#or should we not be so militant and just let ppl enjoy

[datingdonovan]

most stoziers are good but then there’s the ones that make Eddie seem like this really bad person just to have a reason to put reddie to the side. Eddie doesn’t have to be a bad person to not be in a relationship with Richie. Stan doesn’t have to be this mean guy constantly and then be nice to the only one he likes. Stan would die for his friends. He DID die for his friends. Eddie did, too. They aren’t these evil or mean guys. This took a turn but those are just my thoughts

thank u for this its so true. yeah i feel like for some ppl if they don’t ship one of the ~popular~ or ~obvious~ ships theres an impulse to try to make excuses for themselves and/or other ppl as to why they ship what they do. like idk for me as much as i like any ship i can pretty much always be found reading many MANY fics that are contradictory/rival ships/etc and i think to some extent i did at one point feel weird about reading all these contradictory things and i would sometimes make excuses about other ships to try to validate whatever i was interested in at the time but nowadays im like, at the end of the day i can like what i want and im just doin me. i know some other ppl are very much not like that and they can be very territorial ab certain ships and character traits and whatnot so maybe thats why people use these kinds of arguments to validate to others what they ship. but at the end of the day i sorta feel like everybody has a right to do them WITHOUT the need to make these kind of excuses. imo they are all great characters. obviously doesn’t mean we can’t have criticisms of them but yeah, i think ur right, there’s no need to like paint them as bad just to justify another ship. i hope ppl can feel free to just ship what they want bc in the end they’re all fictional characters and ur interested in their dynamics and we’re all writing stuff that a lot of the time is really only loosely based on a book ol stephen wrote while he was on drugs a long time ago (almost 40 yrs??? thats WILD). but on the flip side like, some ppl write fic where certain losers are really genuinely mean and like it’s for the aesthetic or plot or w/e of the fic, and then you get into the issue of like can/should u write certain AU fics and keep the characters’ personalities mostly intact or is it ok to get a lil (or wildly) ooc based on ur fic, and is that even rly that bad considering that, again, theyre all fictional characters and everybody’s sorta using them for their own purposes lol. i know lots of ppl in this fandom also just block what they dont wanna see and thats fair play too like this is all for our enjoyment and however u wanna enjoy it provided its harmless i guess its valid.

ps if this ask is lowkey @ the last ask i answered i do have some other thoughts on this ask in conversation with that anon’s take but this is already way too long lol so maybe ill post them elsewhere

anyways this is a really interesting discussion to have bc as someone who studies english lit and creative writing for many hours a day like, if someone came at me with a mischaracterization of something i read or wrote for class, i’d probably kinda freak. but when it’s in this context where in so many ways we all just completely disregard the canon and are just doing it for fun, are the rules different? and does that imply some kind of value judgement on IT vs. something like, idk Jane Austen? or is it just a different mode of working with the material like if I were to work with IT in an academic setting (i REALLY DO WISH) i’d obviously treat it just as seriously as anything else. i guess these are things ppl have to decide and make judgements on for themselves and what’s rly impt to them. these are also things i should tell one of my contemporary lit profs ab bc i think she’d love that im having these thoughts right now lol.

[dominicvail]

in another world, ncis:la feeds us with actual Au episodes every now and again, but our world is imperfect and we just have to imagine this stuff here, but like, if this did happen i would Require these au’s;

A Bowling Au. Everything is played with exactly the same tone as the actual show, so it’s usually laughable but Sometimes super dramatic except instead of like, a terrorist attack, a rival team bowled a strike. Sam used to be on a super militant and well respected team and hasn’t gotten over that half the time people don’t know the name of this new one. He believes bowling balls should be polished before repacking, Every time, that Deeks just shoves his in the same reusable plastic bag he’s had for 8 years Pains him. G’s back story is Identical to the show except this isn’t a spy genre anymore so ppl just think he’s like, the super above it all edge lord because of it all. 

Teacher AU. Sam teaches all kinds of advanced math, G is a gym teacher who acts really stupid all the time to stop people giving him responsibilities he doesn’t want. Despite this, he is often dragged in to cover for language classes because somebody figured out he’s a language like, genius or something. He covered a drama class one time, too, and was scarily good at it. Deeks actually Is the drama teacher, the kids all Love him. Kensi teaches all kinds of physical design classes, like, anything to do with engines, she does woodwork, things like that, she’s not As liked among the student body (i mean, the boys and gays love her, but her jokes are Weird) but she isn’t classed as one of the asshole teachers. Eric teaches IT or whatever u call computing, he’s friendly, won’t put up with crap, but like, next to nobody understands him because he’s not good at dumbing things down. Nell doesn’t teach at first, was just an administrator dealing with all the complicated things, but sometimes substitutes, she’s tiny and Scary and is not a substitute u can walk all over, the ones who tried can’t figure out How she got them to behave??? but it happened. Mr Deeks and Ms Blye are the ‘will they or won’t they’ teacher couple of the school only for deeks to accidentally let slip that his wife is better at long distance running than he is and they all work it out that they’ve been married the whole time. Mr Beale and Miss Jones become the next will they won’t they couple except it embarrasses them so much all they do is blush at each other now. Hetty is the principal/head teacher. She is rarely seen, to be feared, but always watching. 

Star Trek AU; Hetty is the captain of the ship they’re on, but the show is more about the main away team. Is the team’s reputation as bad as section 31 (the shady(tm) part of starfleet), No! Is their reputation necessarily good? No. In fact, they frequently butt heads with section 31 (we’re calling them the equivalent of the cia in the show, they can be friends but... yeah), however their results are rarely questionable and they save many, many lives. It is highly unlikely anyone will ever be promoted. Sam is a Vulcan, calm waters... except if you make him snap, Vulcans have deep running emotions. Deeks is just. The Most Obnoxious Human to him Ever. G is half betazed, it’s why he’s so good at reading people.  Eric is a member of a species that is super social but have few social graces similar to humans so is always super awkward. Kensi has a tragic backstory where she thinks the borg got her dad when she was a kid but it was a Cover Up. I would make Nell non human also, but i will be honest, i am running out of trek aliens i can make her (klingon nell is a Hilarious concept tho). Hetty is Bajoran. 

James Bond AU. Everything is the same except they all use bad english accents the whole way through the episode. 

I am a massive fan of alternate takes on soulmate au’s, i don’t like romantic soulmate au’s, but unusual takes on them are my Jam. In this one, people have soul marks from people who will have the most profound effects on them in their lives on their bodies. This doesn’t necessarily mean the effects will be good, just profound and altering. The team realise they all have marks from each other on their bodies, and are elated to find out all those marks are Positive effects. 

Though i will admit the ‘see in colour when you meet your soulmate’ one would be hilarious with legitimately Any of the partners on the show. Kensi: See’s deeks, learns what blue is. Kensi: spirals into deep denial and yells at him a lot. 

Queer Eye AU where the Fab 5 are called in when Hetty nominates her team for a makeover! Bobby redecorates the boat shed, is asked by hetty to keep what is already bulletproof, bulletproof. And to keep the trap door. And not to worry about any bloodstains and how they got there. Tan’s discovers how hard it is to style around Sam’s muscles. Tries very hard to stop Nell from mixing prints. Experiences horror at Eric’s wardrobe, Nell is shown in BG laughing. Every single man exhibits true, actual horror at the idea of JVN changing their hair and pack into Sam’s car and run away to hide in the woods. Nell and Kensi enjoy the salon appointment in their absence. Karamo manages to negotiate getting paid literally twice his previous rate by just having to try to fix these idiots’ lives and deserves every penny. Antoni trying to teach them to make fun and not disgusting food doesn’t end well. Deeks can cook but likes to Experiment and 97% of his food is awful. Sam can cook, but it’s all bland muscle building/health food. The rest of them are incompetent, set the kitchen on fire, are caught ordering chinese on the sly, ruin 5 pots and pans with burn marks. They open the new boatshed design by interrogating a criminal they just picked up on a case, he points out how fabulous the decor is as he’s led to the interrogation room. Everybody cheers. The team provided snacks in said interrogation Could be considered a torture technique, tho. 

The team go on jeopardy. I have never seen this game show and have no idea how it works, but i bet it would be funny so it is a bullet point. 

Buffy the vampire slayer au, Kensi is a vampire slayer who Happens to just be an ncis agent. She does her normal job but also tries to keep the vampire world a secret from her team mates. Callen: uh, kensi... why do you spend so much of your free time hanging around cemeteries? Kensi: uh... Bat watching???

Superhero AU but they all have really dumb powers. Sam can raise the temperature of any body of water from a lake to a puddle by ten degrees in temperature whenever he wants. G can spontaneously grow and un-grow his hair, if he gets drunk and makes it super long he has ringlets. Deeks can hover exactly one foot in the air, no higher, is designated ‘grab that off the high shelf’ guy. Kensi can sense sugar. This helps in no ways but essentially makes her a human version of one of the medical alert dogs for diabetics. Eric can make anybody around him mildly sleepy if he wants to. He never wants this. It doesn’t even send them to sleep, they just yawn more often and that makes Him yawn more. Nell can speak to cows, since she lives in the middle of Los Angeles, this is not helpful. Plus, cows mostly just talk about grass and are really very boring. Granger could create rainbows out of thin air which was obviously in perfect sync with his personality. Hetty can detach her toes at will. This is only useful in the case of uncomfortable shoes, but can be awkward if somebody routinely searches your bag and finds them in there and arrests you for being a creepy toe cutting off serial killer. 

i would watch it, s’all i’m saying.

[6ad6ro]

um so… i woke up thinking of this old friend. she was like best friends w my bad ex? like i used to hang out w her like crazy. she was rly nice? mostly? tho she def had this issue where she didn’t rly know what she wanted in life. and let other ppls warped judgements of “how ppl should act” rub off on her.

like i remember times she would more or less call me a lazy piece of shit to my face. like it was somehow “understood”? but then i’d be like “why are u calling me that?” and she wouldn’t know. bc it wasn’t her actual opinion. she liked who i was. idk she was just rly confused. i think her brother was a cop. her dad was emotionally neglecting and like conservative or militant? i remember her always wanting to smoke pot but also saying “drugs are bad™”. she was someone who u could tell always wanted to be free but was held back by the opinions of the people around her.

especially her on again off again bf? i… didn’t like him. he wanted to grow up to be a politician. he only listened to classic rock. he looked and acted like a conservative wanabee eric foreman from that 70s show, but somehow even worse. he had her convinced that her dream was to be “a loving housewife”… it made me sick. i remember how he tried to convince her to stop hanging out w her best friend and me JUST bc she smoked pot. bc “she was an evil hippie and bad”. i mean tbh she SHOULD have stopped hanging out w my bad ex, but for completely dif reasons. like he was def that kinda guy. a selfish, immature, stubborn, self-righteous idiot. but he was the first guy to ever rly like her. and she had… self esteem issues. i remember how she would… was always waiting for him to decide to wanna go out w her. she seemed so lonely.

her and i were kinda friends separately from my bad ex (lets call her “A”). so one time i remember she ended up coming over to hang w me n watch rocky horror in my room? it was rly fun tbh!! we were having a great time! it was totally innocent! but i remember at one point she like… got weird. got up. and was like “im sorry i think i’m being a bad person i gotta go”. and left? i didn’t get it at the time? or rather… i think i denied it. she clearly liked me, wanted something to happen that night, and felt like a bad friend for having those thoughts. i never asked her about it but looking back it was p obvious. also A was a control freak n just a bad person… so i wouldn’t be surprised if she told L to stay away from me. even tho A was constantly cheating on me n using everyone around her etc. idk it was complicated.

i also remember another time before her and that guy that became her bf (lets call her “l” and him “m”)… i remember there was some small party at my house and for some horribly embarrassing reason my bad ex (we were still together then) convinced me to mess around w her under a blanket in same room as our other friends? we were all v v drunk. i guess it made others in room feel v lonely n so L and this other girl started like… both making out w the one other guy in the room? it was bizarre. that kind of stuff is fine in some circumstances? but this was rly unhealthy. i remember the guy felt bad and told the other girl he had to stop bc he had always rly liked L and wanted to see where things would go w her? other girl said she was fine w it (and knowing her persona it easily was?) and he ended up napping on floor w L. next day i think she woke up, completely regretted what happened, and ran back to M. it kinda sucked for guy bc he rly cared about her but she never even was willing to talk about what had happened. to her it was just a drunken mistake (i knew she kinda liked him back but obv she was scared).

even w all that stuff, L was a constant member of our hangout group for like… 7 or 8 years straight? idk! it was always rly fun w her! even if, looking back, A constantly was ruining all our fun w her insane bullshit. i have fond memories of 3am park hangouts n just roaming around talking n going on adventures… i’d never cheat on a partner. never have, never will. but i think i did have like… feelings for L that i always ignored? that part of her that… wanted freedom? from those weird family’s/bf’s/society’s ideals that she let chain her down? it was attractive. she was a nice person just doin her best.

anyways i remember around when A and i finally broke up for good (only a month after my dad died, if u wanna know how awful of a person A was). and she ended up taking me aside n warning me that A had been cheating on w me w another guy, but it’d gotten serious w him. and A of course was lying and stringing me along so she could get money n sex from me etc. A using me was p common. but L had had enough and “betrayed A” (did a v nice thing) and told me. i think that was… really what set in motion A and i being done for good. that helped wake me up about what a horrible person A was. and had always been. i’ll always be grateful to L for that. that must’ve been hard for her. and i think her and A’s like 10 year friendship died over that. which rly was a good thing like A was a terrible person.

anyways fast forward like 2? 3?? 4 years? L had gone off to a college out of state w her boyfriend M. she… followed him around. no judgement, but it prob wasn’t good for her. i was in an apartment in another city and me and A had been DONE™ for years. i was still def hurt from the 8+ years of abuse, but i was def over her at least. seeing other ppl regularly. it was def a weird time for me but… that’s another story.

L and i hadn’t rly talked in years. i just didn’t rly associate w ppl A still hung around. i never knew her and L had stopped being friends or i prob woulda kept up w L. i don’t think L and i cut off contact on purpose, but it was just one if those “things”. but L hit me up outta the blue. was like “ back in town do u wanna hang?” and we did! it was rly nice seeing her! we went out and about. idk. we started hanging for a bit. but she… idk she clearly rly enjoyed my company? but also… had those weird judgements. idk.

one time we were hanging and she was at my place and saw all the alcohol i had layin around and was like “hey uhhh can i have some?” and i was like “hehe okay i guess we can drink” and ordered a pizza and we just hung out.

idk but before we got drunk she finally told me why she was back. M, the guy she had followed to college, had done the gross, stereotypical dude thing of breaking up w her right after they both graduated. i got a vibe he had been cheating on her all throughout too. he rly was the type. and as we drank we talked about it. i felt so bad for her. she vented all night. and idk all i remember was we were both v drunk and i think i was… idk why my head was in her lap? but she was playing w my hair. and idk. we kissed. things happened. she seemed so happy w it! i was too. i even stupidly cracked a joke “i bet A would be rly pissed if she saw us rn” and we both laughed. i always regretted sayin it tho bc its not like i was doin it to get back at A.

but i remember we were in my bed making out bc i had accidentally gotten aggressive w her n slammed her into a wall n started kissing her? so hard her nose started bleeding? i felt awful but she LOOOVED it and idk we somehow wound up in bed. idk i kinda regret this. bc… i was having a hard time around then and… just sleeping w all my friends? it just became… clockwork. i would do what i thought my friends wanted me to do regardless of how i felt. i had become kinda a slut.

so i remember like… making out but then i started to escalate things? and i think fir a split second she sobered up and was like “wait lets cool this down a little”. and i was like “okay no prob” and we both tried to go for a walk n find a park? we walked hand in hand and she kept telling me how happy she was? like how… this was the kinda stuff M would never do with her? she was just smiling a lot. it was cute. but i was so drunk n still fairly new to area, so i took her in wrong direction from the park. we ended up giving up n just walking back.

we got back in and thats i think when she sobered up mostly but i wad still out of it? and she realised her dog hadn’t been fed. it was def a partial excuse but she rly loved that dog so i could tell it was REAL guilt. i felt bad bc i tried to take her hand n go back into my room bc i wanted her to stay n cuddle? i was just drunk. i wasn’t forceful, but i shoulda been like “oh that’s fine!” but tbh i was also a touch worried she was too drunk to drive. well anyways… she left.

later we did have a looong talk about it. like… she ended up going to try and get back with M again (i still will never know what she saw in him like he rly used her n treated her bad like even going so far as to ask her advice on dating other girls after they broke up). but idk i thought she was smart enough to end things w him, and could tell her and i had feelings, so i tried to stay a lil closer than friends? idk what i told her but it was along the lines of “we can stay friends but if things happen sometimes it’s okay w me”. i look back on it w embarrassment but i guess it wasn’t that bad a thing to say?

but rly it was mostly a drunken mistake. and she was scared. and wanted to cut it off. she couldn’t end things w M like she was still torally in love w him even tho he had abandoned her. tbh i know what that’s like. well anyways i remember a few hangouts later she just… bailed on me? in a rly mean way? i had gone to pick her up from her house (idk 30 min drive each way) and she just… totally stood me up. i was parked at her house like texting her wondering where she was? and she sent me a text like “sorry something came up”. and wouldn’t tell me what happened and i got annoyed and drove home.

i have a feeling now that like M had… shown back up in her life and she sorta… threw me away to run back to him? i mean i can’t take it too personally bc she woulda done that to ANYONE. i don’t remember what happened after that but we just stopped talking again. i saw later on fb that her and M had gotten engaged or married?? idek? idk if her and i are still fb friends or if one of us blocked the other or what? i don’t remember.

but idk. i hope she’s well. i hope M got WAYYY better. or she left him. or idk. i wouldn’t even know how to contact her. i’m almost afraid to. like bc i… could see her giving up on her dreams and just being that housewife to him. even if she was mildly content doing that, i know she’d never be happy. and it’s so unlikely that he’d have grown to be good to her. i just… hope she’s doing well and is okay and happy. idk why i woke up worrying about her. it’s been so long… i’m such a dif person now. idk. time is weird.

[the-cryptographer]

re: voltron s5-8

- Ah, yeah, there were a lot of plot holes and unbelievably convenient coincidences going on to keep the story rolling. But I’m not going to be talking about that just because there are so many and it’s the type of thing you must handwave to enjoy the show and I’m okay with that.

- Lotor family drama was pretty great. I’m glad we got the great, horrible filicide/patricide battle. Like, damn, it was great. And Lotor lighting the pyre at the Kral Zera was also very hype. Still not as great as him terribly rejecting Haggar/Honerva. I’m not sure all of these threads were seen to the best conclusion given how hype they all were individually, but I’m in general pretty glad with the way Lotor’s villainy happens and gets revealed to the crew. The honest feelings and affection for Allura getting flipped into ‘if you won’t go along with what I say, I’ll kill you’ was pretty frighteningly believable to me.

- Axca’s endless roulette of deciding who she’s going to align herself with today was also pretty great. I like that moment when her, Ezor, and Zethrid all are like ‘okay no’ to Lotor’s mad rambling and try to bail. Quality.

- Haggar/Honerva might be my favourite character in this canon though (competing with Lance and Coran) I like how competent she is, and how much we see of her personally struggling with the changes in her psyche after being affected by the quintessence. The choice to change her back was really excellent, and I love what it brought out in her, and I hope we get to see a lot of her in the final season.

- Monsters & Mana episode was really amazing. I’m sad it wasn’t the real Shiro playing - but it was still so IC and so fuckin hilarious that he kept on playing Paladin. Best episode.

- Gameshow episode was also good - Pidge’s run of the minigolf course in particular. But it can’t really compete with Monsters & Mana. A low point of it for me was Keith choosing Lance simply because he didn’t want to get stuck with Lance for eternity. Cold bro.

- The timey wimey stuff wasn’t too bad, but it was one of the contributors to what I felt was pretty uneven pacing. I kind of feel like we should have seen some of the stuff with Romelle and the stuff with Keith and his mom and the space wolf first hand, instead of rushing through a lot of it and then presenting the rest of it in flashbacks.

- Not so much the moment everyone was talking about, but The Black Paladins was really emotional in the end. idk like, as frustrating as it is seeing Keith be terribly reckless and consistently willing to sacrifice himself to save Shiro and everyone else, I do feel like it had payoff in the final scene of the episode. hit me hard for those times my teachers/coaches stood up for me. Yeah, Keith- if only you’d stop giving up on yourself.

- Uh, bruh, Earth isn’t in the centre of the Milky Way Galaxy. It’s all the way over to the side on the edge of the spiral. You guys seem to be headed in the wrong direction.

- This show really be overestimating how much I care about the extended Holt family. I think it got off on the wrong foot with the kind of overemotional bait & switch regarding Matt. But there’s also the issue of Pidge getting really reckless and inconsiderate whenever they’re threatened and putting them above everyone else which is... very real and understandable. But at the same time it’s kind of frustrating to watch, especially when the first thing I know about them is they make Pidge act this way before I’m given any reason to know or care about them.

- And I know it’s really just a coincidence, but how Admiral Sanda was handled really rubbed me the wrong way, especially how the other woman she’s (unintentionally?) juxtaposed against is Coleen Holt. Like, first you have this dutiful mother and wife who waited on Earth for 3+ years for her husband to return and she doesn’t stray at all and welcomes him back and supports him in every way he needs. And then Admiral Sanda is this woman who’s actually has rank and power and she’s constantly being vilified and told she’s unfit for her position by all the men working around her. And these are the heros and villains in Sam Holt’s story. When I think about it, there might not be a single woman on this show who’s actually at the top rung of the leadership hierarchy who’s not misaimed or evil. And, yeah, that kind of bothers me a bit. I mean, obviously on an in-universe level, Sanda is a pill. But on a meta level- You get to her death scene. And that she’s, like, the only person who the show actually lets die on screen in the fight to save Earth, as part of some death equals redemption arc... Like, it’s unrealistic and idealistic how many people didn’t die on this show - and that’s fine bc idealistic kids’ show - but Sanda is an acceptable target. If only she had listened to the men who were her intellectual superiors, boo hoo. It felt really obnoxious to me all around.

- Allurance lost some points with me. I still ship it, which is more than I can say for about 90% of the other relationships for this canon/fandom, but I’m decidedly more meh about it now. I know Lance is just a teenager and all, and it’s not out of character or something I couldn’t see happening, but the narrative going along with stuff about how ‘none of the other girls are like her, she’s just so speshul’ is the kind of thing that irritates me. As for Allura responding to Lance’s feelings - it was believable to me given a lot of the pieces that were put in place - but I think more time should have been devoted to following Allura’s feelings and thoughts through the whole of season 7, both in regards to this ship and otherwise. I see why other people say it felt rushed.

- And Axca/Keith is a cute battle couple, you guys are just bitter.

- Buuut, I totally think ppl have reason to be bitter. I don’t know exactly who all was responsible. And I know the creators apologised, and I don’t think they should have had to, necessarily. But, at the very least, some of the marketing decisions here were queerbaiting. The show has gone out of its way to market itself to its lgbt+ audience and fans and has created a lot of hype around Shiro and the show being gay aaaand, we got some subtext, a dead ex-boyfriend, some evil lesbians, and two strongly hinted het ships with the show’s major cast. Yeah. Even though I like those het ships, I get the bitterness.

- And... I think there’s a marked difference between the way the narrative treats Adam and the way it’s treated the other Paladin’s loved ones over the course of the show. Like, god, we’ve gotten so much of Pidge’s family drama. We got a whole episode of Pidge crying over Matt being dead when he wasn’t even dead. We got a lot of Hunk trying to come to terms with not being able to see his family at the Garrison this season. We got quite a bit of Veronica this season, and have touched on Lance missing his family since season one. Keith got several episodes about his mother and the lead up to and effects of his father dying. Coleen Holt waits for Sam Holt to return from space. But with Shiro we get this breakup and then Adam dies and it’s brushed over in a couple of minutes? Like, I’m not saying Adam shouldn’t have died necessarily, or that Shiro’s relationship with Adam shouldn’t have been on the rocks. I’m just saying it’s hard to really divorce this from the fact that the relationships straight ppl have are societally valued so much higher than the relationships lgbt+ ppl have, and this show isn’t really disagreeing with that in terms of what it continues to show us. And, like, I’m not angry and don’t really care all that much, like- I stopped looking for mass media to validate me in this way a long time ago. And I prefer to see myself represented in media through angst as opposed to nice, happy relationships anyhow. But, like, I’m tired of hearing that people /shouldn’t/ feel upset or betrayed by this, lmao. Like, yeah, there are totally valid reasons for people to feel that way. And it’s not like feelings even need to be validated to be there and deserve respected anyhow, smh.

- But, yeah, I’m serious. I’m over the moon about Ezor/Zethrid and I love them so much more than I could have possibly loved any heroic gays. I hope we get a lot of them being their wonderful selves and living to tell the tale next season :’)

- Hunk/Shay is also still good and quality.

- Also, this isn’t really a failing of Season 7, so much as just my preference but- I kind of wish the show hadn’t moved back to Earth. Because one of the major draws the show has for me is the weird alien culture exploration aspect of it. Without that it’s just kind of one string of ‘intricate plans to overthrow Galra -> intricate plans fail and the enemy seizes the upper hand -> heroes come through with a way to take back the upper hand -> enemies come up with a way to seize the upper hand back’ and so on and so forth in a ridiculous escalation of who can turn into the biggest dumbest giant robot and save the day from arbitrary time limit the fastest. And, like, I realise a lot of fans are here for the giant mech battles but I am so not. So I hope we get away from the ultra militant save earth stuff soon and get back to weird worldbuilding shenanigans soon <.<;;