#ran s1

[arcanegifs]

Arcane Gif Requests: @softbeebee ↳ "You wanna mess around? They gonna take you down, down, down Wanna slide and turn Such a lovely way to burn, burn, burn"

[finleycannotdraw]

4. Historic Time ~ won’t you stay with me, my darling, when my walls start burning down? (x)

I have so many thoughts about Aziraphale and the Library of Alexandria (which, as a friend explained, should actually be translated to Alexandrea). I definitely think he was there when it burned. I also think it could’ve been the first time (one of the only times) Crowley touched him without thinking, and maybe one of the reasons he decided to run a bookshop! I am unwell. Aziraphale would’ve been devastated when that library burned.

[mollysunder]

The Medarda arc of s2 struggled to be good, because the plot viciously smothered it. You can argue that Arcane was never about politics but you cannot say the Medardas were never explicitly a family defined by politics. So when the show shifted it's priorities from a drama steeped in political conflict where even though the setting was fantastical the stakes were grounded to a shift where magic is the end all be all threat to humanity, the Medardas are rendered largely irrelevant.

In s2 Mel's agency over her own story is both largely stripped from her and poorly communicated. Arcane has Mel abducted from the plot to be the Black Rose's captive. Even when Mel manages to free herself it's not through the traits the audience understands are her strengths, her cunning and social intelligence, it's through an innate instinct that natural to her and indecipherable to the audience.

Ambessa as a character is more or less a villain of convenience, which would be fine if she wasn't immediately following Silco's act. Once Mel is removed from the story Ambessa is largely disconnected from any emotional tension fuels conflict between the characters and previously drove the plot in s1. She's there to play the worse bad guy for Caitlyn and then give Viktor the man power for the Glorious Evolution.

It's frustrating to see the Medardas used the way they are in s2 because when they're together I can see how it could be good. When they're together Mel forces emotion out of Ambessa. In Act 1, Ambessa proved she could do circles around Piltover's court, which could actually put Mel in a tight spot.

Their final scene on paper sounds like a good idea where the true resolution to Mel and Ambessa's story was that Ambessa saw Mel's own ruthless behavior as she not only betrayed Ambessa to the Black Rose, but used her as BAIT to double cross LeBlanc. Ambessa died proud that her daughter killed her the way she did, and that's so cool and tragic, but the execution was a flop.

One, their final fight is completely unimportant to the actual Glorious Evolution, Mel's grief can't even be a highlight because it's interrupted by Viktor's mind trap. Two, their fight didn't rely on any of Mel's actual strengths, just magic and the poorly explained MacGuffin LeBlanc gave her. How did Mel even know it would do that?

It's like the writers had the bones for a great story for the Medardas, but then they're like the world's worst archeologists and fit those bones together in the worst way possible because they were convinced the bones made a stegasaurus instead of a T-rex or something.

[joifee]

The wizard, the princess, the elven warrior

[tonydaddingham]

so @theeminentlyimpractical and i were yodelling at each other in the DMs last night talking about general time-fuckery stuff in s2 and trying to riddle it all out, and i mentioned that i had noticed something that only now seems obvious from the s1 scriptbook (and im sure that someone pointed it out in 2019 but im wondering how relevant it still is):

everything is running late.

working backwards chronologically in s1, we have when newt arrives at jasmine cottage:

unfortunately the line isn't in the show, but in the interest of pooling all resources, the scriptbook says the following:

NEWT - I swerved to avoid Tibetans in the road. At least, I think I did. I've probably gone mad.

ANATHEMA - If you have, noone's going to notice. You're twenty minutes late.

we then know that crowley was late for arriving to collect the antichrist:

which the scriptbook doesn't elaborate on/give a timeframe, and may be extraneous to the previous and next example, but the antichrist is reportedly part of the Great Plan, so im including it for the moment.

but the kicker is agnes nutter, right?:

a precise and accurate prophetess who doesn't foresee that pulsifer would arrive late to execute her? how?

so when it came down to it, i started to wonder where something might have happened that has shunted the timeline along, between 10-20 minutes... maybe something in eden? but no - laure cracked it:

GOD - Archbishop James Ussher claimed that the Heaven and the Earth were created on Sunday the 21st of October, 4004 BC, at 9:00 a.m. This too was incorrect. By almost a quarter of an hour. It was created at 9:13 in the morning, which was correct.

now. all of the times don't match up completely, but the general sense is that the world may be running a little behind schedule, compared to what it should be - ie. the timeline that agnes predicted, and ussher/his team calculated.

we know that adam reset everything at the end of s1, but:

given that he's not omniscient, would he know that the world is 15 mins behind schedule (and therefore, when s2 starts, are we still running late)? probably not, so does he revert things back but keeps the world on the original clock, so to speak?

alternatively, did he reset the clock, and is the universe that we see in s2 actually on the correct time?

this might not mean much, if anything at all (see: it's just all for The Bit), in the grand scheme of things... but im now starting to wonder if it does. because what would have happened if everything had run on time? because maybe it's not so much thinking about individual events, and how they would have played out otherwise if the world had been on the 'correct' timeline all along, but maybe just the sheer possibility that there is an 'alternate reality' in which those 10-20 minutes meant things played out very differently?

ive talked about the chair (x), and ive talked about the sideburns (x), and ive talked about how crowley somehow seems to be existing at a different time to everything else around him (alternatively - whickber street itself is running in a different... reality? timeline?), as well as the random moments where time seems to disappear entirely/the clock swaps its hands around in ep6 (x). about crowley's comment about it being "too late", and how he seems to act slightly odd just before aziraphale tells him about the metatron's offer (x)... but is it all somehow interconnected? and connected to the 13-minute delay?

and if it is... what caused it? what might have delayed god by 13 minutes, or what might have gone wrong to cause the delay, that has then had a hypothetical knock-on effect, whether it be because adam did fix it, or didn't fix it?

[the-original-skipps]

the glow up be real 😂

[talaofthevalley]

Aikatsu Eyecatches: Season 2

☆ S1 ☆ S3 ☆ S4 ☆

[thelilylav]

Ah Briar my perfect doomed little lesbian. What is wrong with you we may never know. The character ever

[loisfreakinglane]

DOLLHOUSE // 2.03 “Belle Chose”

[karaspal]

"winn is a fan of james' karaoke skills" yeah, i'm sure that's all there is to that...

[stormwaterwitch]

Anyone else seen Kaos on Netflix?

[areseebee]

Who am I to turn down the chance to get some more writing out of you? 😉

How about a little bit of Jerin with "21. pretty"? Bonus points if it's Erin thinking James is pretty rather than the other way around

ohh i love it! here's a little bit set during katya and erin’s confrontation on the stairs at jenny joyce’s house in 1x04 :

“He attractive boy, Erin,” Katya drawls at the top of Jenny Joyce’s stairs, gesturing wearily. Well, Erin’s fucking weary, too. They’ve had this conversation, like, ten times over the past two days and Erin can only attribute it to Katya’s broken English and maybe a wee bit too much radiation because Katya still doesn’t seem to get it. Obviously James is attractive. That’s really not the point. He’s even a little pretty, if you wanted to put a finer point on it (which Erin isn’t very inclined to do – though it would certainly explain why everyone keeps mistaking him for a girl; he’s just got delicate features, like. And very, very green eyes). Katya is so not the first person to notice, and it’s really starting to make Erin rage the way she pretends she is. Because she’s not; Erin’s one-upped her there, and she’s stopped herself nearly 50 times from saying so just so she can rub it in Katya’s big, dumb, Ukrainian face. But some people have principles, and for some people it doesn’t matter that maybe their best friend’s cousin could be a ride (maybe if he sat up a little straighter and, like, didn’t whinge so much), because, at the end of the day, he’s English. But Katya doesn’t have a care about any of it – not about fraternising with oppressors, or deflowering innocent young men, or chasing what she wants so brazenly without a care for what anyone else thinks. Who just lives like that? Erin really can’t imagine; only criminals, probably. Erin’s retort – “He’s English, Katya” – comes effortlessly because that’s the only really necessary explanation. None of the rest of it matters – not the one little curl that likes to come loose and soft around his ear, or the way he kinda looks like Dexter Fletcher from the side if you squint, or when he’d tried to talk to her about Samuel Beckett after he’d learned she liked his writing, or how he’d looked so content with Katya’s hand in his hair and at his jaw. It doesn’t matter what Erin might ever possibly want or not. That’s just the way it is.

as i was writing this, i was surprised to find that i had already written almost this exact same take - erin thinking about james being pretty - for this prompt (i guess i didn't properly link before!) but it has an entirely different vibe. i'm linking it here for a little extra: pretty, version 1.

cranberries ask game

[sskk-manifesto]

Next time we should just skip over ep 3 and do a chapters 84-87 reread

[neonvqmpire]

"...to preserve the very comfortable life they've carved out for themselves." (david while filming s1)

vs

"...the precious, peaceful, fragile existence that I have carved out for myself here."

"I thought we carved it out for ourselves !"

"So did I !" (aziracrow in s2)

[arcsin27]

accidentally discovered greenflower. i like this. i like this a lot.

[brutal-out-here]

Just watched 3x8 of Daredevil and ?? Huh ??