from the police station. The kid who worked at the pirate place has come along with them because fuck responsibility (he is so the bad influence cool guy and I hope Jack kinda gets a little puppy love crush on him although he's calling Jack weird still...)

That statement that no one is weird but normal in their own way was really nice though. Positive influences around Jack! Yeah!

Hahaha they literally said "Lost and Found" for where the clothes came from. Subtle. Jack's lost and found - he's a spare thing left behind, to be collected by the original owner or taken by someone who needs them more.

I used that phrase for a fic title back in season 12 about Mary about how she had been lost and found - died and came back - but also how she felt lost in the world now and then was found again when someone who related to her situation bonded with her and - okay it just turned into Charlie taking Mary back to her place and them making out but the point is that's the emotional tone I was using the title for. I assume it also applies to Jack's emotional state, but he hasn't been "found" yet and I'm assuming Sam will do that for him, but I don't think they'll go back to their place to play video games, drink a few beers and learn the ways of luuurve.

(I know some people were (crack?) shipping them but even though Jack's an adult now and technically only like... well, the actor would be within the window to have a thing with Sam and for it not to be weird age wise, but the whole framing of it... Jack acting like a grown up baby... yeah. We'll see how it goes but the dynamic wider fandom has built for them has been with Jack as a child. The way I see it is more the intern dynamic if he joins up with TFW, but the way they relate to him will have to be as a child by necessity at least until he's demonstrated emotional and intellectual maturity to them, and even then I think the impression will linger for a while...)

that was a weird side note... these notes are a disaster. Look it's been MONTHS and I didn't do rewatch notes for season 10 over hiatus like I meant so I am out of practice at this.

I also took a short break to chat with Mittens to confirm I wasn't going crazy, that WAS the same song as the other video they released in the hiatus, and yep we got the Nothing Else Matters destiel music video as the season opener. No I haven't processed it yet :D

Oh gosh Jack remembers his mom (HI KELLY, RIP) and he says she's in Heaven (can't recall his surname), and that memory was basically the footage from the USB stick, so he's internalised that somewhere without watching it. It's 2 influences, good and bad - a pure perfect dead mom (booo tropes the show was supposed to have ditched dramatically via Mary) and a literal satan father who "should have been there" but wasn't - ironically removed from the narrative by the reformed pure dead mom from last season, Mary. These are the two biological influences on him, anyway. The 2 sides of his nature he may struggle with and the way the conflict may be framed for him.

Buuut and here's a thing that might be contentious. So he knew Lucifer was supposed to be there when he was born and that he has to find him? He seems to have had that low level awareness of the world around him even in the womb, or at least was born with messages or some sort of communication from Lucifer lingering in his subconscious. Lucifer seemed linked to him while he was in the womb and I suppose this confirms it may have run both ways. Bleh.

The Jack As A Blank Slate characterisation is good because it excuses his actions from season 12 as done without knowing intent as he's still figuring it all out now, but these lines do implicate him in the actions, by giving him a sense of at least semi-awareness, of having a missive from before he was even born, knowing that he was supposed to find his father.

I think that also goes with Kelly leaving him the USB stick with the message on it - he has a missive from both his parents. Kelly's of course being so positive and hopeful for him, and Lucifer just kinda... being threatening to his goodness by wanting to be anywhere near him.

OH GOSH and he remembers burning Dagon. He did have an awareness of what was going on towards the end of the pregnancy!

"I remember the universe screamed" well that would be opening the AU I guess

yeah the thumbprinting thing isn't going to do much good :P Blank slate imagery again - he's not on the system, he's new!

Oh boy the stoner movie kid is going to have a wild ride explaining this.

Jack's getting better at full sentences though.

*blink blink*

And that was the Invention of Sarcasm.

Or he was telling the guy how stupid he was like... I have a superior intellect. I know this is a chair and this is a floor and this is the planet earth. Thank you, moronic human who keeps asking me the most obvious questions ever, it's really helping me collect my thoughts and begin to understand my environment. Are all humans as stupid as you?

Uhoh, the "I'm hungry" did not bode well with Amara. But is this going to be a fake out? He didn't seem about to attack the guy for his soul, so is he just going to have a whole ton of junk food when we get back and the guy is like yeah I knew he had the munchies so I raided my stash of M&Ms I keep here and it's all good.

I really can't tell how much of Jack's story is Ominous Nephilim Shit and how much is Stoner Bro Movie Lols

Here's the context about the curly butt fries line and destroying the world. People took it literally and it always seemed like this would be the context that Dean was putting fake words in Jack's mouth because he does it ALL the time. Like the line about getting bored of croquet so you know what's really fun? MURDER. I love it when he does this. I need to make him do it more when I write him.

Anyway Sam understands Jack, he can guess his location. Dean is doubtful and *specifically* mentions torching Chicago I think because of the 5x21 reference to his pizza date with Death. I think that is actually a good comparison because cosmic being but one who was a good ally in his own massive cosmic way. It's a nice omen. Dean is being wrong/right with his sarcasm. It's complicated :P

The fact he is letting Sam go in there also means he doesn't think that Jack is in there probably because the shack is still standing. Sam is going to go find clues! But while they're sitting in the car and Dean's sending Sam into a shack alone I can't help but remember 2x21 which was of course where Sam got snatched in a fast food shack and Dean asked for pie and it aaaaall began. I also wonder why Dean punches the sign and that makes me think that something might happen to Sam somehow although I can't guess how.

I have never related to anyone more than Drunk Fries Girl except I've done it in reverse, just missing the deadline on hashbrowns in McD's and stomping out of the store instead of just ordering fries :P

Sam deals with the awkwardness of asking for a tall naked guy with a level of composure Dean wouldn't manage in a million fucking years.

That's the entire meta.

You were right, Sam!

Sam's asking after Jack as the FBI and it's a way to not have him act as his father on the phone. But the thought occurred to me and I wonder if it passed Sam's mind or if he's judged Jack's age that they're not terribly far apart - less than 10 years.

I don't think they're really playing into this comparison right now anyway - like it was just for the opening scene, or the sheriff would have asked, "are you his father" and put Sam into the awkward position and THEN have him say that he's an agent.

This is literally the best exchange in the entire show because Sam is having to pretend to be FBI while talking about Jack, with Fries Girl and Over Enthusiastic Pirate Guy watching, and his eyes just went to the cheesebutt menu and he saw it and he did not laugh on the phone.

I think Sam is strong and brave and of pure heart and fuck the "trials" or whatever the fuck shows the measure of a man, he just passed through the fucking abyss and came out the other side because he didn't laugh at Cheesebutt.

And, look, I laughed at the cheesebutt thing and the way it reflects hiiiilariously on Dean and the burgers thing. We all laughed at it. But Sam just blinked off in short succession a gay accusation and the urge to laugh at cheesebutt like it didn't even fucking affect him and I am just

Dabb

what

At the end of 12x23 my only conclusion was "i have been mindfucked"

and I thought

maybe season 13 will be you know... normal

Dabb it has been 15 minutes and I am so fucked up about everything :P

And now we cut to Dean with his messed up knuckles. Did he just go punch something off-screen?

(You know, the pirate sign that he punched in the promo for a totally random out of nowhere example of punchable things in the vicinity)

I hope he's not coping so badly that we're getting it in angsty flashbacks because that blood was not there before. And angsty flashbacks basically mean Destiel is canon.

OH NO FRIES GIRL IS HERE.

The drunk are an open and friendly people... Is she going to get Dean to open up? She's literally infodumping her life story on him because she's been up all night and her feet hurt and no one will give her fries, and I think she's about to fucking put the moral of the season in Dean's head somehow I don't know yet because I have literally paused because I was contemplating removing the dash between me bitching at Dabb for the wonderful fucked up episode and this commentary on it :P

Yep she told him that she punched Becky's stupid Elsa poster (what is Dabb's deal with Elsa from Frozen? Does he have a small daughter we don't know about that inflicted Let It Go on him in a loop? :P) and lit all her stuff on fire and started rambling about just burning the world down in her rage.

And then called Dean sensitive to Sam and this is amazing because her drunk wisdom sees right through his shit. I love fries girl.

I LOVE Fries Girl, she wrote "bitch" on the car :D :D :D

was THIS why Baby is all dusty? People are writing rude words all over everything this episode. I mean it's like a theme. A theme of desecration and burning the world down around you and who gives a flying fuck about consequences - you can change all the menu items to Butt because your mom's the sheriff and banging the guy who owns the restaurant or whatever, and if your roommate is a bitch, burn down all her things.

I mean then she writes it on the car which is sort of ominous about all their stuff being burned up.

I mean Dean did have that dream about Mary

He's lost Cas, that's his world burning down around him.

It's... Look, it's weird they have put off whatever Dean did in the intervening time Sam was eyeing up the cheesebutt menu to show later because we know we see it later because there's a hanging "what happened to your knuckles" question and we saw the clip in the promo. It's a storytelling decision to delay this, and we just see Dean dealing with it by drinking, splashing some alcohol on the cuts, and that's that for now.

What a fucking mess. Dean. Honey.

I suppose to keep the action flowing we deal with Jack but Dean's emotional story is running alongside it and it's being put off, held back... but it's not being held back forever. It's going to be opened up to us. But for NOW we just see kinda what Sam and outsiders see - the same thing I was meta-ing about the promo scene, about how they kept us outside the car for that conversation, about how we're not being allowed into Dean's grief and not being able to name Cas is another thing, another delay, another inability to confront it, just... we're outside, we're watching Dean struggle from afar. From Drunk Fries Girl POV.

This episode is fucking magnificent.

Maybe Jack is eating Clark, which is the name apparently of the kid.

Or are they laughing?? I think I heard laughter?

LAUGHTER and the munchies fake out.

I love you Dabb.

This literally says EVERYTHING about Jack and I now trust him completely.

Jack's first part of the story has gone from ominous to what a fucking cutie. He might not actually be a stoner but he's adorably sort of mascot-y to this guy and it's just hilarious that he can be like fuck the system I want candy, let's misuse my powers to get more candy because I love nougat. I mean I was wrong that the world would be saved in 13x23 because of trousers because that was a joke but I am legit thinking that this Human Things redux arc for Jack is going to save us all because fucking nougat. And that's a serious spec you can hold me accountable for at the end of the season.

The fact they're sitting on the floor giggling together is just sweet. Jack is learning about friendship so I doubt he would hurt Clark intentionally now, so if Clark does get hurt by Jack it's going to be a tragedy. Maybe something to show Jack how dangerous his powers are and make him want to be more careful and respectful to human life. I think Clark maaay be in the firing line as an adorable toy that gets mangled because Jack doesn't know how rough he's playing >.>

Also Jack you should probably not eat so much candy, because you'll get sick.

OH NO JACK. Is angel radio messing with your head?

OH NO he hurt the sheriff!

OH NO this is how he does the lights blowing walk? IT's AWFUL. PROTECT MY CANDY LOVING GIANT MAN BABY.

SAM TASED HIM

I am so upset. I apparently am extremely protective of my Nougat and angel radio hurts him and they're yelling about him and want to kill him and he's sensitive too :<

(whatever wizardry Dabb wove with the stoner movie subplot worked.)

Sam and Dean are not hailed as heroes for stopping Nougat, they're arrested to and given the first ever proper search to confiscate all their guns and knives by a cop who knows what the fuck she is doing. Now Dean has to answer for themselves, using his real name and actual job. He's not got a fuck to give.

She asks him if he's a superhero and some part of Dean just crumbles away inside and he says no. In 9x07 especially there was a strong theme of Dean being a superhero and Thinman also had superhero comparisons to them and it was part of the shine of the job wearing off - one of the more subtly horrible Dean moments in season 9 is that superhero action figure melting on the hob yelling "I clobber evil!" into a horrifying mangled sound. I think I just saw his face convey the exact same symbolic awfulness just in his eyes. Fuck you Jensen.

Note to self: gif that if somehow or other someone else hasn't yet.

I mean it's all shattered because the illusion is gone, Dean has nothing left to live for, he's just a guy doing a job. There's no meaning, no personal glory, no one to do it FOR. He's just the tool that gets it done because it has to be done, because what fucking benefit does he get from any of it if the job is also just watching everyone he loves die. That doesn't make him feel like a superhero that makes him feel like total bleak nihilism where you might as well just be upfront and dead inside and tell the truth because what's even the point of lying.

This episode has a lot of nihilism but some of it is fun buttburger style and some is killing me inside :P

Also Dean had to confirm angels are real, and the look on his face when he does THAT is ALSO AWFUL. Because everything is awful.

All that baggage where confirming angels are real he knows what people think. He knows what HE thought. He knows how what he thought was different from what other people thought about angels (see: the entire conflict between him and Sam in 2x13) and what angels eventually became to him. That one angel WAS watching over him. That there was one who broke the pattern and was ... Cas.

Help.

I tell you what I thought while I was getting dinner... This is the first time I've felt like we're in a show run by the guy who helped create Plucky's.

This is the tone. This is the exact right mouthfeel for Dabb era. This is what it SHOULD be.

FINALLY the Sam and Jack confrontation we deserve!

Sam is getting through and chatting! Jack is talking about why he was scared which is nice and symbolic about sharing and caring feelings for better communication and understanding!

Sam's still scared of being in the same room as Jack, flinching when he moves, much like when he's around Lucifer. He's legit scared of a thing and Sam is the biggest badass hunter in the world (like, no offence Dean, you have an impressive and showy history but in terms of brute strength and raw badass mofo power it's Sam :P He's Sam Fucking Winchester and you have a much more personal, over-dramatic flair to the big kills and such)

Jack moves forward intently because he doesn't know that this much eagerness is a trait stamped out of adults, and sits cross-legged, childish, but still imposing. He's learned cross-legged is a fun way to sit and I'm really liking the choices here to make him both naive and powerful.

He's fucking sitting with the Mr Burns hands i knew it i knew this was going to be a trait of his, I called it from like 2 promo pics. God damn I'm good at reading body language from just a few stills :P He's exactly what I was expecting but in full 3D animation.

It's just... a cute weird trait. He doesn't know what to do with his hands so he just rests them where they are and lets them hang, because he doesn't have any tics or mannerisms. He's mannerismless. He's so new he hasn't got the faintest trace of social anxiety. This is a raw, undamaged soul.

I am going to weep when Nougat gets hurt in the bits that make him so sweet.

See now he's apologising for hurting people. He sounds so confused when he says "I'm sorry" like he's sounding out the concept but the great thing is he's learning 1000 miles an hour. Anna told Cas he doesn't know what it is to be sorry and Cas still struggled with it in season 7 in the "playing sorry" game and only in 9x11 expressed that he truly understood empathy and human emotion now. Jack tries on an emotion for size, discovers it, and now seems to be fairly earnest about it.

Sam: *blink blink*

Sam was RIGHT. <3

Hahahah he says Kelly is a part of him. Another point for me! That was one of my specs for how he got to learn English and concepts so fast - that the reason it's fatal to birth him is because he's going to not just absorb the basic baby stuff like nutrients and stuff but he's going to suck her dry of facts and concepts and that's what destroys her. It's like what Amara did but far more complex.

Damn, I'm sorry you had to die for this Kelly, this is a pretty terrible idea in some ways. I better not overthink it.

He just said that his powers are him but not him - he sees them as something other from himself. The whole deal that he needed to be born powers and all, that taking the grace was taking a part of him - yeah. The Cas argument about his grace too, that it can be removed from him and he'll still be Cas, the grace is just power... If Jack sees it as a separate part of himself, a "Not Me" part of himself... That's a huge thing.

Oh my fucking GOD He thinks Cas is his FATHER OH NO OH NO OH NO OOOH NOOO.

(Also thanks a LOT people reading along with me for not telling me. Look, the analysis about Sam thinking it was Lucifer and Dabb's BIG Nougat Fake Out build up were all like... how it was meant to be read :P I guess that's why they backed off the father thing for Sam immediately after using it in the one place it would hurt the most.)

I mean Cas did basically act as the co-parent with Kelly and I am pretty sure our Nougat has some lines crossed here and OH MY GOSH DABB YOU MAGNIFICENT FUCKER

See when I said they were making Jack look SUPER FUCKING CREEPY when he was naked at the drive in obviously that was a fake out because I knew he was gonna be hunting with them later but oh my fucking fuck de fuck I want to go back and watch Jack's bits all over again where he's wandering around naked (as Cas is wont to do) asking for his father because FUCK.

He's born as Cas and Kelly die and now he's wandering around asking for Cas and that whole opening, that whole build up where he seems sinister... He remembered Cas all along... Oh gosh I said some things about him back there... I should go back to that scene immediately.

...

I nearly cracked a fucking joke that Jack doesn't have a last name just like Cas and it turns out that scene was a joke about Jack not having a last name because Cas is his father and HE doesn't have a fucking last name.

I hate everything.

"I'm trying to find him. I have to find him" YEAH SO JACK IS ON THE "WHERE IS CAS" TEAM AND THERE'S ANGELS SAYING CAS DESERVED BETTER, I THINK DABB HAS BEEN READING THE BLOGS AGAIN.

Jack picked Cas to be there to be his parent and guide when Cas said that thing about being his guardian to show him the righteous path and Jack heard it from the womb and was like YES I CHOOSE YOU PIKACHU and that was that, Cas was his father now. Found family in the extreme. Who is the best family, the good family? I'll have that one please.

Oh gosh and now it's sadder that the sheriff was asking for a phone number or address because Cas HAS those. He has a HOME.

...

Anyway back to the Sam and Jack scene, which I already watched through but I want to watch AGAIN DAMMIT.

Gosh this is magnificent though because it puts Cas so squarely in the middle of everything - even though he's dead he's Jack's focus and he's Jack's moral centre and everything that is good about Cas is what Jack wants to beeeeeee and oh my gosh is he going to choose the Winchesters to be his new guardians because they were Cas's family? HELP ME.

I'm still kinda not over Jack completely becoming Kelly in the womb and being born by sucking her goodness out from the inside.

What a godawful parenting metaphor/commentary on the mother's sacrifice.

Oh and the door to the other world thing as the lead in to talking about his father? I was so sure it was going to be about Lucifer and then -

oh god I am in pain.

Because he diverts from talking about the portal to talking about needing to find his father to protect him and I was like A: well you need the portal for that and B: nooo, Nougat, you don't need that fucker in your life! and then -

oh.

Ow.

Anyway Sam's face while talking about Cas is just... ARGH. And Jack's so earnest and happy about Cas protecting him and how he had to grow up

And then poor Nougat's face when Sam tells him Cas is dead and he's SO ANGRY. And THAT, my dear Nougat, is how you get to the lovely position of being furiously vengeful against your birth father in order to avenge your chosen father and I am delighted.

Cas is Jack's Bobby.

OH NO Clark has gone out to smoke with headphones. He's so gonna get angel murdered if Jack's not gonna kill him (because he is a soft squishy nougat person) and then Jack's going to be even more hurt.

STOP HURTING JACK.

FRIES GIRL IS AN ANGEL.

THAT'S NOT A GOOD THING.

SAM, TELL DEAN ABOUT THE CAS'S SON THING.

HE SAID LUCIFER'S SON, THAT'S NOT HELPFUL.

I suppose Sam doesn't want to convey that to Dean because he knows how Dean is with concepts he hates because he's currently flippantly talking about killing "Damien" out back rather than engage with the subject matter, but tbh I think bringing up Cas would be such a knock to the feels that Sam might be able to get in the line that "this kid seems to have a Cas-guided morality" while Dean is still emotionally picking himself up.

AHAHAHA Dean said "that won't do jack against her" - he's still using "jack" as a phrase

Dean's Becky... what a surprise :P Maybe Fries Angel writing "Bitch" on the car wasn't subtle enough.

The angels find Dean an annoying roommate whose drama they're always having to deal with.

Mittens just reminded me I wept about 9x07 to her and the poor melting action figure and how the angels want to burn Dean down. I am not okaaaay.

OOOH we're getting angel radio now because Jack's our in!

I don't think their eyes normally light up to communicate with it but new season new rules and this must be a mechanic we're dealing with more than just this one example.

Poor Clark - Jack briefly had a friend, learned to sit cross legged and eat nougat from him, and now his friend who made him laugh is dead. It's a HARD LIFE being a Winchester.

Also the main Winchesters are getting smashed up

Wait Dean just got back up with STYLE. Nice fight

Hey Clark is still alive-ish... Maybe Jack can heal him.

OH NO BANISHING HURTS NOUGAT TOO.

That was some great quick thinking by Sam.

Guess walls affect it or Fries Angel was too far away.

Fries Angel needed to stick around to deliver some Destiel exposition that she knows Dean's first thought to "Jack can do anything" was not "I will use him to reopen that portal and get mom back" but "I will get him to resurrect my dead angel" and just immediately goes from that to crushing Dean about Cas's death

"Castiel, he's dead. All the way dead. Because of you."

That is.. the worst line

"Or what, Other One?" Jeeeze the angels really do have more of a beef with Dean about the whole Winchesters thing for some reason. That really means in a couple of lines of exposition that every time heaven has mocked Cas about The Winchesters they really have meant Dean... Just, you know.. remember who wrote the eeny meeny miney mo scene for a sec, back when he had to be subtle about Dean calling Cas but that just being a random happenstance to what the angels were talking about, essentially :P

Oh no she stabbed Nougat!

I assume he doesn't die because... you know.. spoilers.

He's got his own Cas-like pull the blade out moment, but... Wow.

HOLY SHIT SOMEONE SAID THE LINE "I'M FINE" ON THIS SHOW AND MEANT IT

IT IS A NEW ERA

NOUGAT IS THE HERALD OF BETTER TIMES

Poor guy is stunned and confused and a little hurt though.

Oh no Clark is fine but going to hospital. I mean I assume this means doctors will help him. His mom is telling him he'll be brave and so on.

Poor Nougat is so sad about how horrible this world is. Cas isn't here to protect him and Sam and Dean just did a moderately adequate job at fending off the angels while getting the shit kicked out of them because angels are scary and powerful again.

Sam tries to bring up the keeping Jack thing again and Dean's like yeah we can keep him but he's evil so I guess that means you clean up the mess a la taking a puppy home?

Dean's still convinced Jack is evil and brainwashed Kelly and Cas - it's kinda more terrifying that he BECAME Kelly and absorbed her, and I do think he chose Cas to be his father and none of it was malicious, and they gave him the love and promise of protection he needs to be good and all and it's a billion times more nuanced than Dean thinks... He's being protective of Cas, depressed about their life and their chances... I think he's going to be pretty wrong about Nougat because from 12x19 it was obvious he had chosen Cas BECAUSE Cas was good and would protect him. Even when he didn't think he could do it himself. So I think Jack, uh... motivated Cas... because he wanted him... Like, I still think Jack did shit to Cas because he did creepy shit to Kelly which we're apparently going to move on from because he is an adorable squishy guy who I want to follow with a blanket and a stick to beat off people who will wear him down. But yeah, 12x19 is super weird and I don't *like* the method Jack acquired his mom and dad, even if I do think that he's not evil and the end result seems extremely positive if he popped out the womb determined to find Cas, and has a Cas-centric morality. Loving Cas is obviously the good and best thing you can do on this show and it's vindicating in spades he's a nice guy because he loves Cas and considers him a father for the protection he offered.

(Still think if he was pure good to start with he'd have SAID "hey I plan to be born a full grown adult, you don't need these diapers" but that WAS what caused him to open the rift so maybe his attempt to warn Cas went astray... :P)

But yeah I still find Jack "choosing" Cas to be his father and to create that bond out of nothing, almost instantaneously, to be a little suspect in the happenstance of it, even if as I've been saying all along I have been completely open to him turning out to be, well... Nougat.

But Dean doesn't care, he wants to kill Jack. "At least the only people he can hurt there are you and me" WOW DEAN.

WWWWOOOOOOW.

OH NO OH NO OOOOH NOOOOOOOOO O OoOOOOooooOOOooo o Sam is saying "are you sure about this Dean? It's Cas" - I assume in reference to burning him rather than burying him and Dean's gonna be like, Fries Angel said he was dead as dead.

I don't wanna see it.

"You don't think I've tried that" OH NO

Here's the flashback! Told you it was coming! (You have all seen this episode no one is mad enough to wait 18 hours just to watch for the first time with my notes) But yeah as I was saying, sidelining Dean's emo stuff to focus on the action, to set it aside, to put us away from it, to keep it back for when it would hit most. To do some god damn STORYTELLING around here. Some fucking ardfgjhlsksdfhjklslhfdjqp storytelling. That when all the action is done, when Dean has been ground down into a fucking paste by this day, the day of having to come to terms with the loss of Cas, when we know he went off to have some private punching things time and Sam was being the least gay to possibly gay in the comic stoner movie side of the story, Dean was having a moment SO POWERFUL that it could ONLY be conveyed to us by not showing it happening until we were deeply, truly, in the context of Dean mourning Cas and where we could focus on that with nothing left to distract us that this is the Worst.

.... I have been sitting here not pressing play for over 10 minutes

OH NO

I have paused it immediately

because they used the camera angle from Baby

the Roadhouse one

and the one from the fight where Cas was on the phone

so uh

Add hysterical weeping to the things this show makes me do because I was one stoic snarky hahaha isn't this ridiculous Jack planned to adult all along so the diapers thing was a massive prank kinda person and then bam Dean went out back to pray and I was scream-crying and then he said Cas was his everything and I am never going to be chill again

Okay, Chuck… or god, or whatever. I need your help. See, you– you left us. You LEFT us. You went off. You said… You said the earth would be fine because it had me… and Sam, but it’s NOT, and we’re NOT.

We’ve lost everything. And now you’re gonna bring him back. Okay? You’re gonna bring back Cas, you’re gonna bring back Mom, you’re gonna bring ‘em all back. All of ‘em. Even Crowley.

’Cause after everything that you’ve done, you OWE us, you son of a bitch. So you get your ass down here and you make this right, right here and right now.

Please. Please help us.

Thanks Mittens.

So.

Uh.

First name basis with the guy upstairs: this is a personal appeal in case he ever actually cared. (Spoiler alert: I don't think Dean is going to come out of this with a better opinion of God)

*I* need your help. Not we, *I*. This is on Dean's behalf for Cas.

He brings up the line which we went into Dabb era on and I ripped to shreds critically at the time that Chuck ever put that burden onto Dean because he has some broad ass shoulders but they are not big enough for the world and his whole problem is he's always been carrying it in the first place so Chuck didn't do SHIT to make him feel better AND NOW DEAN IS CRITIQUING THE CARETAKERS OF THE EARTH IDEA. THAT IT SHOULD NOT BE HIS BURDEN. MAYBE NOT BECAUSE HE CAN'T DO IT BUT BECAUSE HE SHOULD NOT BE EXPECTED TO DO IT. He was singled out as the firewall between light and dark but he doesn't feel like a superhero. He doesn't clobber evil. He's being STRIPPED DOWN AS A PERSON. WHO EVEN IS HE. WILL DEAN QUIT HUNTING? JESUS CHRIST, I SAID THAT LINE IN 11x23 WAS AWFUL FOR DEAN BUT I DIDN'T THINK DABB WAS GONNA GO *THERE*

And he says the world isn't fine - and they're not. Their emotional state reflects the world. The centre of the universe thing, in the storytelling, makes the world reflect Dean. His misery or happiness is on a cosmic scale. This tangledupness of him in the middle of it all is killing him because the world will be in danger and that can't all land on him. He can't be the Atlas of this world. But he is. OH how he is. But this isn't a world with superheroes. Just HUMAN GUYS DOING THEIR JOB.

And then the transition. The terms and conditions. The "you have given me a fucked up burden so pls unfuck it and here's how" swinging around from "everything" to "him". The implicitness of it all. The... The fact everyone knows it's about Cas. It's not about Mom. It's not about Crowley. He can say their names. He couldn't say that Cas was dead. Fries Angel immediately identified it. Cas is the answer to all the questions, where all roads lead. And they've come back to the house where he died, FOR Cas, and Sam asks about praying and Dean has already asked and got no answer, already been told Cas is permadead, and THIS is where we deliver the bombshell. Everything flows into "him".

Cas is Dean's everything.

And yeah he wants Mary back and fuck it fuck you God fuck everything just fucking include Crowley to because why the fuck not, you owe me. All that pointless stupid death and loss, it's enough to make me feel bad that Crowley is gone.

And oh the wank over the summer he would ask for Crowley back too (and I smacked the desk and hooted with laughter, with tears still in my eyes, reeling from the "everything" line because I called the way Dean would ask for him back. I knew it!), it just... Even Mary doesn't compare because she's tacked on in the repetition, the clarification that everything is him is Cas. And it's totally fine for Dean to ask for these others he's lost back, for them to be in the same sentence as Cas, because yes he lost them and it hurts and it's awful, but there is a very special awful reserved for Cas. The kind of awful where Sam has to pause and ask Dean if he's sure, if he doesn't want to find a way to bring him back. And we ALL know we're not supposed to bring people back because there's consequences. We're all adults in the room, they both have done it, seen and FELT the consequences for having it done TO them. But Sam knows. He just knows what happens when it's someone like Cas. And maybe we don't have any more bullshit, we just ask politely and carefully if this is going to be a "bring them back at any cost" situation, and how can I help?

And then at the end of the prayer Dean cracks out the exact look and angle of expression for his Plea To God face that he has used... once. In 5x14. When utterly at the end of his rope. This is what losing Cas has brought him to - the lowest point, the one back in season 5 that was a danger to the guardianship of the world lumped on Dean's shoulders, because it was where he was when he nearly said yes to Michael, the despair cycle he couldn't deny any more at the time... Yeah, this has kind of seen and waved at season 7 on the way to hurtling all the way back to the Worst Dean Has Ever Felt To Date.

Nice.

And Dean has given up all faith in God ever helping them or caring about them.

OH NO

NOUGAT

Sam has taken him to see his dead mom. :(

Time to grapple with the concept of loss.

*beeps her big toe*

Oh Nougat I truly feel bad for you now. Look at his big soft face. He consumed her to gain his life and powers and his intelligence and his GOODNESS and oh no that means he's gonna feel baaad about it.

But Dean is downstairs with Cas, alone. Can this episode get any fucking worse.

THOSE SERIES OF ACTIONS QUALIFY AS WORSE I AM WEEPING AGAIN.

Oh god Dean.

You should have told him.

You should have fucking told him.

Oh Nougat you... sweetie. He has no clue what to say. :(

Sam tells him to say thank you, because he devoured Kelly, and to say sorry.

Oh Sam, he's crying for Cas as well.

OH NO Dean's so defeated about Mary it's just... UGH.

I assume these are the first things he says today where he gets immediately proven wrong - I assume the last scene will be a hop across the universe lines.

"They're all gone"

This is simultaneously the best Sam stuff in 1000 miles of canon and the worst Dean episode ever and I am in agony.

Yep that billisecond of footage was completely right. Sam is sad, Jack, who we didn't see, is struggling sweetly with the concept of death and what it means and how to act and feel right now, and Dean... has checked the fuck out.

RUN, MARY

I LOVE HER.

FUCK YOU LUCIFER BTW

Ugh her face is like mine when he says he needs her. The shot looks like the fucking Titanic poster. I'm assuming they do not get very far before Michael gets involved, though.

I'm gonna go back to ugly-crying about the rest of this.

This is Dabb's best solo episode hands down. I laughed, I cried, I struggled with the complex philosophy of being human and if you should consume your mother from the inside out in order to be born as a full-grown man.

I think I'm keeping Nougat.

#13x01 #season 13 spoilers #I say fuck every 3 words #also fuck you dabb and your fucking nihilistic stoner comi-tragedy nightmare of a show #Dabb vs cars #my stuff

228 notes · View notes

stina-is-a-punk-rocker · 4 years ago

Text

to all the boys i’ve loved before: the good, the bad & the ugly

THE GOOD

I live my life with the belief, not in any religion, but in several other truths: pineapple topping on pizza is a crime against humanity. FOUR is the superior One Direction album. The book will always be superior to the movie based off of it.

Actually, maybe we have to reconsider that last one.

I first watched To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before expecting a slightly polished version of a Disney channel original. I was- to my surprise, and delight- proven wrong. Sure, the premise is a bit flimsy (why, in god’s name, would Lara Jean put her letters in envelopes and address them if she had no intention of mailing them?); there’s a multitude of cliché YA tropes (naïve, introverted MC meets floppy-haired white boy ft. some reincarnation of Regina George who happens to be his ex with a vendetta against the poor, innocent MC; the GBF); I’ve got several concerns about the casting (the Covey girls are supposed to half-Korean. The actors playing them don’t even have the same ethnicity? Nor do they look like they could pass for siblings?); and the soundtrack is- well. They could’ve done better.

BUT. And that’s a big ‘but’, which is why it’s in all caps. There were so many things I loved about the movie, so much more than the ones that bothered me. My little Asian heart always bursts in joy whenever I see a positive representation of someone like me in media- I don’t care if they’re South Asian or East Asian or SEA or Middle Eastern or anywhere else from the Asian continent. For so long, the only representation in Western media- if any; having Asian characters is a rarity- were perpetuating stereotypes; Lara Jean and her sisters are such a breath of fresh air. Noah Centineo’s… well, a lot of people find him cute, and he’s got a charming smile. Kitty is my spirit animal. And the aesthetics are so cute- Lara Jean’s wardrobe is a dream, and her room even more so. I loved the To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before movie, and I will go to my grave defending it.

Since I loved the movie so much, surely, the book would be better! Right?

… Sigh.

THE BAD

The cover’s very cute, I’ll give it that. Arty font, reminiscent of something you’d find in a love letter, good call. The color scheme’s adorable. The girl on the cover is very pretty. And, um… that’s about it.

Right off the bat, Lara Jean’s monologue made me go, oh. It’s that kind of protagonist. The one who spends way too much time telling and not enough showing (blame all the writing advice videos I watched on YouTube. It never used to bother me before, but it’s all I can see now).

(Also, “After I write my letter, I’m no longer consumed by my all-consuming love.” You’re proud of that, aren’t you, Miss Jenny Han?)

And, see, I wouldn’t mind (I probably would) if Lara Jean’s thoughts were particularly riveting. Mildly entertaining, at the very least- that’s all I’m asking for.

Lara Jean is uninteresting; almost painfully so. Film-LJ’s quirkiness barely translates to the pages. Sure, Lara Jean likes romance… and baking… and antiques… and writing letters to boys who are supposedly out of her league and who could never fall for little old her. And she’s a bad driver. She idolizes her older sister. Decent character traits for a YA protagonist. And, as far as I recall, no internalized misogyny that comes in the form of slut-shaming, which is a rarity for the genre of YA. Great.

And yet there’s something about book-LJ that feels so… contrived. A little Mary Sue-ish, if you will. Papery.

Which can be said about almost every other character (except Chris and Kitty. Margot, to an extent, but I don’t like her).

There are loads of useless info-dumps strewn throughout the story, which makes me wonder if it wasn’t edited. The writing’s just… bad. It’s more like a Wattpad story (when did ‘Wattpad story’ become the paragon of bad YA? Honestly speaking, though, all the popular Wattpad books give the website a bad name. There are some incredibly well-written works on it- yes, even Harry Styles fanfiction. Not every Wattpad story is going to be *bleh* After or The Kissing Booth. But I digress). Lara Jean goes into too much detail about her outfits and the trivial details of… everything, really. And, well, no one gives a fuck.

Which brings me to: the love triangle. Beloved of all YA clichés, pretty much a staple in the genre at this point. Always with the female main character choosing between two men, both conventionally attractive in a very Eurocentric way. Usually, it’s painfully obvious who gets the girl; “Emma Notlikeothergirls has to choose between the handsome, confident, gorgeous, athletic, strapping Ashton Dreamboat and that rando who lives next door, Billy Whatsisname. Whoever will she choose?”

I’ll give credit where credit is due. The book makes both Peter and Josh (unrelated, but why are the boys’ names so standard Hoosier boy-ish? You’ve got girls named Genevieve and Margot, and the boys are pretty much the twelve apostles) pretty evenly matched. Josh has the whole boy-next-door, childhood friends, I-have-always-loved-you cliché going for him, while Peter’s the popular boy, the jock, the guy every girl wants to be with and every guy wants to be.

And yet they’re both complete dicks.

I’m supposed to be rooting for one of them. Team Peter or Team Josh; either Peter-Jane or Lara-Josh. Either the guy who’s got nothing but his looks going for him, or the guy who slept with her sister and kissed her without her consent. hOwEvEr WiLL sHe ChOOsE???

And I was never really convinced that Peter actually developed feelings for Lara Jean, ever. Maybe I’m just oblivious, but they seemed more like friends instead of lovers. I was lowkey shipping Lara Jean x Chris, even though I knew that was plain wishful thinking; I already got my Asian MC, this won’t be getting too diverse.

Other clichés I’m tired of seeing but were unfortunately present: Lucas, the token Gay Best Friend (I was annoyed with the movie for making him the Rafiki to Lara Jean’s Simba and nothing else, but rereading the book made me realize that they didn’t have much to work with in the first place); Margot, the Bitchy Sister (I never forgave her for lying to their dad about Lara Jean having sex. Seriously, how low can you get? JOSH kissed LARA JEAN, not the other way around! Margot’s supposed to be the same age I am, I think, so I believe I have the ability to call her out on her bullshit); Genevieve, the Bitch Queen Extraordinaire; Kitty, the Annoying Younger Sibling (but I love and cherish her so I don’t mind it).

“The sibling dynamic was surprisingly better written than a solid 75% of the book,” says me, an only child.

Also, a final complaint: is having sex that big of a deal? I get Lara Jean being (rightfully) horrified at the accusations, and Peter Kavinskydick deserves a decent roundhouse kick (the movie did a better job of making Peter’s actions forgivable), but why does everyone else care? Seriously, do you have that little fodder for gossip?

THE UGLY

Am I going to complain about the sequel to the movie based off of the sequel to the book that I can’t remember anything of besides the fact that John Ambrose was ten times the man Peter Kavinsky was? You bet I am.

In all honesty, I can’t remember much of the book version of P.S. I Still Love You. Rest assured that I was Team John Ambrose all the way, both while reading the book and watching the movie. I don’t want to make myself suffer through the book again, so I’ll resort to bashing the movie sequel.

This movie sucked balls. Not on the level of Sierra Burgess is a Loser or Swiped or The Kissing Booth or- yikes- The Kissing Booth 2, but it was still pretty bad. It’s pretty obvious that the two movies weren’t directed by the same person. For all its plot-related shortcomings, the first film was charming and pretty widely well-received. The second film takes all that charm and cuteness and fluff and flushes it down the toilet, along with the tiniest bit of affection I had for the character of Peter Kavinsky. Lara Jean, too, to an extent.

At least Peter and Josh were evenly matched. John Ambrose is lightyears ahead of Peter. And yet Lara Jean chooses Peter because… the first dick is the best dick? Make it make sense!

She’s leading John Ambrose on during the entire film, and I normally hate using that term because it’s such an incel way of putting things. But she doesn’t tell John Ambrose about Peter and her dating, even though she’s had the opportunity to do so countless times. She gets mad at Peter for being close to Genevieve, and yet? Hypocrite much? Not to mention she kisses John Ambrose, right before she’s like, “whoops haha guess I don’t like you that much after all :/ lol my bad”.

John Ambrose deserved better, and that is the hill I will die on.

1 note · View note

anotheruserwithnoname · 7 years ago

Text

Thoughts on Star Trek Discovery after 5 episodes

(Spoilers for Discovery S01E05 and Orville S01E06)

Episode 5 of Star Trek Discovery aired last night in Canada (up here the network Space airs it, so we don’t need to rely on streaming to view it). “Choose Your Pain” was its title and it’s ironic that it aired a few days after The Orville’s surprisingly hard-hitting “Krill” because it actually allows for something very close to an apples-to-apples comparison.

I’m going to go into spoilers, plus this will be a very long post (apologies; this is Exhibit A to show why I’m not on Twitter), so I’ll put a break here. The tl;dr is that, although I’m still willing to give it a chance, I’m still not “feeling” Discovery, which after 5 episodes is a concern; whereas, I find The Orville not only captures the classic spirit of Trek better, it managed in one single episode to make its Klingon analogue more interesting than the real Klingons in their current incarnation.

Before I begin, I wanted to set the scene to explain where I’m coming from. There is a lot of Discovery-bashing going on, and I don’t support that and this essay isn’t intended to be a bash. Although I am very critical of the show and not 100% certain that I’m going to stick with it much longer (though I’ll probably stick with it till its midseason break, at least), it’s not my intent to become a basher because then I’d be a hypocrite. I was a defender of Star Trek Enterprise throughout its entire run, and was upset to see it bashed mercilessly, to the point where I divorced myself from Star Trek and Star Trek fandom after it ended in 2005. Fortunately, Doctor Who had just come back on TV so I switched my allegiances to Who (which I’d been a fan of since the early 80s, but it became more intense). Fast-forward to 2017, and due to a mix of disappointment over what the series has delivered since Christmas 2015, combined with decisions regarding the show moving forward, I'm now divorcing from Doctor Who (as anyone who follows my blog knows). So with Star Trek back on TV the opportunity to move my allegiances back to Trek exists ... but Discovery isn’t doing it for me. Not yet. Instead, The Orville, Seth MacFarlane’s underrated (in more ways than one) homage is the show that is earning my affection. I know I’m not alone in that.

But here’s the thing, and why I don’t really see the need to “bash” Discovery: because The Orville is so much like “proper” Star Trek - the optimism, the crew-as-family dynamic, the introspective and “ripped from the headlines”-inspired stories, and general sense of fun - this actually allows Discovery to seek its own path (even if that means delivering “improper” Trek), allowing both shows to co-exist (which they could regardless - it’s not as if they’re in direct competition).

But Discovery has problems. Before I get into that, though, some positive thoughts.

This week’s episode introduced Rainn Wilson as Harry Mudd, a character immortalized by Roger C. Carmel in the original series. And I thought he did a good job. I don’t have the same issues with recasting characters as some others do (I liked the guy they had playing Sarek earlier, too). My only complaint is they made him darker than Carmel’s version, which felt a bit inconsistent. But then again this is 10 years before Kirk encountered him and people change (it could be argued that Carmel’s version is more insane than Wilson’s, and maybe we’re seeing why in Discovery). I loved the reference to Stella, his wife, which was a great call-forward to the TOS episode “I, Mudd”. Trivia: Carmel was supposed to reprise Mudd for an episode of TNG, but the actor died before it was filmed; I believe some aspects of what was planned for Mudd - including a scene where he was supposed to actually pay tribute to his frenemy, Captain Kirk - were later reused when they brought Scotty forward into the TNG era in “Relics”. So having Mudd appear in a modern-day Trek is an idea that’s been kicking around for 30 years.

Obviously, Mudd will be back and I’m looking forward to it. I’d rather he be the recurring baddie than the new Klingons. More on that in a moment.

I also liked the on-screen reference to Jonathan Archer, Christopher Pike and Robert April early in the episode. Robert April was established in the animated series as the very first captain of the Enterprise, predating Pike. Since TAS is not considered canon (or at least it wasn’t considered canon during the pre-2005 era; it might have changed since), this is the first “canonical” acknowledgement of April in live action. I appreciated that.

I also liked Capt. Lorca in this episode. After two weeks of being just “there”, Lorca came into his own with this episode. And his backstory is interesting.

But I have criticisms of this episode, and of the show itself as we hit week 5. Starting with a minor point, after four weeks of keeping a lid on language, the swearing in this episode was awkward and clearly put in there “because we can” - there was nothing charming or cool about the first use of the F-word (twice in the same scene, yet) in the Trek franchise. I’m not one to go “oooh, swearing, bad” (The Thick of It is one of my favourite TV shows, for god’s sake), but there’s a time and place, and it just didn’t work - it came across as vulgar and awkward. If they’re going to have people swear in Discovery, fine, but don’t make it feel like “hey, we can swear now!” Torchwood ran into this same issue - and the swearing during Series 1 felt unnatural as a result. If they want Lorca and his crew to turn the air blue, they should get Armando Iannucci in to show them how it’s done.

What will be the deal-breaker for me is if this show continues to be populated with characters I don’t give a damn about. I like Michael (who was for the first time not the focus of an episode) and Lorca has potential - all the characters have potential - but 5 weeks in they should be further along than they are in terms of establishing them, even taking into account the two-episode prologue and the fact a core character only debuted this week.

Five weeks in, and without cheating online, I still don't remember the names of most of the main characters because they’ve made so little impression on me. Michael is fine, Lorca is fine, and I know the new guy is named Tyler (mainly because I’m curious as to whether he’s related to Jose Tyler of Christopher Pike’s Enterprise in “The Cage”), but the rest - by now they should have made enough of an impression for me to at least remember their names, not just call them “Michael’s roommate”, “the jerk who runs the spore drive and who might or might not be the chief engineer but we can’t tell”, “Odo 2.0”, “the doctor who lives with the spore drive guy and who I thought was the ship’s doctor until he mentioned that he answers to a chief medical officer who we’ve yet to see”, “the incompetent who got herself killed by the spore monster last week in a scene Seth MacFarlane would have rejected as too silly”, “the roboty woman on the bridge who kinda looks like Nebula from Guardians of the Galaxy,” and “the woman whose head is half shaved”. In fact I think this was the first episode in which those last two individuals were actually identified by names on screen.

By comparison, I had not just the Orville character names but their functions nailed down by Episode 2 of that show. And I had much more invested in them as characters, even early on (and by “Krill” I find I want to know more about what’s happening with Borus and Klyden and their child, Alara’s love life, and whether Ed and Kelly are going to get back together or not). With Discovery it’s almost as if they’re all being set up to be redshirts. (As it is, I really don’t expect to Michael’s roommate - I looked it up; her name is Tilly - to survive the season. Too much telegraphing about her being naive and having dreams for the future.) Maybe they are if the show is taking the Game of Thrones “anyone can die” approach and if there is a reason why we’ve never heard of Spock having an adopted human sister before now.

When I started writing this very long (sorry!) blog entry, I mentioned an apples-to-apples comparison between Discovery and Orville. This week, “Choose Your Pain” and “Krill” both involved captains boarding enemy vessels and learning more about the bad guys. And it really drove home the fact that the new Klingons are rather boring. Never mind the different make-up and all that - I’m sure they’ll come up with a workaround to explain that the same way Enterprise did back in 2005 with the Augments story arc (and I didn’t miss the fact they name-dropped eugenics this week) - they just don’t have the spark of the Klingons of old, or even the Abramsverse versions. Not saying there aren‘t promising signs - I kind of like the fact the show is shipping cult leader Voq with the female officer L’Rell. Every episode so far has included focus on the Klingons. But in only one episode, The Orville managed to develop a very well-rounded picture of the Krill, making them relevant, interesting, sympathetic, and “villains” we want to see more of. The Klingons on Discovery? I want more Harry Mudd, fewer Klingons. Of course, a big difference between Orville and Discovery is the use of humour. Discovery pretty much has none, while Orville is a dramedy. Which was driven home during the climax of the Discovery episode when we were actually treated to an unexpected piece of Orville-like comedy when the female Klingon captain, who has the hots for Tyler. Encountering him trying to escape, she let off with something like “After all we mean to each other, you’re leaving?” (not an exact quote). It was a funny moment, but poorly timed. Seriously, we’re supposed to see her as a threat (and an ongoing one seeing as Lorca doesn’t finish her off as opposed to every other Klingon he encounters), and she spouts dialogue more appropriate for a spoof? Compare to The Orville, which usually knows when to be funny and when not to be. Having Ed Mercer and Gordon Molloy facing the possibility of having to kill a bunch of Krill children in order to save a human colony, and Mercer saying “If we kill those kids ... we have no souls” was a far more hard-hitting and dramatic moment than anything “Choose Your Pain” offered. And once things got serious, they got serious. The ending of “Krill” was chilling as Mercer realized that instead of saving a bunch of kids, he created a bunch of future enemies instead, instantly giving the series a long-term aspect as the potential is there for it to revisit this fact years from now, if it survives that long. The Avis rent-a-car jokes were funny, and the opening sequence where Bortus does his best Matter-Eater Lad impersonation (Google it) was cute, and I loved the gag where Ed starts talking before Alara can open a channel, but it was the serious moments that made “Krill” stand out. The next episode looks serious as well as it casts a long-overdue spotlight on Lt. LaMarr.So to sum up: I’m not ready yet to say “Discovery sucks” as some have. I don’t think it does, despite all I’ve written here. It has issues, yes, but every Trek series has issues and teething pains. I am concerned that the characters aren’t gelling for me and that’s what’s going to make me decide to keep watching in the long term. On the other hand, The Orville is proving to be a great show that also has had its rough patches and its teething pains, but it managed to hit the ground running a lot faster in terms of establishing characters and stories and tone. I am in the market for a sci-fi show to replace Doctor Who, and so far The Orville is winning the battle against Star Trek Discovery. But I’m not willing to write Discovery off ... yet.

#star trek discovery #the orville #calling it as i see it

23 notes · View notes