#please feel free to add to this discussion i love speculating like this and getting my hopes up

[ryo-hirakawa]

top 5 f1 prospects (anywhere in the feeder series)

omg thank u for this nonnie. alright so this will be kids i acc think can make it to f1 and not necessarily my fav juniors rn. holds up a sign that says "ask me about my youths for hypercars recommendations"

5. victor martins

putting him 5th because i fear putting him higher will jinx him and ogs know vic is one of my main guys. has had a pretty ass start to the season which i am not forgiving art gp for btw, but if este and pierre really both go "fuck it" then victor could get a chance. but it'd only happen if both seats are vacant bc there's still jack. honourable mention to jack who did not make top 5 simply bc i like victor more but he's the 6th. oh also if jack gets the f1 seat but vic doesn't i would love to recommend him to a certain affiliated hypercar team. in the 36 bc im attached to 35's lineup already #thealiens

4. zane maloney

f2 championship leader rn. i know it's incredibly early days and he has to contend with theo BUT if he does win f2 this year he would have done it in 2 years as opposed to theo's 3. although his case will only truly be made if theo flops in superformula (probably measured by performance relative to other toyota cars rather than the whole grid, but if ayumu beats him it Won't look good.) anyway if the above two things do happen zane's in a real shout for an audi seat. come on audi you can't be serious about hulk rn can ya...

3. arvid lindblad

why not the loveable red bull f2 lineup? imo it's the timing; isack and pepe are too close to make it to the next big rb shuffle, but arvid is 16, youngest f3 winner ever, and has the time to polish the rougher edges to be the prime choice for the baby bull seat when it becomes vacant again. also arvid is good although he panicked at the end of his f4 campaign and handed it to kacper. but isack also panicked at the end of his f3 campaign and i still rate him so. also hi isack have you considered hypercar (i know pepe already has)

2. liam lawson

pre-f1 debut i would think liam was doomed to be forgotten by the red bull machine because it's not easy to get your foot in the door. but because he did, and also because of the general wackiness of the red bull driver situation rn, he could stand a real chance. most likely he will take ric's seat. in the event they decide to show both ric and checo the door, they probably won't put him straight in the red bull. then again maybe verstappen will veto sainz jr again and then they'd have no choice (they won't put yuki in the second rb. i don't trust like that.)

1. ollie bearman

lil bro's destiny is all but written for him at this point, i'm very confident he will get a haas seat. whether he manages to make it into ferrari will imo depends less on how the charles/lewis lineup does and more on whether he can get to grips with the beast that is haas. once upon a time mick schumacher won euro f3 and f2 but what did haas do for him? exactly. although he is the best fda prospect of his generation (i am so sorry dino) so i am more inclined to think he will swim rather than sink

EDIT HOW DID I FORGET ABOUT KIMI ANTONELLI. although i think the f1 community as a whole is hyping him up too much and he deserves some breathing space to do what he does at his own pace so i am not ranking him 🫶

[aoitrinity]

Why Do I Have to Feel Like a Fucking Conspiracy Theorist -- OR -- How I Find a Semblance of Peace on Sunday Night

I’m also going to start this out with a GIANT DISCLAIMER.

I am about to theorize about what may have happened to the SPN finale. I have absolutely no insider knowledge. I am merely speculating here based on the panels and a bunch of Twitter and Tumblr posts that I have been reading over the last few days. If you are not in a good place to read such things, TURN BACK PLEASE. Go take care of yourself and your mental health. You and your feelings are valid and deserve to be handled gently right now.

Additionally, if you are here to give me shit for being unhappy with the ending, please walk away as well. I am here to reach out and share my feelings with people who might be struggling to make sense of something that upset some of us in very deep-seated ways. I am not here to bother you or critique you or tell you that you’re lesser because you liked the ending. If you felt it was good, then go enjoy it.

Long-ass post beneath the cut, everyone.

Alrighty folks...I debated whether or not to do this because I have been spiraling down the hell that is the SPN finale since Thursday. The travesty of what happened to our show--to this beloved show that seemed to have been so perfectly and precisely written for at least four years that it had basically already paved its own tarmac on which to land its plane and we all thought we knew exactly what we were going to get. And then we didn’t. We had a nigh Cas-less and entirely Eileen-less ending. We had no goodbye between Cas and Jack. We had Dean dying young after finally finding his freedom, only to ascend to heaven with no one but Bobby. We had the weird, weird, weird incest-y death scene. We had the bridge crane shot thing because...sure. You do you, Robert Singer.

It was so terrible, so truly awful, and I couldn’t seem to square any of it with anything we had known going in. I tossed and turned and cried and didn’t eat or sleep all weekend. I spent hours just reloading tumblr and twitter, going to the Misha panel, reading and reading and listening and trying to figure out what the fucking hell is going on because I needed to know exactly where to direct my anger. And after a fuckton of talking with @winchester-reload, I think we have at least a very plausible theory about what happened here--I’m laying it out below as much for my own peace of mind as anything else, because otherwise all of these thoughts are going to continue to spin around in my head for weeks and I won’t be able to do jack shit.

Now to start off, unfortunately I do think Dean was slated to die from the beginning of this season. I don’t know WHY they thought that was the best way to go, and I wish they had listened to Jensen on this one. Part of me wonders if it was an order from on high based on the discussion between Becky and Chuck earlier this season--the writers knew it wasn’t a great choice, but they were trying to signal to us that we should feel free to write our own endings to the story because they’d be better (I can wax poetic on the signs of why many of the writers probably wanted Dean to live, but that’s another post). I’m not defending that choice by any means, just laying it out there that I think they didn’t necessarily all want to kill Dean like they did.

However, what I THINK I can explain now is what happened with Misha and why we got so jerked around with Cas’s story. Consider what we know (I can’t immediately source all of it, but I did my best):

At the end of episode 15x19, Lucifer has been returned to the Empty after being killed AGAIN. He talks with Cas. Maybe harasses him a bit about Dean, idk. But then...Jack shows up. New God Jack. And he picks up Cas and pulls him out of the Empty, leaving Lucifer behind, because seriously. Fuck that guy (also leaving behind his abusive father is character growth for Jack, so yay for that).

-Misha was contracted to film 15 episodes this season. He was only in 14.

-Misha told Michael Sheen he had to go back to film 1.5 episodes after the shutdown in March. (Starts at 6:13)

-Misha was in Vancouver during filming of the finale.

-Mark P said at Darklight Con that the last scene he filmed was with Alex and Misha (and Mark P was only in episode 19).

-Misha implied that he was present for various filming moments, including Dean’s death (start at 35:15), and said that it felt like a “mini-reunion.”

-Various sources have mentioned that Jimmy Novak was supposed to be in the finale.

-After episode 18, Stands tweeted a fan who was angered and hurt by Cas's death that they could talk about the “bury the gays” issue after the finale aired.

-In episode 19 we know there were takes of the parking lot scene where the only thing fans observing could hear was Dean yelling “CAS” at Chuck (fuck I can’t find this one right now, but it’s definitely out there)

-Also in episode 19, we had a very strange, awkward montage at the end of the episode.

-In episode 20, we know there were a FUCKTON of missing scenes

-We also had no opening montage, but three other separate montages.

-Carry on My Wayward Son was played TWICE, back-to-back at the end of the episode.

-Episode 20 was shorter than normal and had surprisingly little dialogue. The pacing was VERY strange.

-The cast and crew has been almost completely silent about the finale since it came out. When they have spoken, it has been with an awkward excuse of “Uh...COVID?”

-Samantha Ferris has specifically noted that, despite the Harvelle’s being back in play and a big heaven reunion having been planned pre-COVID, neither she nor Chad Lindberg received any such invitation to return.

-Cas and Dean POP Funko figures were pictured together in a replica of Harvelle’s in 15x04.

NOW with all of this in mind (and I’m probably missing some stuff too because there is so much--feel free to add on to that list), please bear with me because here is what I think we were SUPPOSED to get POST-COVID (after it was determined that the reunion couldn’t happen because of the virus):

In episode 20, we start with our NORMAL OPENING MONTAGE, like always. It traces everything that happened during the season. We are reminded of Cas. The confession. Rowena. Eileen. Jack. Billie, God, the Empty, all of it. 

Things then follow along in the episode where they did up until Dean dies and wakes up in heaven. After his conversation with Bobby, he drives off to find Cas (who, in the script, was listed as “Jimmy Novak” in order to protect against script leaks--who wouldn’t want to do their best to avoid spoilers about the finale with the wrapping of a fifteen-year show?). He does indeed find Cas. We get Dean’s end of the confession. Hell, maybe we even get a kiss. And then Dean sets up his new heaven home in the recreated Harvelle’s. Maybe Cas even fucking moves in. 

Years pass. We get Sam having his life on Earth (still can’t explain why they cut Eileen and couldn’t even have Sam signing vaguely to the blurry brunette in the background; if anyone wants to take that on, go for it). Eventually, Cas tells Dean that it’s almost Sam’s time. Dean takes Baby and goes to meet Sam at the bridge. The cover of Carry on My Wayward Son plays during this much shorter sequence. End of episode.

But that’s not what we got. Instead, much of what I just wrote about was excised from the episode. The remnants were stitched together after shooting had been wrapped. Filler was added in the form of montages and long, unnecessary extra shots to get the episode to something approaching a reasonable length. 

But why? Why would they spend all that time and money and quarantining on Misha, only to almost completely cut him out of the finale? I struggled with why the fuck the CW would want this mammoth show to go down as the greatest queerbait in TV history when they had the chance to do something truly beautiful and monumental with it? It couldn’t just be sheer homophobia, right? Well, I think that factored into it, my friends, but here is where my head is at right now.

It was about cold, hard cash.

Now I could be wrong, but this is what I’m thinking at the moment: Supernatural is going off of the air. Supernatural, the CW’s cash cow for fifteen years. Sure there is still money to be made on blu-rays and merchandise and cons...but they need people watching their shows. They need that sweet advertising revenue. And you know what show they have about to premiere? A show that could, potentially, bring with it a chunk of that SPN revenue?

Walker.

And if any of you know anything about the original Walker Texas Ranger, you know that the show was predominantly a show about a very heterosexual white man being very excessively heterosexual. And for SOME REASON over the years, many of the execs at the CW still seem to think that this show, Supernatural, is really attractive to a lot of middle-American white men...whom they desperately want to watch this new show with this guy from Supernatural that they already know.

Now here’s where COVID fucked us. I think Destiel was greenlit by TPTB, at least in SOME form, before COVID. But then the pandemic happened, and they panicked. They got the cut of the last two episodes and watched them in their original, probably queer form. And then, the execs at CW looked at the economy. They looked at their cash cow, about to make its journey to the great beyond. And they looked at this new little calf Walker that they were so desperately worried about. And they made a choice.

They decided that it would be too risky to take the step with Destiel. They were worried about frightening off their ever-so-valuable hetero male demographic with the possibility that a traditionally masculine man in his 40s could be in love with another man in an overt way. It was homophobia mixed with greed, spun up by fear for their revenues because of COVID.

So they called in Singer, possibly Dabb, although I wouldn’t be surprised if they went straight to Singer. They told them that Destiel had to go: executive orders. And the only way to make it go in a way that removed any trace of what had been there was to rewrite what happened to Cas and cut him out from the last two episodes entirely. It was too late to reshoot anything. They had to just cut and stitch and fill with bullshit montages. 

They removed the scene at the end of 19, probably because Cas and Lucifer discussed Dean. All that was left of Misha there was his voice on that fake phone call. They may have cut other things too, but I would bet my life that they cut a scene from the end of the episode and replaced it with that very strange montage. Then they moved onto 20. They cut out every scene with Cas. And left in only two platonic mentions of him, neither made by Dean. They tried to imply that Cas might show up in Dean’s heaven at some point, but that was as far as the editors could go in the time they had. They filled in with montages, awkwardly long shots, anything they could do to fill all of those missing scenes.

And they even had to take the opening montage, because literally everything in it pointed to Cas being there at the end of it all. They wouldn’t be able to leave out his scenes, they were too critical to the season. They couldn’t cut his confession without raising eyebrows. So they cut the whole thing and moved “Carry On My Wayward Son” to one of the newly-added driving montages at the end. Which is why we awkwardly had both songs play back-to-back--again, such a strange choice unless they were out of options and couldn’t exactly buy rights to a new track or compose anything else.

And so we were left with the shadow of the finale that we deserved, that Cas and Dean deserved. We were left without resolution or happiness or words. Bobo told us the most important thing about happiness is just “saying it” and our characters were silenced without anyone ever knowing the truth.

I think the writers might have known and been given the new party line that “Misha never filmed, he couldn’t, sorry, it was COVID, no one’s fault!” But I don’t think most of the cast even knew it had happened until they watched the finale on Thursday with us (though they might have been confused why the bit from 15x19 was sliced, they could reasonably have assumed it was a time thing and also BL episodes don’t make sense anyway). Why do I say that?

Well, first of all, Misha started sending out a bunch of excited texts to fans with some old BTS pictures about an hour before the show started airing on EST. He also wanted his children to see the episode, his YOUNG children. Why would he show them such a traumatic episode if their Dad wasn’t in it? What if it was because he wanted them to witness what was going to be a monumental moment in queer television history that their DAD got to be a part of? And then that was all dashed.

Which is why I think the cast and crew went almost completely radio silent the next day. I don’t think they knew. And based on how they have been acting on social media since then, I think many of them are absolutely furious, but they have been silenced because of NDAs, because they want to find work again in a cutthroat industry, because they don’t want to bring down the hellfire of Warner Brothers Entertainment upon themselves. So the most we have gotten is a little acknowledgement from the MERCHANDISING COMPANY trying to validate our pain (god bless Shirts, she is a LIFESAVER) and a response to my salty tweet about keeping good stuff in the closet from Adam Williams (the VFX coordinator) that seemed to acknowledge the validity of my complaint.

Then there was a scramble behind the scenes, I would bet my life. Talking points were fed to the boys who had panels today, to CE, to all the cast and crew:

Toe the party line. Misha never filmed. This was always about COVID. Do not mention Destiel. Do not mention Dean’s feelings for Cas. Do not promote the Castiel Project or anything that validates the idea that this was anything less than a superb ending.

And that is why we have heard so little from the cast on this front, and what we have heard has been muddled and contradictory. That is why the writers are saying nothing. That is why we have been left adrift.

Now before I close this out, I do want to say that I really, genuinely do not think this was on the writers at all. I feel like they tried to give us the best ending that they could, in a writers room that we know is notorious for splitting along party lines about the overall story (BL and Singer, who have always been about the brothers and their man-pain vs. Dabb and the rest who always seemed to want more for them and for Cas). I think they did everything in their power to at least end with Dean and Cas happy together. If they could give us nothing else, they wanted to give us that. And then the network took it from them. From us. From everyone.

For the sake of fucking money. 

And the WORST PART OF IT ALL, for me, is that in the wake of this disaster, the fans have been left to try and figure out what happened. We have had to wade through a mire of conflicting information in the midst of all of our collective anger and grief over this garbage ending of a show many of us have loved and even relied on for YEARS, all the while wondering if we’re just fucking crazy, if we have all fallen collectively into the hole of conspiracy theories. That hurts ESPECIALLY badly because we have taken so many hits over the years from other groups on social media saying we were crazy for seeing things that weren’t there (especially Destiel), for writing meta and analyzing tropes and believing the evidence of our eyes and ears. The network has made us relive that entire nightmare WHILE processing our grief for a show we wanted so badly to celebrate and which instead we now have to mourn.

So again guys, I cannot prove that this is exactly what happened at all; this is simply my idea of what may have happened. But right now, it’s the most sense I can make from this mess, and to be honest, the act of typing it out has helped me enormously in my processing of it all. I feel like I can see more clearly, like I know where to target my outrage and where to direct empathy. I feel like just fucking maybe, I might be able to do my job tomorrow without bursting into tears at random moments. 

I really hope that this post has helped some of you to, in some small way, process this too. We get through this the way that Misha told us at his panel this morning, the way the writers have told us to do all season long...we throw out the story God gave us and we make it better. We write our characters the happy endings they deserve. 

We save them.

One last thing--if you have not already, please consider channeling your rage into a donation to one of the five causes our fandom has put together to pay tribute to our beloved show and to mourn the ending it should have had:

-The Castiel Project

-Dean Winchester is Love

-Sam Winchester Project

-The National Association of the Deaf

-The Jack Kline Project

[thecaladrius]

prompt: KILL ME  —  a drabble about one character killing another. from @badrshadow disclaimer: this is not speculation or theory about future cc developments. im just making shit up to create a context in which i can write about my one true love: graphic violence. trigger warnings for graphic violence. 

Victory always comes at a cost. Swiping the Last Tear of Heaven was only the first part of the equation, and Blue Jay’s success, though helpful, put a target on the whole team’s back. With so many eyes trained on them, it’s a miracle that Javi’s held Badr’s threats off for so long, but stalling means giving them time to find stronger leverage.

He has a bad feeling about it, this time. As Javi stops at the door of the lone car parked in their agreed-upon meeting place, Javi throws his hands up. “I’m unarmed.”

Past the rolled-up window, Badr smiles. “Good. Come inside.”

He’s not sure if he’s ready to do what he’s about to do. His throat tightens. It’s already been hard to breathe ever since transference withered half his left lung that time he pulled a bullet wound from Mateo’s stomach. Doesn’t help that his head’s still cloudy from having healed Vulture’s broken leg on the way here. Still, he slides into the shotgun seat, leaning his exhausted body against the car door.

“Like we discussed,” Badr says. “The map.”

Javi scoffs. “Yeah, sorry. Some shithead already stole it yesterday. You good with directions?”

“I knew you wouldn’t be truthful.” With a small laugh, they pull something from the glove compartment. “So I brought you a gift.”

Badr slips a box into Javi’s open hands. It’s small, the size of a pocketbook. Javi stares at it, then narrows his eyes at Badr. They want him ruined more than they want him dead, so whatever’s inside isn’t going to blow up on him. Still, his hands freeze before pulling the ribbon.

“Please be careful with it, Sarmiento,” Badr adds. “It took my contacts a while to get that shipped here.”

Some sharp feeling sears at his veins. A slow hand pulls the cover out, and in seconds his eyes widen, glazed over with abject horror. His gaze stays frozen on the gift. Somehow, seven years distant, he still recognizes it: his mother’s wedding ring, finger still attached.

Badr’s smile widens. “There will be more of that, if you lie to me again.”

See, taking the tear didn’t earn them freedom, but it did give them a headstart. Erin’s shots curve toward their targets, defying every law of physics. Nour’s fabrics re-sculpt bodies in perfect metamorphosis. Mateo’s hands master anything they hold. 

And Javi?

A broken surge of rage thrusts his hand at Badr’s face. Badr grabs his wrist to yank it away, but it’s too late: even with only the tips of his fingers grazing their skin, Vulture’s fracture slams into Badr’s bones with the force of a battering ram. Shards of skull and malar bone cave through their eyes into their brain, smattering blood into Javi’s hand, his sleeve, his face. Badr’s body falls into the steering wheel. Limp. Pulseless.

Gasping a shuddered breath, Javi collapses back into his seat. Closes his eyes. He places his free hand on his stomach, trying to palm out a feel of what the transfer took from his body. Lungs again, maybe. A rib, if he’s lucky. His sense of taste or smell. Maybe a limb will fall off. Or maybe the magic’s merciful this time, and killing a shadow won’t cost anything.

Javi opens his eyes. Ahead of him, there is only darkness.

[le-cat-nipp]

Ok, as mithanberg monarch I feel oblige to tell the reasons why I ship it.

First of all, from what I see most wintersberg fans just want to ereased Mia from Ethans life, cause for them she is “unworthy” of him as she did some shady things, that eventually led to his demise. But they are forgetting that she also paid hight prize because of her own bad choices, not only Ethan. She tried to protect him, to keep him away from danger (thou we can discuss the way she tried to do that). She tried to warn people, who help her. She admit to lie to him in last video sended to him before ship crashed. And Ethan knowing she was hidding something still welcomes her, cause he never imagined his life without her after all of this years. He knew about her involvment in shady bussines, therefore she didn`t lie to him at this point. Mia was questioned by BSAA, that triggered her memories so bad, her mental health collapse. She didn`t get completly free from what happened. She was under supervision, she couldn`t move around without bein watched. And for the reasons she didn`t told Ethan about bein mold, she prob didn`t know herself till she got pregnant and there was something wrong with rose (it was said she grown to fast I think). And after givin birth, she saw how happy and relax he was, she just couldn`t bring it (the fact capcom robbed us from many scenes that would be key for Mia`s development and her relationship with Ethan is just sad).

Other than that, lets not be short sighted and pretend like Karl didn`t done any shady stuff himself. The point why everyone is upest with Mia is that she has moral compass and Karl doesn`t, she had a choice to do good, while he didn`t know better. And maybe thats where I see interesting part: where they could learn from eachother. Both did shady stuff, that shattered others people life, maybe for egoistic purposes (yet we don`t know in case of Mia). Karl wouldn`t care if Mia`s worked as bioweapon handler, cause its not significant to him. He created bioweapons himself, plus experimented on dead and alive people (YES he was eventually turn from corpses to living people). And maybe from Mia`s point of view- from her regrets he could learn to value others life more. And she could learn to live with consequences of her actions.

Also as we see, Mia and Ethan love eachother very much and from my point of view  Karl would be interested in their dynamic, as he never experience this feeling himself. Seein as they are doing their best to save eachother, he would see their actions as foolish at the beginin but also very intriguin. Basically he would learn about forgivness, redemption, till eventually he would feel something towards those two.

But the thing is, that we only saw Karl`s interaction with Ethan (mostly part where fanbase went crazy, cause of  interestin “body” stuff is read as somethin sexual). At this point we could speculate, how it could go from there when it comes to Mia. And I see great possibilities and thats why I ship it. So please, do not spoil our fun, cause u don`t approve of Mia. I really don`t mind people ship wintersberg, I just see more potnetial in 3 of them together, cause I cannot imagine that Ethan would left her since canon prove otherwise. Beside I find his dynamic with Karl interesting as well. Therefore I deep dive to create headcanons, how Heisenberg would go along with Mia and there is lots of potential over there.

Mithanberg fans are free to add their own reasons.

[scripturiends]

law school episode 9 musings

warning: very very long post ahead. i have a lot of thoughts.

hey folks — how we feeling about episode 9?

given that there are so many plotlines in the show, i’m afraid i won’t be able to extend my analysis of the episode as far as i would like, but there are three characters who stood out to me the most last night that i’d like to talk about for now:

kang dan

there’s a lot that we got to uncover about her thanks to professor yang’s trial. if i’m piecing it all together right, the basic summary of what led to her disappearance goes like this:

she was a volunteer for assemblyman ko’s campaign, but upon discovering that he was spreading fake news about his opposition, dan reported him to the authorities (i’m guessing not just the police but also the media) and became a whistleblower. assemblyman ko tried to buy her off with money, but she refused, so he attacked her where she’s most vulnerable instead — by using her family.

i’m not completely sure about this (please feel free to correct me!) but it’s either byeol is (1) the twins’ half-sister, or (2) their stepsister? it’s so hard to tell, especially since korean terms can get lost in translation in the process (i watch on netflix, if that helps). but anyway, sol and dan’s mom married someone who was abusing her, and in exchange for dan’s silence (and her fleeing), the husband signs a contract that he would stop hurting his wife.

so that’s the backbone of dan’s story. however, this still doesn’t answer a lot of things, like where seo byungju or lee manho fits into the equation, the whereabouts of their mom’s ex-husband, or why dan was sent into boston in the first place.

i usually don’t like theorizing, but i do have one: there is an ivy league school located just outside of boston — harvard. (it’s technically in cambridge but you know, i’m taking liberties here.) professor yang said in passing one episode that he thought he saw dan when he went to the school for a seminar or a talk or something. could it be that assemblyman ko offered her an education at a top school in exchange for her silence? it could explain why she gave it up all so easily. what if she took that topnotch education as a chance to prepare, so that when she came back, she had much stronger leverage to take assemblyman ko down, given the knowledge and network of connections she’ll have earned in that school?

the theory’s plausible but i might be overestimating assemblyman ko’s kindness — unless he’s insanely desperate, he might not give a damn about dan’s education. it actually benefits him more if she stayed uninformed, but still. let me know what you think about it.

yoo seungjae

in this episode, we learned a little bit more about how yoo seungjae was able to hack into the professors’ laptops, and they also confirmed some of our previous speculations about him: that his wife yujeong was an ob gyn, and so was he, and that they were trying for a baby. unfortunately, i find it all to be a bit lacking in substance. i was hoping we could get down to the nitty-gritty of why he did what he did.

i say this for one important reason: i don’t know about you guys, but i would never make such a stupid mistake in undergrad, let alone in law school. seungjae has gone to med school, so we know that he knows the repercussions of his actions. why would he go to such lengths? sure, he found an opening, he was tempted, and he took it. but he didn’t just do it once, he did it multiple times, and those offenses add up (hacking, stealing exam papers, and cheating). surely he must know that something like this can ruin careers even before they even start, and not only would he get kicked out of the school, he would also get blacklisted from the industry once he implicates himself. so we understand why he’s so hesitant to testify (especially now that his wife is pregnant).

but why did he do that in the first place? we could say he’s insecure about his skills, but he’s survived med school. how much harder could law school be for him? i just don’t think that the payoff is worth the risk. what must be so important for yoo seungjae to do all of this for? what does he get in return if he successfully pulls it off and gets straight As during his entire time in law school? who is he doing for?

i hope it runs deeper than just wanting a ‘good future’ for him and his wife and their baby or something — because he could just as easily do that as a doctor. there must be another reason he went into law.

still, though, and this is just a personal opinion, even if i did find out his entire backstory, there’s no way i could ever defend him. we see in the show how his guilt builds up (from observing how kang sol A studies so well, to his conversation with jeon yeseul in the hospital), but at this point there is no more excusing what he did. not that i ever condoned it in the first place.

we’re still in the dark about a lot of things regarding yoo seungjae. hopefully by the next episode, we get something. but until then, he is still a shady, shady man to me.

kang sol B

her screen time in this episode was short, but i still wanted to highlight her because she is pretty much a ticking time bomb.

she’s in a tight spot right now because even if she testifies about having seen the sugar packet, the prosecutor will just twist the argument by saying she colluded with a murderer just to cover up her plagiarism.

and now, seo jiho needs her help, probably for something related to his case with prosecutor jin. in exchange, she puts pressure on him to ‘confirm’ that she didn’t plagiarize in middle school, since they were schoolmates and rivals.

there may be more to this plagiarism issue than meets the eye. who knows, we might find out later on that she actually didn’t plagiarize? but given what i know now, i have no reason to believe that she didn’t. i don’t blame her specifically for that, seeing as she has to pay for the consequences for something that her awful mom forced her to do. but now that the mess has been made, i want to see how she cleans it up.

kang sol B is a very elusive character to me. the scary thing about her is that she’s on no one’s side but her own. and that’s why i think she’s a ticking time bomb.

~

bonus: han joonhwi

so that’s all i have for the serious stuff. as a bonus, i’d like to talk about han joonhwi and his four (4) children jeon yeseul, seo jiho, kang byeol, and min bokgi.

one of my friends brought up how it’s so funny how he’s somehow just at the right place at the right time all the time. this happened when he ran into kang sol A when she was looking for yeseul (i still think they were on the phone with each other beforehand but this is just my shipper self talking — truthfully, if the focus was shifted towards that phone call without divulging who it was, i have a feeling it might be more important later on), and when seo jiho confronted prosecutor jin. adding his elevator conversation with kang sol B, i think it just solidified what we already know: han joonhwi is a very compassionate person. but he doesn’t sacrifice his own personality just to appease them — he recognizes that these individuals have agency, and he’s just giving them the little push they need to make them realize what they need to do.

i also felt the need to bring up kang byeol. the show does such a good job of ensuring that all the solhwi scenes that we get, no matter how indulgent and “fanservice-y” they might seem, actually have a deeper purpose. again, i could go on and on about what each solhwi scene has actually contributed to the development of the plot, which is exactly why i love them so much! because all of their scenes are so meaningful. but anyway, it’s nice to see han joonhwi care so much for his, ehem, future sister-in-law.

and for min bokgi — this scene was so short, but i absolutely loved it so much (i tend to pay attention to the throwaway scenes): min bokgi is going off about how yoo seungjae is acting weird, and he says to joonhwi, “hyung, you should call him.” and joonhwi responds with, “sure. eat your food.” it’s such a fatherly thing to do and it’s such a great contrast to bokgi’s dynamic with sol A, with whom he’s so loud and vibrant, moods that both match their personalities, but with joonhwi, who is more subdued, he’s like a little kid in need of rescue from an older brother, or even a dad. ah, i love it so much. min bokgi is such an underrated character. i wish he had more screen time. (if he doesn’t get a central ep, well, you guys know where i’m going with this, right? it means i’ll give it to him myself.)

~

so that’s it for now! i’m sorry i went on rambling again, but if there’s anything noteworthy in this post that you think is worth discussing, please do tell! if there’s anything that you found thought-provoking in the episode that i didn’t get to touch up on, let me know as well!

i personally don’t make any theories about the overarching plot myself, seeing as by the time the new episode comes out, we get fed information that renders the theory useless. still, that doesn’t mean we should stop coming up with our own ideas. sometimes, the theories are more interesting than the canon itself.

[green-blue-heller]

hey, can you explain the cockles breakup? i saw u just posted about it and s7 and ive seen speculations but i dont think i really understand what happened lol

Hi Anon!

Thanks for your question!!

First off - DISCLAIMER: I do not know Jensen or Misha, or anyone they know. I do not have any direct information or confirmation of any information in this post. This information may or may not be correct (if anyone has any further clarification, feel free to add it - just please know that this same disclaimer will extend to such comments). None of this should ever be discussed with Jensen or Misha. Their lives are theirs, and while the fandom may discuss and speculate, it’s not okay to do so with the actual people.

Ok... now that we have that out of the way!

I will find the post that gave me the most of the information that I have about it, and reblog with it.

But it’s after 1 am, so I’ll give you the quickish answer now lol.

So, in 2011 Misha was essentially fired from SPN as Sera Gamble was killing off Cas (he’s in S7 ep 1-2, and then doesn’t come back until ep 17, I think it is). He wasn’t supposed to come back, at all. He was supposed to be dead dead.

Summer 2009 is where the earliest flirting is seen with JenMish. I think it was AHBL 1. It is on YT. They’re doing a signing, and Jensen and Misha are going back and forth saying about how they couldn’t see each other and they were worried. Jared pipes up and says that he’ll keep an eye on them and let them know the other is still there.

Vicki and Dee are behind Jared and there is definitely giggling going on.

Then Dec 14 2019 is when Jensen posted what’s referred to as the 10 year anniversary pic and it’s assumed that the original was taken around the same date (if anyone has any links to the pic being talked about, can you please share?)

So, if you assume Dec 2009 is when cockles officially became cockles, then it wasn’t very long after when word would have trickled down that Cas was being killed off. I’d say maybe late 2010 to early 2011.

As far as I can tell, no one knows who ended it. Speculation is probably Jensen, saying it would be too difficult now that Misha wasn’t part of the cast, even though he only lives like an hour and a half from Vancouver.

It also has to be taken into consideration that Jensen and Dee got engaged in 2009 and married in 2010. Then 2011, Misha is written off the show.

It’s fair to assume Jensen wouldn’t have wanted to rock the boat at home for something that he wasn’t sure could be sustained.

So, during the 2011 con panels (I think starting around the time of the Asylum convention) Misha is totally different and a little sarcastic/meanish. The matching rings and bracelets also disappear during this time (but different matching/coordinating jewelry shows up later though).

At Rising Con 2011, Mish and Seb have a panel, and Seb says his favorite sound is when he’s laying next to someone he loves and listening to her sleep.

Misha buts in and says “or him” and looks really sad. He’s off the entire panel.

This continues for a while with panels.

I don’t know what con it is, but at one of them, Jensen does talk about how he is glad that Misha is back on the show. I don’t know if they’ve made up yet at this point, since I don’t know when it is from.

I haven’t watched all the 2012 panels (hardly any) but by JIB, they seemed to have maybe made up.

Jensen jokes about their panel being sort of like a blind date. And apologizes that it might be a bit awkward, sort of like working together. Then Misha says that he rather enjoyed working together.

Jensen assures him then that it was great, and that he had a great time. Then tells Misha it was not him (Misha), that it was him (Jensen).

Then Misha says he thought it was really special. And Jensen makes a comment about how maybe they can give it another shot and Misha kinda shakes his head.

This is either Jensen still in the groveling phase, or the trying to be cute and apologize and say he’s happy they worked things out.

Jensen is a little extra flirty.

But it’s obvious after this that things are fine. Since by JIB10, they ran outta fucks to give and Misha literally straddles Jensen on stage and Jen gets a boner and has to adjust himself. Lol.

Though it’s obvious they’re sad about the show ending. I’m sure the breakup (if there had actually been one) over them not being on the same show anymore from 10 years ago is coming back to them. And I’m sure it’s especially not easy with covid.

But they still seem to be bringing up each other when talking, when it’s not really necessary. And Jensen still gets his stupid (in the most loving meaning) smile when he talks about Misha.

And they were obviously texting each other during the panel on Tuesday.

So, hopefully, cockles is still going strong. It’s been 11 years now, not like 1. So hopefully they have learned how to deal with things.

If only The Boys was shot in Vancouver and not in Ontario. Then he wouldn’t be far from Misha, to be able to see him once there aren’t mandatory 2 week quarantines when arriving in Canada.

But I know during JIB10, Misha made several remarks about moving to Austin.

This would be amazing, though idk of him and Vicki would actually want to uproot the kids. So it may be a more wishful thinking. Even if not, I’m sure covid is making that impossible at the moment.

So... I hope I answered your question, nonnie. Lol.

Like I said, I’ll reblog it tomorrow with links to the post I found on it, as well any other links to the panels in question (if I can find them again).

Though all the ones I talked about are on YT.

Let me know if you have further questions, either in the comments or via another ask! 💕

Edit: the post now has additional pieces, with links to other posts and references. So I suggest checking the comments to get the latest version!

[its-bound-to-get-loud]

Speculating about sexuality

It’s time to get a little controversial on this blog. Or at least talk about a controversial subject. I’ve recently seen some fandom discourse about this subject from multiple sources. A lot of people have the opinion that discussing a celebrity’s sexuality is a bad thing, something you shouldn’t do. I strongly disagree.

Full disclosure, I’m a Larrie. I’m a 1D fan who believes Harry and Louis are a couple. I’m also a 5SOS fan. Now I know many 5SOS fans seem to be wary of Larries in particular. I know some people have taken it too far sometimes. But also, it’s hard to compare Larry/1D to 5SOS in many ways, because Larry and 1D themselves have done a lot of things to encourage fans looking into things they normally might not. It feels to me as if 5SOS fans saw the things that happened in the 1D fandom, turned around and decided to do the exact opposite. This is a good thing in some ways, but it also leaves no room for critical thinking.

Now back to 5SOS. I’ve had a few conversations about this topic and what it comes down to is this. 5SOS are famous, they live a life that’s (partially) being seen by the public and the media. Now this will sound cold, but it’s a fact: 5SOS are a product. When we interact with them on social media, we interact with a product. In the end they want to keep selling their music to us. In order to do so, engaging with fans is part of their job. It doesn’t mean they don’t enjoy it, it doesn’t mean they’re not genuine. If you work in a supermarket part of your job may be stocking shelves. You have to do it because it’s your job, but that doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy it as well.

Part of the product that is 5SOS is their relationships. We see their girlfriends plastered over their social media, they mention them in interviews, etc. That’s not something they HAVE to do generally speaking. If we are to assume that (for argument’s sake) all 3 current 5SOS relationships are genuine, then they don’t have to show us their girlfriends if they don’t want to. This means they either choose to do so, because that’s what they want, or these girlfriends are being presented to us for a reason (PR, bearding, etc.). Which of these it is, is for you to decide. Both options make them become part of the product. We are allowed to question that product, since we are the ones consuming it. If the person in question has made comments that can be regarded as them hinting at not being straight they open the door even further. You cannot tell someone to come over and then slam the door in their face because they get too close.

If 5SOS want to they can keep their relationships private. Their social media profiles are not the same as ours. They are a representation of the product they are. A representation of their image. That’s why celebrities often have private profiles as well, where they can share private things that they don’t want to share with the public.

The 5SOS girlfriends themselves are a product as well. They all have careers that involve being in the public eye, they are just as well selling us a version of themselves. 2 public people dating does not mean we automatically HAVE to see that they are dating. Celebrities can keep things a secret or low-key if they want to. In fact, I’d dare to argue they have more tools to do so than you and I.  

You can look at it like this, if I’m buying a laptop I’m doing research online, I’ll check out reviews. I’ll ask questions at the store. I question the product before I buy it. That’s not that different from what we do as fans. Before we buy their music we question if this is a product we want to buy. Most of the time that’s an unconscious decision we make. Sometimes a product can becomes unsatisfactory after a while and we choose to move on from it. I know it sounds cold, but it’s not that different with celebrities. If 5SOS keep showing me their public girlfriends on their public social media, I get to question that. If I come to the conclusion that I think that what they are telling me is false. I get to discuss that. Being a fan does not equal always taking things at face value.

There’s also a double standard in this fandom. Some people are more than willing to yell about how problematic and toxic the girlfriends are in their opinion. Which means they are allowed to poke into (what they think is) a real relationship between 2 people. When Luke says Teeth is about Sierra, they question his words and don’t hesitate to say their relationship is toxic. But when it comes to sexuality suddenly that’s a no go. I am absolutely not a fan of the way some of the way girlfriends behave. As long as this happens in a fandom environment I am also fine with talking about that. But if you disapprove of one thing and then do something similar, maybe it’s time you start practicing what you preach or leave people to have their own opinions.

This doesn’t mean you should tell the guys directly that you think their relationship is not real or that you think they are not straight. You don’t harass their friends, their crew, and their family about this. Discussing a celebrity’s sexuality/relationship should stay limited to fandom spaces. With social media it’s a lot easier for celebrities to see what we say about them. Therefor I always suggest being mindful of what you say (they may be a product, but they are still people). Personally it’s why I enjoy Tumblr, because most celebrities don’t go on here and (most of the time) we can safely discuss things that are more difficult to discuss in a place like Twitter. I will say, just because we are questioning a product, it doesn’t mean we get to be rude in the process. You generally don’t go to the store and start yelling at the salesperson if you don’t agree with what they tell you.

People seem to think it’s disrespectful to say someone is gay. Why? Is there anything wrong with being gay? Absolutely not. We live in a society that’s very heteronormative, being straight is seen as the “default” sexuality. It should not be. If you’re going to argue that it’s disrespectful to say someone is gay, then please also don’t assume they are straight. You can have personal thoughts, sure. I have personal thoughts on the specific sexuality of the guys in 5SOS as well. But I keep in mind that my personal thoughts aren’t a fact. I could be wrong. So unless someone has specifically stated their sexuality it’s best to not assume anything and keep an open mind.

Then finally I want to briefly touch on a topic that goes hand in hand with what I’ve talked about: shipping. Some people have a problem with shipping when it comes to real people. For some people shipping is just enjoying the idea of 2 people together even if you think they aren’t. While other people truly believe in that relationship. There’s nothing wrong with any of that as long as it doesn’t become invasive. It all comes back to what I’ve said before. We are consuming a product. The relationships between the 5SOS guys are a huge part of that product. The chemistry between them is part of why we love them. I’m not saying they are pretending to like each other. I fully believe their chemistry is genuine, but it does help sell the product. It also means that sometimes the guys/their team plays into that chemistry to sell the product.

They guys should not have a problem with fans shipping them together, because it’s not up to them to decide that. They sell us their relationships, so we get to form opinions about that. If we stay in our own fandom space and do not become invasive by showing them or people around them fandom content (fics, headcanons, manips, etc.). Then they should not come into our spaces and invade stuff we enjoy in that space. I get super uncomfortable whenever I see celebrities reading fanfiction or being read fanfiction. Fanfiction about them is not for them. It’s made for fans to enjoy and they should stay away from that. I want to encourage you to go and read this answer* about shipping real people. Because sometimes other people’s words say it better than my own words ever could.

With that we have reached the end of this post. As usual I am always open to discuss this in an adult manner. If you feel like you have anything to add to this discussion, feel free to send me an ask/dm. Or reply to this post. If you like/agree with what I write I would love it if you reblogged this post. That’s the only way more people can see it. My blog is small, so reblogs are very much needed to keep the discussion going. Don’t think of coming in my inbox and yelling at me how everything I said is wrong and bad and awful, because it is only going to get you blocked. If you don’t agree, that’s fine, but I’m not going to tolerate any hate.

Finally, just because you are allowed to speculate and question whatever 5SOS or any other celebrity/influencer tells you, doesn’t mean you have to. If that’s not your cup of tea, then that is more than fine. The reason I wrote this post is because we need to stop making people who think critically about the things they are being told, feel guilty about what they do.

* Please note that the author of this post does not have anything to do with what has been written in this post. If you have a problem with anything in this post, please direct it to me and not them.

[thoughts-on-bangtan]

I m sorry if this post makes u upset but honestly this is something i have been wondering a lot about. So i m sure the admis are aware of a theory that has existed for long time in t/k spaces that BH was holding t/k back. So wrt that we also know the boys recently became partners of BH by buying shares sometime in 2020. They also renewed their contracts in 2020. We also know tae has become happier and the famous t/k conversation took place in 2020. We can also see that t/k have more on (1/2)

screen interactions and are more frequently paired together since after the ITS convo and also appear to interact more with each other in various cobtent. Also there is a fall in j/k content no? I wonder if that theory was indeed true and that tae being happier could be bcoz of him getting to be more open with jk now and not hiding their relationship infront of the cameras and if that has anything to do with them being shareholders and the new contract. Bcoz this kinda makes sense to me (2/2)

Admin 1: The only thing with which you’ve upset me is by ignoring what I’ve said just a few posts ago about how the only ships I feel have actual potential of being ‘real’ are vmin and, to a certain degree, namjin, and how I’m more than open to talking about other duos etc as long as we talk about them as their real life friendships. Just yesterday I said that I don’t really care or pay attention to what other shippers do because it’s simply none of my concern. Why is that? Because no JK+ML ship has ever given me reason to go “huh?” or given me the impression there could be more than just friendship. Also, I’m not here to try and disprove other ships, or somehow try to convince anyone that my views are the only correct ones, I simply want to have a good time talking about vmin, namjin, and Bangtan, and that’s it, which I’ve said it yesterday as well.

I’ve been ARMY for many years now and yes, I’m more than aware of this theory because, in a way, it’s inescapable even if you try to stay clear of what T/K (and J/K) shippers are up to. And yet, despite that, for years my opinion on the topic has not changed in the slightest. I’ve written a whole post about ships and BH and how they are used for marketing purposes in rather obvious ways at times, how more screen time doesn’t immediately equal them being romantic (and the whole no screen time = no bond paradox), or BH “allowing” them to show off their relationship more, because that frankly, to me, sounds ridiculous.

Even if we’d entertain the idea for a moment, while also remembering that apparently T/K is still the biggest BTS ship, wouldn’t it make more sense for BH to show them? Because that would bring in more money? So, in that sense, hiding them wouldn’t make such sense business wise? Someone could argue that scarcity creates more demand, which once they do supply that demand, the money basically rains down on BH like crazy. And yet even that, to me, doesn’t really make all that much sense, given that they could just put T/K content behind a paywall, as in keep their interactions as paid content exclusives, but even that isn’t the case since apparently there hasn’t been much T/K shipper satisfying content even there. So, what exactly, would be the business point for BH to “hide” them? Remember, they are a company after all, not a matchmaking service.

Anyway, going back to my thoughts. We have 4 O’Clock followed by the knowledge that not that long after Tae started working on Happy Christmas, a duet for himself and Jimin which supposedly was too much for two members to sing it together (the implications here are rather clear), which was followed by Scenery (which has clear connections to the same event as in 4 O’clock and to Jimin), and add to all of that what Tae replied to that ARMY on weverse (this I also have a whole post about which I thought might’ve made my thoughts clear in a way, but I guess it did not). That does paint quite the obvious picture, does it not?

Just yesterday I said that the biggest rule in shipping is respect and being respectful, yes? Do you think it is respectful to still hold on to this made up T/K theory despite being faced with Tae’s own words? Despite how ridiculous it sounds? I don’t think so.

Therefore, for me, with everything Tae has done to express his feelings in connection to Jimin, as well as clearly stating that 95z is love (just a few months after telling off that shipper) and the fact that (despite surely having to jump through many hoops along the way) Jimin answered Tae in kind by making Friends happen which solidified them as soulmates to us but also made their wish and promise of remaining together even when the cheers are gone known (here’s my analysis of that song). That’s no small thing. And if that T/K theory held any merit, I highly doubt either Tae or Jimin would do all this, which I’ve also already once discussed in a previous post. Add to that Tae’s Weverse reply, their conversation during ITS, and Tae wanting Jimin to come sleep next to him on JKs birthday (that being something the company has no control over and is their own free time and their free will of telling us about it), the only “relationship” that Tae has with JK, in my opinion, is that of close friends, band mates, and colleagues.

As for their contract and them being shareholders and that having some kind of connection to them being able to show their relationships more freely—while yes, they did say that they’ll sign the contract and thus give BH seven more of their years so long as the contract reflects their hard work and achievements, it’s rather ludicrous to think that there might’ve been some kind of clause in there as well about how BH won’t “hide” a ship anymore or allow them to just run free and show off their relationships. Frankly that would be stupid and way more risky than worth it both for BH and the members themselves. Besides their personal relationships, especially romantic ones, are not for public consumption, so to speak. Even more so in the world of idols and with the prospect of having to do their military service in the future (this being doubly important and risky when considering their relationships being between two members and therefore LGBT).

We have no way of knowing what is exactly in those contracts, and what kind of effect them having BH shares has on their work-relation with BH, all we do know is that whatever was in those contracts was satisfying enough for all seven of them to sign it and be happy with that choice. Everything else is pure speculation.

This is the final time I’m answering such an ask since now I think I’ve truly made my stance on JK+ML ships known sufficiently, and this time I mean it.

Also, for future reference, can we please talk about JK not in romantic connection to a member for once? I have a whole post expressing my grievances with the treatment he gets from shippers and how there is so much more to him.

Admin 2: We live in a materialistic capitalist world where money is the leading power. Many people get up in the morning and work their a*s off to bring in enough income to live and to feed themselves and their possible family. But there are also people who find ways to make money without having to work their a*ses off. Such possibilities in todays day and age gives you, among other things, making videos on Youtube. If you’re sneaky enough and have an eye for what sells best at any given time and what brings in the biggest viewership, you might come to find that a great way to earn well is by making videos about BTS, and more specifically, about popular BTS ships, or even the most popular one at that.

Maybe you noticed how at some point there was a boom on youtube when it came to people making reaction videos, especially to anything BTS related, as well as hundreds of channels about shipping doing analysis videos, especially for T/K and J/K.

More below the cut:

In that moment when Tae basically said no to T/K being romantic, those T/K channels faced potentially “losing their jobs” and thus losing a very lucrative source of income. When I say lucrative, I mean up to $90k a year, which is a sum of money the average person can only dream of. Therefore, to save their existence and income, they decided to push on with their agenda and disregard any signs pointing against their ship. That’s why I think theories such as the one anon presented us with are ones that are created during conversations between people with such channels as wonderful solutions to explain away signs and behaviors that simply didn’t fit them and their agenda. There is a whole own eco system between those channels and their views, and shippers at large, to keep their shipper fantasies alive at all cost.

We know that T/K is one of the oldest, and the most popular one, among BTS ships, which relies on how fun and nice interactions between JK and Tae are to look at, how silly they used to be in the past together, and how some of their on stage behavior worked well in terms of “awakening” crazy fantasies among shippers. The most important in all of it though has always been that this ship contained the maknae and the next member closest to him in age, and thus also to many of those who ship them. But that of course isn’t all there is to it.

Since 2016 we’ve had 4 O’Clock and Scenery, both inspired by the same event, as well as vmin defining each other as their soulmate. These facts alone are, for me, a glaring contradiction for this whole T/K theory and any kind of romance existing within either T/K and J/K. For me, it’s a rather absurd thought to have a soulmate and also be in a romantic relationship (or harbor romantic feelings) for another person. Just like it’s absurd for me how supposedly two big JK and maknae ships are supposed to be real at the very same time and the band also exists at the same time as some form of background noise.

We also later on have Tae who wrote Sweet Night in which Tae sings about falling in love with his best friend, who has always been Jimin. Taking into account what Tae told that shipper on Weverse yet months later announced that 95z is love, that he sang Friends with Jimin, which was also co-written by Jimin, I very much doubt that there have ever been any romantic feelings from Tae toward JK (and vice versa).

I’d also like to note that Tae and JK didn’t spend any time together during their vacation in 2019 (according to them in the first episode of BV4), as well as JK having shown a kind of distaste toward the idea of one of Tae’s friends already having gotten married (or at least that’s what his facial expression looked like) which to me indicates the same thing they said in the ITS conversations: they’ve matured and their personalities have simply grown in different directions making parts of their friendship a bit awkward.

On the FESTA 2020 Rolling Paper Tae called JK his comedian while JK called Tae is safe place, which for me makes it sound that their bond is simply that of an older brother and his younger brother. I feel like during their ITS conversation they tried to communicate to us that they had some issues with each other but at the same time also try to somewhat negate all that obsessive romantic shipping that's been going on involving those two for so long. But that obviously hasn’t worked out.

Tae did say that he had to take certain steps and now he’s happier, but personally I believe that had far more of a connection to their work, or specifically Tae’s mixtape and the work and negotiations around it, since we know some of it might’ve been pushing the lines a little too much if BangPD felt the need to call him and ask him to tone it down a little. If I put on my delulu hat, looking at how happy Tae seems in recent months, I’d be inclined to believe this also had something to do with Jimin, who also seems to be in quite the happy mood as well.

Even if I’d step into a whole delulu tent, I see absolutely no connection to JK when thinking of all the things that could’ve been a factor that led to Tae’s happy state.

It’s easy to see that we’ve been getting more T/K interactions recently, which can be due to marketing strategies (since Tae’s mixtape is coming soon, and potentially also JKs since it’s been mentioned here and there last year) but also due to them getting closer again friendship wise after working through whatever was causing them to be awkward with each other (or at least slowly doing so). We all know that Tae is a very honest (as much as that’s possible in their line of work) and the only thing all of this shows us that Tae is simply showing us with JK that they’re doing better again, but none of their behavior in any way diverges or exceeds anything that’s normal for all of BTS and how touchy and full of affection they are with each other to various degrees. We have a whole post on the bias of body language as well.

Personally, I see no indication whatsoever for there being anything romantic about T/K, since that’s what you’re essentially asking about. After all Tae was the only one who had no idea about JKs drawing for Hobi, so if they were romantically involved, don’t you think JK would’ve showed it to him or at least told him about it?

I’d recommend listening to what Tae told us, remember that especially when we see him put his arm around JKs shoulder or touches his arm, that that isn’t a show of his romantic love for him, but just their normal level of BTS affection. Don’t let people convince you into buying into their agendas because at the end of the day, they have a lucrative business in doing so while, should it all one day come to an end, you will be the one that gets hurt due to their words and theories.

The sole fact that T/K relies on many of the same arguments as J/K, and both have JK as the part of them, is, for me, an indication that those ships aren’t real and instead that Tae and Jimin treat JK as their younger brother whom they love, just like all of BTS does. This is simply how BTS are. Everyone touches everyone’s arm, thigh, back, and hugs each other, it’s simply them being them. In order for a ship to be romantic and “real”, it takes a little more than just a touch of a thigh. There needs to be something more, like we’re able to find/see that something more with vmin, for example.

Tae is my bias and it always upsets me when people don’t respect him and the things he’s said.

[sunnymusingsao3]

director's commentary: haunt me, then? :3c

Behind the Scenes: Fanfic Edition

Edit Post-Writing: Buckle up, friends, this got LONG (so sorry slkdjf)

So you, Crow, were there when we discussed the idea to haunt me, then, so I'll try and keep this about stuff that you may not have seen! However, before I do that, a quick tl;dr for those who did not see us hollering about this idea lol:

It happened right after we got the Rise of the Titans teaser trailer, back when we still knew so little about the movie itself. In the teaser, we saw Bellroc and their cool fire titan, and that spawned a whole myriad of ideas-- some earnest speculation, others just forming from the metaphorical playground because they were fun. One such idea that, if I remember correctly, was somewhere in between "wouldn't this hurt?" and "oh god what if it actually did happen?" was born, in order to explain why Skrael wasn't present in the teaser. Crow suggested the truly heartbreaking (compliment) idea that someone had to be sacrificed in order to raise the volcanic titan, and oh boy did that one gain legs.

So, moving on, I got permission from Crow to write this fic because the idea was just so good, and also because I was really in the mood to write something in the vein of horror, with romantic themes undercutting it. I was very enticed by the idea of monstrous love, and the different forms it can take, as well as the idea of loving someone so much that when it comes time to sacrifice them, you do it, because you know that not doing it would feel too much like coddling them. You have a mission that you both would lay down your lives for; to not allow your lover the chance to do so, when it is necessary, would feel like dishonor-- it would be an insult.

So this was the thesis of the fic, as it were; the central idea behind all of the themes and imagery that I wanted to explore.

Now on to some things that, to my memory, were not told to anyone as I was writing!

I toyed a LOT with the idea of Skrael figuring them out before they actually sacrificed him; I ended up landing on "he's suspicious, but doesn't stop them"

The reasons he has for not stopping them are: 1. It's his job 2. He was always prepared for the possibility that only one of them would end up making it to the new world 3. He wants to see if they did their research; was this an impulse decision, or are they really sure about this?

By the time they stop him from grabbing his staff, he is sure that it's not an impulse decision; that was his last reservation-- because if he can get his staff, he can fight back. But if they ensured that he couldn't even fight back, then it meant that they'd prepared for even the least likely outcome. It's not that he doesn't believe they know what they're doing, but it reassures him to know that they are taking extra measures to stay safe, and to make sure their plans come to fruition

In the final act, where they lean him over the volcano's lip, it's a much calmer version of what I'd initially had in mind, but I liked it better because the slow inevitability was more compelling to me. It felt like a natural progression. And if I wanted drama, it could come after, when the grief actually hits Bellroc, so there was less harm in delaying some of that higher emotion for a little bit later in the fic

The more dramatic version, however, was Skrael beginning to fall, and him grabbing their arm on instinct. It was a good image, the idea of him dangling openly, held only by a hand that he knows now is going to let go, but it also felt too much like Skrael didn't know what was happening beforehand, which didn't feel like the right character choice for him. He admits to being unfamiliar with the ritual they're about to perform, but the pieces rather start to add up, and he's always been good at reading Bellroc.

Speaking of that ritual, I imagined that he is less familiar with this one because it's one born of fire magic, and he just simply does not possess the necessary understanding of that magic to make it-- in his mind-- worth his while to read the spellbook it's in. He's surely dabbled in reading about fire magic a little, because it's smart to at least have some level of understanding when you live with a fire mage, but it's more like he was reading the Fire Magic 101 textbooks, while Bellroc was about to submit their PhD dissertation.

However, though he is less familiar with the ritual in the fic, I also like to think that he has a similar one in his own practice. He hasn't needed to use it, but he knows it, however distantly. I think it would involve a much, much slower death for his sacrifice, leaving them exposed to the ice and the elements, to slowly wear the person away. This would be why, if the Order were given the choice between Bellroc's ritual and his, Skrael would always push to be the sacrifice in theirs, because he does not think he could be steadfast enough to last the length of their death. With his death in theirs, he knows it would be quick, and they'd have little chance of changing their mind, but with them in his, he'd have to wait hours to days, and he just doesn't think he could subject them to that.

It's linked in the fic itself, so this is known, but the song that inspired this was The Horror of Our Love by Ludo. However, the other songs I primarily listened to for this were Eternally Yours by Motionless in White, Brutus by The Buttress, and a slowed version of Teeth by 5 Seconds of Summer (blood warning). These helped set the mood, and then in between them, I wrote to darker classical music playlists on Youtube!

The quote at the end was almost the one from Black Panther, between W'Kabi and Okoye: "Would you kill me, my love?" "For Wakanda? Without question."

I went with the Wuthering Heights one, however, because it felt more appropriate to Bellroc's grief, and since that grief was focused on less in the fic than the sacrifice parts, I wanted to highlight it a little more

This was also an idea I talked about with Crow, but I wanted to share it here, too, since idk if it'll ever gain proper legs, but I really like the idea of, after this, Bellroc becoming the new North Wind, as well as the Keeper of the Flame, because I don't think you can truly get rid of the North Wind. But, perhaps the "powers that be" (whether that's something sentient or not) see that they've only really got two options left for who they could make the new North Wind, and, well, Bellroc's got his staff already, and they're right there when he dies, so maybe they just kinda... pop that magic right in there

It's a very AU idea though lol, so I'm not sure if there's enough grounded basis for it

However, if I ever did write it, I also really like the alternate idea of... the best way I can describe it is Greeling in FMA:B? Body sharing, basically, and Skrael being a whisper in the back of their head. When they want the North Wind to "take over" as it were, they don't change their form or anything, but suddenly, they grow very, very cold, and they can no longer perform fire magic, but ice magic, instead

I just think it would be neat to see the North Wind and the Keeper of the Flame as one person, whether it's only one soul in the body, or two!

This is one of like, three fics I've considered making a podfic for!

I think that's about everything I can think of off the top of my head, but if there's anything else you or someone else would like to ask about, please feel free to come into the inbox again! <3

[amimons]

Miraculous Sweet-ember (Sept. 20th)

September 20th: Troublemaker & Reverser

Troublemaker was about a TV show turned akuma battle taking in the Dupain Cheng’s apartment...what could go wrong? For starters two things were almost revealed; Marinette’s crush on Adrien to Adrien and Ladybug’s secret identity. Safe to say that there was not a dull moment in this episode. Just like Adrien, I was completely blindsided that they were going to show Marinette’s photos of Adrien on national TV. Embarrassing? Yes. But did it pay off in the end? Oh yes. Not only did we get Adrien being a locker stalker again, but he playfully teased her about the situation letting his Chat Noir persona slip out for amount. Let’s not forget the big moment where Ladybug almost lost her miraculous to Troublemaker. With half her earrings taken from Troublemaker, Ladybug was slowly detransforming. Thanks to Chat Noir’s quick response he saved Ladybug from having her Miraculous stolen. 

But it left the question...did Chat Noir find out her identity? The quick answer, no he didn’t. But after this episode aired that was the big debate. It didn’t help that he only raise the suspicions when leaving Ladybug after the battle telling her he knows who she is; which was ‘the love of his life.’ And then we were gifted with that Adrienette interaction at the end of the episode. The speculating was fun but what was even greater was seeing Adrien comfortably joking with Marinette after finding out she had photos of him in her room. She dismissed it as her being sooo into fashion (but does that really explain to photos under your bed too Marinette? I mean Adrien had his suspicions about that lol). All in all it was nice seeing that Adrienette confrontation at the end especially since it was very reminiscent of Ladynoir behavior. And oh my god Adrien slung his arm around Marinette’ shoulders!!! The end. 

Reverser felt like an outer body experience. Or did it only feel that way to me? Either way it was a change of experience for our heroes who had their personalties reversed by the Reverser. Ladybug, instead of being the well coordinated and put together hero was turned into a grand klutz while Chat Noir’s bravery was taken away, turning him into a cowardly scaredy cat. Chat Noir was hilarious in this episode. Chat was leaping into his lady’s arms whenever he got spooked but also jumping to action for Ladybug despite being afraid because he wanted to be there for her. 

Even when he is afraid of everything, Chat Noir will never stop fighting by Ladybug’s side. There were many moments where Chat Noir could’ve shut down and succumb to this new cowardly nature. Instead he pushed through. Like when Chat Noir jumps onto Ladybug knocking themselves in to the seine. Chat Noir helped a clumsy Ladybug swim to surface even though being surrounding by water would only frighten this scaredy cat. He was also willing to be launched into the air tied to a makeshift kite because Ladybug needed him to do that. Even when all his courage is supposedly taken away he still managed to find the bravery to help Ladybug. Chat is just a terrific partner. (Also I just wanted to add that Chat yelling at the taxi driver calling him a public health hazard and the driver responding that he did even drive over 15 mph was absolutely hilarious and one of the funniest lines delivered in the show.) 

About Sweet-ember:

For the month of September I wanted to spread some positivity and praise Miraculous Ladybug on the things I’ve appreciated/enjoyed from the show.

Everyday I’m going to select one particular moment, event, theme, etc. from an episode of Miraculous and shared what I liked from that episode. Each post will discuss 2-3 episodes (from season 1-3; 78 episodes in total).

Whether its something big or small there is something positive that I can take away from every single episode of Miraculous.

Please feel free to add a moment from these particular episodes that you loved to this post as well!

Salt towards the show, characters, ships will not be tolerated!

Sweet-ember posts

[1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] [10] [11] [12] [13] [14] [15] [16] [17]

[18] [19] [20] [21] [22] [23] [24] [25] [26] [27] [28] [29] [30] [31]

[muertawrites]

Two Halves - Chapter Three (Zuko x Reader)

Part Two

Word Count: 2,450

Author’s Note: Something very important to note about this series is that in it Zuko has very long hair. I’m talking like feudal era Japan hair (use this post from @frogydraws​ for reference. It is *chef’s kiss* gorgeous). Also, I feel like I’m missing people who asked to be on the tag list - if you asked but don’t see your name, PLEASE direct message me so I can fix that! Other than that I don’t have much else to say about this chapter. It’s mostly exposition but who doesn’t love some good plot speculation?

~ Muerta

Everyone gathers in a sitting room in Zuko’s personal wing of the palace, clustered in groups or pairs in an attempt to create some sense of comfort after the night’s discord. Katara, Aang, and Sokka gather in the center of the room - their typical formation, still very much a reflex due to years of working as a team. You sit with Iroh and Toph to one side of the room, Iroh sharing a chaise with you and Toph seated on the floor beside you, one hand laid protectively over the top of your foot. Zuko stands at the room’s fireplace, passing a ball of flame between his hands; you watch him closely, already innately drawn to him as your partner, noting that while the others (mainly Katara, Aang, and Sokka) discuss the evening’s events, attempting to formulate a plan for whatever should come next, he remains silent, secluded deep within his own thoughts. He looks every part the leader you’re now married to, in a way you hoped you’d only see much later in your relationship. 

“It had to be someone within the palace,” Sokka states. “The gates were too heavily guarded for anyone to get in from the outside.” 

“But how could they commit a murder without being seen?” Aang wonders. “There were too many people around for something like that to go unnoticed.” 

“That’s just the thing,” Katara counters. “There were enough people to create a big enough distraction that nobody saw until whoever did it wanted us to.” 

“And we’re absolutely positive it was that specific guy who was the target?” Sokka proposes. “It wasn’t just a random attack to make a statement against the whole government?” 

“No,” Zuko chimes in. “They meant to kill him. When I proposed making someone from outside the Fire Nation queen, he was the only one in favor of the idea. He convinced the rest of the board to support me.” 

“Do you think maybe they wanted to make a statement against just you, then?” Aang asks. 

“It wasn’t just a statement,” you tell him, speaking for the first time since entering the room. Everyone turns their heads towards you; the only one who doesn’t show any surprise is Zuko. “It was a threat, meant for both of us.” 

“And probably on behalf of Ozai or Azula,” Toph adds. 

“Do you think he’d really still have followers within the palace?” Katara questions. “Everyone who served him was imprisoned after the war.”

“It’s possible,” Zuko responds. “My father radicalized more people than we could possibly know of. I expected his resistance at some point.” 

“If Ozai intended to stage any resistance, he would have done it much more gruesomely,” Iroh interjects. “He wouldn’t have wasted time with threats. He would have killed one or both of you, if not everyone in attendance tonight.” 

“But who else could hold that much of a grudge against not only the Fire Nation, but the alliance with an outsider?” Sokka asks. 

“It could be someone from the Water Tribe,” you suggest. Your words are deadpanned and grim. “It’s very possible they see this as another form of colonization.”

“Nobody else from either tribe is here, though,” Katara says. “It’s just me and Sokka.”

“I don’t think they’d be here officially if they planned to kill someone,” Aang reasons. “If it was someone from the Water Tribe, they’re probably in disguise.” 

“They couldn’t have been,” Sokka replies. “They’d have to have been inside the palace, and nobody got in without official documentation.” 

“Our concern right now should not be the manhunt,” Iroh speaks up in his firm, tepid way. “It should be the safety of our loved ones; our lord and lady especially.” 

“He’s right,” Toph agrees. She stands, placing a hand on your shoulder. “I think she should stay with me tonight. I have the best chance of seeing someone and stopping them before they can do any harm.” 

“She’s staying with me,” Zuko quips. 

The entire room falls into a heavy silence, the air itself seeming to drop to the floor. Everyone stares at Zuko in shock, yourself included. 

“We’re married,” he explains. “It’s our responsibility to look after each other. She’ll stay with me in my chambers.” 

Five sets of eyes shift to focus on you. You meet Zuko’s gaze, the steely determination within them only serving to remind you of the bond you now share. You nod, keeping your eyes locked with his as you speak. 

“It’s okay,” you affirm. “I’ll stay with him.”

After a few more minutes of deliberation, everyone parts ways for the night - Sokka is sent with Katara and Aang to provide them extra defense, and Toph goes with you and Zuko, moved to the guest chamber just outside his sleeping quarters so she can monitor any movement that happens during the night. 

You follow Zuko into his rooms, arms linked together in a mutual nervous embrace. His chambers are divided into three spaces; two rooms connected by a sitting room and a large, covered porch. Zuko leads you down a short hall off the right side of the sitting room, opening a set of doors to reveal an ornate bedroom - your things rest at the foot of the four poster bed, your sleeping clothes already laid out on the mattress. 

“This used to be a sunroom,” Zuko tells you. “But I had it converted into a bedroom. I figured it would be weird sleeping together, but also weird keeping you in your own wing across the palace, so… this seemed like a good way to be close to each other without making it too awkward.” 

You squeeze his arm in a gentle, appreciative hug, turning to look up at him. 

“Thank you,” you say. “I really appreciate all you’ve done for me.” 

Zuko nods, laying one of his hands over where yours rests on his bicep.

“Let’s get changed,” he murmurs. “I’ll call for some tea and we can try to have a normal night.” 

He leaves you, and you draw the curtains of the room’s sweeping windows so you can dress in peace; one side overlooks a garden courtyard, while the other gives a view of the ocean beyond the palace’s farthest wall. The sights are stunning, but the suspense you feel building in the pit of your stomach makes it hard to enjoy them in full. 

Your hands shake as you undress, letting the layers of your wedding robes drop to the floor and leave you naked at the foot of the bed. You stare down at your night dress, the pristine white fabric glaring virginally up at you. You warily slide yourself into it, then cross the room to the vanity that’s been set to the left of the bed. 

You can hardly control the shiver of your fingers as they work the beads out of your hair, taking the freed locks behind your head into the single braid you typically sleep in. You stare at yourself in the mirror, clutching the totems Katara gave you to your chest; your eyes are wide, your cheeks sunken, your knuckles white. A small voice, somewhere in the far reaches of your mind where the sound can hardly carry, tells you to have faith in your new husband; he’s treated you with nothing but kindness since even before the moment you set foot on his soil, and has showed nothing but the utmost respect for you - he wouldn’t be the man your family loved and trusted with your life if he shifted his behavior in such a sudden, drastic way by forcing you into his bed. 

Despite these cries of reason, all you can hear is the voice of the beautician who prepared you for tonight - she hovers behind you in the mirror, her face contorted into a heinous, scowling grin as she cackles with laughter. She reminds you of the children you’re meant to bear, her nails digging into your shoulders as she goes on to tell you that, as the Firelord’s wife, he’s entitled to all the pleasure your body can give him, and will take it at any cost. 

Your terror turns the man who’s been so endlessly sweet to you into a monster. 

Through the bedroom doors, you hear a servant enter with a tray of tea, followed by Zuko’s gentle voice thanking them. You swallow, taking the strands of beads in your hands and twining them together, forming a necklace which you place over your head and tuck into the front of your night dress. After a few deep, quivering breaths, you stand, making your way out to the shared sitting room. 

Zuko sits on the side of the room closest to his bedroom, head turned towards the now lit fireplace and eyes lost within its glow, his gaze distant and glazed with worry; he snaps back to the present when he notices you enter, giving you a faint, slightly defeated smile. His military uniform has been replaced with a simple set of pajamas and a robe, his long hair free from its knot, now hanging loosely about his shoulders and down his chest; he’s even more handsome this way, his features contoured by the darkness of the room and the light of the fire. You feel a rush of lightheadedness as you lower yourself across from him, nervously returning his smile. 

“Uncle took the liberty of preparing our tea,” Zuko greets you. His voice is soft and welcoming, tinged with a mirth that feels almost ironic given the circumstances. “He didn’t want to subject you to my awful cooking skills so early in the marriage.” 

You huff amusedly, sharing a genuine smile with him as he serves you. You sip the scalding liquid slowly, letting it ease down your throat and warm you from the inside out; it relaxes you, the shaking in your limbs disappearing. 

“I’m glad we have him,” you say. “I don’t think we’d know what to do with ourselves otherwise.” 

Zuko chuckles, his grin causing a manic tremble to erupt in your chest. 

“He’s definitely the romantic one in the family,” he agrees. “He hasn’t stopped talking about you since he met you. I think if he were forty years younger, he’d have married you before I could.” 

You giggle, a timid blush coloring your cheeks. 

“I never thought I’d be so popular among Fire Nation men,” you tease. 

Zuko smiles, wistfully and exhaustedly, letting out a soft breath of laughter; you can tell the nights events anchor his thoughts. 

“I’m sorry tonight ended the way it did,” he tells you. “I wanted your arrival to be a source of happiness for our people. Maybe I was too hopeful.” 

You sigh heavily, running a finger along the brim of your teacup as he meets your eyes; you can tell he blames himself for what happened. 

“A hundred years of hatred doesn’t end in a decade,” you console him. “It isn’t just here, either - many people in the Water Tribe feel just as divisive as people do here.” 

You cautiously reach forward and take his hand, letting your thumb stroke over his knuckles. His fingers tighten around your palm, and you can feel every callous and scar that marks his alabaster skin. 

“We have to stand together,” you say. “We have to show the world that we can overcome the past; that things are different now, for the better.” 

Zuko nods, raising the back of your hand to his lips and pressing a light, tender kiss to the knuckle of your forefinger. He smiles faintly, letting his mouth linger on the bone for a long moment before placing your hand back where it was on his knee, still twined with his. 

“I really did make the right choice in a queen,” he muses. Heat spreads across your skin, your lips curling up slightly at his endearing remark. 

“It’s late,” Zuko says after a beat, letting his fingers slip away from yours. “We should both get some rest.” 

He stands, leaning over you and placing a docile hand at the back of your head. Your heart leaps from your chest and into your throat, your fingers curling to grip the skirt of your night dress as anxiety rushes to your head. You deny every instinct you have that tells you to fend him off. If this is when he chooses to take you, you have no choice but to go willingly - you can’t form any rifts in a relationship that’s already somewhat fragile, especially when doing so would mean driving a wedge through the center of an already divided country. 

Zuko lowers himself and rests his lips to your forehead, etching the phantom of a kiss just below your hairline; he parts almost as soon as he arrives, leaving you dazed and flustered in his wake. 

“Sleep well,” he murmurs, offering his arm to help you to your feet. You accept it, feeling much smaller beside him than you did only hours before. “I’ll see you in the morning.” 

You each return to your respective bedrooms, your legs floating towards your bed of their own accord and dropping you backward onto the mattress. You stare up at the sheer, billowing canopy hung from the ceiling as the shivering in your limbs returns, your body completely unable to accommodate with what your mind can barely seem to process. 

He didn’t force himself onto you. He didn’t violate the comfort between you simply for the sake of tradition and lineage. The extreme relief you feel is overwhelming, so much so that you think you might throw up or faint. 

You fall asleep to the sound of the ocean beyond the palace walls, the danger that looms within them doing little to deter the peace that washes over you as you drift into a pleasant dream.

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[gallavictorious]

Hello! What do you think about this recent new rumor that Ian and Mickey will have a threesome with a woman to get her pregnant? This is based on one anon saying some shit about a threesome happening (no proof) and a new actress being on set for ep 11 and 12 (who could be related to Carl's or Debbie's storyline as well). I think it's very weird and I'm not sure the show would actually go there. Hope not.

Hiya, nonnie!

Well, I don't think very much about at all, to be honest. As you say, there's not a lot of solid stuff to back this up, but it's also not outside the realm of possibility (if only because so few things are). When I saw the first BTS pic of the actress lounging in the Gallavich house, my first guess was that she was somehow involved with Carl's story – but of course that's just as unsubstantiated as the idea that she's there for a Gallavich threesome.

The actress appears to be Shakira Barrera, by the way, of Glow fame, and apparently also Animal Kingdom. Getting this ask, I checked IMDB for any clues, and it lists her as playing a character named Heidi in 11x11 and 11x12. Now, IMDB is not necessarily a trustworthy source, since anyone who registers an account can suggest edits (which is how we end up with sudden listings of Emmy Rossum in upcoming episode credits and the like) but Shakira did post on her IG about being on the Warner Bros lot the other day and Emma liked the pic, and yesterday she posted a story about going to the Warner Bros lot and there being ”last day of school vibes”. I am terrible with faces – like, if one of my best friends get a radical haircut I do not always recognize them terrible – so I can really tell if it's Shakira in the ”Last night with the Allstar team” picture Noel posted yesterday, but... I think there's a pretty decent case for it being her? I dig it, if so; I liked her in Glow!

That admittedly doesn't do anything to either support or disprove the threesome, as far as I can tell, but now that I have the information, I'd like to share. ;)

Returning to the actual rumour... There will always be rumours, especially concerning things people fear might be true, and once that anxiety gets hold of you, it's hard to shake. There is little to suggest that a threesome will happen – we have this new actress on set, we’re expecting some sort of lovely and sexy Gallavich moments in 11x11, we know that JW originally thought* Ian and Mickey might discuss kids this season (although we do not know how covid affected that, since the interview was done before the pandemic truly hit, but he did bring up Ian potentially thinking about kids again in December, though then it wasn’t entirely clear if that was more of general observation about things Ian and Mickey might differ on or something we could expect to actually see in the season), and these things could add up to a threesome with a potential surrogate but they could also add up to so many other things – and these separate facts needn't be connected at all! Ian and Mickey can very well be discussing kids without suddenly having a threesome with a woman. I suppose the pic Cam posted of a fake baby kind of sparked the whole thing, since it once more turned people's minds towards Ian and Mickey having children, and in combination with the strong reaction many fans had to the orgy of 11x07... it was just fertile ground for this kind of speculation to take hold, you know?

But. I can't conclusively debunk this theory, nonnie; I wish I could, to ease the minds of those who fear the possibility. For what it's worth, I think it's based on very little and to me introducing a whole new character in the last two episodes just to get Ian and Mickey a kid doesn’t seem like the likeliest option – but that doesn't mean it can't happen. While it's not my first (or second or third) guess about what might be going down, I obviously can't make any promises or even educated guesses, because there’s not enough data for me to feel comfortable doing that. We'll just have to wait and see, I'm afraid; hopefully new details will emerge in the coming weeks that might give us further clues. (And if you’re sitting on anything relevant – anything relevant and sourced, mind you! – feel free to share, but please understand that I’m not terribly interested in the topic, apart from the sleuthing opportunities it presents, and have no intention of getting further involved in the arguments surrounding it - at least not without something solid to go on. ;) I might - and probably will - ignore asks concerning this: fair warning.)

I'd urge people not to borrow misery, when we have this little to go on, but while I'm not particularly concerned about this possibility (both because I don't think there's a very strong case for it and because I'd probably be less upset about such a developtment than most others, even though it's certainly not the SL I’d have chosen for them) I am very familiar with anxiety, and know that many fans are deeply distrustful of the writers. I suspect that nothing but actual, conclusive proof that this new character won't be involved with a character will properly soothe people's fears. Unfortunately, that I cannot give you at this point.

*I’m at work and can’t for the life of me find the relevant interview now; I’ll try to get hold of it when I’m back home at my own laptop to provide a link. Please take the claim with a grain of salt until then.

[hippychick006]

Misha Panel 

I’ve done this summary as it helps to have what Misha actually says to hand as more often than not, his stans misquote him. It’s also useful as Misha often changes things - as he appears to have done between his last virtual panel and this one. Note, I’m only focusing on the key parts where he talks about the show/Jared/Jensen.  It is not free of anti castiel/misha comments where I disagree, though those are few and far between for a change. It’s long so putting under a cut... 

- Misha confirms his filming finished in March prior to Covid [this comes up later in more detail].  Watching the last epiosode was an emotional experience for him.  For him, it represents the end of a chapter of his life. 

- Misha says fandoms not going anywhere [*hisses]

- Misha’s future work/projects?: working on senate race in georgia, publishing a book of poetry, couple of film projects he’s trying to get off the ground, one he’s not acting/directing in, the other he may act and/or direct 

- Jack brought Cass back but we didn’t get to see it, what happened?: different ending originally that Covid restrictions made impossible to produce. Cool ending involved bringing back lots of cast members over the years.  In the original ending, Castiel hadn’t gone to rebuild heaven, there was a different conclusion for him.  Misha purposely did not read the last two episodes before they aired as he wanted to be an audience member. He knew a little about Castiel/Jack’s fate in the abstract, but because he wasn’t in it, he doesn’t know what the answer was. He thinks them rebuilding heaven was less boots on the ground and more at a spiritual level [so he’s talking at the metaphysical/spiritual plane level and not corporeal) so they are everywhere (e.g. in drops of rain as per Jack’s speech to Sam in 19). That’s what I’m understanding at least.  He says that’s pure speculation though.]

- what qualities does castiel have similar to Misha?: there are a lot of similar qualities [backstabber comes immediately to my mind tbh]. Over time he and the character melded. Over time he evolved into something that didn’t quite fit in with either angels or humanity, he felt like an outsider which Misha has felt for much of his life. He became softer, more sensitive, he tried to do the right thing and be a good person. Oh wow, he says that in order to write to play to Misha’s strengths, the character had to “morph a bit”.  I loved bad!ass Castiel, he’s my favourite Castiel!

- What one thing will he take with him from playing Castiel?: on a professional level, it was fascinating to play a character for so many years. He discussed with J2 recently that the characters really became part of them. He doesn’t think that will happen again, just due to length of time the played them. On watching Jensen’s death scene, he cried but it was more “That’s Cass’ friend Dean dying”  It was weird to have a blurring of lines between yourself and your character but he thinks that’s what happened with all of them. He’ll take the character away, which will be a part of him forever. 

- Misha made fortune cookes and put inside lewd and inappropriate fortunes

[I don’t get this next bit as earlier in the panel he says he didn’t read the last two episodes so didn’t know what was going to happen and gave the answer I documented above and now we have this next question where his answer seems to contradict that]:

- Is there anything more he can say about the originally planned finale?:  He doesn’t want to be the one to reveal these state secrets, but what are they going to do, fire him?  He feels someone might have said to him, please don’t reveal what was going to happen, but can’t remember for sure if it’s true. He says there was a version of Sam and Dean’s heaven that was populated with all of the people that were from their past that they have come to love.  They could not do that because of Covid restrictions. 

- Favourite behind the scenes memory of “The boys”: He doesn’t have a favourite memory, they were close friends for 12 years. They had laughing fits and fights and got pissed off at each other. Some of his fondest memories of being at work anywhere were working on Supernatural.  He’s never going to be on a set again where there is so much mirth so he’s going to miss that for sure.

- he’s talking about Castiel’s wardrobe which is actually funny - e.g. original suit 3 sizes to big, sometimes showing blood and holes, sometimes being magically fixed, not wearing a tie, going back to wearing a tie... “Nobody complained about that too much...” [uh because some of us were watching other things and your own stans were looking at the background.]  He stole some trenchcoats and has them in his closet.

- How do you prepare for emotional scenes?: it’s hard for him to get into that emotional state. To prepare for the Castiel’s declaration of love scene and taken by the empty, Misha needs to be off by himself and not chatting with people, so for that scene he sat on his own in a dark corner of the stage and ruminated on his own.  Rob Hayter, stunt coordinator, noticed and stood sentinel and made sure no one disturbed him which Misha said was really sweet.  Everyone stopped fucking around for that scene to allow them to do what they needed to do.

-  How did you feel when you read the script when Castiel dies?: Misha knew for a long time that ending was coming, he’d been speaking to Rob Berens about it, he was really happy with it.  It was the ending he’d wanted for Cass so when he read the script, he was really happy it had made it to the page [i bet it was Misha, how are those destiel sales going through your Stands company?]. It felt it was a little “risky and a little brave” for the show to do [on a fucking network that is number one in Glaad reviews?  Are you being fucking serious right now?] He was happy to be a part of that [again sales] and have that character express love like that so he was happy with it. 

[Okay, so notice in his last virtual panel 2 weeks ago, he was very happy, he’s now starting to do exactly what he did with Karla movie as he goes on to say...]

He’s seen “some people” [you mean lgbtq+ people?!]  “complaining” about this is playing into the “bury the gays” trope which is an insidious and real trope in film and television storytelling in h/w over the years. Misha doesn’t think that’s what was happening with Castiel’s [he died second after the confession MIsha!] First of all Castiel isn’t dead, he’s in heaven working to rebuild it... [you didn’t know this 2 weeks ago, as far as you knew Castiel died and went to the empty].  So much good came from that declaration, because Cass was able to save Dean, which was essential to saving the world, so this declaration wasn’t so then fate strikes you down and you’re done forever. The declaration literally ended up saving the world. It was of Cass’ own volition, he wasn’t forced to do it, it was his choice, and he thinks that’s important, so maybe he’s naieve and doesn’t feel they are playing into that trope. 

[You were absolutely playing into that trope Misha and you didn’t give a shit as you did no research on playing an lgbtq+ character so sincerely fuck off]

He’s glad that Castiel got to express that and have that ending. He thinks thats kind of important and he’s proud the show did that. [again fuck off, this was done for you and it showed]  He thinks its a conversation they will continue to have as they continue to dissect it going forward [nope, consigned to the dumpster fire I’ve put the majority of the rest of Drabbernatural in]

- Do you think you will ever get an SPN tattoo?:  He doesn’t have any but he’s thinking about getting tattoos relating to his children.  Is that a sign of desperation that a true hasbeen will do? Should he get a tattoo of Jared and Jensen’s face.  He could get a tattoo of Castiel’s face on his abdomen.  He’s saying probably not. If they want to get one, totally supportive of that

-  what is his favourite moment of the finale?: Dean’s death scene, masterfully executed, excellent performances from both Jared and Jensen in that scene and made him cry

- best memory of your last day on the supernatural set?: everyone being really sweet, lot of tears from cast and crew. The last scene he shot as Castiel was the last scene of the day on a Friday. Him, Alex, Richard S and Jensen all had to get to Las Vegas for a fan convention the next morning. They shot late and finished at 1.30, it was Cass goodbye and Misha’s goodbye to the show.  He said they had to get a chartered flight because of the early flight [not sure why he’s saying this as I thought it was Jared’s plane they all travelled in?] He’s talking about going back - because of the issue with the plane - and they are all texting family, saying they love them, so it was such a strange night, he’d said goodbye to Supernatural, he said goodbye to Castiel and later on said goodbye to his kids because they thought they were going to die that night. :(

[Going to add that this puts to rest that Misha was due back for 19 and 20 even before covid, it confirms he was not going to be in either episode, though I maintain, they may have shot an extra scene while they had him to slot into 19 or 20]

- do you think Cass and the other angels got their wings back?: Yes, probably, they have Jack who is the new god. What a long and miserable experience that was of not having wings. Cass was so powerful when he started, he could snap his fingers and teleport and time travel and lost that with his broken wings and they didn’t come back. He doesn’t know why they didn’t fix him as Castiel would have been a much more powerful ally if he didn’t have to drive around in the pimp mobile [uh, for the same reason Sam lost his powers, deus ex machina]. He tells the story of Jared pressing buttons in the car causing the hydraulics to fail costing $10000 of repair.

- in your opinion, what colour are Castiels wings?: shit, I don’t know, I always thought they were black, but now that you’ve said that, they are rainbow coloured, how about that?

- What is the worst joke Jared and Jensen did to you?: [*cough fans looking for things to complain about or hate Jared on]: Jared and Jensen, as you know, they are not good people.  He talks about directing an episode and they got excited in the week before, they were going to break into his apartment and steal his furniture, they had all kinds of nefarious plans, the crew tipped him off and told him to watch his home and car keys. They put a fish under the seat in his car and one of the crew told him.  Jared removed the canvas on the director’s chair and laid it across so it looked like it was still the chair. Misha fell for that at least 5 times. That was pretty frustrating. Jared kept messing up his lines (which Misha said Jared never does) and Misha was directing in another room, Misha eventually went to see what the problem was and that’s when Jared pied him in the face. Everyone in the crew was complicit in the “assault”. Jensen brought him another shirt, said, “I’m sorry man, that’s sucks, that was too much.”  Jensen then pied him in the face.

- What is the real story behind the handprint in the finale?: Um I don't know, but I think it was a nice touch, that was a really lovely callback that worked well. I can’t remember how we came up with that, or was it in the script, I can’t remember. Wasn’t it a good callback to the very beginning. [Again, this appears to differ from what was being reported two weeks ago so might need to go back to that panel if I can get access to it]

-What’s your favourite memory from offline/online panels?: It’s much more fun to be live and in person. I don’t know, I have had some really fun... [PANDERING ALERT COMING UP] Jensen and I have some really fun panels together in Rome.  I don’t know why but we always just seem to have a real hoot there, talks about the resume off, they really enjoyed that. He had pizza delivered to a creation panel once.  He talks about the Saturday night special and he can’t wait till they can get back to that. 

[NOTE CYNICAL PART OF THIS IS FOR HIS FANBASE TO ONCE AGAIN CLAMOUR FOR MORE JENMISH PANELS. I DO NOT TRUST THIS MAN AT ALL]

- What was your favourite version of Castiel to play?: he had the most fun playing Lucifer because Mark P had left a great template to play Lucifer [you took the worst parts imo but Mark fucked his character up too]. He enjoyed playing the human parts of Castiel because it was fun to explore how to be human for the first time. Overall, just regular Cass. He wouldn’t have wanted to trade regular Castiel for other iterations. [A great question would be badass Castiel v late season wooby castiel preference]

[thefreakishmuffin]

Cursed Princess Club Theory: Who is going to die?

Here I am, back on my bullcrap with yet another CPC theory! And this is a... Rather dark one, to say the least.

Now, if you’re all caught up on the series, you’d know that Nell has received an eerie premonition that someone in the club is going to die before the next new moon. However, she can’t exactly remember who she saw in her vision, so that leaves us to theorize and speculate about who’s going to die. You know, at least until the premonition passes and we see what happens. 

So, who in the club is going to die? I have a few different theories on who (or perhaps what) is getting the axe. (And hold onto your butts, everybody. Once again, I have made a post that has gotten way longer than I originally intended).

Theory #1: Prince Whitney

I feel like this one is the most obvious. Which is why I feel it may be the least likely. Allow me to explain. Back when Nell received her premonition, it was near the same time Prez was talking about receiving a potential new, male member of the club, who was said to be waiting for her in the forest. Soon after this, we find out that this potential new member (or at least appears to be the potential member) is Prince Whitney. 

You see where I’m getting at? These two moments seem too close together, as if Lambcat is purposely trying to make us believe that the premonition is about Whitney. But I’m thinking this may be a trick. Why? Because this is roughly the same thing she did with Nell when she was first introduced into the series. 

When we first saw Nell, it was around the same time Gwen started getting some mysterious, anonymous notes. And most of these notes were followed by a glare from Nell, almost making it appear as if she were the one writing these notes in the first place. Lambcat was playing all of this out in the story in such a way to make us believe that Nell was writing the notes, while, in actuality, that wasn’t the case. It turned out to be Aurelia, someone that nobody would’ve ever suspected. And that’s what I think is going on here. Lambcat is trying to make us believe that Whitney is the one slated to die, so we will be surprised when it isn’t him.

And the placement of moments and Lambcat being sneaky isn’t the only argument I have for this. Another is that, in Nell’s premonition, she stated that it was club member who was going to die. As of right now, Whitney isn’t a club member. Now, I fully understand that he may become a member in the future, but that’s not at all set in stone. We find out that Whitney has been traveling around for the past few years apologizing to all the people he’s wronged, and trying to make things right. He even tells Frederick that there is one last person he needs to apologize to, who we all know is Prez. I’m thinking he let out some info that he wants to join the club - not because he wants to join - but because he wants to find a way to get to Prez and apologize to her. And when she didn’t show up that night when he thought she would, he decided to head off to try and find her on his own.

I don’t know about you, but I really didn’t get the vibe that he had any intention of joining the club. To me, it just seemed like he really wanted to find a way to get to Prez and complete his quest for redemption. But what if he does want to join the club? To be honest, when Prez sees him again, she’s probably gonna freak out a little. And even after he apologizes to her and expresses a desire to join the CPC, there is no guarantee that she’ll let him join. 

So there’s my thoughts on Prince Whitney being the potential victim. I personally don’t think it’s super likely, but I understand that I could be completely wrong. Anyway... Onto the next one.

Theory #2: A curse is lifted

I’ve seen this theory tossed around a bit, and I think it’s a pretty good one. What if Nell’s premonition isn’t exactly what it appears to be? After all, she did say that part of her vision was a little fuzzy and hard to make out, so it could be possible that she wasn’t receiving the full premonition. She said, “a member of this club will die in a flash.” Perhaps this supposed club members ‘death’, is the death of their old selves, with them being born anew without their curse. 

But who could it be getting their curse lifted? Good question. I have no idea. It cold literally be anybody. Though I suppose I could guess that it would be Monika, as we’ve been getting a bit more of her this season. Or maybe, if we find out that Gwen is actually cursed, it could be her cursed that is getting lifted. Oh, and speaking of our dear little Gwendolyn...

Theory #3: The ‘death’ of Gwen’s insecurities

This is one that my older sister actually brought up to me the other day. I feel like this theory might be just a little far-fetched, but I think it’s plausible enough to discuss and put out there. 

The idea is that Gwen finally comes into her own by seeing her worth and - through that - start viewing herself as beautiful. My sister said that this may happen through Frederick confessing his love to Gwen, but I don’t think so. I feel like, in order for this to work, she’s gonna have to get there her own. As discussed in the story, there’s nothing wrong with her leaning on friends and family for support. But at some point, it’s going to take her realizing this for herself, without needing others to always support her. 

And even if Frederick confesses his love to Gwen right now, I’m not sure it will be received very well. Keep in mind that Gwen hasn’t been privy to Frederick’s little story arc, and that when she was getting her portrait done by Lord Leopold, she said that she wasn’t going to allow herself to fall for Frederick. If anything, if Frederick confesses to Gwen, it’ll likely just end with one of them getting either really sad, hurt, or even heartbroken.

Well I went off on a little mini tangent there with Gwen... But there you have it. Those are my theories on who (or what) is going to get killed off. Have any other ideas? Please feel free to add on. I might even come up with a few new ideas later down the line as well. 

[illfoandillfie]

ok sorry but how many people do yall think rog has ever slept with cos i’m guessing four figures no lie

okay, i don’t normally respond to messages like this because, frankly, i dont really feel like its my place to speculate on roger’s sex life. Theres a difference between writing a fiction story with a character named after and inspired by him and discussing his actual personal life which i have no real knowledge about. What he gets up to in his free time is between him and the women he does it with. but i didn’t really feel able to ignore this one. please don’t take this as me telling you off or shutting you down or anything like that. If you want to speculate about roger’s body count thats up to you, go nuts with it. and i love when you guys message me and I don’t want to discourage you from feeling like you can talk to me or just send me your random thoughts or whatever about any subject. But I feel like I need to address why I disagree with this sentiment. Also so I can ask ya’ll to please stop asking me questions like this. 

So firstly, just to get this out of the way. 1000 is a lot. even 100 is a lot. I think if rog had slept with 1000+ people he’d have a least a few illegitimate kids and probably would have been checked into rehab for sex addiction (not to mention STIs and such because lbr people in the 70s specifically probs werent the most careful especially if drugs were involved). I mean even if we were going to say Rog got lucky with a different woman after every show we wouldn’t reach 1000. According to google, Queen played around 700 shows in their entire career. If we add shows played by The Cross thats only another 67 odd shows (according to wikipedia). 

now, i think there are 3 things that contribute to this idea of roger as especially promiscuous. 1. His attitude/demeanour/general way he sells himself. 2. the generally held conceptions about rock stars and rock star behaviour. and 3. what i’m going to call fandom dumbassery (but i mean that with a lot of love) 

So lets start with the man himself. Roger Taylor is loud and opinionated and not particularly humble. He knows he’s talented and attractive though for at least some time he was a little self-conscious about how feminine he looked. He’s always up for a laugh, likes to party and has admitted to enjoying his drink and his women. He’s had kids with two different women, who’s relationships “overlapped”, and is currently married to a third. At least that’s the perception we can gleam from his interviews, behind the scenes videos, and other public appearances. 

It’s easy to see how that image leads to accusations of being a womaniser and a cheater and basically a bit of a slut lmao. But here’s the thing. I think Roger, in part, markets himself that way. The thing is, if you look at his solo songs and the relationships he currently has with his kids and their mothers, and things other people have said about him/his relationships over the years, I think it’s fair to say he also has a bit of a romantic streak maybe? idk if thats the best way of describing it...he’s self confessed to not being a fan of marriage and the like but he’s not opposed to writing and singing love songs and seems to believe in ~love~ as a concept/power. He certainly cares deeply for those closest to him. Whether or not that translates to an agreement with monogamy I can’t say for certain. It’s hard to draw conclusions here because a lot of what we know of his personal life was fed to us through magazines and news paper gossip column articles and they were never looking for the truth, they were looking for scandal and sensationalism. 

For instance the whole thing with the overlapping relationships. I think most people who have read anything about roger and dom and debbie realise that it’s not as cut and dry as “he was cheating with debbie and left dom for her” even though that was the story being sold by the press at the time. The reality (or at least the version closer to reality since obviously no one outside of them and whoever they were closest with knows all the nitty gritty details) is that rog and dom had already split when they got married. it was a marriage of convenience to make sure her and the kids would be looked after financially etc even after he’d moved out. So while it looked to the public like he married one chick and 30 odd days later was spotted with another, there really wasn’t anything untoward happening.  I’m not saying he never had casual hookups or one night stands and i’m not saying he never cheated, but I do think some of it’s been exaggerated, whether by him to encourage the rock star perception or by newspaper/magazine articles.

Now, obviously, we have stories of rog, particularly in the late 60s and into the 70s, being with multiple women. There’s that bit in the Interview with a Queen “Groupie” (which is a fantastic read and i defs recommend checking it out if you havent already) where she talks about roger being a chick magnet and says that, at the time, it was pretty common to sleep about. But, she also says she didnt notice him doing it more or less than anyone else and seemed to mostly be with Jo (his girlfriend at the time). This is the same Jo that got a mention in the Queen in 3D book (”i think we all had the feeling that these two were together for life, but it was not to be”). Conversely, we have that quote (which i cannot find rn but i’ll link it when i do) about roger sometimes having one girl upstairs while another waited in the garage for them to be finished. I think it was about Rog in the mid-late 60s in Truro but whatever. Obviously he wasn’t anywhere near celibate and it’s likely was sleeping with people outside of his relationship(s). But one has to assume that as he got older those kinds of antics stopped happening, at least as frequently.

There is one potential story that I remember reading somewhere along the way about Roger cheating on Debbie while she was pregnant. But, take that with a grain of salt because I can’t find the article again and also I think it was from like The Sun or something equally as rubbish. The press was notoriously always printing mean shit about the boys and that might have been another thing they published to create scandal. Even so, if we assume it’s legit that is still only 1 story. Not to throw him under the bus but Brian is the one with multiple confirmed affairs, who literally wrote songs about it all. So why is Roger the one with sleazy reputation? 

This is where my second and third points come in. There is a pervasive idea about what it means to be a rock star. The whole trashing hotel rooms, sleeping with groupies, passing out drunk every night thing. And I’m sure that Queen was like that to an extent. I think it’s pretty common knowledge that all of them got up to shit on the road. Between innuendo laden interviews and songs, videos and accounts of their parties, stories CT has put online, and other stories like the one of Roger bringing out lines of coke as dessert when he was having dinner with motley crue. They definitely embraced the rock and roll lifestyle. And I think with Roger’s personality being what it is, it’s easy to link him to those traditional rock star tropes and say it was all true all the time. I also think Roger has done nothing to counter those beliefs. He’s been open about how he wanted to be a rock star since the minute he picked up a guitar, he’s labelled himself as a great lay in magazines, he’s joked about girls pulling their tits out over dinner in interviews (though he said he didnt take her home), he’s written songs like One Night Stand and Dirty Mind and Airheads which explicitly mention his preference for women and alcohol. I think it’s fair to say he’s kind of encouraged that view of himself. Whether it was just a side effect of being part of such a well known band and having such a boisterous demeanour/personality, or whether it was intentional as a version of promotion i don’t know. maybe a mix of them? I mean I’m sure it didn’t hurt sales and stuff. it’s the whole guys want to be him, girls want to be with him thing, right? Maybe that’s just me being cynical though lmao. 

Anyway, the fandom brain has taken all of that and compressed it into memes and jokes about rog being the band slut. Which i’m not complaining about, lord knows i’ve made the same jokes and reblogged the same posts and used those tropes in my fics. They’re funny and lend themselves to interesting fic concepts. Plus, i think roger is the sort of person who would probably laugh about most of it. But it’s an idea that keeps feeding into itself through fandom, perpetuating what is probably a misguided view of his personal life.

Again, I am sure he’s had his fair share of fun and I’m not trying to make out that he was always perfect or whatever, but I don’t think he’s been with as many women as the popular discourse would imply and I certainly don’t think he’s in the 4 digit numbers. 

[snkpolls]

SnK Episode 63 Poll (for Manga Readers)

The poll closed with 253 responses. Thank you to everyone who participated!

Please note that these are the results for the Manga Readers’ poll. If you wish to see the results for the Anime Only Watchers’ poll, click here.

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RATE THE CHAPTER 244 Responses

In contrast to episode 62, this episode got a lot more of a positive response, with no one rating it a one, and well over ¾ rating it as a 4 or better. The anticipation for the upcoming events surely has a part to play in this!

I love it! Wholesome and thrilling all in one!

LET'S GOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

I think they did an amazing job. The animation was even better than before too.

Pacing was great! The best so far.

WHICH OF THE FOLLOWING MOMENTS WAS YOUR FAVORITE? 247 Responses

As expected of the fandom, Falco leading Reiner to the basement to meet Eren got the largest chunk of the pie as what was probably one of the most anticipated moments from the episode. In second was the daytime festival with Reiner spoiling the kids to some good food, with the third place going to Eren meeting his grandfather at the hospital. 

They animated Dr Jaeger’s breakdown incredibly well, I felt extra bad for the guy.

WOULD YOU SHAMELESSLY EXPLOIT REINER FINANCIALLY IF YOU HAD SUCH AN OPPORTUNITY? 242 Responses

The majority of respondents say they would definitely exploit Reiner financially, with 31% saying they would feel bad about it, and 26.4% truly being shameless about it. 17.8%, on the other hand, would never even entertain the thought.

WHICH FOOD WOULD YOU WANT REINER TO BUY YOU? 246 Responses

Naturally, pizza gets the majority with nearly 60% of the vote (c’mon, who doesn’t love a good pizza?). Behind that was dessert at 22.8%, followed by those who prefer a good sandwich at 17.1%. A couple of commenters were just plain thirsty for other characters. 

All of the above ;)

Ereh abs 

1 drink with 2 straws so we can share while romantically staring into each other's eyes

EVERYTHING

erwin's t*ts

All. We make reiner broke

WHICH KID HAD THE CUTEST “BEGGING” EXPRESSION? 244 Responses

Gabi says she’s cute, and the fandom agrees! With 67.2% of the vote, Gabi takes the number 1 spot as the most adorable beggar. This is followed up distantly by Falco, who took in 25.8% of the vote. Zofia and Udo got a small amount of love as well.

WHAT DO YOU THINK - DID MAPPA DO WILLY TYBUR JUSTICE? 245 Responses

Overall, respondents are very happy with MAPPA’s rendition of Willy Tybur, with nearly 50% simply appreciating his design and seiyuu, while 38.8% find him quite dashing. A small amount think MAPPA got his design down just right, but not so much of a hit with the seiyuu. 

As expected of MAPPA! That's exactly Willy!

His shoulders look so small its weird

They did a good job casting and drawing him but I don't personally think he's attractive at all

I couldn't take him seriously since his voice is the same as kakashi's

He is fine and MAPPA animated him well. I don't look at him from sexual way. 

They really nailed Willy and I appreciate his character way more than in the manga

MAPPA MANAGED TO FIT IN THE STAIRWELL SCENE WITH PORCO AND PIECK. WAS IT EVERYTHING YOU HOPED IT WOULD BE? 247 Responses

MAPPA gave some of us a good surprise by repurposing the stairwell scene with Porco and Pieck (and I think most of us agree they’d have been fools to omit it completely). 38.1% were very grateful for it’s inclusion. 37.2% think they executed it well and had a nice chuckle from it. 9.7% were disappointed in the adaptation of Pieck’s ass, and 10.9% actually didn’t care about this scene anyway. 

Everyone's making too much of a fuss over it. Nice scene though

I wish they had actually animated her scurrying around

My bisexual ass simps for Porco AND Pieck 

It was everything I hoped for and more. Thank you Mappa

I always knew MAPPA wouldn't dare cut the scene where Pieck scares the crap outta Porco 😂. Poor guy could have fallen down the stairs.

That was a cute and fun scene. Pieck is really sweet and Porco was more friendly and open hearted than his manga counterpart. I really loved it!

YES! YES! YES! YES! Y E S!

Pieck Ass

MAPPA INCLUDED AN ANIME-ONLY SCENE OF A DRUNK TOWNSMAN PRAISING ZOFIA (MISTAKING HER FOR GABI), WHICH INCLUDES SOME SYMBOLISM ABOUT BAD LUCK. WHAT DO YOU THINK OF THE ADDITION? 244 Responses

Anime-only scenes are always hit-or-miss with manga readers, and this one seems to have been no exception. Overall, 32% of respondents thought it added a nice layer to the life of Eldians on the mainland. 18.4% were appreciative of a little more Zofia content. 16.4% liked the scene well enough, but didn’t feel it was necessary. 12.7% feel that it will serve as more fodder for Gabi’s characterization. Smaller amounts either didn’t care about it, or felt that it was completely unneeded and pointless. 

I don't remember it not being part of manga, but this scene was good.

They skipped so many scenes from the manga and then add this... really not necessary

I've appreciated every little addition they've added so far, but I wish we could all quit associating black cats with bad luck. It's a major reason why they have a hard time getting adopted in real life. :(

Yet another bitter reminder of why I despise Gabi so much

OOF

I really liked the additions they made, they’re really making us like all these characters more and it’s going to hit even harder when things go down.

UDO’S SARCASM IN THE ANIME IS MUCH MORE PLAYFUL THAN HIS GLOOMY CYNICISM IN THE MANGA. DO YOU THINK THIS MAKES HIM MORE LIKEABLE? 243 Responses

Udo shows a lot of distaste for the way that Eldians are treated both in the manga and in the anime, although it seems to have gone a bit more overlooked when we initially met his character. The anime team upped the sarcasm in Udo’s fatalistic views and the fandom seems to be very receptive to it! 44.9% of respondents feel that it makes him stand out a lot more than it did in the manga, and 34.2% are simply enjoying this more lively rendition of his character. A handful of others prefer his demeanor better in the manga, while others really don’t care about Udo at all.

I adore him in the anime. It’s gonna hurt seeing him squashed.

The answer is: Yes! 

It hurts more 'cause he'll die

To me it kind of felt like anger disguised as playful sarcasm, which actually made it scarier to me because you never know when he's gonna snap like he did last time.

MAPPA OMITTED THE SCENE SHOWING ZEKE AND COLT PLAYING BASEBALL. AS MANGA READERS, THIS ONCE SPARKED A LOT OF DISCUSSION ABOUT WHETHER EREN AND ZEKE WERE WORKING TOGETHER. DO YOU THINK ITS REMOVAL WAS A GOOD MOVE? 243 Responses

Overall, there doesn’t seem to be much panic in the omission of Zeke and Colt playing baseball, although some write-in responses indicated that they were more saddened by the lack of development between Zeke and Colt, rather than the foreshadowing of the Yeager brothers working together. 39.5% feel that since we already know Zeke has an affinity for baseball, the foreshadowing works well enough without this extra scene. 28.8% feel that we should simply wait and see if MAPPA rearranged this like it has other scenes. 13.6% think that this will make things even more of a shock for anime-only viewers, while a smaller handful feel that it ruins all ability to even speculate about it.

It would be too obvious if it was in the same episode and I think Eren's scene is enough for people to make a conection between baseball and Zeke

I missed it because it fleshed out Zeke and Colt’s relationship. Specifically the thing Zeke says about being a big brother. 

I'm more sad because it was cute than for the potential foreshadowing. The foreshadowing is at least partly still there without it.

It's looking like a "show it later in a flaskback" angle.

It would probably be too obvious in an anime format

I'm more disappointed about the content of the conversation between Zeke and Colt

Since it was obvious last episode that the injured soldier was Eren, it’s good to actually hold another plot twist in the air that nobody will see coming as a replacement

WITH KIYOMI NOW INTRODUCED, HOW DO YOU THINK MIKASA WILL ACKNOWLEDGE THE AZUMABITO SYMBOL? 240 Responses

The symbol on Kiyomi’s kimono is the same one that is branded on Mikasa’s wrist in the manga. But the anime team retconned this detail and Mikasa’s mother showed her the symbol through embroidery instead. So it begs the question of how this will be acknowledged in the anime, given Mikasa doesn’t (knowingly) walk around with an embroidered Azumabito symbol on her clothing. 41.7% feel that she will verbally acknowledge the symbol as something her mother showed her when she was little. 25% are anticipating MAPPA retconning things back to having the symbol branded on Mikasa’s wrist again instead. 15.8% think she will have the symbol embroidered on a piece of clothing she is wearing, and others feel it will be acknowledged in a different way, or the scene will be omitted altogether.

Either canned entirely so they can focus more on adapting the more labor intensive parts or acknowledged in another way

Anyone who thinks they’ll retcon to a tattoo is super wrong. Japan has a huge taboo on tattoos because of the Yakuza (Japanese Mafia) so they’re 100% keeping with the embroidery 

I don’t even remember where Mikasa first saw the symbol…

I think it would be fine if they use the embroidery but they could just change where the tattoo is located

WHAT DID YOU THINK ABOUT THE INCLUSION OF PIECK AND PORCO DURING THE DAYTIME FESTIVAL? 245 Responses

With Pieck being a fan favorite and Porco lacking in as much screen time in comparison, we asked how you all felt about the inclusion of them in the short festival scene. Most responses were positive, with 38.8% getting a kick out of the implication that they, too, were mooching off of Reiner for free food, 35.1% just loving that they’re getting more screen time altogether, and 17.1% feeling that it was a huge improvement over Reiner being solo in the manga. A small chunk of respondents felt it was better the way it was depicted in the manga. 

Doesn't matter, Falco is really the only one who deserves to live

I preferred it in the manga when Reiner was alone with the kids, but it's a nice addition to give them more screentime. Especially to Porco

Their moments together show the close-hearted bonds they have.

HOW DO YOU THINK THE ADAPTATION OF CHAPTERS 99 AND 100 WILL GO? 100 IS ONE THE COMMUNITY’S ALL-TIME FAVORITE CHAPTERS. 244 Responses

The Declaration of War has been one of the most anticipated animated episodes since its chapter’s publication. With MAPPA at the helm, we asked how confident you guys were in how it will be adapted. Nearly 70% of respondents are wholly confident in MAPPA’s ability to pull this off, regardless of whether they’ll have to cut some lines or are able to keep everything in. 25% remain cautiously optimistic. 

I'm really scared, but hope that they can make it justice 

No idea how they adapt that much dialogue in one episode

I hope the declaration of war gets the best adaptation possible.

IN A RECENT INTERVIEW, WE GOT A GLIMPSE OF SOME NEW MUSIC THAT HASN’T YET BEEN IN THE ANIME. COMPOSER SAMUEL KIM MADE A WONDERFUL FAN COMPOSITION BASED OFF OF THE SNIPPET IN THE INTERVIEW.... DO YOU THINK THAT HIS MUSIC IS WHAT WILL BE PLAYED DURING THE BUILDUP TO THE DECLARATION OF WAR? 228 Responses

For those of us who are OST nerds, we wait in anticipation of which track will be used for the iconic Declaration of War scene and how it will impact the overall execution. 37.3% who listened to the fan composition of a new song feel that no other song would suit the scene and are hopeful this is, indeed, what will play. 22.4% are hanging on for YouSeeBigGirl/T:T (or at the very least a rendition of it) due to the significance it has between Eren and Reiner. 19.3% feel it will play during Willy’s play, but not the Big Moment itself, and 11.4% simply aren’t invested. Some write-ins indicated they don’t want to be spoiled on any of the new music until it’s paired with the appropriate scenes. 

I hope that it will be Vogel im Kafig but this track fits great too, and I think that this track is more likely to play during the buildup scene

Not gonna listen. If this is indeed the DoW music, I want to hear it first during the scene itself.

It'll be edited around for the play but the climax at the end could very well match the trailer they used it in for DoW

Whatever MAPPA decides to play, I'll be content with I'm sure. 

I prefer to wait and be suprised by the ost than listen to it before and it feeling like deja-vu

YouSeeBigGirl would be great for some nostalgia but this new soundtrack seems intriguing, maybe MAPPA has more surprises for us

Im thinking the ost might be completely different but i am open to it being played because it does sound nice

No ost spoilers for me

WHICH SCENE FROM THE PREVIEW ARE YOU MOST LOOKING FORWARD TO NEXT EPISODE? 243 Responses

The top three most anticipated clips from the preview include Eren starting to transform, Willy declaring war and Eren and Reiner’s conversation in the basement. Of course, these are all more or less interconnected, so the vast majority of respondents are looking forward to the buildup toward and the climax of the DoW (as expected). A small number are looking forward to smaller scenes such as Falco realizing he’s been used and Willy’s play in general. 

I'm hyped for the declaration play!

ADDITIONAL THOUGHTS ON THE EPISODE?

I LOVED IT MAPPA IS DOING A GOOD JOB!!!!

I loved the humanization of all the characters

The perfect calm before the storm. Everything from here on out will be an unstoppable train

I'm just so happy to see the story animated! 

It was a mandatory filler episode for the declaration of war, important stuff happening but pretty boring overall.

This episode seemed shorter and kinda empty, but considering what's coming, I totally forgive and understand it. 

Its just a really great episode The pacing was perfect I was actually more invested with Magath's and Willy's interaction in the anime rather than the manga The visuals for the scene when Eren and Dr. Jaeger were talking were beautiful Udo's character was fleshed out more I'm still waiting for Armin It just presented things differently from how i read into those scence, and i liked that. Overall just really exited for the next episode and for chapter 136 to come out

The ending got me so HYPED for the next episode!! It was really well done.

the eyeshots of Eren's grandpa were epic

The episode was trully wonderful and I enjoyed every part of it. MAPPA is doing great job and I get a feeling that with the new soundtrack the episodes feel more serious than the ones created by WiT. I love Pieck. I never understood what was so ""cute"" about her in the manga. I saw her only as intelligent, skilled, tough warrior woman. Now I finally see her cuteness. I love how sweet and calm she is. Pieck reminds me of Tsuyu from MHA. They share similar energy. I'm grateful to MAPPA for making the bonds between the warriors stronger. This way the anime onlines will feel more sympathy to them. Pieck and Porco won't be just cold warriors, but nice folks.

Watching Falco and Gabi together is so satisfying to watch after knowing he confesses his love before inheriting the jaw Titan oooof love them so much

WHERE DO YOU PRIMARILY DISCUSS THE SERIES? 232 Responses

Thank you again to everyone who participated! We’ll see you again next episode!