#redemption 2x05

[leveragecentral]

LEVERAGE: REDEMPTION, 2.5 THE WALK IN THE WOODS JOB

[thieves-never-say-die]

Bad guy: unfortunately none of you can leave alive

*close up of Sophie, Eliot, and Paul looking supremely unconcerned*

[kajaono]

Thinking a lot about Paul hearing the trigger being pulled and his first instinct is to grab Eliot.

[thewanderingace]

I haven't seen this mentioned yet but Breanna and her frog hat in 2x05 was adorable and I love her!

[spandexspangles]

Fellas, is it gay to gaze into your previously-thought-dead battle buddy's eyes while you gently clasp each other's forearms as you sit at a candlelit table in a secluded courtyard after helping each other achieve a measure of peace?

Asking for a friend.

[hihogandalfaway]

Okay so apparently putting food in the microwave without a plate isn't just a Hardison thing? Do all of Nana's kids do that?

[gleesongtournament]

Glee Song Tournament Redemption Round

[bigevildoeeyes]

rewatching 2x05 and thinking about louis' motivation in saving daniel. daniel who was in deaths embrace before louis intervened, and doesn't that sound familiar? louis does something careless, people get caught in the crossfire, and scrambling for absolution he cant find in himself he insists to his partner this innocent must be saved

depressed, suicidal, spiraling from the guilt and grief of deeply loving claudia yet not in the ways which counted, here is this boy. this boy who should be dead, this boy who is intertwined with louis at his worst and is in some form a reincarnation of the same hope that prompted louis to turn claudia.

drenched in guilt with low resolve to live, here is proof of redemption. in ruins of homes aflame and families dying because of me, here is a girl i can save. in this apartment of dozens dead in my get high, fuck and kill spree, here is a boy i can save.

"She asked if I was an angel! Me!"

"Listen as though I'm the voice of God or an angel, talking to you (...) youre not inconsequential or a junkie. Youre a bright young reporter with a point of view."

i like to think saving daniel was louis first attempt of transforming his love for claudia into something non-destructive after her death. it became guilt, became violence, became hatred but with daniel it returned to the beacon of hope she was originally

so let him live. let me save you without the harm of staying with me. live a long full life unburdened and with the joy and success i wasnt able to give her. 'as long as you walk the earth ill never taste the fire', then she stopped walking the earth, then i did taste the fire, and this is me trying to stay alive. trying to refamiliarize with love using her blueprint

[kajaono]

I would also sell my soul for it!

Yeah I also think it will be mostly subtext but I didn’t thought they would go so far. Especially after redemption season 1 and „give Eliot a girlfriend“, so this is more then I already hoped for

If they continue that road I am happy

Yeah here in Germany it is not on Freeve because a really popular tv channel bought the rights to stream it on their niche crime channel, which means I have to pay for it, when it is finally released!

So you think they will actually confirm Eliot as bi?! 😳

I’d sell my soul for it, but I’m not sure they’re actually going to confirm it

the walk in the woods job sure came close, but in the end it was still subtext for the most part

[aceofwhump]

any good tied to a chair whump scenes?

Ooooh my dear nonny I am about to go crazy. I love a good tied to a chair scene and I have MANY recs for you. In fact I have an entire tag for you to peruse should you like to: https://aceofwhump.tumblr.com/tagged/tied%20to%20a%20chair

Jaskier in The Witcher 2x05

Leverage Redemption 1x09

National Treasure: Edge of History 1x08

The Mentalist 2x23

The Umbrella Academy 1x04

Alice (2009)

Supernatural 12x01

Manifest 2x10

Stargate Atlantis

Criminal Minds

The Magicians 1x09

Once Upon a Time 4x16

[moon0fairy]

Finished 2x05 of heartbreak high and oh boy stuff went down (contains spoilers!!):

I kinda expected the identity of bird psycho but also didn‘t want it to be true. He was kinda acting sus during the camping trip and something about his mannerisms, the way he looked made me suspicious

On reason why I threw away that thought is because I couldn‘t think of a motive since he‘s the new kid but I‘ll guess why‘ll find out soon

Poor Malakai tho, he deserves someone who truly likes him :( I can‘t tell if I still like Amerie x Malakai because she‘s done some not so nice stuff but let‘s see

Amerie listing out to Malakai what he‘s done wrong in a frog costume and a flute was hilarious

Poor Quinni, I totally get it tho :( She was so focused on her detective work and then suddenly it all collapsed. I also panic when my friends have so much stuff going on and I feel left out. I‘m just glad we got such great autism representation

Darren, Cash and Harper sounds like the most chaotic living situation ever (I feel like Cash would do all the household chores and being stressed out)

Kinda need more Darren and Cash scenes, I‘m glad they‘re communicating more ( minus Cash not telling Darren about the whole Chook thing, which also understandable)

Interesting that we get a Spider redemption arc and yeah, after seeing his living situation, I can understand why he behaves like that (what Missy said). I hope he learns that he doesn‘t have to be such a shitty person

Also MISSY IS SO GORGEOUS I HAVE A FAT CRUSH ON HER (Spider you better treat her right)

[thephantomcasebook]

So why are the writers destroying Aemond in S2? Like show us what immediately went down between Aemond and his mother right when he returns from Storm's end, not a few days after, if you want him as a straight up villian, you know. Aldo rumors are he even murders Heleana. That's how bad the writing is. Thoughts?

They fumbled the transition ...

Book!Aemond and Show!Aemond are two different characters.

Book!Aemond is loud, brash, and in your face, with a streak of cruelty and ruthlessness that was needed and fostered as a way to protect his family. Aemond made the hard decisions and took ownership - good or ill.

Show!Aemond in Season 1 was just Daeron in Aemond cosplay. All the attributes of Aemond that made people like him, quiet, brooding, devoted unimpeachably to Alicent, close to Criston. These are all Daeron's characteristics from the book. I think people have this misconception of Daeron - because he is the youngest - of him being light, fun, and innocent. But the book says that he was quiet and cerebral, that he was courteous, but brooded alone with only Alicent - and probably Criston - being the only one who knew his true mind.

Book!Aemond is never going to sit by the fire alone and brood thoughtfully in the shadows of the flames or seek the council of Criston Cole for a private talk. That's 100% Daeron behavior. Book!Aemond is completely unrepentant about anything and everything he does. He takes ownership and flaunts it. The dude is pure unreptant swag.

The problem the show has is that now that Daeron is coming and GRRM insisted that they add Daeron - cause the symmetry would be fucked for the entire story - "The Butterflies" - they had to basically strip Aemond of Daeron's qualities and reset the character to factory settings. The problem is that they both fumbled the realignment and also didn't give him enough time to become the character he became in 2x05-2x08. They fucked around so much with unnecessary plotlines with riots and Mysaria and dragon seeds, that they rushed the transition or gave just enough time to do "Well enough" for the character's story arc.

They also broke Aemond's character to put over Alys and Daemon. In the book, it is extremely clear that a lot of Aemond's odd and psychotic behavior toward the end is being influenced by Alys. Aemond starts going completely off book and out of character once Criston and he take Harrenhal. Aemond abandons Alicent and Helaena, he leaves Criston and Daeron twisting in the wind, he starts burning the Riverlands in a reign of terror that even by the time of "Game of Thrones" they still haven't quite recovered from. All of these things is clearly from Alys's influence through spell craft or just preying on his worst aspects.

Now, Aemond is burning cities because the show is trying to convince us that it was always in his nature, when, if you read "Fire and Blood" a lot of it has to do with whatever Alys is planning. But now, because of this childist "Men are stinky and Women are good" trash their pushing, now Alys is this wise, sage-like, witch, rather than an extremely dangerous and mercenary figure who has her own agenda that is not for the good of the realm, but what is good for Alys Rivers.

The main problem is that the writers woefully misunderstand Aemond as a character and basically reengineered him to fit their bullshit political agenda and message that they want to push. They're trying to set up that 'Yeah, Daemon is bad, but his redemption is that he kills that meanie Aemond, cause Aemond is just pure evil!'

Mark my words, that's the simplistic childish thinking of these hacks.

[thieves-never-say-die]

Harry: you’ve been shot twice??

Eliot: oh I’ve been shot more than twice

Harry: how many times?

Eliot: …you lose count

[kajaono]

I love Eliot focused episodes so much. Kane is always the hitter but he is so good when he is allowed to open up and show Eliot’s emotional side

[canonizzyhours]

i read more canyon fic than i should.

it used to be because i was interested in the actual canon edizzy dynamic some other posts here have talked about and i wanted to find good darkfic about izzy topping from the bottom. then i realized i was never going to find that and it became something i did in good faith hope that i would understand the canyon better, maybe i'd find some really good fic about their take on fanon izzy and i would finally get why they found this compelling. at this point it's something i do out of morbid fascination, i'm still trying to understand the canyon but what i keep understanding is that their perspectives are always worse than i expected.

anyway here's what i was thinking about today. at this point i can sort canyon fic into categories and there's this one subgenre that's always fascinated me - and it goes well back into the early post-s1 hiatus era - where izzy becomes a weirdly passive character who never really does anything.

you can see exactly why this is happening. the author is so immersed in canyon meta that they refuse to engage with any of izzy's canonical motivations from s1 - the craving for power, the homophobia, the fetishizing obsession with masculinity, the contempt for the crew who work under him, the cruelty, the sense of entitlement to control ed's life: they've been convinced that none of that stuff is a part of izzy's character. but when you take it all away, you end up with a guy who would never actually do any of the stuff izzy canonically does in s1. and if you gave him any other motivations that pushed him to do other stuff instead it would become really obvious this is just a completely different guy (there's several OTHER genres of canyon fic where they do exactly that and it is super obvious this guy just has nothing to do with izzy anymore). so you end up with a character who does absolutely nothing except stand around in the background of scenes gazing at edward thinking sad thoughts about their dying relationship and every once in a while the author remembers to have him say "fuckin' twats."

so i was thinking about this today and what hit me like a lightning bolt is this exactly predicted what would happen in s2. the writers wanted to redeem him in one season and since all his motivations in s1 existed to push him to be awful, they had to resolve all of them as quickly as possible. so within the first half of the season izzy had let go of his creepy psychosexual obsession with ed and belief that he should control ed's life and his homophobia and contempt for effeminacy and learned to respect others instead of needing to dominate or be dominated.

but just like in those fics, this turned izzy into a character who no longer had any real personality traits besides saying twat sometimes, or any reason to actually do much of anything at all. and since the traits they got rid of so completely defined who he'd been up to that point, giving izzy any NEW motivations or personality traits would just make it really obvious this was functionally an entirely different guy.

this is the exact reason he was so boring in 2x05-2x07. with those traits gone there is no longer any reason for him to do anything in particular. the only thing they can do with him at this point is demonstrate that his redemption arc is complete by repeatedly having him do the opposite of evil stuff he did last season, and once they've checked off every box on that list, they have to kill him off because there is now nothing else he can possibly contribute to the narrative.

it's so funny to me that if i had taken seriously the lessons i learned from reading canyon fic i would have been able to predict at the very beginning of the season, as soon as it became clear they were speedrunning the redemption, that he would be dead at the end of it. those fics showed me exactly why there couldn't possibly be any compelling reason to keep a fully redeemed izzy in the narrative.

#394.

[reallygoodplants]

I've been reading a lot of discussion recently about whether Ed made enough amends from 2x05 onwards: if his nonpology should count, if his probation lasted long enough, if he showed enough regret for the trauma he caused the crew etc.

To me personally, the answer is yes. I think it was handled quite well, and I don't need to see 10 eps of him grovelling. Admitting he wants to make amends but not quite knowing how, reconsidering his past behaviour, letting Lucius push him off the ship, "sorry about your leg", listening to what people (Fang, Stede) tell him, trying to move away from the Blackbeard-persona and piracy in general - those felt real and meaningful.

Is that enough? Well, I think the answer becomes very clear when looked at in the context of the show and the themes of guilt/forgiveness in other characters.

First of all: Izzy. Who sold Ed, Stede and the crew out to the English and used the English navy's power to assume a captaincy he didn't earn on his own merit. Who played a crucial role in Ed's mental breakdown and following murder-suicide attempt. While of course Ed is responsible for his actions towards the crew, Izzy has very deliberately and on purpose used every trick in the book to replace the soft, open, heart-broken "namby-pamby" with the Blackbeard of old. He may not have wanted the deranged Kraken, but he did want the brutal, vengeful, merciless pirate who risks his crew's life on a regular basis to raid ships, to drive them hard, and, well, be a proper pirate captain with all the violence that entails. Even in the most sympathetic reading of Izzy, where he acted out of a misguided sense of protectiveness or whatever, he fucked up big time.

Izzy has never uttered a word of apology (or nonpology) to the crew. Or openly acknowledged his hand in Ed's transformation mid-1x10 (which all happened in Ed's private quarters) to them. He never apologised to Fang for the shitty way he treated him even before Stede Bonnet came into his life. Or to Lucius for being a homobphobic dick to him. Or to Stede for trying to kill him multiple times. He didn't thank the crew for risking their lives to keep him alive.

He is never made to wear sackcloth and a catbell ashes.

Instead, he earns his redemption incrementally through his actions: he keeps Ed from firing into the mast (thus saving all their lives at the last minute). He keeps Ed's (presumed dead) body on the ship. He accepts Stede's presence in Ed's life and helps him become a better pirate. He He opens up and shows vulnerability during Calypso's Birthday. At the very end, he apologises to Ed and acknowledges the pain he brought him.

Is that enough? It certainly is to the narrative. It kind of is to me.

But the important point is that he is redeemed because the people in the show - Ed, Stede, the crew - decide that he is. They choose acceptance, cooperation, kindness and belonging over grudges, punishment and bitterness.

This show doesn't expect characters to deliver pitch-perfect, PR-approved apologies or self-flagellation or a tit-for-tat reckoning of all their sins in order to be deemed worthy of redemption. It expects them to move on. To change. To try.

(I meant to talk about the narrative's treatment of Stede as well here, but I think this is quite long enough already and it wouldn't change the main point).