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purrincess-chat · 4 years ago

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Cat’s Definitive Ranking of Every ML Episode as of 4/22/21

Are you guys ready for this? I did the thing. You’re all welcome. Don’t ever ask me for anything again. You can watch me get progressively more unhinged in real time.

Now, just to preface this, I did not give this too much thought. Most of these are just my gut feelings. I went through every episode and just made some snap judgments based off the lasting impressions I’ve been left with. These are my opinions. If you don’t like them, tough. And also I don’t care. Go spend 4 hours making your own damn ranking. And shut the hell up. Anyway, this is probably the longest post I’ve ever made, so I’m gonna put it all under a read more. Click on it if you have an hour to read it. Okay, here we go!

1. Origins II- Good starting point for our heroes. Good establishment of canon ships and character dynamics. Umbrella scene literally stole my wallet. Cannot emphasis enough that I am whipped for the umbrella scene. I wrote a whole ass AU just to say how whipped I am for the umbrella scene. In the Rain will play at my wedding. Jk. Weddings are for suckers. But dammit if I don’t want these kids to get married. 10/10

2. Origins I- Good introduction to lore. Good introduction to characters. Good establishment of status quoyo. Just good. 10/10

3. Simon Says- Listen, I am nothing if not a shipper at heart. This episode just sparks joy. And the whole series almost ended when Gabriel almost jumped off the roof. I was really rooting for this one. This was the episode where I saw Ladrien and went yes, ma’am, I’ll have one of those. 10/10

4. Evillustrator- Are you all surprised? Cat, the MC-skeptic ranked the pivotal MC episode so highly? Well, let me tell you all a thing, I started this fandom out a MC shipper because of this episode. Their first interaction is gold. I don’t deny that. I enjoy it. This is the MC dynamic I fell in love with. Yall toxic shippers ruined MC for me when you opened your mouths and spat in the face of Ladrien and baselessly declared MC the sin-ship. We all know it’s Ladrien. Stop kidding yourselves. Boy in leather catsuit? Please. Basic ass vanilla bitches. I’m getting off-topic. Solid episode 10/10. We love to see it.

5. Stormy Weather- Baby’s first Miraculous episode. It holds a special place in my heart. It’s a solid episode. Good establishment of what the show is. Fun villain. Good times. Fond memories. 10/10

6. Riposte- Listen, I know I’m an Adrinette stan, but hear me out: Ladrien. It’s just so good. And Kagami was compelling in this episode. It was just really solid. It’s my favorite s2 episode. If you ask me if I want to rewatch Riposte, the answer is always yes. 10/10. We stan.

7. Gorizilla- Okay, so this episode has some solid Adrinette in it, but the real reason it ranks so high is that fucking Ladrien trust fall. I stare at that scene for hours, you guys. HOURS. It is absolutely just *chefs kiss*. Sometimes when I need a pick-me-up, I just go watch gifs of that catch on loop. 10/10. Beautiful. Radiant. Carefree.

8. Gang of Secrets- I have been keeping most of my opinions to myself about s4 (mostly because I’ve backed way the hell out of this fandom), but GoS was pretty solid. Gotta say, it’s the first episode in a long time with this show that made me actually excited to see what happens next. Most other episodes I was like, okay, that was cute. The show is still meh overall. But GoS really got me like oh shit, is ML good again? 10/10 for making me feel things again.

9. Oblivio- Told you guys this one was probably rated higher than I thought. Oblivio is just really fun. There is good Adrinette. That “No wonder I fell in love with you” paired with the softest of Adrien smiles just sends me. And the kisses. The unquestionable trust. These two kids literally woke up together alone in an elevator with no memories and said welp, you’re my boyfriend/girlfriend obviously, I don’t make the rules. Honestly, how anyone could argue that these two dorks aren’t made for each other after that episode is beyond me. 9/10

10. Backwarder- Okay, I know I am weird and alone for this one, but I really liked this episode. It got a lot of shit for the constipation capsule thing at the end, but like who cares? We finally got some more backstory on Fu. He got a love-interest who is dope as hell. This episode is my favorite lucky charm use ever. Like that queen DID that. I like Backwarder, guys! Fuck off. 9/10.

11. Kwamibuster- We all know I am a Marinette-stan by this point, but our girl was SHINING this episode. This bitch said gimme all them and let me go whoop this bitch’s ass, and she DID. Hawkmoth could never. Multimouse is a gift, and Marinette is a boss ass queen. 9/10

12. Chat Blanc- Listen, this episode was very good. I enjoy the idea of my children being happy in another timeline somewhere very much. We got all 4 sides of the square in an episode. It’s just really solid. I know this is the fandom’s favorite, and everyone is gonna shit their pants because it didn’t make my top 10, but this is my list. So, I put it at number 12. It’s good. I like it. It just didn’t steal my wallet like other episodes did. Put the pitchforks down. It’s gonna be okay, you can still love it more than me. 8/10

13. New York Special- I know everyone felt some type of way about this special, but I wasn’t mad at it. My perception of it might be clouded because I watched it in Disney World where I was chilling and having a great time, but like this special really did somethings for me. The Adrinette was top tier. Tippy top tier. Even though they hurt us in the end, I am okay with it because it just means the children will grow and come out stronger. I don’t care if it’s not technically canon. Ask me if I give a fuck. I don’t. I had fun here. 8/10. Solid.

14. The Collector- This one might shock a lot of you, but let me paint you a scene. It’s the first episode of s2. We have just come off a 2 year hiatus. The fandom is thriving. We’re hungry for canon content. We have hopes and dreams and expectations. Everyone is going wild with theories. This episode confirmed something that was long since obvious (in my opinion) and ended the stupid arguments people had been having. It made Gabriel actually seem semi-competent. We got our first taste of how Chat/Adrien will react to his dad being Hawkmoth. We got a peek at their life. Adrien’s isolation and sadness. They were so close to figuring it out. The battle was epic. Like Collector really had them on the ropes there for a second. It’s a solid episode, yall. I’m not wrong. Hate me all you want, but this episode brought it. 8/10

15. Despair Bear- Is this episode up this high because of the Adrinette slow dance scene? YOU BET YOUR ASS IT IS. Okay, but fr though, shipping aside, this episode gave us hope that Chloe was actually gonna redeem herself. I mean, she didn’t but, we didn’t know that at the time. Seeing her run around trying to be nice was fun. And then she actually did something good, and we had a moment of okay, she’s capable. We’ll get there. We didn’t. But what a ride this episode was for making us think she would. 8/10

16. Startrain- Cat, you’re just ranking all the Adrinette episodes highest. And? What of it? Are you surprised? You clicked a blog that has simping for Adrinette in the description, and you’re surprised all my favorite episodes have Adrinette? I’m not wrong, you’re just an idiot. The Adrinette nap cuddles aside though, this was a pretty good episode. If you don’t think too hard about the whole space thing, we got a look at Max’s life, his mom is a driven, smart lady doing her best. Adrien rebels against papa for once. Alya stops a Lila scheme. Chloe gets to play the hero. Alya and Nino actually investigate like the heroes they are. Gabriel gets to realize what a dumbass bitch he is. I mean. Guys. Startrain is solid. 7.5/10

17. Sapotis- This one shot up in rank for me after GoS, but tbh it’s always been a solid episode. Alyanette sleepover? Check. Alya becoming a superhero? Check. It’s a fun episode. And looking back, it’s nicely called back to later in GoS. We love it. 7.5/10

18. Sandboy- Idk why I enjoy this episode as much as I do, but I do. Sandboy is a cute bean. I love his aesthetic. We also get hilarious looks at everyone’s nightmares. “Plagg, who turned you into a sock?” cracks me up cause like Adrien, bby, no XD And Chat Noir’s nightmare. I think it would have been interesting though if since Sandboy dusted the Agreste mansion, if we got a peek at Hawkmoth’s nightmares. It would have been a nice hint of plot to go along with Master Fu’s nightmare. Also Plagg giving the akuma the slip like the clever boy we know he is deep down? 7.5/10

19. Furious Fu- If you guys haven’t realized by now that I love Fu, idk what you’re doing. Pay attention. I know that some people don’t like him, but I’m just gonna say it, you’re wrong. Fu took care of the Miracle Box for over 100 years, and this episode kind of gives some insight to what the Order was like. Very strict. Lots of rules. And ya know what, Fu said fuck the police, I’m gonna befriend these little magical demigods, and fuck off! Like what an absolute legend. I was really happy to see him living his best life, and that he and Marianne got married because it’s what he deserves. We love to see it. 7.5/10

20. Gamer- People like to shit on Marinette in this episode, but like honestly, if I were in her shoes, I’d have probably done the same thing if I had the skill. Ain’t nothing wrong with a girl trying to spend time with the boy she likes. And Tom and Sabine being absolute shipping trash. I love them. And the awkward Adrinette. The introduction of the lucky charm that Adrien STILL carries. Wholesome. This was a good episode for their friendship, and we love to see it. 7.5/10

21. Christmaster- Okay, I know a lot of people hated this episode when it aired, but I thought it was really funny? Everyone skidding around in the ice rink was hilarious. If you don’t take this episode seriously, it’s really fun. Chris is pretty cute, and damn right Ladybug is the best kid in the world. Idk. This episode is fun. I’m not mad at it. Sue me. 7.5/10

22. Weredad- What? Another MC-heavy episode in Cat’s top 30? Listen, I don’t hate canon MC. The fans just annoy me. This episode was funny. The secondhand embarrassment and cringe was real. Plagg taunting Adrien because he knows the secret was great. Marinette being a self-saving queen was great. It’s a good episode. I like MC, you guys. I do. I swear! 7.5/10

23. Miraculer- This episode was interesting to me, and I think it’s still a good development episode. For one, Sabrina finally got her own akuma episode named after her. Secondly, because it’s a big step for Chloe, just not in the way we expected. It totally makes sense that Chloe can’t have her Miraculous back because literally everyone knows her identity. Can’t argue that logic. And she is the first person to ever refuse to become akumatized, so like mad respect. I know a lot of people had high hopes for redeemed Chloe (myself included), but I think watching a character fall from revering someone to hating them is also an interesting path. The friends to enemies arc as it were. Idk. I liked this episode. It was an opportunity for Chloe to grow, even if she didn’t in the end, but we’ll talk about that later. 7.5/10

24. Lady Wifi- I like Alya. I feel like I don’t say that much, and people make some assumptions because of MDCSP, but MDCSP is just a concept I wanted to explore. It doesn’t really reflect how I feel about any one character. Except maybe Lila. And Gabe. But every other spite fic I’ve written branching from Chameleon, the class has been fine. Alya has been fine. So, let it be known that I like Alya. Lady Wifi was a fun episode. Putting aside the fact that she thought Chloe was Ladybug for no reason, I like her akuma. I like the interactions we get with LadyNoir in this episode. After GoS, this episode gets a bit funnier. It’s solid. 7/10

25. Dark Cupid- I don’t have much to say about this one. LadyNoir. That’s it. That’s the tweet. Send it. 7/10

26. Volpina- So many things about this episode. It introduced a new antagonist who we didn’t exactly 100% know was going to be an antagonist at the time. This episode sparked a lot of fun fan theories for a while. Who was Lila? How was she going to shake things up? Not to mention this episode gave us a taste of plot and lore, and set up Marinette meeting Master Fu officially. Lots of intrigue sparked from this episode. And that LadyNoir door scene? OOOOOO 7/10

27. Hearthunter- One word: Adrigaminette. This episode was so cute for them! I loved seeing them all goofing and running around together. Adrien and Kagami being absolutely in love with Marinette when her hair is down. They both love her, I don’t make the rules. Not to mention, Marinette takes a big step by letting her friends be happy without her. Kagami not wanting to hurt Marinette. The drama!! Gabriel being a messy ass bitch to his friends. It loses points for the abomination of an akuma, but overall, I wasn’t too mad at it. Yet. 7/10

28. Glaciator- More MC in Cat’s top 30? It’s more likely than you think. Listen. Listen… Listen. MC is fine. This episode was the closest thing to fanfiction that we got. The balcony scene was really sweet. I was drinking the irony. We got introduced to Andre the icecream fraud. Andre the please just give me the flavor I asked for man. I could have done without Chat pouting, but the LadyNoir in the end was pretty good. I wish they’d done more with Ladybug’s feelings for Chat. Had her question herself a bit more after this one, but overall, it’s cute. 7/10

29. Zombizou- A lot of people started hating Mlle. Bustier after this episode, and like I can kind of see it, if I squint, but I did not draw that same conclusion from this episode. Mlle. Bustier just wants good things for all of her students. They’re 14 ffs, she just wants to be a good influence on all of her students and wants them all to be successful. But go off, I guess? Plus, this episode was basically just a spoof on zombie apocalypse movies. We got so many things. Julerose, Myvan, DJWifi. Chloe actually showing some depth and emotion. LadyNoir. We won this episode, babes. Sorry you didn’t get the memo. 7/10

30. Timetagger- Okay. This is the last episode in the ones that I’d venture to call “good.” Number 30. I enjoyed Timetagger. I know people have feelings about timey-wimey bullshit, and like I’m not gonna lie and say I’m thrilled with it either (I mean, I changed the rabbit’s power in MDCSP) but that being said, Timetagger was so sassy. Bunnix was cool as hell. We get to see that LB and CN are still doing the thing in the future. So many questions sparked from this episode. It was fun. Idk. I liked it. That’s all I got. 7/10

31. Malediktator- Okay, from this point on, less comments because this is the section that are more or less just meh to me. Like they’re fine. This episode was fine. Chloe was fine. Chat playing with the laser was cute. 6.5/10

32. Mayura- Adrien’s speech at the end. Nuff said 6.5/10

33. Ikari Gozen- Ryuko/Ryuuko. Gals being pals. 6.5/10

34. Reflekdoll- I talked about this earlier, but I don’t hate this episode. It’s not as bad as people make it out to be. Sue me. 6.5/10

35. Anansi- Nino is the goodest boy. Also I need more of the gang taking Adrien on adventures via Facetime. Stat. 6.5/10

36. Shanghai- This one is new, and tbh I still haven’t watched it with subs, but I had a good time. Fei was cute. The boy squad was cute. Adrien bonding with Great Uncle Cheng was cute. Hawkmoth getting literally dunked on was *chefs kiss* 6.5/10

37. Gigantitan- I love overly supportive, ride-or-die girl squad. 6.5/10

38. Party Crasher- Idk why this episode was funny to me. Kim is the purest bean. We don’t deserve him. 6.5/10

39. Desperada- This episode was an emotional roller coaster, and even though we all collectively hate Aspik’s stupid egghead, we love the Ladrien this episode provided us. 6/10

40. Oni-chan- Listen, I loved seeing Lila get a tiny bit of karma even if she made it up in the end. I loved Chat going off on her. I loved seeing her get outsmarted in the end. 6/10

41. Frightningale- My good lesbian Clara Nightingale. We stan. 6/10

42. Style Queen- I like Audrey in a “she’s the worst person I’ve ever met, I want to travel the world with her” kind of way. She’s funny to me. Idk. I love her firing everyone. She’s the one I love to hate. She’s the worst, but we love her for it. Plus this episode gave us Plagg’s adorable little Cataclysm that destroyed half the city. 6/10

43. Gamer 2.0- Chat confidently strutting in heels made this episode worth it. And we get to see the beginning of Marinette being overwhelmed. Plus it was the return of gamer!nette. 6/10

44. Troublemaker- I don’t hate this episode as much as the next person either. It was fine. Jagged is a manchild, but we love him for it. He’s a Marinette stan which like mood. The Adrinette at the end was cute. I wasn’t mad at it. Idk. It’s fine. 6/10

45. Reflekta- Where are all my Juleka stans at? I loved the LadyNoir banter in this ep. V. cute. 6/10

46. Dark Owl- This episode was fun. And it really shows their level of trust. Plus Plagg and Tikki interacted. 6/10

47. Timebreaker- Have I ever mentioned that I like Alix? I like Alix. 6/10

48. Silencer- I don’t hate this episode as much as you’d expect me to, and that is 100% because of the LadyNoir. 5.5/10

49. Prime Queen- Chat purrs. 5.5/10

50. Syren- I think the fish power-up is adorable. Ondine is a gem. Kim is a pure bean, but we been knew. 5.5/10

51. Befana- I like Gina, but this episode fell flat for me. Almost as flat as the animation. 5.5/10

52. Reverser- Another episode that everyone hates that I am actually fine with. This episode made me like Nathaniel more. Probably because I was previously indifferent toward him. Marc is cute too. 5.5/10

53. Mr. Pigeon- Marinette is one clever girl. And the Adrinette hand-touch. 5.5/10

54. Felix- Felix is a gremlin of chaos. A true chaotic neutral. He gives his uncle the finger, and I think that’s beautiful. 5.5/10

55. Truth- Bet you expected this episode to be higher. While I did enjoy watching toxic people’s world crumble, this episode still gets a meh from me dog. 5/10

56. Lies- The Adrigami was cute, and I respect Kagami as a character. The akuma could have been better tho. 5/10

57. Princess Fragrance- Not much to say here. 5/10

58. Copycat- 5/10

59. Bubbler- 5/10

60. Mime- 5/10

61. Animan- 5/10

62. Robostus- 5/10

63. Ladybug- This episode ranks this low purely because I don’t care about GabeNath, and I hate that Lila won something in the end. But Adrien saying I won’t hesitate, bitch! At the end was nice to see. 5/10

64. Catalyst- I know I ranked Mayura way higher, but Catalyst fell flat for me. Like it was fine. Wasn’t as into it though. 4.5/10

65. Puppeteer- One of my favorite lucky charm uses. 4.5/10

66. Pixelator- My favorite Cataclysm. 4.5/10

67. Horrificator- That almost-Adrinette kiss tho 4.5/10

68. Pharaoh- 4.5/10

69. Kung Food- 4.5/10

70. Rogercop- 4/10

71. Guitar Villain- 4/10

72. Dark Blade- 4/10

73. Bakerix- 4/10

74. Antibug- And now onto the bottom 10. To start us off, I will just say: UGH, this episode annoyed me. First of all, Sabrina didn’t even get her own episode. Chloe was a piece of shit. Idk why they made Ladybug the one in the wrong when Chloe was being obnoxious. Ugh. 3/10

75. Captain Hardrock- I’m gonna be honest. My apathy for this episode has grown into loathing. Toxic stans are 100% to blame. Birthday ruining, bitches. This is the reason I threw a breakup bash after Truth. Yall deserved it. 3/10

76. Christmas Special- I didn’t hate this episode as much as everyone, but it still wasn’t great. 2.5/10

77. Stormy Weather 2.0- This episode was really dumb. It didn’t need to exist. 2.0/10

78. Queen Wasp- Why did we give Chloe a Miraculous after this episode? 2/10

79. Animaestro- Did we really need a self-insert? Did we really? 2/10

80. Puppeteer 2.0- Listen, this episode would have made more sense in s1 or at the very latest early s2. Adrien gave a whole ass speech on how great Marinette is, then he turns around and is like idk if she likes me… Clean it up. 2/10

81. Miracle Queen- I could talk at length about how much I hate the ending of this episode and what they did with Chloe and Master Fu, but we’re just going to remain calm and give it a solid 1.5/10

82. Frozer- This episode made no goddamn sense. I call bullshit on so many things. Just ugh. 1/10

83. Chameleon- Surprisingly, even though this episode sparked many, many spite fics out of me, it’s not my least favorite because at least Ladybug semi-redeemed this episode. Still really dumb and ooc tho. 1/10

84. Feast- Okay, okay, okay, here we are. Bottom of the barrel. Cat’s most hated episode, and you wanna know why? You want to know why this episode fills me with the rage? Because we spent two fucking seasons building up all this mystery and lore and intrigue surrounding Fu’s big mistake, and they dropped the fucking ball! They did my mans so dirty! They could have really deepened his character, deepened the Order, deepened anything other than whatever fucking affair Gabriel and Nathalie have going on, but NO. They made it some stupid, bland-ass thing that got resolved magically in the end, then just ignored it for the rest of the season. I will never not be salty about how they did my boy Fu in this show. I’m happy he found his peace, but fuck if I’m not livid about how they did it. Whatever. Chat being done with Ladybug’s shit when they’re about to get eaten was funny I guess. .5/10

#cat speaks #cat spoils #episode ranking #long post #i'm tired now #i go to bed

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holyhellpod · 4 years ago

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Holy Hell: 3. Metanarrativity: Who’s the Deleuze and who’s the Guattari in your relationship? aka the analysis no one asked for.

In this ep, we delve into authorship, narrative, fandom and narrative meaning. And somehow, as always, bring it back to Cas and Misha Collins.

(Note: the reason I didn’t talk about Billie’s authorship and library is because I completely forgot it existed until I watched season 13 “Advanced Thanatology” again, while waiting for this episode to upload. I’ll find a way to work her into later episodes tho!)

I had to upload it as a new podcast to Spotify so if you could just re-subscribe that would be great! Or listen to it at these other links.

Please listen to the bit at the beginning about monetisation and if you have any questions don’t hesitate to message me here.

Apple | Spotify | Google

Transcript under the cut!

Warnings: discussions of incest, date rape, rpf, war, 9/11, the bush administration, abuse, mental health, addiction, homelessness. Most of these are just one off comments, they’re not full discussions.

Meta-Textuality: Who’s the Deleuze and who’s the Guattari in your relationship?

In the third episode of Season 6, “The Third Man,” Balthazar says to Cas, “you tore up the whole script and burned the pages.” That is the fundamental idea the writers of the first five seasons were trying to sell us: whatever grand plan the biblical God had cooking up is worth nothing in face of the love these men have—for each other and the world. Sam, Bobby, Cas and Dean will go to any lengths to protect one another and keep people safe. What’s real? What’s worth saving? People are real. Families are worth saving.

This show plugs free will as the most important thing a person, angel, demon or otherwise can have. The fact of the matter is that Dean was always going to fight against the status quo, Sam was always going to go his own way, and Bobby was always going to do his best for his boys. The only uncertainty in the entire narrative is Cas. He was never meant to rebel. He was never meant to fall from Heaven. He was supposed to fall in line, be a good soldier, and help bring on the apocalypse, but Cas was the first agent of free will in the show’s timeline. Sam followed Lucifer, Dean followed Michael, and John gave himself up for the sins of his children, at once both a God and Jesus figure. But Cas wasn’t modelled off anyone else. He is original. There are definitely some parallels to Ruby, but I would argue those are largely unintentional. Cas broke the mold.

That’s to say nothing of the impact he’s had on the fanbase, and the show itself, which would not have reached 15 seasons and be able to end the way they wanted it to without Cas and Misha Collins. His back must be breaking from carrying the entire show.

But what the holy hell are we doing here today? Not just talking about Cas. We’re talking about metanarrativity: as I define it, and for purposes of this episode, the story within a story, and the act of storytelling. We’re going to go through a select few episodes which I think exemplify the best of what this show has to offer in terms of framing the narrative. We’ll talk about characters like Chuck and Becky and the baby dykes in season 10. And most importantly we’ll talk about the audience’s role, our role, in the reciprocal relationship of storytelling. After all, a tv show is nothing without the viewer.

I was in fact introduced to the concept of metanarrativity by Supernatural, so the fact that I’m revisiting it six years after I finished my degree to talk about the show is one of life’s little jokes.

I’m brushing off my degree and bringing out the big guns (aka literary theorists) to examine this concept. This will be yet another piece of analysis that would’ve gone well in my English Lit degree, but I’ll try not to make it dry as dog shit.

First off, I’m going to argue that the relationship between the creators of Supernatural and the fans has always been a dialogue, albeit with a power imbalance. Throughout the series, even before explicitly metanarrative episodes like season 10 “Fan Fiction” and season 4 “the monster at the end of this book,” the creators have always engaged in conversations with the fans through the show. This includes but is not limited to fan conventions, where the creators have actual, live conversations with the fans. Misha Collins admitted at a con that he’d read fanfiction of Cas while he was filming season 4, but it’s pretty clear even from the first season that the creators, at the very least Eric Kripke, were engaging with fans. The show aired around the same time as Twitter and Tumblr were created, both of which opened up new passageways for fans to interact with each other, and for Twitter and Facebook especially, new passageways for fans to interact with creators and celebrities.

But being the creators, they have ultimate control over what is written, filmed and aired, while we can only speculate and make our own transformative interpretations. But at least since s4, they have engaged in meta narrative construction that at once speaks to fans as well as expands the universe in fun and creative ways. My favourite episodes are the ones where we see the Winchesters through the lens of other characters, such as the season 3 episode “Jus In Bello,” in which Sam and Dean are arrested by Victor Henriksen, and the season 7 episode “Slash Fiction” in which Dean and Sam’s dopplegangers rob banks and kill a bunch of people, loathe as I am to admit that season 7 had an effect on any part of me except my upchuck reflex. My second favourite episodes are the meta episodes, and for this episode of Holy Hell, we’ll be discussing a few: The French Mistake, he Monster at the end of this book, the real ghostbusters, Fan Fiction, Metafiction, and Don’t Call Me Shurley. I’ll also discuss Becky more broadly, because, like, of course I’ll be discussing Becky, she died for our sins.

Let’s take it back. The Monster At The End Of This Book — written by Julie Siege and Nancy Weiner and directed by Mike Rohl. Inarguably one of the better episodes in the first five seasons. Not only is Cas in it, looking so beautiful, but Sam gets something to do, thank god, and it introduces the character of Chuck, who becomes a source of comic relief over the next two seasons. The episode starts with Chuck Shurley, pen named Carver Edlund after my besties, having a vision while passed out drunk. He dreams of Sam and Dean larping as Feds and finding a series of books based on their lives that Chuck has written. They eventually track Chuck down, interrogate him, and realise that he’s a prophet of the lord, tasked with writing the Winchester Gospels. The B plot is Sam plotting to kill Lilith while Dean fails to get them out of the town to escape her. The C plot is Dean and Cas having a moment that strengthens their friendship and leads further into Cas’s eventual disobedience for Dean. Like the movie Disobedience. Exactly like the movie Disobedience. Cas definitely spits in Dean’s mouth, it’s kinda gross to be honest. Maybe I’m just not allo enough to appreciate art.

When Eric Kripke was showrunner of the first five seasons of Supernatural, he conceptualised the character of Chuck. Kripke as the author-god introduced the character of the author-prophet who would later become in Jeremy Carver’s showrun seasons the biblical God. Judith May Fathallah writes in “I’m A God: The Author and the Writing Fan in Supernatural” that Kripke writes himself both into and out of the text, ending his era with Chuck winking at the camera, saying, “nothing really ends,” and disappearing. Kripke stayed on as producer, continuing to write episodes through Sera Gamble’s era, and was even inserted in text in the season 6 episode “The French Mistake”. So nothing really does end, not Kripke’s grip on the show he created, not even the show itself, which fans have jokingly referred to as continuing into its 16th season. Except we’re not joking. It will die when all of us are dead, when there is no one left to remember it. According to W R Fisher, humans are homo narrans, natural storytellers. The Supernatural fandom is telling a fidelitous narrative, one which matches our own beliefs, values and experiences instead of that of canon. Instead of, at Fathallah says, “the Greek tradition, that we should struggle to do the right thing simply because it is right, though we will suffer and be punished anyway,” the fans have created an ending for the characters that satisfies each and every one of our desires, because we each create our own endings. It’s better because we get to share them with each other, in the tradition of campfire stories, each telling our own version and building upon the others. If that’s not the epitome of mythmaking then I don’t know. It’s just great. Dean and Cas are married, Eileen and Sam are married, Jack is sometimes a baby who Claire and Kaia are forced to babysit, Jody and Donna are gonna get hitched soon. It’s season 17, time for many weddings, and Kevin Tran is alive. Kripke, you have no control over this anymore, you crusty hag.

Chuck is introduced as someone with power, but not influence over the story, only how the story is told through the medium of the novels. It’s basically a very badly written, non authorised biography, and Charlie reading literally every book and referencing things she should have no knowledge of is so damn creepy and funny. At first Chuck is surprised by his characters coming to life, despite having written it already, and when shown the intimidating array of weapons in Baby’s trunk he gets real scared. Which is the appropriate response for a skinny 5-foot-8 white guy in a bathrobe who writes terrible fantasy novels for a living.

As far as I can remember, this is the first explicitly metanarrative episode in the series, or at least the first one with in world consequences. It builds upon the lore of Christianity, angels, and God, while teasing what’s to come. Chuck and Sam have a conversation about how the rest of the season is going to play out, and Sam comes away with the impression that he’ll go down with the ship. They touch on Sam’s addiction to demon blood, which Chuck admits he didn’t write into the books, because in the world of supernatural, addiction should be demonised ha ha at every opportunity, except for Dean’s alcoholism which is cool and manly and should never be analysed as an unhealthy trauma coping mechanism.

Chuck is mostly impotent in the story of Sam and Dean, but his very presence presents an element of good luck that turns quickly into a force of antagonism in the series four finale, “Lucifer Rising”, when the archangel Raphael who defeats Lilith in this episode also kills Cas in the finale. It’s Cas’s quick thinking and Dean’s quick doing that resolve the episode and save them from Lilith, once again proving that free will is the greatest force in the universe. Cas is already tearing up pages and burning scripts. The fandom does the same, acting as gods of their own making in taking canon and transforming it into fan art. The fans aren’t impotent like Chuck, but neither do we have sway over the story in the way that Cas and Dean do. Sam isn’t interested in changing the story in the same way—he wants to kill Lilith and save the world, but in doing so continues the story in the way it was always supposed to go, the way the angels and the demons and even God wanted him to.

Neither of them are author-gods in the way that God is. We find out later that Chuck is in fact the real biblical god, and he engineers everything. The one thing he doesn’t engineer, however, is Castiel, and I’ll get to that in a minute.

The Real Ghostbusters

Season 5’s “The real ghostbusters,” written by Nancy Weiner and Erik Kripke, and directed by James L Conway, situates the Winchesters at a fan convention for the Supernatural books. While there, they are confronted by a slew of fans cosplaying as Sam, Dean, Bobby, the scarecrow, Azazel, and more. They happen to stumble upon a case, in the midst of the game where the fans pretend to be on a case, and with the help of two fans cosplaying as Sam and Dean, they put to rest a group of homicidal ghost children and save the day. Chuck as the special guest of the con has a hero moment that spurs Becky on to return his affections. And at the end, we learn that the Colt, which they’ve been hunting down to kill the devil, was given to a demon named Crowley. It’s a fun episode, but ultimately skippable. This episode isn’t so much metanarrative as it is metatextual—metatextual meaning more than one layer of text but not necessarily about the storytelling in those texts—but let’s take a look at it anyway.

The metanarrative element of a show about a series of books about the brothers the show is based on is dope and expands upon what we saw in “the monster at the end of this book”. But the episode tells a tale about about the show itself, and the fandom that surrounds it.

Where “The Monster At The End Of This Book” and the season 5 premiere “Sympathy For The Devil” poked at the coiled snake of fans and the concept of fandom, “the real ghostbusters” drags them into the harsh light of an enclosure and antagonises them in front of an audience. The metanarrative element revolves around not only the books themselves, but the stories concocted within the episode: namely Barnes and Demian the cosplayers and the story of the ghosts. The Winchester brothers’s history that we’ve seen throughout the first five seasons of the show is bared in a tongue in cheek way: while we cried with them when Sam and Dean fought with John, now the story is thrown out in such a way as to mock both the story and the fans’ relationship to it. Let me tell you, there is a lot to be made fun of on this show, but the fans’ relationship to the story of Sam, Dean and everyone they encounter along the way isn’t part of it. I don’t mean to be like, wow you can’t make fun of us ever because we’re special little snowflakes and we take everything so seriously, because you are welcome to make fun of us, but when the creators do it, I can’t help but notice a hint of malice. And I think that’s understandable in a way. Like The relationship between creator and fan is both layered and symbiotic. While Kripke and co no doubt owe the show’s popularity to the fans, especially as the fandom has grown and evolved over time, we’re not exactly free of sin. And don’t get me wrong, no fandom is. But the bad apples always seem to outweigh the good ones, and bad experiences can stick with us long past their due.

However, portraying us as losers with no lives who get too obsessed with this show — well, you know, actually, maybe they’re right. I am a loser with no life and I am too obsessed with this show. So maybe they have a point. But they’re so harsh about it. From wincestie Becky who they paint as a desperate shrew to these cosplayers who threaten Dean’s very perception of himself, we’re not painted in a very good light.

Dean says to Demian and Barnes, “It must be nice to get out of your mom’s basement.” He’s judging them for deriving pleasure from dressing up and pretending to be someone else for a night. He doesn’t seem to get the irony that he does that for a living. As the seasons wore on, the creators made sure to include episodes where Dean’s inner geek could run rampant, often in the form of dressing up like a cowboy, such as season six “Frontierland” and season 13 “Tombstone”. I had to take a break from writing this to laugh for five minutes because Dean is so funny. He’s a car gay but he only likes one car. He doesn’t follow sports. His echolalia causes him to blurt out lines from his favourite movies. He’s a posse magnet. And he loves cosplay. But he will continually degrade and insult anyone who expresses interest in role play, fandom, or interests in general. Maybe that’s why Sam is such a boring person, because Dean as his mother didn’t allow him to have any interests outside of hunting. And when Sam does express interests, Dean insults him too. What a dick. He’s my soulmate, but I am not going to stop listening to hair metal for him. That’s where I draw the line.

Where “the monster at the end of this book” is concerned with narrative and authorship, “the real ghostbusters” is concerned with fandom and fan reactions to the show. It’s not really the best example to talk about in an episode about metanarrativity, but I wanted to include it anyway. It veers from talk of narrative by focusing on the people in the periphery of the narrative—the fans and the author. In season 9 “Metafiction,” Metatron asks the question, who gives the story meaning? The text would have you believe it’s the characters. The angels think it’s God. The fandom think it’s us. The creators think it’s them. Perhaps we will never come to a consensus or even a satisfactory answer to this question. Perhaps that’s the point.

The ultimate takeaway from this episode is that ordinary people, the people Sam and Dean save, the people they save the world for, the people they die for again and again, are what give their story meaning. Chuck defeats a ghost and saves the people in the conference room from being murdered. Demian and Barnes, don’t ask me which is which, burn the bodies of the ghost children and lay their spirits to rest. The text says that ordinary, every day people can rise to the challenge of becoming extraordinary. It’s not a bad note to end on, by any means. And then we find out that Demian and Barnes are a couple, which of course Dean is surprised at, because he lacks object permanence.

This is no doubt influenced by how a good portion of the transformative fandom are queer, and also a nod to the wincesties and RPF writers like Becky who continue to bottom feed off the wrong message of this show. But then, the creators encourage that sort of thing, so who are the real clowns here? Everyone. Everyone involved with this show in any way is a clown, except for the crew, who were able to feed their families for more than a decade.

Okay side note… over the past year or so I’ve been in process of realising that even in fandom queers are in the minority. I know the statistic is that 10% of the world population is queer, but that doesn’t seem right to me? Maybe because 4/5 closest friends are queer and I hang around queers online, but I also think I lack object permanence when it comes to straight people. Like I just do not interact with straight people on a regular basis outside of my best friend and parents and school. So when I hear that someone in fandom is straight I’m like, what the fuck… can you keep that to yourself please? Like if I saw Misha Collins coming out as straight I would be like, I didn’t ask and you didn’t have to tell. Okay I’m mostly joking, but I do forget straight people exist. Mostly I don’t think about whether people are gay or trans or cis or straight unless they’ve explicitly said it and then yes it does colour my perception of them, because of course it would. If they’re part of the queer community, they’re my people. And if they’re straight and cis, then they could very well pose a threat to me and my wellbeing. But I never ask people because it’s not my business to ask. If they feel comfortable enough to tell me, that’s awesome. I think Dean feels the same way. Towards the later seasons at least, he has a good reaction when it’s revealed that someone is queer, even if it is mostly played off as a joke. It’s just that he doesn’t have a frame of reference in his own life to having a gay relationship, either his or someone he’s close to. He says to Cesar and Jesse in season 11 “The Critters” that they fight like brothers, because that’s the only way he knows how to conceptualise it. He doesn’t have a way to categorise his and Cas’s relationship, which is in many ways, long before season 15 “Despair,” harking back even to the parallels between Ruby and Cas in season 3 and 4, a romantic one, aside from that Cas is like a brother to him. Because he’s never had anyone in his life care for him the way Cas does that wasn’t Sam and Bobby, and he doesn’t recognise the romantic element of their relationship until literally Cas says it to him in the third last episode, he just—doesn’t know what his and Cas’s relationship is. He just really doesn’t know. And he grew up with a father who despised him for taking the mom and wife role in their family, the role that John placed him in, for being subservient to John’s wishes where Sam was more rebellious, so of course he wouldn’t understand either his own desires or those of anyone around him who isn’t explicitly shoving their tits in his face. He moulded his entire personality around what he thought John wanted of him, and John says to him explicitly in season 14 “Lebanon”, “I thought you’d have a family,” meaning, like him, wife and two rugrats. And then, dear god, Dean says, thinking of Sam, Cas, Jack, Claire, and Mary, “I have a family.” God that hurts so much. But since for most of his life he hasn’t been himself, he’s been the man he thought his father wanted him to be, he’s never been able to examine his own desires, wants and goals. So even though he’s really good at reading people, he is not good at reading other people’s desires unless they have nefarious intentions. Because he doesn’t recognise what he feels is attraction to men, he doesn’t recognise that in anyone else.

Okay that’s completely off topic, wow. Getting back to metanarrativity in “The Real Ghostbusters,” I’ll just cap it off by saying that the books in this episode are more a frame for the events than the events themselves. However, there are some good outtakes where Chuck answers some questions, and I’m not sure how much of that is scripted and how much is Rob Benedict just going for it, but it lends another element to the idea of Kripke as author-god. The idea of a fan convention is really cool, because at this point Supernatural conventions had been running for about 4 years, since 2006. It’s definitely a tribute to the fans, but also to their own self importance. So it’s a mixed bag, considering there were plenty of elements in there that show the good side of fandom and fans, but ultimately the Winchesters want nothing to do with it, consider it weird, and threaten Chuck when he says he’ll start releasing books again, which as far as they know is his only source of income. But it’s a fun episode and Dean is a grouchy bitch, so who the holy hell cares?

Season 10 episode “fanfiction” written by my close personal friend Robbie Thompson and directed by Phil Sgriccia is one of the funniest episodes this show has ever done. Not only is it full of metatextual and metanarrative jokes, the entire premise revolves around fanservice, but in like a fun and interesting way, not fanservice like killing the band Kansas so that Dean can listen to “Carry On My Wayward Son” in heaven twice. Twice. One version after another. Like I would watch this musical seven times in theatre, I would buy the soundtrack, I would listen to it on repeat and make all my friends listen to it when they attend my online Jitsi birthday party. This musical is my Hamilton. Top ten episodes of this show for sure. The only way it could be better is if Cas was there. And he deserved to be there. He deserved to watch little dyke Castiel make out with her girlfriend with her cute little wings, after which he and Dean share uncomfortable eye contact. Dean himself is forever coming to terms with the fact that gay people exist, but Cas should get every opportunity he can to hear that it’s super cool and great and awesome to be queer. But really he should be in every episode, all of them, all 300 plus episodes including the ones before angels were introduced. I’m going to commission the guy who edits Paddington into every movie to superimpose Cas standing on the highway into every episode at least once.

“Fan Fiction” starts with a tv script and the words “Supernatural pilot created by Eric Kripke”. This Immediately sets up the idea that it’s toying with narrative. Blah blah blah, some people go missing, they stumble into a scene from their worst nightmares: the school is putting on a musical production of a show inspired by the Supernatural books. It’s a comedy of errors. When people continue to go missing, Sam and Dean have to convince the girls that something supernatural is happening, while retaining their dignity and respect. They reveal that they are the real Sam and Dean, and Dean gives the director Marie a summary of their lives over the last five seasons, but they aren’t taken seriously. Because, like, of course they aren’t. Even when the girls realise that something supernatural is happening, they don’t actually believe that the musical they’ve made and the series of books they’re basing it on are real. Despite how Sam and Dean Winchester were literal fugitives for many years at many different times, and this was on the news, and they were wanted by the FBI, despite how they pretend to be FBI, and no one mentions it??? Did any of the staffwriters do the required reading or just do what I used to do for my 40 plus page readings of Baudrillard and just skim the first sentence of every paragraph? Neat hack for you: paragraphs are set up in a logical order of Topic, Example, Elaboration, Linking sentence. Do you have to read 60 pages of some crusty French dude waxing poetic about how his best friend Pierre wants to shag his wife and making that your problem? Read the first and last sentence of every paragraph. Boom, done. Just cut your work in half.

The musical highlights a lot of the important moments of the show so far. The brothers have, as Charlie Bradbury says, their “broment,” and as Marie says, their “boy melodrama scene,” while she insinuates that there is a sexual element to their relationship. This show never passed up an opportunity to mention incest. It’s like: mentioning incest 5000 km, not being disgusting 1 km, what a hard decision. Actually, they do have to walk on their knees for 100 miles through the desert repenting. But there are other moments—such as Mary burning on the ceiling, a classic, Castiel waiting for Dean at the side of the highway, and Azazel poisoning Sam. With the help of the high schoolers, Sam and Dean overcome Calliope, the muse and bad guy of the episode, and save the day. What began as their lives reinterpreted and told back to them turns into a story they have some agency over.

In this episode, as opposed to “The Monster At The End Of This Book,” The storytelling has transferred from an alcoholic in a bathrobe into the hands of an overbearing and overachieving teenage girl, and honestly why not. Transformative fiction is by and large run by women, and queer women, so Marie and her stage manager slash Jody Mills’s understudy Maeve are just following in the footsteps of legends. This kind of really succinctly summarises the difference between curative fandom and transformative fandom, the former of which is populated mostly by men, and the latter mostly by women. As defined by LordByronic in 2015, Curative fandom is more like enjoying the text, collecting the merchandise, organising the knowledge — basically Reddit in terms of fandom curation. Transformative fandom is transforming the source text in some way — making fanart, fanfic, mvs, or a musical — basically Tumblr in general, and Archive of our own specifically. Like what do non fandom people even do on Tumblr? It is a complete mystery to me. Whereas Chuck literally writes himself into the narrative he receives through visions, Marie and co have agency and control over the narrative by writing it themselves.

Chuck does appear in the episode towards the end, his first appearance after five seasons. The theory that he killed those lesbian theatre girls makes me wanna curl up and die, so I don’t subscribe to it. Chuck watched the musical and he liked it and he gave unwarranted notes and then he left, the end.

The Supernatural creative team is explicitly acknowledging the fandom’s efforts by making this episode. They’re writing us in again, with more obsessive fans, but with lethbians this time, which makes it infinitely better. And instead of showing us as potential date rapists, we’re just cool chicks who like to make art. And that’s fucken awesome.

I just have to note that the characters literally say the word Destiel after Dean sees the actors playing Dean and Cas making out. He storms off and tells Sam to shut the fuck up when Sam makes fun of him, because Dean’s sexuality is NOT threatened he just needs to assert his dominance as a straight hetero man who has NEVER looked at another man’s lips and licked his own. He just… forgets that gay people exist until someone reminds him. BUT THEN, after a rousing speech that is stolen from Rent or Wicked or something, he echoes Marie’s words back, saying “put as much sub into that text as you possibly can.” What does Dean know about subbing, I wonder. Okay I’m suddenly reminded that he did literally go to a kink bar and get hit on by a leather daddy. Oh Dean, the experiences you have as a broad-shouldered, pixie-faced man with cowboy legs. You were born for this role.

Metatron is my favourite villain. As one tumblr user pointed out, he is an evil English literature major, which is just a normal English literature major. The season nine episode “Meta Fiction” written by my main man robbie thompson and directed by thomas j wright, happens within a curious season. Castiel, once again, becomes the leader of a portion of the heavenly host to take down Metatron, and Dean is affected by the Mark Of Cain. Sam was recently possessed by Gadreel, who killed Kevin in Sam’s body and then decided to run off with Metatron. Metatron himself is recruiting angels to join him, in the hopes that he can become the new God. It’s the first introduction of Hannah, who encourages Cas to recruit angels himself to take on Metatron. Also, we get to see Gabriel again, who is always a delight.

This episode is a lot of fun. Metatron poses questions like, who tells a story and who is the most important person in the telling? Is it the writer? The audience? He starts off staring over his typewriter to address the camera, like a pompous dickhead. No longer content with consuming stories, he’s started to write his own. And they are hubristic ones about becoming God, a better god than Chuck ever was, but to do it he needs to kill a bunch of people and blame it on Cas. So really, he’s actually exactly like Chuck who blamed everything on Lucifer.

But I think the most apt analogy we can use for this in terms of who is the creator is to think of Metatron as a fanfiction writer. He consumes the media—the Winchester Gospels—and starts to write his own version of events—leading an army to become God and kill Cas. Nevermind that no one has been able to kill Cas in a way that matters or a way that sticks. Which is canon, and what Metatron is trying to do is—well not fanon because it actually does impact the Winchesters’ storyline. It would be like if one of the writers of Supernatural began writing Supernatural fanfiction before they got a job on the show. Which as my generation and the generations coming after me get more comfortable with fanfiction and fandom, is going to be the case for a lot of shows. I think it’s already the case for Riverdale. Correct me if I’m wrong, but didn’t the woman who wrote the bi Dean essay go to work on Riverdale? Or something? I dunno, I have the post saved in my tumblr likes but that is quagmire of epic proportions that I will easily get lost in if I try to find it.

Okay let me flex my literary degree. As Englund and Leach say in “Ethnography and the metanarratives of modernity,” “The influential “literary turn,” in which the problems of ethnography were seen as largely textual and their solutions as lying in experimental writing seems to have lost its impetus.” This can be taken to mean, in the context of Supernatural, that while Metatron’s writings seek to forge a new path in history, forgoing fate for a new kind of divine intervention, the problem with Metatron is that he’s too caught up in the textual, too caught up in the writing, to be effectual. And this as we see throughout seasons 9, 10 and 11, has no lasting effect. Cas gets his grace back, Dean survives, and Metatron becomes a powerless human. In this case, the impetus is his grace, which he loses when Cas cuts it out of him, a mirror to Metatron cutting out Cas’s grace.

However, I realise that the concept of ethnography in Supernatural is a flawed one, ethnography being the observation of another culture: a lot of the angels observe humanity and seem to fit in. However, Cas has to slowly acclimatise to the Winchesters as they tame him, but he never quite fit in—missing cues, not understanding jokes or Dean’s personal space, the scene where he says, “We have a guinea pig? Where?” Show him the guinea pig Sam!!! He wants to see it!!! At most he passes as a human with autism. Cas doesn’t really observe humanity—he observes nature, as seen in season 7 “reading is fundamental” and “survival of the fittest”. Even the human acts he talks about in season 6 “the man who would be king” are from hundreds or thousands of years ago. He certainly doesn’t observe popular culture, which puts him at odds with Dean, who is made up of 90 per cent pop culture references and 10 per cent flannel. Metatron doesn’t seek to blend in with humanity so much as control it, which actually is the most apt example of ethnography for white people in the last—you know, forever. But of course the writers didn’t seek to make this analogy. It is purely by chance, and maybe I’m the only person insane enough to realise it. But probably not. There are a lot of cookies much smarter than me in the Supernatural fandom and they’ve like me have grown up and gone to university and gotten real jobs in the real world and real haircuts. I’m probably the only person to apply Englund and Leach to it though.

And yes, as I read this paper I did need to have one tab open on Google, with the word “define” in the search bar.

Metatron has a few lines in this that I really like. He says:

“The universe is made up of stories, not atoms.”

“You’re going to have to follow my script.”

“I’m an entity of my word.”

It’s really obvious, but they’re pushing the idea that Metatron has become an agent of authorship instead of just a consumer of media. He even throws a Supernatural book into his fire — a symbolic act of burning the script and flipping the writer off, much like Cas did to God and the angels in season 5. He’s not a Kripke figure so much as maybe a Gamble, Carver or Dabb figure, in that he usurps Chuck and becomes the author-god. This would be extremely postmodern of him if he didn’t just do exactly what Chuck was doing, except worse somehow. In fact, it’s postmodern of Cas to reject heaven’s narrative and fall for Dean. As one tumblr user points out, Cas really said “What’s fate compared to Dean Winchester?”

Okay this transcript is almost 8000 words already, and I still have two more episodes to review, and more things to say, so I’ll leave you with this. Metatron says to Cas, “Out of all of God’s wind up toys, you’re the only one with any spunk.” Why Cas has captured his attention comes down more than anything to a process of elimination. Most angels fucking suck. They follow the rules of whoever puts themselves in charge, and they either love Cas or hate him, or just plainly wanna fuck him, and there have been few angels who stood out. Balthazar was awesome, even though I hated him the first time I watched season 6. He UNSUNK the Titanic. Legend status. And Gabriel was of course the OG who loves to fuck shit up. But they’re gone at this stage in the narrative, and Cas survives. Cas always survives. He does have spunk. And everyone wants to fuck him.

Season 11 episode 20 “Don’t Call Me Shurley,” the last episode written by the Christ like figure of Robbie Thompson — are we sensing a theme here? — and directed by my divine enemy Robert Singer, starts with Metatron dumpster diving for food. I’m not even going to bother commenting on this because like… it’s supernatural and it treats complex issues like homelessness and poverty with zero nuance. Like the Winchesters live in poverty but it’s fun and cool because they always scrape by but Metatron lives in poverty and it’s funny. Cas was homeless and it was hard but he needed to do it to atone for his sins, and Metatron is homeless and it’s funny because he brought it on himself by being a murderous dick. Fucking hell. Robbie, come on. The plot focuses on God, also known as Chuck Shurley, making himself known to Metatron and asking for Metatron’s opinion on his memoir. Meanwhile, the Winchesters battle another bout of infectious serial killer fog sent by Amara. At the end of the episode, Chuck heals everyone affected by the fog and reveals himself to Sam and Dean.

Chuck says that he didn’t foresee Metatron trying to become god, but the idea of Season 15 is that Chuck has been writing the Winchesters’ story all their lives. When Metatron tries, he fails miserably, is locked up in prison, tortured by Dean, then rendered useless as a human and thrown into the world without a safety net. His authorship is reduced to nothing, and he is reduced to dumpster diving for food. He does actually attempt to live his life as someone who records tragedies as they happen and sells the footage to news stations, which is honestly hilarious and amazing and completely unsurprising because Metatron is, at the heart of it, an English Literature major. In true bastard style, he insults Chuck’s work and complains about the bar, but slips into his old role of editor when Chuck asks him to.

The theory I’m consulting for this uses the term metanarrative in a different way than I am. They consider it an overarching narrative, a grand narrative like religion. Chuck’s biography is in a sense most loyal to Middleton and Walsh’s view of metanarrative: “the universal story of the world from arche to telos, a grand narrative encompassing world history from beginning to end.” Except instead of world history, it’s God’s history, and since God is construed in Supernatural as just some guy with some powers who is as fallible as the next some guy with some powers, his story has biases and agendas. Okay so in the analysis I’m getting Middleton and Walsh’s quotes from, James K A Smith’s “A little story about metanarratives,” Smith dunks on them pretty bad, but for Supernatural purposes their words ring true. Think of them as the BuckLeming of Lyotard’s postmodern metanarrative analysis: a stopped clock right twice a day. Is anyone except me understanding the sequence of words I’m saying right now. Do I just have the most specific case of brain worms ever found in human history. I’m currently wearing my oversized Keith Haring shirt and dipping pretzels into peanut butter because it’s 3.18 in the morning and the homosexuals got to me. The total claims a comprehensive metanarrative of world history make do indeed, as Middleton and Walsh claim, lead to violence, stay with me here, because Chuck’s legacy is violence, and so is Metatron’s, and in trying to reject the metanarrative, Sam and Dean enact violence. Mostly Dean, because in season 15 he sacrifices his own son twice to defeat Chuck. But that means literally fighting violence with violence. Violence is, after all, all they know. Violence is the lens through which they interact with the world. If the writers wanted to do literally anything else, they could have continued Dean’s natural character progression into someone who eschews the violence that stems from intergeneration trauma — yes I will continue to use the phrase intergenerational trauma whenever I refer to Dean — and becomes a loving father and husband. Sam could eschew violence and start a monster rehabilitation centre with Eileen.

This episode of Holy Hell is me frantically grabbing at straws to make sense of a narrative that actively hates me and wants to kick me to death. But the violence Sam and Dean enact is not at a metanarrative level, because they are not author-gods of their own narrative. In season 15 “Atomic Monsters,” Becky points out that the ending of the Supernatural book series is bad because the brothers die, and then, in a shocking twist of fate, Dean does die, and the narrative is bad. The writers set themselves a goal post to kick through and instead just slammed their heat into the bars. They set up the dartboard and were like, let’s aim the darts at ourselves. Wouldn’t that be fun. Season 15’s writing is so grossly incompetent that I believe every single conspiracy theory that’s come out of the finale since November, because it’s so much more compelling than whatever the fuck happened on the road so far. Carry on? Why yes, I think I will carry on, carry on like a pork chop, screaming at the bars of my enclosure until I crack my voice open like an egg and spill out all my rage and frustration. The world will never know peace again. It’s now 3.29 and I’ve written over 9000 words of this transcript. And I’m not done.

Middleton and Walsh claim that metanarratives are merely social constructions masquerading as universal truths. Which is, exactly, Supernatural. The creators have constructed this elaborate web of narrative that they want to sell us as the be all and end all. They won’t let the actors discuss how they really feel about the finale. They won’t let Misha Collins talk about Destiel. They want us to believe it was good, actually, that Dean, a recovering alcoholic with a 30 year old infant son and a husband who loves him, deserved to die by getting NAILED, while Sam, who spent the last four seasons, the entirety of Andrew Dabb’s run as showrunner, excelling at creating a hunter network and romancing both the queen of hell and his deaf hunter girlfriend, should have lived a normie life with a normie faceless wife. Am I done? Not even close. I started this episode and I’m going to finish it.

When we find out that Chuck is God in the episode of season 11, it turns everything we knew about Chuck on its head. We find out in Season 15 that Chuck has been writing the Winchesters’ story all along, that everything that happened to them is his doing. The one thing he couldn’t control was Cas’s choice to rebel. If we take him at his word, Cas is the only true force of free will in the entire universe, and more specifically, the love that Cas had for Dean which caused him to rebel and fall from heaven. — This theory has holes of course. Why would Lucifer torture Lilith into becoming the first demon if he didn’t have free will? Did Chuck make him do that? And why? So that Chuck could be the hero and Lucifer the bad guy, like Lucifer claimed all along? That’s to say nothing of Adam and Eve, both characters the show introduced in different ways, one as an antagonist and the other as the narrative foil to Dean and Cas’s romance. Thinking about it makes my head hurt, so I’m just not gunna.

So Chuck was doing the writing all along. And as Becky claims in “Atomic Monsters,” it’s bad writing. The writers explicitly said, the ending Chuck wrote is bad because there’s no Cas and everyone dies, and then they wrote an ending where there is no Cas and everyone dies. So talk about self-fulfilling prophecies. Talk about giant craters in the earth you could see from 800 kilometres away but you still fell into. Meanwhile fan writers have the opportunity to write a million different endings, all of which satisfy at least one person. The fandom is a hydra, prolific and unstoppable, and we’ll keep rewriting the ending a million more times.

And all this is not even talking about the fact that Chuck is a man, Metatron is a man, Sam and Dean and Cas are men, and the writers and directors of the show are, by an overwhelming majority, men. Most of them are white, straight, cis men. Feminist scholarship has done a lot to unpack the damage done by paternalistic approaches to theory, sociology, ethnography, all the -ys, but I propose we go a step further with these men. Kill them. Metanarratively, of course. Amara, the Darkness, God’s sister, had a chance to write her own story without Chuck, after killing everything in the universe, and I think she had the right idea. Knock it all down to build it from the ground up. Billie also had the opportunity to write a narrative, but her folly was, of course, putting any kind of faith in the Winchesters who are also grossly incompetent and often fail up. She is, as all author-gods on this show are, undone by Castiel. The only one with any spunk, the only one who exists outside of his own narrative confines, the only one the author-gods don’t have any control over. The one who died for love, and in dying, gave life.

The French Mistake

Let’s change the channel. Let’s calm ourselves and cleanse our libras. Let’s commune with nature and chug some sage bongs.

“The French Mistake” is a song from the Mel Brooks film Blazing Saddles. In the iconic second last scene of the film, as the cowboys fight amongst themselves, the camera pans back to reveal a studio lot and a door through which a chorus of gay dancersingers perform “the French Mistake”. The lyrics go, “Throw out your hands, stick out your tush, hands on your hips, give ‘em a push. You’ll be surprised you’re doing the French Mistake.”

I’m not sure what went through the heads of the Supernatural creators when they came up with the season 6 episode, “The French Mistake,” written by the love of my life Ben Edlund and directed by some guy Charles Beeson. Just reading the Wikipedia summary is so batshit incomprehensible. In short: Balthazar sends Sam and Dean to an alternate universe where they are the actors Jared Padalecki and Jensen Ackles, who play Sam and Dean on the tv show Supernatural. I don’t think this had ever been done in television history before. The first seven seasons of this show are certifiable. Like this was ten years ago. Think about the things that have happened in the last 10 slutty, slutty years. We have lived through atrocities and upheaval and the entire world stopping to mourn, but also we had twitter throughout that entire time, which makes it infinitely worse.

In this universe, Sam and Dean wear makeup, Cas is played by attractive crying man Misha Collins, and Genevieve Padalecki nee Cortese makes an appearance. Magic doesn’t exist, Serge has good ideas, and the two leads have to act in order to get through the day. Sorry man I do not know how to pronounce your name.

Sidenote: I don’t know if me being attracted aesthetically to Misha Collins is because he’s attractive, because this show has gaslighted me into thinking he’s attractive, or because Castiel’s iconic entrance in 2008 hit my developing mind like a torpedo full of spaghetti and blew my fucking brains all over the place. It’s one of life’s little mysteries and God’s little gifts.

Let’s talk about therapy. More specifically, “Agency and purpose in narrative therapy: questioning the postmodern rejection of metanarrative” by Cameron Lee. In this paper, Lee outlines four key ideas as proposed by Freedman and Combs:

Realities are socially constructed

Realities are constituted through language

Realities are organised and maintained through narrative

And there are no essential truths.

Let’s break this down in the case of this episode. Realities are socially constructed: the reality of Sam and Dean arose from the Bush era. Do I even need to elaborate? From what I understand with my limited Australian perception, and being a child at the time, 9/11 really was a prominent shifting point in the last twenty years. As Americans describe it, sometimes jokingly, it was the last time they were really truly innocent. That means to me that until they saw the repercussions of their government’s actions in funding turf wars throughout the middle east for a good chunk of the 20th Century, they allowed themselves to be hindered by their own ignorance. The threat of terrorism ran rampant throughout the States, spurred on by right wing nationalists and gun-toting NRA supporters, so it’s really no surprise that the show Supernatural started with the premise of killing everything in sight and driving around with only your closest kin and a trunk full of guns. Kripke constructed that reality from the social-political climate of the time, and it has wrought untold horrors on the minds of lesbians who lived through the noughties, in that we are now attracted to Misha Collins.

Number two: Realities are constituted through language. Before a show can become a show, it needs to be a script. It’s written down, typed up, and given to actors who say the lines out loud. In this respect, they are using the language of speech and words to convey meaning. But tv shows are not all about words, and they’re barely about scripts. From what I understand of being raised by television, they are about action, visuals, imagery, and behaviours. All of the work that goes into them—the scripts, the lighting, the audio, the sound mixing, the cameras, the extras, the ADs, the gaffing, the props, the stunts, everything—is about conveying a story through the medium of images. In that way, images are the language. The reality of the show Supernatural, inside the show Supernatural, is constituted through words: the script, the journalists talking to Sam, the makeup artist taking off Dean’s makeup, the conversations between the creators, the tweets Misha sends. But also through imagery: the fish tank in Jensen’s trailer, the model poses on the front cover of the magazine, the opulence of Jared’s house, Misha’s iconic sweater. Words and images are the language that constitutes both of these realities. Okay for real, I feel like I’ve only seen this episode max three times, including when I watched it for research for this episode, but I remember so much about it.

Number three: realities are organised and maintained through narrative. In this universe of the French Mistake, their lives are structured around two narratives: the internal narrative of the show within the show, in which they are two actors on a tv set; and the episode narrative in which they need to keep the key safe and return to their own universe. This is made difficult by the revelation that magic doesn’t work in this universe, however, they find a way. Before they can get back, though, an avenging angel by the name of Virgil guns down author-god Eric Kripke and tries to kill the Winchesters. However, they are saved by Balthazar and the freeze frame and brought back into their own world, the world of Supernatural the show, not Supernatural the show within the show within the nesting doll. And then that reality is done with, never to be revisited or even mentioned, but with an impact that has lasted longer than the second Bush administration.

And number four: there are no essential truths. This one is a bit tricky because I can’t find what Lee means by essential truths, so I’m just going to interpret that. To me, essential truths means what lies beneath the narratives we tell ourselves. Supernatural was a show that ran for 15 years. Supernatural had actors. Supernatural was showrun by four different writers. In the show within a show, there is nothing, because that ceases to exist for longer than the forty two minute episode “The French Mistake”. And since Supernatural no longer exists except in our computers, it is nothing too. It is only the narratives we tell ourselves to sleep better at night, to wake up in the morning with a smile, to get through the day, to connect with other people, to understand ourselves better. It’s not even the narrative that the showrunners told, because they have no agency over it as soon as it shows up on our screens. The essential truth of the show is lost in the translation from creating to consuming. Who gives the story meaning? The people watching it and the people creating it. We all do.

Lee says that humans are predisposed to construct narratives in order to make sense of the world. We see this in cultures from all over the world: from cave paintings to vases, from The Dreaming to Beowulf, humans have always constructed stories. The way you think about yourself is a story that you’ve constructed. The way you interact with your loved ones and the furries you rightfully cyberbully on Twitter is influenced by the narratives you tell yourself about them. And these narratives are intricate, expansive, personalised, and can colour our perceptions completely, so that we turn into a different person when we interact with one person as opposed to another.

Whatever happened in season 6, most of which I want to forget, doesn’t interest me in the way I’m telling myself the writers intended. For me, the entirety of season 6 was based around the premise of Cas being in love with Dean, and the complete impotence of this love. He turns up when Dean calls, he agonises as he watches Dean rake leaves and live his apple pie life with Lisa, and Dean is the person he feels most horribly about betraying. He says, verbatim, to Sam, “Dean and I do share a more profound bond.” And Balthazar says, “You’re confusing me with the other angel, the one in the dirty trenchcoat who’s in love with you.” He says this in season 6, and we couldn’t do a fucken thing about it.

The song “The French Mistake” shines a light on the hidden scene of gay men performing a gay narrative, in the midst of a scene about the manliest profession you can have: professional horse wrangler, poncho wearer, and rodeo meister, the cowboy. If this isn’t a perfect encapsulation of the lovestory between Dean and Cas, which Ben Edlund has been championing from day fucking one of Misha Collins walking onto that set with his sex hair and chapped lips, then I don’t know what the fuck we’re even doing here. What in the hell else could it possibly mean. The layers to this. The intricacy. The agendas. The subtextual AND blatant queerness. The micro aggressions Crowley aimed at Car in “The Man Who Would Be King,” another Bedlund special. Bed Edlund is a fucking genius. Bed Edlund is cool girl. Ben Edlund is the missing link. Bed Edlund IS wikileaks. Ben Edlund is a cool breeze on a humid summer day. Ben Edlund is the stop loading button on a browser tab. Ben Edlund is the perfect cross between Spotify and Apple Music, in which you can search for good playlists, but without having to be on Spotify. He can take my keys and fuck my wife. You best believe I’m doing an entire episode of Holy Hell on Bedlund’s top five. He is the reason I want to get into staffwriting on a tv show. I saw season 4 episode “On the head of a pin” when my brain was still torpedoed spaghetti mush from the premiere, and it nestled its way deep into my exposed bones, so that when I finally recovered from that, I was a changed person. My god, this transcript is 11,000 words, and I haven’t even finished the Becky section. Which is a good transition.

Oh, Becky. She is an incarnation of how the writers, or at least Kripke, view the fans. Watching season 5 “Sympathy for the Devil” live in 2009 was a whole fucking trip that I as a baby gay was not prepared for. Figuring out my sexuality was a journey that started with the Supernatural fandom and is in some aspects still raging against the dying of the light today. Add to that, this conception of the audience was this, like, personification of the librarian cellist from Juno, but also completely without boundaries, common sense, or shame. It made me wonder about my position in the narrative as a consumer consuming. Is that how Kripke saw me, specifically? Was I like Becky? Did my forays into DeanCasNatural on El Jay dot com make me a fucking loser whose only claim to fame is writing some nasty fanfiction that I’ve since deleted all traces of? Don’t get me wrong, me and my unhinged Casgirl friends loved Becky. I can’t remember if I ever wrote any fanfiction with her in it because I was mostly writing smut, which is extremely Becky coded of me, but I read some and my friends and I would always chat about her when she came up. She was great entertainment value before season 7. But in the eyes of the powers that be, Becky, like the fans themselves, are expendable. First they turned her into a desperate bride wannabe who drugs Sam so that he’ll be with her, then Chuck waves his hand and she disappears. We’re seeing now with regards to Destiel, Cas, and Misha Collins this erasure of them from the narrative. Becky says in season 15 “Atomic Monsters” that the ending Chuck writes is bad because, for one, there’s no Cas, and that’s exactly what’s happening to the text post-finale. It literally makes me insane akin to the throes of mania to think about the layers of this. They literally said, “No Cas = bad” and now Misha isn’t even allowed to talk in his Cassona voice—at least at the time I wrote that—to the detriment of the fans who care about him. It’s the same shit over and over. They introduce something we like, they realise they have no control over how much we like it, and then they pretend they never introduced it in the first place. Season 7, my god. The only reason Gamble brought back Cas was because the ratings were tanking the show. I didn’t even bother watching most of it live, and would just hear from my friends whether Cas was in the episodes or not. And then Sera, dear Sera, had the gall to say it was a Homer’s Odyssey narrative. I’m rusty on Homer aka I’ve never read it but apparently Odysseus goes away, ends up with a wife on an island somewhere, and then comes back to Terabithia like it never happened. How convenient. But since Sera Gamble loves to bury her gays, we can all guess why Cas was written out of the show: Cas being gay is a threat to the toxic heteronormativity spouted by both the show and the characters themselves. In season 15, after Becky gets her life together, has kids, gets married, and starts a business, she is outgrowing the narrative and Chuck kills her. The fans got Destiel Wedding trending on Twitter, and now the creators are acting like he doesn’t exist. New liver, same eagles.

I have to add an adendum: as of this morning, Sunday 11th, don’t ask me what time that is in Americaland, Misha Collins did an online con/Q&A thing and answered a bunch of questions about Cas and Dean, which goes to show that he cannot be silenced. So the narrative wants to be told. It’s continuing well into it’s 16th or 17th season. It’s going to keep happening and they have no recourse to stop it. So fuck you, Supernatural.

I did write the start of a speech about representation but, who the holy hell cares. I also read some disappointing Masters theses that I hope didn’t take them longer to research and write than this episode of a podcast I’m making for funsies took me, considering it’s the same number of pages. Then again I have the last four months and another 8 years of fandom fuelling my obsession, and when I don’t sleep I write, hence the 4,000 words I knocked out in the last 12 hours.

Some final words. Lyotard defines postmodernism, the age we live in, as an incredulity towards metanarratives. Modernism was obsessed with order and meaning, but postmodernism seeks to disrupt that. Modernists lived within the frame of the narrative of their society, but postmodernists seek to destroy the frame and live within our own self-written contexts. Okay I love postmodernist theory so this has been a real treat for me. Yoghurt, Sam? Postmodernist theory? Could I BE more gay?

Middleton and Walsh in their analysis of postmodernism claim that biblical faith is grounded in metanarrative, and explore how this intersects with an era that rejects metanarrative. This is one of the fundamental ideas Supernatural is getting at throughout definitely the last season, but other seasons as well. The narratives of Good vs Evil, Michael vs Lucifer, Dean vs Sam, were encoded into the overarching story of the show from season 1, and since then Sam and Dean have sought to break free of them. Sam broke free of John’s narrative, which was the hunting life, and revenge, and this moralistic machismo that they wrapped themselves up in. If they’re killing the evil, then they’re not the evil. That’s the story they told, and the impetus of the show that Sam was sucked back into. But this thread unravelled in later seasons when Dean became friends with Benny and the idea that all supernatural creatures are inherently evil unravelled as well. While they never completely broke free of John’s hold over them, welcoming Jack into their lives meant confronting a bias that had been ingrained in them since Dean was 4 years old and Sam 6 months. In the face of the question, “are all monsters monstrous?” the narrative loosens its control. Even by questioning it, it throws into doubt the overarching narrative of John’s plan, which is usurped at the end of season 2 when they kill Azazel by Dean’s demon deal and a new narrative unfolds. John as author-god is usurped by the actual God in season 4, who has his own narrative that controls the lives of Sam, Dean and Cas.

Okay like for real, I do actually think the metanarrativity in Supernatural is something that should be studied by someone other than me, unless you wanna pay me for it and then shit yeah. It is extremely cool to introduce a biographical narrative about the fictional narrative it’s in. It’s cool that the characters are constantly calling this narrative into focus by fighting against it, struggling to break free from their textual confines to live a life outside of the external forces that control them. And the thing is? The really real, honest thing? They have. Sam, Dean and Cas have broken free of the narrative that Kripke, Carver, Gamble and Dabb wrote for them. The very fact that the textual confession of love that Cas has for Dean ushered in a resurgence of fans, fandom and activity that has kept the show trending for five months after it ended, is just phenomenal. People have pointed out that fans stopped caring about Game of Thrones as soon as it ended. Despite the hold they had over tv watchers everywhere, their cultural currency has been spent. The opposite is true for Supernatural. Despite how the finale of the show angered and confused people, it gains more momentum every day. More fanworks, more videos, more fics, more art, more ire, more merch is being generated by the fans still. The Supernatural subreddit, which was averaging a few posts a week by season 15, has been incensed by the finale. And yours truly happily traipsed back into the fandom snake pit after 8 years with a smile on my face and a skip in my step ready to pump that dopamine straight into my veins babeeeeeeyyyyy. It’s been WILD. I recently reconnected with one of my mutuals from 2010 and it’s like nothing’s changed. We’re both still unhinged and we both still simp for Supernatural. Even before season 15, I was obsessed with the podcast Ride Or Die, which I started listening to in late 2019, and Supernatural was always in the back of my mind. You just don’t get over your first fandom. Actually, Danny Phantom was my first fandom, and I remember being 12 talking on Danny Phantom forums to people much too old to be the target audience of the show. So I guess that hasn’t left me either. And the fondest memories I have of Supernatural is how the characters have usurped their creators to become mythic, long past the point they were supposed to die a quiet death. The myth weaving that the Supernatural fandom is doing right now is the legacy that will endure.

References

I got all of these for free from Google Scholar!

Judith May Fathallah, “I’m A God: The Author and the Writing Fan in Supernatural.”

James K A Smith, “A Little Story About Metanarratives: Lyotard, Religion and Postmodernism Revisited.” 2001.

Cameron Lee, “Agency and Purpose in Narrative Therapy: Questioning the Postmodern Rejection of Metanarrative.” 2004.

Harri Englund and James Leach, “Ethnography and the Meta Narratives of Modernity.” 2000.

https://uproxx.com/filmdrunk/mel-brooks-explains-french-mistake-blazing-saddles-blu-ray/

#transcripts #supernatural #supernatural podcast #<60mins #this is first and foremost a podcast about cas and misha collins

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kn1ghthawk · 4 years ago

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Fallout OC questionaire

@falloutfandomeventhub Fallout OC Questionnaire Whether your OC is a Lone Wanderer or Sole Survivor, these questions can be asked by others to know more about them! Or simply be used as a guide to further develop your character. Ask away, luv! 00. Which Fallout game are they from? Fallout 4 01. Which faction(s) did they join and which did they destroy? Why? The only Faction to be destroyed was the institute by the minute men. Officially, the botherhood won the commonwealth. Their equipment and training are stronger than either the railroad or the minutemen can handle on a one-by-one. With the institute destroyed, the railroad had lost its greater purpose. Some of the remaining members worked to establish a pipeline to Far harbor and Acadia for those who didn't wish for a mind-wipe. Others chose to join the minutement to make the world a safer place. The brotherhood is the army, the minutemen are the police. 02.What is their S.P.E.C.I.A.L.? S4 P6 E1 C1 I10 A4 L3 Strong enough to bend metal to his will, but no 'heavy hitter' or load hauler. Good eyes and quite perceptive, able to play with explosives without fear and an able rifleman The frost seems to have sapped all of his endurance he developed in the army, finding himself constantly winded. Between his sarcastic nature as a veteran, the dysphoria of a new world, and his half blasted face, his charisma is something to be desired Intelligence is where he shines, capable with computers, engineering and certified to operate with fusion cores. His agility is fair. Able to be sneaky, but by no means a ninja. He is lucky in cards but unlucky in love. Hard pressed to romance any companion, he is still able to get a lucky shot off. 03. Give us a summary of their backstory. Son of a locksmith, he used his gift with tumblers to break into places for the cheap thrills and fell in with a bad crowd. The first time he met Nora was popping a lock for her in the rain and he decided she was someone he was willing to make a better man of himself. He enlisted, became a combat engineer, got half his face blown off. Came home after the tour, got popped in the freezer. 04. What’s their full name and does it have a meaning? Do they have any nicknames and how did they get em? Nathaniel Victor Winters, A.K.A. Vic, Blue and THE SILVER SHROUD! Vic is a shortening, blue comes from the suit he emerged from the vault, and the silver shroud came from his time enacting revenge in goodneighbor and his codename with the railroad. 05. What’s their sexual, romantic, and gender orientation? Do they feel comfortable telling other people? He's bisexual male favoring feminine appearance lovers, he lost his virginity with another man in the gang he ran with as a kid. In this war-torn world, what you have in your pants and where you stick it really is on the bottom of the totem pole. 06. Do they have any mental illnesses? How do they cope? The horrors of the war and what he has done still tear at him today. He often stays up late nights tinkering and drafting until he is finally too exhausted to think and blacks out. He 07. Do they have any medical conditions? Is medicine/ treatment available for them? His lungs are frost-burnt from the improper freezing technique. He can get enough air to walk and talk, but any sudden exertion like running has him on his knees in ten seconds. he has second and third degree burns on the right side of his face and body. 08. How much do they care about their outer appearance? What’s their “beauty routine”? How often do they shower/ bathe? His physical appearance is a sensitive subject, some days he feels like he looks like half a ghoul with his second and third degree burns down the right side of his face and body. Optimally, he likes to wear his silver shroud get-up with the scarf wrapped around his face and operator goggles. (use surgical mask or striped bandana to represent the scarf pulled up) Not only does he like to bathe, but he has started building water heaters for a hot bath. 09. What do they fear the most? Fire makes him... uncomfortable, his armor always has asbestos when it is an option. He fears loosing curie, the only other person not bothered by his features beyond Hancock, both of whom are his only lovers. Part of him is afraid he will wake up in the tube again, that this was all a dream. 10. They’re biggest flaw? Do they recognize it as a flaw? He overthinks everything, he has an obsession with returning some of the old world tech back to this new place. He sees a hundred things being used or not used that would make things so much easier. 11. What are they most insecure about? He is almost entirely sure he is a synth, placed by deacon into the vault. 12. What Wasteland threat do they fear the most? (ex. Deathclaws, super mutants, raiders) Raiders are just people. So is the institute. But if he had to pick one single crature he will call for an airstrike on everytime is the mirelurk queen. Three story tall crab spitting armor-melting acid? Hard pass. 13. What’s their zodiac sign or which one do you think they relate to the most? What are their placements (if you know them)? (ex. Aries sun, Taurus moon, Aquarius Venus) May 5th 2045 (Taurus/Ox) 14. What’s their Myers–Briggs Type? (ex. ENTP, ISFJ) INTJ- The scientist 15. What Harry Potter house would they be in? (ex. Gryffindor, Ravenclaw) Ravenclaw 16. Which Pokemon Go team would they choose? (ex. Instinct, Valor, Mystic) Team mystic 17. Out of the nine forms of intelligence (rhythmic, spatial, linguistic, mathematical, kinesthetic, interpersonal, intrapersonal, naturalistic, and existential) which one(s) are they really good at and which one(s) is(are) their weakest? 1) Mathematical 2) Kinethetic 3) Linguistic 4) Spatial 5) Interpersonal 6) Intrapersonal 7) Naturalistic 8) Existential 9) Rhythmic 18. What natural alignment are they? (ex. Lawful Good, Chaotic Evil) Chaotic good, Doing the right thing, regardless of the law. 19. Do they have any hobbies? What are they? Tinkering, repairing, drafting. 20. Do they have a favorite holiday? How do they celebrate it? Halloween, costumes and parties. 21. What’s their favorite season? Winter, not just because of the namesake, the way the snow absorbs all sound and colors to make a calm quite monotone of the world. 22. Do they have a temper or are they level headed? Level-headed but vengeful. 23. Do they express their emotions freely or hide their true feelings? He holds his feelings until he has time to walk them out and express himself calmly. But if he gets overwhelmed with loss, he is known to find a corner and break down. 24. Are they a leader or a follower? A reluctant leader as he is the only man with a plan half the time. 25. How do they come off to others? What first impression do they usually make? Know-it-all, gallows humor, awful ugly. 26. Do they prefer to travel alone or with company? Who have they traveled with if any? Current companion if any? He has traveled with most of the companions, leaning on their experience and expertise. His constant companion is Curie and dogmeat. He has the sentinel to provide assistance and carry what he needs to keep himself agile. 27. Would you describe them as selfless or selfish? Does it depend on the situation? Most often he is selfless, throwing caps and resources as problems. He always makes sure the farms under his protection have eight turrets and the farmers are well armed and armored with the standard of leather armor and bolt action rifles. 28. What do they find most attractive in others? Name at least one psychological and physical trait. (doesn’t have to be romantic attraction) In curie it is her sweet faux-french voice and elemental green eyes that almost glow in the right light. From his minor hearing loss in the war, he often reads lips which leads to liking the shapes of certain mouths. 29. Do they flirt often? How easily do they fall in love? He is heavily flirtatious, but he cannot fall in love without sleeping with someone first. As a concupiscent, he has trouble forming longer relationships past fleeting friends without engaging in sexual activities with them. 30. What’s their love life like? Are they interested in anyone or in a relationship? He is in a relationship with Curie and Hancock in a 70/30 split. Hancock knows the need to get down and dirty to do what had to be done. So often after a 'dark' mission, hancock will get loaded and Vic will get drunk to wind down and whatever happens next happens. 31. Do they prefer to solve things diplomatically or using violence? “Si vis Pacem, Para bellum. If you want peace, prepare for war.” He always hopes for peaceful resolutions, popping a grape mentat before an important meeting but keeping track against addiction. But that peaceful meeting almost always comes with a loaded ten on his thigh and one person as backup. 32. What is their combat style? What range do they prefer? Do they sneak? He is a fine rifleman, preferring to take his targets one by one from a hidden distance for as long as possible with the sentinel and dogmeat running melee interference. If curie is with him, she cannot escape her programming with her buzz-saw limb so Vic gives her a melee weapon like a ripper or the throatslicer for her to exercise her medical expertise. Handcock is given a shotgun and a chance to go to town. 33. What weapon(s) do they always carry with them? Vic's favored sidearm is the ultimatum but his go-to is the Kiloton radium rifle. Before then It was Crickets spray-n-pray with the railroad deliverer. 34. Their most prized possession? A lucky rabbits foot he keeps as a charm on his pistols lanyard loop, it was a keepsake from the first time he ever went hunting. 35. Their thoughts on power armor? He finds them very convenient, as long as they are not overutalized or relied on to accomplish the task. As part of the combat engineers, he spent most of his time in a base skeletal frame with cobbled bits ten feet behind the real armored infantry solider marching through the front lines. 36. Favorite armor/ outfit? The silver shroud costume, armored up thanks to Kent. Otherwise, a pair of ballistic military fatigues with full heavy combat armor. 37. How’s their aim? Do their hands shake while pointing a gun? When using a rifle, his left hand holds the barrel steady, when using a pistol his right hand shakes from the nerve damage of the burn so he has to settle for center mass. 38. What are their thoughts on having to kill on a daily bases in order to survive? Does it take a toll on them? Or do they shake it off rather easily? The sad truth is that killing is easy, push a button, pull a trigger. The hard ones are the melee kills, feeling the hot blood splash and run as the last moments of fight or flight kick in before the death rattle. 39. Thoughts on death if any? (ex. Fear it, accept it) He is fairly accepting of death, the world is already a better place for his coming and going. 40. Do they move around a lot or prefer to have a place to call home? Adventure has kept him on the move, he is content for now, his place is in the workshop bringing back Boston to the way it could be. He trusts his friends to keep the day-to-day running while he plays with his pet projects. 41. What’s their favorite location? He likes Red Rocket when he needs to get away from sanctuary hills, Deacon jokes it is the silver shroud's secret lair. He likes to stop in on all the settlements to make sure he didn't need to call in the brotherhood for a massive problem. 42. Their opinions on ghouls, feral and not feral? Feral ghouls still remind him of zombies. His preferred practice is to kneecap them so they fall and let the others finish them off. He has heard the feral transition on the holotape to ozwald and can only compare it to rabied dog and will put them down like dogs. He feels that it is similar to dementia at an old folks home, there is no coming back yet, even from the serum. 43. Do they scavenge for their supplies or simply buy them? He is a scavenger as often as possible, Often holding off or doing without until later, Sometimes he will buy a weapon just for a specific part, then pass the rest of the weapon to one of the farmers. 44. Are they the type to get distracted and go off to an unknown nearby location or do they stay on track? It often depends on the severity of the mission at hand. If it is tracking a signal or fetching something then he is free to wander. But if it is a time sensitive mission like an assault or someone is in danger, then he is a one track mind. 45. How do they sleep? Are they picky about where and how or can they sleep basically anywhere? He prefers to be able to pull something over his shoulder, be it blanket or jacket. He can only really be at rest to sleep in a room with closed or no windows and a door he can lock or brace. Often blocking bathrooms with fallen stall doors so he can sleep on the floor. 46. What’s their favorite radio station and song? (post-apocalypse) Johnny guitar by Peggy Lee, it was the nickname of the boy he lost his innocence with. 47. What’s their favorite post-apocalyptic food? Are they a picky eater? Do they know how to cook? He prefers the canned dog food, it is a hearty protein and reminds him of army beef stew MRE's 48. What’s their favorite beverage? Do they drink alcohol? His favorite drink is Nuka Cherry and his favorite hard drink is numa Dark or rum and cola 49. Anything they like to collect? (ex. Unique weapons, Bobbleheads) He often collects weapons and armor mods to add to his modular suits to try and think of an answer to every situation. 50. Are they good at disarming traps or do they constantly miss them? He has seen what happens when a trap gets missed, the lives and limbs lost. He studied EOD wherever he could from anyone willing to teach him, the rest has come from experience.

#fallout 4

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pendragaryen · 6 years ago

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Rewriting the stars - The S5/Bellarke fanmix

- The way I see (and feel about) S5 of The 1OO

Over months and months I was drawing up this list, bc I just had the feeling to do so - for my own good. There were TOO MANY FEELS I had to work through concerning the last season. And so I developed this fanmix, which was only ever growing over the last couple of months. I wrote down my own thoughts to each and every song and why I was choosing it. But I think I’ll just leave it here with my thoughts concerning the timing/the person, moment or place I see them connected with. I had fun making this and I just wanted to share it at this point of the hiatus, bc it lasts waaaay too long. Can’t wait to see my bbs back on screen!

Beware of FEELS. A lot of them. But follow me folks, if you will, right down the rabbit hole of angst and excitement that was our season 5 of The 100. ;)

1. Afterglow (Bellarke, after S4, setting: Earth and space/the ring)

You left your ghost behind my door, it whispers you’ll be back for more, was it your intention to own and possess my soul? (C )

I got my days, I’m half alright, I found new things that make me smile, but then it hits me: They’re nothing compared to us (B)

Where are you now, who has my place? Hope when you kiss you see my face. No bad intentions, but I hope it’s not true love (C )

I threw our past against the wall, but I can’t wash your handprints off my soul. What the hell am I doing? Have I lost it all? (B)

I’m trying to make room for love but it’s crowded inside me. I know it’s time to let you go (B)

So won’t you come and get your ghost, your memory haunts me. I’m living on the afterglow (C )

2. All of the stars (Bellarke, after S4, setting: Earth and space/the ring)

It’s just another night and I’m staring at the moon, I saw a shooting star and thought of you

I wonder if you see them too

So open your eyes and see the way our horizons meet, and all of the lights will lead you into the night with me

And I know the scars will bleed, but both of our hearts believe, all of the stars will guide us home

3. Light years away (Bellarke, after S4, setting: Earth and space/the ring)

We only see it on the inside, imagine where it ever came from. Understand with all our insight, ‘cause what we see is already gone

The space between the systems, the space between you and me

The light in you that shines, so vast of its consistence, our life an instance in its time

Don’t you know we’re light years away...

4. It’s okay (Clarke Griffin/Bellarke, S5, after time-jump/six years later, setting: Earth, shallow valley)

I remember how you used to say ‘have no fear, it’ll be okay’, when you told me ‘anything you want is possible, we could have it all’

I believed in you, must have been a fool, all my dreams were with you

I say it’s okay, I can promise you it’s alright, you ain’t keeping me up all night no more. You’re not here but it’s okay, I assure you, babe, it’s alright, you ain’t keeping me up all night no more

5. Whatever it takes (Octavia/Blodreina/Wonkru, S5, setting: Earth, the bunker, “Red Queen”)

Everybody waiting for the fall of man, everybody praying for the end of times, everybody hoping they could be the one.

Break me down and built me up

Whatever it takes, ‘cause I love the adrenaline in my veins. I do whatever it takes, ‘cause I love how it feels when I break the chains

You take me to the top I’m ready for

6. Lovers on the sun (Bellarke, S5, setting: Earth, reunion, “Sleeping giants”)

Let’s light it up until our hearts catch fire, then show the world a burning light that never shined so bright

We never know what stands behind the door, but I got a feeling thats’s worth dying for

Just close your eyes and hold your breath, because it feels right. We’ll keep it moving until we make it to the other side

7. Delicate (Bellarke, S5, setting: Earth, Eligius-ship, reunion 2, “Pandora’s box”)

Is it chill that you’re in my head? ‘Cause I know that it’s delicate

Sometimes I wonder when you sleep, are you ever dreaming of me? Sometimes when I look into your eyes I pretend you’re mine all the damn time... ‘Cause I like you

We can’t make any promises now, can’t we, babe?

8. Hello heartache (Clarke Griffin/Bellarke/Becho, S5, setting: Earth, the desert, Becho reunion, “Shifting sands”)

I was stupid to think that I could stay

I seen your best sides, you got to see my worst. It’s not the first time, but this one really hurts, yeah this one’s gonna... It hurts...

Goodbye my friend, hello heartache, it’s not the end, it’s not the same

Do you know, do you care?

It’s not the end

9. In it with you (Clarke Griffin/Bellarke/Becho, S5, setting: Earth, the desert, after “Shifting sands”)

You took a blade, it went in deep, and it was tearin’ up inside you. Must’ve been sharper underneath, ‘cause there were scars I couldn’t undo.

What were you thinking? Why did you let go? I was still holding you. What were you thinking? Why didn’t I know when I was right there with you?

10. Dangerous (Zaven/Pirate mechanic, S5, setting: Earth, shallow valley)

I don’t know where the lights are taking us, but something in the night is dangerous.

And nothing’s holding back the two of us. Baby, this is getting serious.

11. Run (Clarke Griffin/Bellarke/Becho, S5, setting: Earth, the desert, Becho kiss 2, “Exit wounds”)

I sing it one last time for you, than we really have to go. You’ve been the only thing that’s right in all i’ve done

I can barely look at you

Light up, as if you have a choice. We’ll run for our lives.

I can hardly speak I understand, why you can’t raise your voice to say...

12. Scars to your beautiful (Clarke Griffin, S5, setting: Earth, after “Exit wounds”)

She don’t see the light that’s shining deeper than the eyes can find it. Maybe we’ve made her blind, so she tries to cover all her pain and cut her woes away.

There’s a hope that’s waiting for you in the dark. You should know you’re beautiful just the way you are. And you don’t have to change a thing, the world could change its heart.

No better you than the you that you are

No better time for you to shine, you’re a star

Oh, you’re beautiful, you are beautiful

13. Hush (Bellarke/Becho, S5, setting: Earth, after “Exit wounds”)

I wanted to keep you forever next to me. You know that I still do and all I wanted was to believe.

When I try to forget you I just keep on remembering. What we had, it was so true and somehow we lost everything.

14. I don’t know why (Bellarke, S5, setting: Earth, Polis/the bunker)

Now I’m lost in us. We’re living in a lying trust.

I don’t know why, but I guess it’s got something to do with you...

15. In my life (Octavia/Blodreina/Bellamy Blake, S5, setting: Earth, Polis/the bunker)

Can’t believe the things you said. I turn my head and walk away. You make me sick, you make me nervous.

In my life I decide and it turns me on how I am, how I live, who I love. In my way I feel strong and it turns me on. In my life I decide, I decide...

16. Atlas (Bellamy Blake/Octavia Blake/Clarke Griffin, S5, setting: Earth, Polis/the bunker, “Acceptable losses” and “How we get to peace”)

Some saw the sun, some saw the smoke. Some heard the gun, some bent the bow.

Show me the way, Lord, ‘cause I’m about to explode.

Carry your world. I’ll carry your world and all your hurt...

17. Find you’re gone (Bellarke, S5, setting: Earth, Polis/the bunker, shallow valley, post “Sic semper tyrannis” aka “The Slap”)

There should be grief but I feel none. Trying to leave the night behind I hardly get my thoughts in line. But there is one thing I could say, it seems I’m glad I find you’re gone

18. Heart of misery (Clarke Griffin/Madi/Bellamy Blake, S5, setting: Earth, desert/the bunker)

I don’t want to feel anything today, anything at all, I’ll just be alone. I just want to know that you want to know.

I don’t wanna live through another day. Meaningless to fight for your sympathy, I just wanna drown in the heart of misery.

One life forgot to be

One heart refuse to beat

One love is incomplete...

19. Someone you loved (Bellamy Blake/Bellarke, S5, setting: Earth, the bunker, “The warriors will”)

I’m going under and this time I fear there’s no one to save me. This all or nothing really got a way of driving me crazy.

I need somebody to heal, somebody to know, somebody to have, somebody to hold. It’s easy to say, but it’s never the same.

But now the day bleeds into nightfall and you’re not here to get me through it all. I let my guard down and then you pulled the rug. I was getting kinda used to being someone you loved...

20. deSolate (Bellamy Blake, S5, setting: Earth, bunker/fighting pit)

21. White flag (Clarke Griffin/Bellarke, S5, setting: Earth, shallow valley, “Damocles 1″)

I know I left too much mess and destruction to come back again. I caused nothing but trouble, I understand if you can’t talk to me again.

I will go down with this ship and I won’t put my hands up and surrender. There will be no white flag above my door.

I’m in love

and always will be...

22. You are (Bellarke, S5, setting: Earth, Eligius IV, “Damocles 2″)

If ever I wanted to run away, I’ll go only if you come with me. ‘Cause no-one can talk to my heart like you are.

I’d say you’re here in my heart, you’re in my heart.

You are my reason

You are the air I’m breathin’

23. O.k. (Bellarke, S5, setting: Space, Eligius IV, “Damocles 2″)

When I find myself in the middle, could you love me more just a little? Over-complicate, but it’s simple. Would you love me more, just a little?

So tell me now, when every star falls from the sky and every heart in the world breaks. Hold me now. When every ship is going down I don’t fear nothing when I hear you say: It’s gonna be o.k.

24. Someday (Bellarke, S5, setting: Space, Eligius IV, “Damocles 2″)

I believe we’ve come to where there’s no turning back

In a way I know that things have been going on for too long, it’s become too much

I’m not the one who walks away that easily. I try to believe in love

Someday, in another time and place, with a brighter, stronger flame, we’ll make it right. In some way there can be a miracle

I know that we can make it right...

25. Approaching lightspeed (The 100/Bellarke/Marper/All, time-jump/cryo-sleep, S5, setting: Space, Eligius IV, “Damocles 2″)

I try to breathe, I try to think of you. Don’t know if trying will do. The silence, a mirror, that breaks the lights in two.

We’ll discover what will make us free.

We’ll trying to stand where no-one dared to be.

When time stands still a moment lasts. We’re moving on, we’re flying fast, approaching lightspeed

26. Rewrite the stars (Bellarke, after time-jump, S5, setting: Space above the “New Earth”, Eligius IV, “Damocles 2″ Finale)

You're here in my heart So who can stop me if I decide that you're my destiny?

All I want is to fly with you All I want is to fall with you So just give me all of you

Say that it's possible

How do we rewrite the stars? Say you were made to be mine Nothing can keep us apart 'Cause you are the one I was meant to find It's up to you And it's up to me No one can say what we get to be And why don't we rewrite the stars? Changing the world to be ours...

Insert Harper’s and Monty’s voices from the void:

Let’s show them how to live...

Be the good guys...

(And now I’m a crying mess... Thanks for staying with me, guys.)

~~~

I think that this’ll be a one time thing considering the amount of time and effort I brought up to create this and due to my job. But who knows: Maybe the new season is really kicking in and I’ll do something like that again. For now: That’s it, folks. I hope you guys like it - or maybe some parts of it. And bc I value your opions a lot I’m going to tag a few peeps I know from my notifications or who i admire and love from afar. (If you DON’T want to be tagged here, please let me know and I’ll delete your name again. ;) )

Thank you, fam! <3 <3 <3

@clarkgriffon, @katersann, @fyeahbellarke, @hereforbobmorley, @jasperjoordan, @raven-reyes-of-sunshine, @ringsabellamy, @sometimesrosy, @youleftme-clarke, @bellamywanheda100, @viviansternwood, @jordanjaspergreen, @lovethyblakes, @hostagetakerandhisgirlfriend, @clarkeywifey, @morleybobs, @clarkegriffintitties, @mimir-anoshe, @asroarke, @sly2o, @bellamyblake, @bellamynochillblake, @montygreen, @hostagetakerandhistraitor, @bellamys11thfreckle, @ricchardmadden and my beloved @merlination (no particular order)

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sol1056 · 6 years ago

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Just to make sure I watched the same season as everyone else, in sort of order but not really.

1. Wow, Lotor’s upbringing was all-around abusive. His parents are neglectful and his so-called governess believes that physical violence is a necessary part of education. And her approach is valorized when Hunk declares that he must’ve learned something after all.

2. Did it really take this series forty-six episodes to suggest it might be a good thing to learn about the enemy’s culture? Like, at this point, why even bother. Hunk little history lesson might as well have been about why broccoli is green for all it made any difference or carried any narrative weight.

3. As much as I enjoyed seeing Lance told to pipe the fsck down, I could’ve done without the violence. You wanna know what has the impact on children, in a show like this? It isn’t people saying ‘I love you,’ it’s when violence like this is trivialized and treated as funny.

4. Sendak shows up, makes trailer-level threats that... aren’t all that threatening. Aha, I know your weakness! I shall now shoot at those people over there and, uh, run away, I guess. Not sure. He literally showed up, didn’t try and take Voltron out, just shot at a station that I could’ve sworn was one he was trying to make one of his own? idk, he disappeared so fast, no chance to ask him.

5. Disabled ship, no supplies, this seems like a great time to do a two-person adventure to the heart of some anomaly that’s destroyed every probe. Really? Shit’s not going anywhere. At least radio for backup.

-- minor aside: the use of an anomly that warps space and time was an interesting way to introduce flashbacks, except for the too-chronological aspect. then again, if it’d been out of order, that might’ve forced the two characters to talk, and we could’ve gotten half those scenes summarized in like two sentences.

6. Thousands of trackers checking every planet and in 10,000 years the only thing they found was a lead on the Blue Lion? that was it? Zarkon’s organizational skills are even more pathetic than I realized.

7. Now let us pause for an interlude so we can artificially age up a character for no apparent reason. What was the point of that? So Keith could bond with a space puppy? Plenty of time spent on that, and end with a cliffhanger where we don’t get to see an actual meeting.

-- PLEASE OMG THAT ACCENT IS HOLLYWOOD JUST STOP TALKING PLEASE JUST STAAAAAAAHP PLEASE

8. Submitting minor change to Hypable’s comment: “The Dungeons and Dragons themed episode? It might just be one of my favorite episodes* that they’ve ever put to screen. Shiro fans will, especially, be delighted by it.” No. Shiro fans will not be delighted. Josh Keaton fans will be, because he’s in the episode, But Shiro is not.

9. Speaking of which, I skipped S6E3. I got better things to do with my time.

10. I yawned through Romelle's story. No, I don’t care about her or her family or her brother. She’s a plot device who exists to deliver exposition on cue.

11. Speaking of which, Lotor’s motivation is to get immense power for the Galra... so he can revive the Altean culture and get rid of the Galran people? We’re talking about the culture that his neglectful abusive power-mad cruel mother came from, right? Just checking.

12. Romelle talks like the quintessence/colony thing’s been going on forever, but first sign of it back in S4 was shipments large enough that it’s a pretty substantial supply chain. Except the Galra themselves found one cargo ghost-ship with only one piece of it left. How exactly did the Blades stumble over it regularly while the Galra barely knew it existed?

13. So Lotor’s goal was to use one-person komars on Alteans to collect quintessence to do... what? What was the point of all that? Was it powering the Altean’s own colony? Building stuff? Warping things with its strange effects, and oh, guess that monster let loose may end up another dropped plot thread.

...Let us pause and have a moment of silence for all those dropped plot threads.

14. Okay, that was some serious retconning going on in Keith’s flashbacks. There’s the little shack, which from the beginning was clearly not enough for one person to live in. And look, a two-story farmhouse next to it, gone without explanation. Could we at least see a house fire? Something?

15. Am I the only one who finds the BoM episode now really kinda creepy in hindsight? Even in a vision, if you see your parent, oh, ten years or so after they died, wouldn’t your reaction be something like, “Dad! You’re alive!” or possibly “Dad! You’re a zombie GAAAAHHHHHHHHHHH”. No, really: “Dad, you’re home,” only makes sense if you truly believed that Dad could still be alive. Seeing a tombstone kinda deep-sixes that one, so to speak.

ugh. more later.

#voltron legendary defender #vld spoilers #vld #voltron

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chocolatequeennk · 7 years ago

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Forever and Never Apart, 25/42

Summary: After taking a year to recover from the Master, the Doctor and Rose are ready to travel again. But Time keeps pushing them forward, and instead of going back to their old life, they slowly realise that they’re stepping into a new life. Friends new and old are meeting on the TARDIS, and when the stars start going out, the Doctor and Rose face the biggest change of all: the return of Bad Wolf.

Series 4 with Rose, part 7 of Being to Timelessness; sequel to Taking Time (AO3 | FF.NET | TSP)

Betaed by @lastbluetardis, @rudennotgingr, @jabber-who-key, and @pellaaearien. Thank you so much!

We are finally to the Library, which gets a major rewrite. And that means this is still a prompt fill for @doctorroseprompts–imagine Doomsday didn’t happen, and rewrite one S3/S4 episode or scene.

AO3 | FF.NET | TSP

Ch 1 | Ch 2 | Ch 3 | Ch 4 | Ch 5 | Ch 6 | Ch 7 | Ch 8 | Ch 9 | Ch 10 | Ch 11 | Ch 12 | Ch 13 | Ch 14 | Ch 15 | Ch 16 | Ch 17 | Ch 18 | Ch 19 | Ch 20 | Ch 21 | Ch 22 | Ch 23 | Ch 24

Chapter Twenty-five: Donna and Jenny Have Been Saved

Jenny knew as soon as her dad hit the teleport button that something had gone wrong. Even as she caught a quick glance of the TARDIS console room, she felt a tug, like something had grabbed a hold of her and wasn’t going to let her into the ship. She heard Donna scream as she gritted her teeth against the sensation, and she hoped that either Donna had made it to the TARDIS, or that they’d be together, wherever they were going.

Ten seconds later, her eyes blinked open in a large, airy bedroom painted in soothing pastels. She looked down at herself, and instead of being dressed in her own jeans and t-shirt, she was wearing flannel pyjamas.

What is going on? How did I get undressed and where am I?

Jenny took a deep breath and closed her eyes, focusing on the telepathic presence of her father and Rose. They were still there in her mind, just like they should be.

Her dad had told her that if she were ever abducted or lost, she should reach out for him and Rose so they could start looking for her. When she’d asked the first question to come to mind—rather practical she thought, to wonder if it was possible to block telepathy—deep, remembered pain had echoed in her mind from both of them.

She’d quickly gathered that while it was possible, most people wouldn’t have the means or knowledge to do so. And lying in this strange bed, it only took her a moment to find their telepathic signatures and ask them to find her.

The heavy wooden door swung open, and Jenny jumped to her feet as a tall, bald, black man entered the room. She scanned him quickly, taking in the crisp white shirt and the placid smile on his face. His non-threatening posture did nothing to reassure Jenny, since, as far as she could tell, this perfect stranger had yanked her away from the safety of her home.

She crossed her arms over her chest. “Who are you, and how did you bring Donna and me here? Where’s the rest of my family?”

Brown eyes blinked behind rimless glasses. “I’m Doctor Moon. I’ve been treating you and your Aunt Donna since you came here.” He tilted his head. “What do you remember, Jenny?”

Jenny drew herself up and wished she had her boots on—they would have added a few inches to her petite size. She copied the way Rose would tilt her head back when people dared condescend to her and reached for the confident tone of voice her dad always managed.

“My name is Jenny Tyler. My dad and mum are the Doctor and Rose Tyler. We live on the TARDIS with our friend Donna.”

Doctor Moon circled her as she talked. “Interesting,” he mused quietly. “Integration seems to have failed entirely with you. I’ll have to try again.”

He walked back to the door and smiled at her. “I’ll see you tomorrow, Jenny.”

Jenny shook her head slowly after he left, trying to understand what had just happened. Integration?

She blinked, and when she opened her eyes, she was in a cafeteria. Doctor Moon sat across the table from her. “Hello, Jenny. I’m glad you could join me for coffee today. Are you feeling better than you were yesterday?”

Jenny stared at him. “That was less than a minute ago, Doctor Moon. You left my room, I blinked, and then we were here.”

Doctor Moon pursed his lips. “No, Jenny. You’ve forgotten the last twenty-four hours. That’s a symptom of the trauma you received.” He gestured at her. “Look, you’re even wearing different clothes.”

Jenny glanced down and realised her hospital issue pyjamas had changed from red to blue-and-white plaid. She raised an eyebrow—she knew there was no way she’d been in the hospital for more than ten minutes.

“Can I see Donna?” she asked, ignoring his lie. “You said she was in a room like mine. I’d like to see her.”

The doctor shook his head. “I’m afraid I can’t allow that, not when your mind is still so affected by your accident. Your Aunt Donna has had some false memories as well, and if the two of you met right now, you would only reinforce the fiction your damaged minds are trying to create.”

Jenny could feel her forehead scrunch up in a frown. “I’d really like to see her,” she pressed.

Doctor Moon smiled regretfully. “When you’re feeling better, we’ll see what we can arrange.” He looked down at the watch strapped to his wrist. “I’m afraid I need to cut today’s meeting short. I’ll see you tomorrow, though.”

Jenny watched him stand up and walk away, then she closed her eyes. When she opened them, she wasn’t surprised to find herself walking with the doctor across a plush lawn. A surreptitious look at herself revealed she was finally dressed in normal clothes, instead of pyjamas.

Her first instinct was to ask how they’d gotten outside, but then she remembered what Doctor Moon had said. If she wanted to make sure Donna was all right, she had to pretend to buy into the lie.

“It’s a lovely day for a walk,” she said, not commenting on the time or location at all.

She felt Doctor Moon looking at her, but she kept a smile on her face as she looked up at the sky. The sun didn’t even feel warm. How did they expect people to believe this was real?

“Have you had any more dreams?” he prodded. “About the Doctor and Rose, and the blue box you flew in through time and space?”

Jenny’s temper flared at the casual, condescending way he referred to her entire life. But she reminded herself that the goal today was to see Donna, and she shook her head. “No, Doctor Moon,” she said—and it wasn’t a lie. She hadn’t even slept, so how could she have dreamt?

Doctor Moon smiled. “It is a lovely day,” he agreed. “I’ve asked a nurse to bring Donna out, if you would like to talk to her.”

Jenny swung her gaze around to look at the doctor. “Yes, please!”

A second later, they were on the patio, sitting at a table sipping tea. Donna reached across the table and grabbed Jenny’s free hand. “I’m so glad you’re all right, Jenny,” she said. “This lot wouldn’t tell me anything about you, except that your head injury was worse than mine and it was taking you time to heal.”

It was hard to smile when Jenny knew Donna didn’t really know who she was, but somehow she managed it. “I’m doing so much better,” she promised Donna.

“As soon as they let us out of here, we’ll get a place together,” Donna promised her.

“I’d like that,” Jenny managed to say. She wanted to grab Donna and shake her until she remembered their real life on the TARDIS with the Doctor and Rose and all the running, but she just smiled instead.

“Donna,” Doctor Moon said, “would you like to go for a walk down to the river with me?”

Donna smiled beatifically and stood up. Then she looked at Doctor Moon, now wearing an overcoat and holding a bag of bread crumbs while ducks quacked noisily.

A steady breeze came off the water and they sun had slipped behind the clouds. Donna looked around, fighting her disorientation. “You said river, and suddenly we’re feeding ducks.” There was something not right, but she just… couldn’t put her finger on it.

“Doctor Moon. Morning.”

Donna turned and suddenly felt a little breathless when she spotted a man who was the epitome of tall, dark, and handsome walking towards them carrying fishing gear. And he’s got some meat on him, too, she thought, admiring his solid physique. Unlike that skinny bloke… She closed her eyes quickly and shoved the errant thought of the Doctor into the back of her mind before Doctor Moon could pick up on it.

“Donna Noble, Lee McAvoy.” Doctor Moon smirked, then moved off to the side.

Donna smiled at the newcomer. “Hello, Lee.”

His eyes were warm when he smiled at her. “Hello, D, D, D…”

“Ooo, you’ve got bit of a stammer there.” She looked over at Doctor Moon. “Bless.”

“D, D,” Lee persisted.

Donna waved the attempts away with a hand. “Oh, skip to a vowel. They’re easy.”

What felt like just a second later, she was back on the hospital grounds with Doctor Moon. The sun had come back out, but it was still cold enough that she was comfortable in her winter coat.

Donna bit her lip as she looked up at the doctor. She thought she liked Lee, but no matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t remember anything about the rest of the afternoon.

“How did we leave it, him and me?

Doctor Moon smirked again. “I got the impression he was inviting you fishing tomorrow.”

oOoOoOoOo

The next twenty-five minutes were a nightmare and a headache for Jenny, as she watched Donna progress rapidly through her relationship with Lee McAvoy. Jenny had no real objections to Lee—he seemed perfectly nice—but was he even real? What if she and Donna got out of wherever they were, and Donna had fallen in love with someone who didn’t even exist?

But she couldn’t say a thing to warn Donna—Aunt Donna, she reminded herself—or she’d be back in the hospital faster than you could say… well, most things.

Jenny looked around at the cosy bungalow she’d moved into sometime around minute eighteen in this strange, pocket universe. Her act had successfully fooled Doctor Moon, and he had declared her fully integrated and stopped visiting her, thankfully. It was harder than she’d thought to continue pretending in front of him.

Pretending was how she was allowed to be part of Donna’s life, though, and that let her offer some kind of protection, at least. Today, she was supposed to be going to Lee and Donna’s wedding, but she knew there wasn’t any reason for her to try to get ready, because in just a minute…

The pew was hard against her back and the pale blue dress didn’t fit well. But despite her discomfort and misgivings, it was almost impossible not to be happy for Lee and Donna as they ran up the aisle together.

Twenty minutes or eight years later, Jenny was sitting in her own garden, listening to the shouts of Donna’s children echoing over the wall. She pressed a hand to her forehead; how had this gotten so out of control?

Suddenly, she realised there was another person in her garden—a tall, veiled woman dressed all in black. Jenny jumped up and pressed her back to the wall. “Who are you?”

“You don’t need to be afraid of me, Jenny Tyler,” the woman said, and the voice was familiar. “You are not like anyone else who has been in this computer simulation.”

“Is that what it is, then?” Jenny looked around, and it all made sense. Everything was perfect. The computer could program them to skip time, and then Doctor Moon would fill in the gaps of what had happened with his narrative explanation.

“Yes. You are in the central computer of the Library. You remember the Library, don’t you, Jenny?”

Jenny pressed her lips together to withhold a sob. Even though less than an hour had passed since her dad had activated the teleport, sometimes it really did feel like she’d been trapped here for nine years. Time is meaningless in the Vortex, Rose, she remembered her dad saying more than once. She didn’t really think this was what he’d meant.

So after being trapped in a bizarre virtual reality for an hour, hearing someone else talk about the real world was almost more than she could handle. But the other woman was waiting for an answer, so she nodded. “Who are you?” she asked.

The woman tilted her head. “I think you know the answer to that, if you really think.”

Jenny stared at her, trying to place the voice. She’d heard that voice before… she’d heard that voice dying, she realised suddenly.

“Miss Evangelista!” she gasped.

“Yes, or at least, I am what’s left of her,” the woman said.

Jenny frowned and started to ask what exactly she meant by that. But then the air next to her flickered, and she watched a figure appear out of thin air—a figure she knew very well.

“Dad!”

He had his head bent down so he could listen to the sonic, but when he heard her voice, he looked straight at her. “Jenny!”

She held out a hand and he ran towards her, but he disappeared before he reached her. Staring at the blank space where her father had been just a moment before, Jenny swallowed hard.

“How can we get out of here?” she asked Miss Evangelista.

oOoOoOoOo

After Rose reminded Melody of the squareness gun, she used it on every wall they came to. The Doctor crossed his fingers that it wouldn’t run out of battery power, though she didn’t seem to having the problem Jack did.

Finally, they reached a room with a large open space under the skylight, giving them plenty of light. “Okay, we’ve got a clear spot,” Melody announced, motioning for everyone to pile into the room.

The Doctor immediately let go of Rose’s hand and slid down to the floor, pointing the sonic at the shadows.

“In, in, in!” Melody continued. “Right in the centre. In the middle of the light, quickly. Don’t let your shadows cross. Doctor.”

“On it,” he replied, scanning for Vashta Nerada.

“There’s no lights here,” Melody said, pointing out what he’d noticed as soon as they entered the room. “Sunset’s coming. We can’t stay long.” The sonic flickered. “Have you found a live one?”

“Maybe. It’s getting harder to tell.” He tapped the sonic against his hand and scanned again. “What’s wrong with you?” he asked his tool.

Melody stood up and spun around. “We’re going to need a chicken leg. Who’s got a chicken leg? Thanks, Dave.”

A moment later, the Doctor watched a chicken leg fly through the air and hit the ground as only a bone.

“Okay,” Melody said as she stumbled backwards. “Okay, we’ve got a hot one. Watch your feet.”

“They won’t attack until there’s enough of them,” the Doctor said, brushing off her concern. “But they’ve got our scent now. They’re coming.”

You’re being rude, Rose told him gently as she rubbed his shoulders.

Behind their backs, both of Melody’s assistants were peppering her with questions—questions about them.

“So who are they?” Other Dave asked. “A group of people we’ve never met show up on our expedition, and we’re just supposed to trust them?”

“That’s the Doctor and Rose Tyler,” Melody said. “And yeah, you’re supposed to trust them.”

The Doctor stared into the shadows as he shamelessly eavesdropped on the conversation between Melody Pond and her team. I’m being rude? At least I’m not talking about her where she can hear me.

Only ‘cause she’s not telepathic, Rose retorted, and he glanced up to see her teasing grin.

The results from the sonic screwdriver were getting spottier. The Doctor tried pulsing the button to see if that would help while Mr. Lux asked Melody who he and Rose were.

Oh, I feel so hurt that Mr. Lux isn’t impressed by our credentials, Rose snarked.

“The only people I’d want with me in a life-and-death situation,” Melody shot back. “Trust me, there’s a reason I asked them to meet us here. If there’s anyone who can get us out of here alive, it’s them.”

The Doctor knew Rose was trying to make light of the situation, but as he watched Melody out of the corner of his eye, he couldn’t let it go. Listening to someone he’d never met talk about him and Rose as if she’d known them forever had been mildly curious before. Now that Donna and Jenny were gone because he’d followed this woman’s message to the Library, it was infuriating.

“You say they’re your friends, but they don’t even know who you are.”

The Doctor moved to the next set of shadows and nodded vigorously with Anita’s salient point. Exactly! They didn’t know who this woman was, so how could they trust her?

Melody looked up at him and shrugged when they made eye contact. She didn’t even look surprised that he was listening in. “Listen, all you need to know is this. I’d trust those two to the end of the universe.”

Really? the Doctor thought sarcastically. And have you been to the end of the universe? Because I have, and you weren’t there.

Stop snarking at Melody Pond and focus on finding Donna and Jenny, Rose ordered sharply, clearly tired of his sour disposition.

The Doctor shuffled over to the next set of shadows, but he didn’t get any better results there. I’m trying, but something’s interfering with the sonic.

“The Doctor doesn’t act like he trusts you,” Anita said astutely. “Rose might, but I don’t think he does.”

Melody tucked a strand of straight, brown hair back behind her ear. “Yeah, there’s a tiny problem. They haven’t met me yet, and the Doctor is extremely protective of his family.”

“What about Rose?” Anita asked.

They heard a smile in Melody’s voice when she answered. “Rose is extremely protective of the Doctor.”

You have to admit she’s right about that, Rose told him as she traded screwdrivers with him. They both heard Melody walk towards them, but ignored her while the Doctor tried Rose’s sonic on the shadows. To their consternation, her screwdriver seemed to be having the exact same problem.

“What’s wrong with it?” Melody asked.

The Doctor ignored her, tapping the screwdriver lightly and tried it again, but the violet diode only flickered briefly.

Rose sighed and looked at Melody. “There’s a signal coming from somewhere, interfering with it.”

Melody nodded once. “Then use the red settings.”

The Doctor’s gaze flicked over to her, then he went back to fiddling with Rose’s sonic. “It doesn’t have a red setting.”

“Well, use the dampers,” she said as she took her gloves off.

“It doesn’t have dampers.” The Doctor was already disinclined to be civil towards this woman who claimed to be from their future, and the way that she was now pretending to know everything about his sonic screwdriver, the tool he had designed and perfected over the years, grated.

She pulled the sonic screwdriver she’d used earlier out of her pocket. The diode that had been blue now looked red. “Hmmm. I guess mine has a few extra features then,” she said.

The Doctor snatched it from her hands and stood up. “So, some time in the future, I just give you my screwdriver.”

She snatched it back. “No. At some point in the future, you give me my own screwdriver.”

He rocked back on his heels and glared at her. “Why would I do that?”

“Present when I graduated from uni,” she said breezily. A hint of nostalgia entered her voice, but her smile was still smug, like she knew something they didn’t. “I’d always wanted one, but I’d never dared to ask. And then you came up to me, just the two of you, and said you had a special gift for me.” She arched an eyebrow. “I guess this is when I told you I wanted a sonic screwdriver.” A smirk crossed her face. “You know, if you’d told me before that this was what you meant when you said time travel had its up sides, I might have been more interested.”

The Doctor’s agitation washed over Rose, and combined with her own worry for Jenny and Donna, her temper sparked. She stepped in between the Doctor and Melody, standing with her feet shoulder width apart and her arms crossed over her chest.

“Oi! Leave ‘im alone!” The Doctor put a hand on her arm, and Rose took a deep breath but didn’t back down. “You just told Anita and Other Dave that I’m protective of the Doctor, and now you’re teasing him for your own amusement when you can tell how upset he is?”

Melody opened and closed her mouth, then shook her head.

Rose sighed, and some of her anger drained out of her. “I know you’re upset and stressed and this has got to be difficult for you, when you were thinking you’d get the versions of us that you know. But we just lost our daughter and our friend.” Her voice cracked and she swallowed hard. “Neither of us are in the mood for jokes right now.”

The smirk disappeared from Melody’s face. “You’re right. I’m sorry, both of you.” She smiled wryly at Rose. “I’ve never been on the receiving end of one of your protective tirades. Think I’ll try to avoid it happening again.” She blinked rapidly as she turned back around to the rest of her expedition crew.

There was a short, awkward pause, then the Doctor held up Rose’s screwdriver. “Know what’s interesting about our screwdrivers?” he asked as he started walking in circles around the group. “Very hard to interfere with. Practically nothing’s strong enough. Well, some hairdryers,” he allowed as he looked up at the skylight. “But I’m working on that. So there is a very strong signal coming from somewhere, and it wasn’t there before. So what’s new? What’s changed?”

“The moon is up,” Rose said immediately. “I noticed it when I looked through the skylight when we walked into this room. There wasn’t a moon in the sky before, and now there is.”

The Doctor spun around and bounced on his toes. “Oh, very good, Rose!” He turned and looked at Mr. Lux. “Tell me about the moon. What’s there?”

The company president shook his head. “It’s not real. It was built as part of the Library. It’s just a doctor moon.”

“What’s a doctor moon?” he pressed.

“A virus checker,” Mr. Lux explained. “It supports and maintains the main computer at the core of the planet.”

“So it’s there to make sure that CAL is safe,” the Doctor mused. Now that he knew what to look for, he could scan for a connection between the planet and the moon. Unlike his attempts to scan for Vashta Nerada, that worked almost immediately.

“Well, still active. It’s signalling. Look.” The sonic’s steady buzz pulsed slightly as it picked up the signal from the moon. “Someone somewhere in this library is alive and communicating with the moon. Or, possibly alive and drying their hair.” The Doctor put his screwdriver to his ear, listening to the signal. “No, the signal is definitely coming from the moon. I’m blocking it, but it’s trying to break through.”

He twisted the top of the screwdriver and heard a funny pop, then a very familiar voice called out, “Dad!”

The Doctor looked up up, and his throat caught when he saw a flickering projection of his daughter. “Jenny!” he called back, pushing her name past the lump in his throat. He ran towards the projection, but it disappeared just as he reached it.

He stared at the blank spot, blinking back tears. A moment later, Rose wrapped her arms around his waist and hugged him tight. She’s there, love, one of them said, though he couldn’t tell right now if the thought was his or hers. Jenny’s there, and she’s fine.

Rose pulled back and wiped tears from her eyes. “Can you get her back?” she whispered hoarsely.

“I can try,” the Doctor said, his voice thick. His hands were shaking when he raised the sonic to his ear, but they were steady enough to adjust the settings, trying to lock onto the frequency coming from the moon. Please, let me see Jenny again, he pleaded with the universe.

But it seemed like the universe wasn’t listening. No matter what he tried, he couldn’t interfere with the signal between the doctor moon and the planet.

He growled and tapped the sonic on the heel of his hand. “I’m being blocked!”

“Doctor Pond?” Anita said, a tremble in her soft voice.

“Just a moment,” Melody replied. The Doctor heard the buzzing from her screwdriver and realised she was trying to locate Jenny, too.

“It’s important,” Anita insisted. “I have two shadows.”

The Doctor’s stomach fell when he spun around and saw that the young archaeologist did indeed have two shadows.

“Okay.” Melody took charge. “Helmets on, everyone. Anita, I’ll get yours.”

“It didn’t do Proper Dave any good,” Anita pointed out practically.

Melody shook her head. “Just keep it together, okay?”

Anita rolled her eyes and snorted. “Keeping it together. I’m only crying. I’m about to die. It’s not an overreaction.”

No one could argue with that, so Melody was silent as she put the helmet on the scared woman and did up the seal.

“Hang on.” Using the sonic, the Doctor turned the filter on the visor all the way up, making it black.

Melody gasped. “Oh God, they’ve got inside.”

“No, he just tinted her visor, Melody,” Rose explained. “But why, Doctor?”

The Doctor shrugged. “Well, I thought maybe they’ll think they’re already in there, leave her alone.”

“Do you think they can be fooled like that?” Melody pressed.

The Doctor pressed his lips into a thin line. The constant questioning was grating on his nerves. “Maybe. I don’t know. It’s a swarm. It’s not like we chat.”

“Can you still see in there?” Other Dave asked.

Anita nodded. “Just about.”

When the Doctor turned around to look at Other Dave, he noticed something they’d all missed. A seventh figure, standing in the shadows.

Other Dave and Mr. Lux both took a step forward, and the Doctor waved his hand for them to stay still. The last thing they needed was for the shadows to cross, spreading the infestation.

“Just, just, just stay back.” Then he took Rose’s hand and looked at Melody. “Rose, Melody. Could I have a word, please?”

Both women frowned, but nodded, and they took three steps away from Anita, careful to stay in the light.

The Doctor lowered his voice. “All right, both of you. Without being obvious, I need you to take a quick head count.”

He watched them casually glance around the room before they looked back at him. “Seven,” they whispered in unison.

“Right. That’s the three of us, Anita, Other Dave, Mr. Lux, and…”

Their eyes widened.

“Hey, who turned out the lights?”

“Run!” the Doctor ordered, and the six still-living people raced out of the room, chased by the form of Proper Dave.

oOoOoOoOo

The Doctor led the group to the stairs, thinking they might be harder for the swarm in a suit to navigate. Sunlight streamed in through the windows, keeping them safe from other shadows as they climbed over two dozen flights.

Finally, they reached a floor that indicated a skybridge could be found on this level. “This way,” he said in a low voice, straining his ears for the shuffle-clomp of the Vashta Nerada, several storeys below them.

They ran through the sky bridge from one skyscraper to another. The Doctor slammed the heavy wooden doors shut behind them and hustled everyone towards the stairs, but some twinge of curiosity caught Rose’s attention, and she stopped and looked at him while Mr. Lux and Anita ran on.

His eyes were bright with anger and curiosity as he stared back at the closed doors. It only took a moment for Rose to figure out what he wanted to do.

She looked at Melody, who’d slowed down when they’d stopped. “Keep running. We’ll be right behind you.” Melody looked hesitantly at the two of them, then nodded sharply. “Mr. Lux, Anita, Other Dave—stay with me,” she barked, then ran for the door marked ‘Stairwell.’

From behind them, the shuffling noise of the swarm-in-a-spacesuit got louder, and Rose mentally counted off the minute or so she reckoned they could stay there safely.

“Rose…”

She cut him off with her hand held up. “No. I sent them away because every second counts. But you’re not going to stay here with that… You said the only thing to do with Vashta Nerada was to run, Doctor.”

“I know, but…” He looked at her, then back at the doors, just as they burst open. “Why did they come to the Library to hunt?”

“Hey, who turned out the lights?”

Rose rolled her eyes. “Does it matter?” she asked. “Would finding out how they got here and why get us any closer to the TARDIS? Would it help us find Jenny and Donna?” She held out her hand for the Doctor, and he took it. “Come on. Let’s get out of here.”

“Hey, who turned out the lights?”

The Doctor looked over his shoulder at the Vashta Nerada, just crossing the threshold of the room. Rose’s heart stopped until he looked back at her, and she could see the decision in his eyes. She let out a slow breath when he took her hand.

“Thank you.”

With the Doctor’s hand in hers, they raced down the stairs. “I’m still curious about where they came from, but you were right,” the Doctor admitted as they ran. “It wouldn’t make a difference in the end.”

Rose squeezed his hand. “I’m curious too,” she panted as they turned a corner. “But I’d rather spend our time finding Jenny and Donna and getting the hell out of here.”

The Doctor snorted. “Right you are.”

They both looked out the window as they reached the ground floor of the building. The sun had very nearly set by now, which would make it almost impossible to avoid the shadows.

“I don’t know how we’re going to make it out of this,” the Doctor admitted finally.

Rose pulled him to a stop. “Don’t,” she said sharply. “Don’t talk about giving up, not…” She took a deep breath and smiled up at him. “Have you forgotten, Doctor? We’re the stuff of legend.”

It was all bravado, and they both knew it. There was a significant likelihood that they would not make it out of this adventure alive. The possibility of regenerating teased the edges of Rose’s mind, but she could tell by the level of the Doctor’s fear that it probably wouldn’t be possible if they were consumed by Vashta Nerada.

She shook her head and rested her hands on his elbows. “We are going to rendezvous with Melody and her team, we’re going to find Jenny and Donna, and we are going to make it home,” she said firmly. “That’s the only conclusion to this day that I will accept. All right?”

The Doctor smiled, then pulled her close. “And I reckon even the Vashta Nerada don’t dare thwart your wishes,” he said, his voice muffled by her hair.

Rose nodded. “Exactly. Now, are you ready to find Melody?”

He kissed her quickly, then took her hand. “Oh, I’m ready.”

oOoOoOoOo

They found Melody, Anita, Other Dave, and Mr. Lux back in the main circulation area, where he had first explained the Vashta Nerada only a few hours before. Melody was crouched on the floor, using her sonic screwdriver to scan the Library seal in the middle of the floor.

None of them heard the Doctor and Rose enter the room silently from the mezzanine level, so the Doctor took advantage of the moment to shamelessly eavesdrop.

“You know, it’s funny,” Melody said as she checked the results of her scan. “I keep wishing the Doctor and Rose were here.”

“The Doctor and Rose are here, aren’t they?” Anita said. “They are coming back, right?”

Melody sighed and pushed herself to her feet. “You know when you see a photograph of someone you know, but it’s from years before you knew them. And even though it’s them, there’s something just… missing. A familiarity that isn’t there yet.”

Rose squeezed the Doctor’s hand. Like meeting your first incarnation, she told him. It was the first time meeting you since meeting you the first time when you looked at me without knowing me.

Down below, Melody continued her explanation. “Well, yes, the Doctor and Rose are here. They came when I called, just like they always do.”

The Doctor raised his eyebrows and filed that piece of information away.

“But they aren’t the Doctor and Rose who pick me up every year for Christmas. Last year, we had dinner at the Tylers’, but they don’t know that Jackie spiked the punch with ginger ‘because it just isn’t fair that himself doesn’t get drunk like the rest of us.’” Anita laughed, and Melody nodded. “You see what I mean? They’re here… but they aren’t.”

Rose’s hand had tightened around his at the mention of her family, and the Doctor pulled her close. “Spoilers,” he warned, unable to keep the bite out of his voice. If Melody wasn’t who she said she was… if she was just playing them and she’d just given Rose false hope of seeing her mother again…

Rose reached up and stroked his jaw. Don’t get so upset before we know, she chided. You can be my protector later, if it’s necessary.

Melody’s expression was stricken, though, and for the first time, the Doctor really believed she was who she claimed to be. “How much did you hear?” she whispered.

Her guilt was obvious, and now that he’d allowed the possibility that she truly was someone from their future, he could more fully appreciate how difficult this would be for her. Meeting someone you obviously knew very well before they had even met you was a tricky tightrope to walk, and he’d clearly impressed upon the young woman the importance of maintaining the timelines.

Impulsively, he jogged down the stairs and pulled her in for a reassuring hug. “It’s fine, Melody,” he promised. “A little foreknowledge won’t damage the timelines.”

She drew a shaky breath and looked up at him. “Yeah?”

“Yep! And I’ll let Jackie get me drunk, even though I know it’s going to happen.”

Melody rolled her eyes and shoved him away from her, and he knew everything was going to be fine.

He turned and looked at the rest of the group—Mr. Lux and Other Dave, looking scared as they hovered awkwardly in the space between the shadows and Anita, who still had two shadows.

“How are you doing?” he asked her as he walked over to her.

“Still alive,” she said, a hint of defiance in her voice. “But Doctor. Proper Dave only lasted what, five minutes after they latched onto him? How come they haven’t taken me yet?”

“I don’t know.” The Doctor looked at her two shadows. “Maybe tinting your visor’s making a difference.”

Anita snorted softly. “It’s making a difference all right. No one’s ever going to see my face again.”

Her grim pragmatism made him wish he could do something for her, and despite the fact that he really couldn’t, he found himself asking, “Can I get you anything?”

“An old age would be nice,” she quipped, and her brave wit in the face of death made this hurt even more. “Anything you can do?”

The Doctor nodded, even though she couldn’t really see him. “I’m all over it,” he promised. If there was any way he could persuade the Vashta Nerada to let go of Anita, he would do it.

“Look at us,” Rose said, and he silently thanked her for changing the subject. “Six of us, still safe after running from the Vashta Nerada for two hours.”

The Doctor grinned and stuck his hands into his pockets. “Yep, still safe…” He lingered on the word. It felt significant, and he quickly filtered through his memory of all the times in the last two hours that he’d heard the word “safe” or any variations of it.

“What is it, Doctor?” Melody asked.

“Safe.” As he repeated the word, the thought finally unlocked. “You don’t say saved,” he explained, his mind still working out the ramifications of his realisation as he talked. “Nobody says saved. You say safe.” He spun to point at Mr. Lux. “The data fragment! What did it say?”

“Four thousand and twenty-two people saved. No survivors.”

“Doctor?” Rose asked.

“Oh, it’s been staring us in the face, Rose!” He grabbed her and spun her around. “Because people don’t get saved, not unless you’re talking about the preachers on street corners. But computers—computers save things. And that’s what it did. It saved them.”

oOoOoOoOo

Something about the world was wrong. Donna usually managed to shove that faint awareness into the back of her mind, but a moment ago, when she’d been talking to Doctor Moon, it had flared to life for just a few seconds.

Now, as she made tea for her guest, she felt like she’d forgotten something really important. It felt like she’d had it, just for a second, and then it had been lost again.

She sighed when the tea was done and shrugged her shoulders. I’m not going to figure it out by standing in the kitchen, she told herself as she picked up the cups and walked back to the living room.

“Here we are, Doctor Moon.”

Donna’s smile faded into a confused frown when the doctor was nowhere to be seen. Ella and Joshua ran through the room, and she held the teacups up to keep them from getting bumped into.

“Mummy, I made you!” Ella held up a thick body made of plasticine with two arms, two legs, and no face.

“Oh, that’s nice, Ella,” Donna said. She was determined to praise her daughter’s artistic endeavours, rather than belittling them like her own mother had. But… “Where’s the face?” she couldn’t help but ask.

Ella looked down at the doll and shrugged. “I don’t know.”

Donna sighed and carefully bent over to put the teacups down on the coffee table. “Did you see Doctor Moon? Did he leave?”

Before Ella could answer, the door swung open and Lee stepped inside, wearing his regular suit and carrying a briefcase. The kids went crazy, calling his name and running to him, and for the briefest moment, Donna thought that the timing of his arrival was certainly convenient, the way it interrupted any answer Ella might have given her.

That cynical thought disappeared when she watched her husband set his briefcase down and open his arms to their children. “Hey! Hello, you two. Come here. Big hugs. Big Daddy hugs.”

“Look what I made.” Ella held up her doll.

“Oh.” Lee looked at it, then glanced at Donna, his eyes dancing. “It’s Mummy.”

“Uh, it hasn’t got a face,” Donna pointed out again. There was something off-putting about the idea of her face being… taken, and try as she might, she couldn’t let it go. “Did you see Doctor Moon?” she asked, wanting to change the subject.

“No. Why, was he here?” asked Lee.

“Yeah, just a second ago.” Donna walked over to the window. “You must have passed him.”

She pulled the curtains back, expecting to see the tall figure of Doctor Moon, maybe disappearing around the corner. Instead, she spotted a flash of black lace as what looked like a veiled woman in a long, black dress walking behind a tree.

“You all right?”

Lee sounded a little worried now, and despite Donna’s growing feeling that something was wrong, her reassurance was automatic.

“Yeah. Yeah, I’m fine,” she said as the last of the woman’s train disappeared. “It’s just…”

“Just?” Lee murmured in her ear.

The quiet neighbourhood Donna had always loved suddenly seemed eerie. Wind blew clouds in, and the sun slanted in at the wrong angle for the time of day. Even the birds were quiet.

Donna sighed and shook her head. “Nothing.” She turned around and wrapped her arms around her husband. “It’s been a long day, that’s all.” She pulled back and smiled up at him. “I’m just tired.”

She blinked, and she and Lee were in their bedroom, dressed for bed. The feeling that the world was wrong strengthened, and she shook her head, hoping to either get rid of it, or get more insight into why it seemed so wrong.

Lee put his hand on her arm. “You okay?”

Donna felt a hint of panic welling up inside her as she tried to remember exactly what they’d done for the evening. She hadn’t had this many problems with her memory since she’d been released from the hospital, and the idea that she might have to go back terrified her.

“I said I was tired,” she began slowly, trying to remember what had happened next. “And, and… we put the kids to bed, and we watched television.” The memories came as she talked, and the knot of tension in her stomach had eased by the time she finished.

Lee smiled at her, and Donna was just about to suggest they get into bed when they heard the distinctive sound of the mail slot being pushed open.

Donna looked over her shoulder at their open bedroom door, then back at Lee. “Was that a letter?” she asked.

Lee shook his head. “It’s midnight.”

Donna pushed him gently towards the bedroom door. “Go and see what it is,” she requested urgently.

He sighed, but left the room, patting her shoulder reassuringly on his way by. After he was gone, Donna stared at the red accent wall behind their bed for a moment, wondering yet again what had led her to paint it that way. It had felt familiar and right, somehow.

She shook the thought off and wandered over to the window. If someone had dropped a letter in the slot, maybe she could catch a glimpse of them as they walked away.

The flash of lace was familiar. This definitely seemed like the dress she’d seen earlier in the afternoon, though this time, she caught a much better glimpse of it, enough to see that it was a Victorian gown, with a bustle and train.

“The world is wrong.”

Donna’s skin tingled when she heard the words she’d been thinking from Lee’s lips. She dropped the curtain and looked back at him.

“What?”

He held up a letter. “For you. Weird, though,” he added, raising his eyebrows before reading the entire note. “‘Dear Donna, the world is wrong. Meet me at your usual play park, two o’clock tomorrow.’”

Donna looked out the window again, and Lee wrapped his arms around her waist and looked over her shoulder as they watched the woman in black walk away.

“Nutter,” she muttered, earning a laugh from Lee.

Still… the world was wrong, and despite the tremor of foreboding she felt when she considered what the woman might have to say, Donna needed to know if she actually knew something, or if she just liked dropping notes in letterboxes at half twelve at night.

The rest of the night and the morning passed in an instant, and the next thing Donna knew, she was walking hand in hand with Ella and Joshua to the big park down the road. She brushed off the part of her that wondered when she’d decided what to wear, and if she’d had coffee or tea with her breakfast, and even how she and the kids had gotten to the park. Those weren’t important questions.

She spotted a woman dressed in full Victorian mourning, completely with veil, sitting on a weathered park bench. Donna took a deep breath and nodded once, then looked down at her kids.

“All right, you two, off you go,” she told them. “No fighting,” she added as they raced off to play with the other kids.

She watched for a moment, and when she was satisfied they were having fun, she turned back to the woman and slowly circled the playground equipment until she was able to sit down beside her.

“I got your note last night.” It was cold enough that Donna could see her breath when she talked. “‘The world is wrong.’ What’s that mean?”

“No, you didn’t,” the woman said.

Something about the voice sounded familiar, but Donna ignored it in favour of addressing the direct contradiction she’d just received.

“I’m sorry, what?”

“You didn’t get my note last night,” the woman elaborated. “You got it a few seconds ago. Having decided to come, you suddenly found yourself arriving.”

Donna sucked in a breath, thinking about all the times she’d felt like time had just magically passed, all the times she’d had to struggle to remember how she’d gotten from one place to another.

The woman’s head tilted. “That is how time progresses here, in the manner of a dream. You’ve suspected that before, haven’t you, Donna Noble?”

She added emphasis to her name, but it wasn’t necessary. Hearing someone she’d never met address her by name was enough of a shock.

“How do you know me?” Donna demanded. The world was wrong. This was all wrong.

“We met before, in the Library.” It was strange listening to someone talk when she couldn’t see their lips moving. “You were kind to me. I hope now to return that kindness.”

“Your voice. I recognise it.” Flashes of memory returned to Donna, moments Doctor Moon had told her were only dreams and hadn’t really happened. But this voice had been in those dreams, calling her the nice woman.

The woman turned slowly to look directly at her. “Yes, you do. I am what is left of Miss Evangelista.”

#ficandchips #ten x rose #dwfic #fic by Nancy #doctorroseprompts #cq's fic: forever and never apart #series: Being to Timelessness #drama and intrigue!#I really love the new things with Jenny in this chapter #I hope you do too!

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aspiestvmusings · 7 years ago

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When do you think quintis baby will come into the picture? In the middle of the season or towards the end? And one more thing: we don't know if quintis will have a biological child or adopt but if they do adopt, do you think they will have biological kids as well?

Hi,

Thank you for the question.

And though I don’t have anything more/new to add to what I’ve said in my posts regarding this Scorpion Quintis s4 plotline, let’s repeat the list of “facts” here:

But first I want to say that my personal feelings or thoughts about how it will be done - when will it happen, how will it happen, will it be bio kid or adopted kid…etc… do not matter at all. I have my preferences, and I’ve listed them already. During/After the s3 fake/Cd-poisoning-pregnancy plot.

Here are some posts I’ve made on this topic before.

post1 post2 post3 post4 post5 post6 post7

FYI: THIS IS A SUPER LONG MASTER-POST… (and I give no definite answers or speculate on when & how I REALLY think it’ll happen. This is more just analysing the wording of the spoilers that mention the plot, and what these quotes seem to suggest. But spoilers are known to be worded in a misleading way…and so on…)

As usually, feel free to add comments, agree/disagree…

What we know about the Quintis S4 baby-plot:

#1: “Don’t look for the bundle of joy that Toby & Happy will be welcoming right off the bat – the new addition will come later in the season.” source

This, to me, says that the pregnancy/adopting news aren’t happening (though they might be talked about..:and as we now know ARE talked about/mentioned already in ep 4x03-4x04 when Quintis, “inspired” by the case of the week, talk about expanding their family) in the beginning of the season, during episodes 1-6. I would not expect any positive test results or adoption paper acceptance before November sweeps (that’s starting in ep 7.) I’d even “translate” this sentence as saying: while they might start the journey early s4, there won’t be any babies/toddlers/kids cast until S4B, the second part of the season. But this clearly states that it’s happening middle or end of season, earliest Nov sweeps. Most likely no sooner than Xmas ep. And by the sound of it most likely sometime in the second part of the season.

#2: “Now that Happy and Toby have tied the knot, EP Nick Santora is confident that another major development is in sight for the couple — like, say, a pint-sized addition to Team Scorpion. “Like all things, the answers can be found in elementary school: First comes love, then comes marriage, then comes something in a baby carriage". Though he says he’s in no rush to bring a baby genius onto the show, he believes a pregnancy is “the natural progression” for Quintis. “One of my favorite speeches of S3 was when Happy said she always wanted to wait outside the school for her kid. She still wants that, and Toby wants that.” “ source

This makes it obvious that my wish/the wish of many Quintis fans - Toby & Happy talking/mentioning (in some capacity) - the S3 Cd-baby, happens. And we get to see/hear some of that “discussion”.

This sounds to me, like Quintis might feel like “the time is right” now. That they’re over the “mourning” period. And that they decide it’s time to become a “family of three” instead of being a “family of two”. And they will talk about this, and decide it’s time.

PS. And while strong couples can and will remain together and start a family & raise kids together even without a piece of paper, then in general the traditional “style” is preferred, and TV shows won’t usually do or promote characters having kids (planned kids) before getting married. So the timing makes sense, also storyline wise.

#3: “While there’s still a question of whether some other relationships on the show will last, Scorpion fans can rest assured that the same can’t be said of newlyweds Toby & Happy. EP Nick Santora says that: “They dig being married.. But/And.. They’re going to have their own challenges this season [that] may or may not have something to do with the expansion of their family — maybe a little pro-creation or other things of that nature.” source

This, to me, conforms, that the Quintis relationship keeps being strong, and they balance eachother well, and that makes them a great team (also as a romatic couple). This tells me that the writers have no intentions to break them apart, or have them doubt their feelings & commitment for the other. (despite the bumps that are coming)

This also tells me that the Quintis pregnancy/adoption/baby plot won’t go all smoothly. It’s gonna be a bumpy ride. And as this is TV, then my guess is that if they’ll first decide to adopt (because that makes a lot of sense, cause Happy was in foster care, so she knows how much these kids need/want a home/family), then their financial issues and other “legal” issues might become a hurdle and make the process harder for them. And if they’ll first decide to have a biological child, then they will struggle to get pregnant (they could claim on the show that the Cd-poisoning makes it difficult, or they could come up with anything from “it doesn’t happen for every couple right away” to “one of them/both of them are infertile”. Or there might be pregnancy complications…or other fears during the pregnancy or in the birth episode. See: Happy’s mom’s/Happy’s birth as an example) But either way it sounds like there will be more drama for them during a pregnancy plot, and we get to see them try to have a baby, but not get a positive result right away/as soon as they wish.

But the “bumps” during the baby-plot might not even be pregnancy/adoption complications. It could be simply a reference to a possible financisal issue (we know they’re broke, as is the team since ep 4x03), or Toby’s past catching up on him (he still owes to “Bruno”, plus now he owes more…with a 19.5 intress) - he might be “motivated” to pay back his dept…fast, or he might from the anxiety or happiness (both were triggers for his addiction) break his promise fro 2x18 and gamble/almost gamble. Or it could be that Collins will be back…to haunt them. Or… something else. But either way… whatever the “bumps”… it won’t all go smoothly…

Now… of I were a writer on this show, then taking into account the past episodes/seasons and storylines, and what we know of S4 so far, then since I don’t see it happening in the first 6 episodes, then that to me leaves 3 options:

a) November sweeps (eps 7-9)… if they go for a bio baby. That way they can time the birth of the baby to S4 finale/S5 premiere. Otherwise it won’t work. If they want to make it believable timeline wise (human pregnancy = 40 weeks…and unless they wanna time the birth to random ep is S5, there are limitations) Though…since the show was magically able to lose about 4 months between s2 & s3, then gestation period in their universe doesn’t have to match real worlds and/or they can play with time…and have it not make sense/be impossible IRL terms.

b) Xmas episode (ep 12)… this would make a lot of sense…for many reasons. Baby news would be the best Xmas gift these two have ever gotten & make the best/perfect Quintis Xmas. Hat/Tools in S1, kiss/start dating in S2, robot/keychain & trying to give each other the best gift/mas ever in S3, and baby news in S4… And unless the show uses long timejumps or ignores the real time issue..in a big way...then reveal in Xmas ep is the last time it’d be possible for the baby to also be born in S4.

c) Feb sweeps.(eps 15-18) This allows them to have the first part of the season as a setup for pregnancy & second/end part about the “real-time” pregnancy (trying to conceive). And if it’d be a bio kid, then this way they could use the summer-break between seasons wisely...and either jump over some parts of the nine months or if they play with time or ignore real time altogether (pregnancy on tv is often not natural, lasting for either a few months or a full year, and they could follow the popular TV continuity mistakes...to time the reveal & birth eps to certain eps - sweeps, premiere/finale, Xmas) and time the birth to S4 finale. This also is the timeline that to me seems like the last possible time for the pregnancy reveal.

d) late S4 (eps 20-24).. have the baby or adoption news happen in the finale/just before the finale plot. And thogh technically there is a chance that they’d go for a “random” S4B ep (between eps 12-20, “middle of the season”…then do a timejump between seasons, skipping over some of the pregnancy that way…and have baby born in S5, then the wording of all these spoilers seems to indicate (though not confirm) that the child actor is cast during S4, so the Quintis baby is born or adopted during S4.

And this is the first spoiler for this storyline that seems to hint at adoption more than bio baby/pregnancy. And though an adoption plot is very suitable and fitting for these characters (see: Happy’s past, notice the wording writers had Toby use in 3x07 in the end scene whatever baby is lucky enough to have you as their mum”), I selfishly wish that they would not do the over-used (IMO) fertility issues plot (a’la Monica/Mondler on FRIENDS, Robin on HIMYM), and make them not have kids of their own. Yes, I think it’s a good idea to use “no results for a while” to create that drama TV shows depend on, but I would prefer them use that only for a bit, before making it happen for the characters. This is a personal, selfish wish, because one of my least liked tv plots/clichees is fertility issues/can’t have kids for characters who actually want them. That is the plot I find least interesting one TV shows do for couples.

There are many options: They could have a bio kid that Happy carries. They could adopt a child (from an oprhanage). They could use a surrogate (biologically their kid, but someone else carries). They could have a case with a baby/toddler, who is an orphan/loses their parents and they become the childs guardians… They could…

#4 The ep 4x03 “Grow a deer, a female deer” press release reveals more details to us with this quote: “When poachers almost kill a pregnant endangered deer, Team Scorpion recreates the animal’s womb to try to save it and its baby’s life. Also, Happy and Toby discuss the future of their family.”

Well, now we know… the storyline is set in motion right at the start of th season. The first ep after the premiere. And even without that last sentence in the synopsis, the case info is enough to deduce that this is used to bring back the topic, and have them discuss last year and next year (past, present, and future).

But now we have a confirmation. They will discuss the Cd-baby in episode 4x04, and also talk about having kids, and the right time and all that…already “so soon”.

But as I said… I think the storyline is set in motion early in S4, but they baby/toddler/kid won’t show up in the Garage before end of S4/in early S5. I still don’t think we will get a “Happy’s pregnant” scene/ep before the Xmas ep. But I also don’t think it’ll happen later either.

For the timeline to match… if the show wanted to not play with time (using timejumps between eps, etc) or not use realistic timeline for a human pregnancy, then to cover 9 months, there are these options:

Babies birth timed at season finale (May…May to August ‘18 in their universe): conception had to happen between Aug & Nov. So that’s between eps 4x01 - 4x09

Babies birth timed to S5 premiere (August to Oct ‘18 in their universe): conception had to happen between Nov & Feb. That’s between eps 4x03 - 4x17

Babies birth timed to S5 Xmas ep: conception had to happen latest around March. That’s around eps 4x14 & 4x22

So… if we don’t assume that they’re going to be EXTREMELY casual with the timeline, and use timejumps, and other tricks…more…then in order to have any accuracy and believability (human pregnancy/gestation: ~40 weeks…that’s around 9-10 months), then if they go with a bio kid/pregnancy, instead of adoption, then there are a few limitations to their options on when to reveal the pregnancy. If we assume that they’re not gonna break the usual TV tradition to timing the birth to a sweeps ep, or Xmas ep, or premiere/finale ep, then we can predict the possible eps when we’ll hear the happy news with Quintis.

This is my wish based on current canon facts (my original wish isn’t possible, because we know that they don’t get a positive result right after returning from the island, so this is my current wish…that fits the facts…and until new facts and revealed plot details don’t make this impossible, here’s what I’d prefer):

I would love it to be a pregnancy plot. I’ve said this many times: before S3 I wished Quintis/Happy would have a bio kid, after S3/ep 3x07 I need them to have a bio kid. Just because they want it so much. And unlike in real life, you can have what you want in fiction - writers just need to write it certain way/make it happen. And I would like them to try getting pregnant, and not succeed for a little while. And get frustrated that it’s not happening for them…as fast as they want. That would be the “emotional/dramatic” side of the plot… And then, when they’ve already given up, they get the surprise news. That would allow the storyline to have all the elements - comedy, drama, twists…

And I’d love that thanks to timejumps that moment will be timed to happen during Nov sweeps ep or the Xmas ep. So that with a few more timejumps during S4 they could time the birth to S4 finale/S5 premiere. (human gestation = 40 weeks, so May birth equals Aug conception & Aug birth equals Nov conception…) And based on the BTS pics/vids, it’s obvious Happy is still in the field at least until ep 6, so that confirms my assumption that they are not pregnant yet by then.

And I need the baby to be a girl, and a genius. Because the team has already been raising a boy-genius (from age 9), and despite the awesome recurring guest-cast having many girls/women, the team lacks girl-geniuses/female members. And they have to name the girl “Grace”…for Happy’s mom. (Marcus, or Patrick..if the show decides to go with a boy). And while I’d also be ok with a toddler, though prefer a baby (bio or adopted), I agree with Steph… hopefully they won’t go the adoption route with adopting another “Ralph” (a school aged kid), cause while it’s great from producton POV, cause kids that age (over 7) do the job better, then the team/show really needs to do a “team of geniuses raising a baby/toddler” storyline. We’ve already seen them raise a kid from age 9, this child actor has to be younger (pre-school, baby) IMO.

And I want to see some of the moments during Happy’s pregnancy on screen. Not much, just a few little scenes here and there. Kind of continuation of S3 (Happy has to stay at the garage during missions, she has to deal with over-protective daddy!Toby…, Toby becomes even more puppy-dog & uses more nicknames & talks to the belly, and all that stuff that fits his character) I think a pregnancy plot allows more interesting storytelling, and allows the writers to stretch the plot out through whole season… to cover the whole pregnancy period, whilst adoption (thougt it allows emotional plot and all), IMO leaves less options, and is harder to incorporate into A-plot (pregnant Happy not being able to go on certain missions cause she simply can’t fit into air vents they tend to climb often… etc.. and pregnant Happy informing closedminded people they encounter that shes not sick, and can do the job…and so on…), while adoption plot can only be added to opening/end scenes…

Other ways they could do timejumps - have the baby be born (very) early, and spend time in NICU. That way they could also pay with time, and have baby born in May, whole pregnancy news around Xmas. That would also mean “challenges”.

Next: I don’t expect there to be much scenes with the baby. I so wish it’d be not like TBBT are doing with Halley..cause that’s silly IMO. I also wish it’d be better than than Friends did with baby Emma. Though I don’t expect to see the baby more than 4-6 times per season…every 4th to 6th ep. But I do want the show to have continuity, and mentions of the baby. eg. “How she’s with a babysitter/in daycare…” etc. Her absence explained. (cause working with babies on set is complicated), but I do wish the show would take that challenge and do it well. Go with pregnacy/bio kid and cast actual babies for the role. (no, it should not be hard to find asian/mixed twins/multiples in California to play baby Quintis)

All these things are what I would prefer to happen. What wish would happen. But that does not mean this is close to what the show will do.

So while the decision “let’s expand our family” comes early in the season (ep 4x03), I don’t think we/Quintis is gonna have any positive (pregnancy test, adoption papers accepted) news before Xms ep. If it’s adoption, it’s IMO gonna be a plot in S4B, starting with Xmas/NewYears ep. If it’s a pregnancy plot, then it’s gonna happen during Nov sweeps, Xmas ep or Feb sweeps… and then they either play with time and baby born in S4, or the birth is in S5. That is all I’m willing to “theorize”/say for sure right now. But either way… the baby/kids plot is gonna be the Quintis S4 main storyline that is part of the whole season…in some way (trying for a baby, looking at their finances and options of adoption, etc etc..). So somewhere between Xmas ep & Season Finale… is my theory & most likely in canon. And I hope that if it’s adoption plot now, then they’ll d a (real) pregnancy plot in the future.

My own new prediction is pregnancy reveal somewhere between eps 412 and 418 (Xmas ep - Feb sweeps)...after some struggles, and then either some medical issues (genetic issues - baby possibly having some chance of having some genetic condition; other health issues...) or there will be a threat (most likely Collins) that comes in late S4...during the pregnancy. And since we know no baby news before Xmas, then the birth ep is either s4 finale or sometime during s5 (premiere/Nov sweeps/Xmas). Also... it’d be interesting to see if Florence will be the one “replacing” Happy during the missions in the episodes she’s not there... as extra set of hands...with Toby taking over Happy’s job, and Flo helping otherwise.

But knowing network tv, then I am gonna make a wild guess and say they will do the plot I find least likable, and do it all in a way I wish they wouldn’t. From all the options they as a tv shows have, I believe they have chosen/chose the one route that I really did not want them to.

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possiblyimbiassed · 7 years ago

Text

Everything in S4 has happened before - did you make a list?

The wheel turns and there’s really nothing new under the sun… It struck me that just about everything we see in Series 4 of BBC Sherlock, seems to have happened before, in one form or another. Which I believe is strong evidence for EMP theory (or at least something similar). I’m sure several people have already commented on this, but I’ll try to write down a whole list of what I’ve found this far – feel free to add to it!

Events in The Six Thatchers

1. Sherlock (in a Secret Service meeting about how to cover up him shooting Magnussen): “I am taking it seriously; what makes you think I’m not taking it seriously?”

Earlier event: In TEH, the Gothic fan in Anderson’s Holmes fan club, theorizing that Sherlock and Moriarty are attracted to each other: “I do take it seriously. I don’t think we should wear hats.”

2. Sherlock is brought back to London to figure out how Moriarty can be transmitting his “Miss me?” message on every screen in the country. Sherlock’s plan is to sit and wait for Jim’s “spider web” to quiver, rather than trying to find Moriarty himself.

Earlier event: In TEH Sherlock was brought back to London to foil a terrorist attack on the city. At first, he was just waiting for one of his markers (“rats”) to make a move.

3. In one case, Sherlock is in 221B, holding a plastic bag with ice and a human thumb in it.

Earlier event: In ASiB Mrs Hudson discovers a plastic bag in the fridge of 221B, containing human thumbs.

4. In “The Circus Torso” Sherlock mentions tattoos on dead bodies.

Earlier event: In TBB (where a Chinese circus is involved) there are bodies with Black Lotus tattoos on their heels.

5. In “The Duplicate Man” we get the following quote: “How could Dennis Parkinson be at two places at the same time? And murdered in one of them?” Before John manages to say anything, Sherlock tells him: “It’s never twins, John.”

Earlier event: In TAB (Victorian times inside Sherlock’s mind) we have Watson saying about Emilia Ricoletti: “But she can’t have been in two places at the same time, can she?” Watson asks why it couldn’t have been twins, and Holmes answers “Because it’s never twins.”

6. And also (reality check!) there’s John hammering down all their cases into his blog as usual, with titles and all. Quite some time must indeed be passing when John is frequently transmitting blog posts, because in between them he even becomes a father! Lestrade refers twice to John going to publish his blog about the Six Thatcher case, thereby making him, Greg, look incompetent and undeserving of the credits.

Except there are two great big flaws in this: a) John is only seen writing on a picture file (.jpg), not a real blog prompt and b) There are no new blog entries on the official www.johnwatsonblog.co.uk since John’s wedding in TSoT. Not one. The last one from that time is written by Sherlock himself, complaining about John’s and ‘Mary’s’ “sex holiday”. John’s last blog post was from the Mayfly Man case at the time of his stag night, shortly before the wedding.

7. Charlie Welsborough’s car blows up with his dead body inside.

Earlier event: In TGG a hostage was covered in explosives and placed in a car, waiting for it to blow up.

8. Sherlock is ‘deducing’ a client’s case, telling him that his wife is a secret spy who will drug the US president with an injection in the neck.

Earlier event: In TEH John was drugged with an injection in his neck.

9. Sherlock is solving a case about a client who has a heart failure causing him amnesia.

Earlier event: In HLV Sherlock’s heart stops temporarily. Judging by TLD, something weird has happened with Sherlock’s memory in S4.

10. Six busts of Margaret Thatcher are being smashed to pieces, which is the focus case of this episode.

Earlier events: The whole case is described long before on John’s blog with the same title, with smashed Thatcher figures and with basically very similar events. Maggie Thatcher was also a password to secret info in THoB.

11. Craig the Hacker talks about “Ostalgia” and “Cold War memorabilia”; how some people in Germany long for the old communist era.

Earlier event: In TEH, when Sherlock was tortured in Serbia, we saw uniforms that looked a lot more like Red Army uniforms from the past, than modern Serbian military uniforms:

12. ‘Mary’ calls Sherlock a ‘Dragon Slayer’ when he meets her in his secret bolt hole.

Earlier events: In TRF Moriarty talked on a video screen about Sherlock as a knight slaying dragons. In HLV Mycroft claimed that Sherlock sees himself as a Dragon Slayer.

13. ‘Mary’ is revealed as one of four freelancing assassins in A.G.R.A. who had been hired for an operation in Tbilisi, Georgia.

Earlier event: In TRF, according to Mycroft, Moriarty had assigned “four top international assassins” relocated to within “spitting distance” of 221B.

14. ‘Mary’ uses a poisoned letter to drug Sherlock; he gets affected when he inhales the vapor from the paper. Then he sees a childhood memory when he was playing pirates with his dog.

Earlier event: In THoB the murderer uses an aerosol perceived as fog to drug his victims with a substance that works fear-inducing and produce hallucinations when they inhale it:

15. Sherlock goes on an international tour to chase after ‘Mary’.

Earlier event: In MHR Sherlock goes on an international tour to several countries to chase after Moriarty’s remaining criminal network, after faking his own death in TRF.

16. ’Mary’ dies from a bullet wound in the abdomen, with John at her side.

Earlier event: In HLV Sherlock was very close to dying from a bullet wound in the abdomen, with John at his side.

17. By smashing a Thatcher bust Sherlock gets hold of a memory stick with the acronym A.G.R.A. on it, which contains secret information.

Earlier events: in TGG Sherlock finds the lost memory stick with the top secret Bruce Partington Plans. In John’s blog case ‘The Six Thatchers’, a knife with Beppo’s initials on it was found inside one of the Thatcher figures.

18. There’s a scene with a swimming pool where Sherlock and the assassin Ajay are fighting over a memory stick.

Earlier event: in TGG there was a scene with the swimming pool (where Carl Powers had been murdered) and Sherlock, Moriarty and John were fighting over a memory stick.

19. There are several scenes from the London Aquarium where sharks swim around in bluish water.

Earlier event: In HLV Sherlock described Charles Augustus Magnussen as a ‘shark�� with a ‘dead eyes stare’, and he was referencing to the London Aquarium.

20. There are shattering glass transitions between scenes in TST.

Earlier events: John described in his blog post The Six Thatchers how he heard glass shatter when Beppo broke in. Glass shattering (a mirror) was also used to reveal a ghost trick in Sherlock’s Mind Palace in TAB:

21. John refuses to see Sherlock for quite a while, after blaming him for ‘Mary’s’ death, which hurts Sherlock badly.

Earlier event: In TEH John refused to see Sherlock for some time in TEH, after Sherlock came back and told John thad he had faked his suicide. Sherlock seemed very sad about this.

Events in The Lying Detective

22. John visits a therapist for his problems with grief and depression. (And a depressed Sherlock suddenly visits John’s old therapist Ella in TST for his problems with John).

Earlier events: Already in ASiP John went to his therapist Ella for depression, and then he visited her again for his problems with grief over Sherlock in TRF.

23. Sherlock is waving a gun quite carelessly, shoots the wall in 221B and seems to be in a lot of distress.

Earlier events: In TGG Sherlock shot the wall in 221B and later carelessly scratched his head with a gun in the pool scene, where John had just shown willing to sacrifice his life for Sherlock:

24. In 221B Sherlock manages to catch the cup of tea that Mrs Hudson has made for him but drops from shock, before it hits the floor.

Earlier event: In TBB Sherlock managed to catch the teapot that Soo Lin Yao was tending to in the museum but dropped from shock when Sherlock entered, before it hit the floor.

25. Sherlock is walking the streets of London at night together with Faith, who likes him and thinks he’s “nicer”. By walking with her, he hopes to prevent her from committing suicide, since Sherlock has deduced that she is alone and is carrying a gun in her handbag. Faith is also walking with a cane, which reminds Sherlock of John.

Earlier event: In ASiP Sherlock was running through the streets (and rooftops) of London at night together with John, who seemed to like him and admire him. By running together, trying to solve an exciting crime case, John’s psychosomatic limp was cured and he no longer needed his cane after that. (And John, who was depressed, was probably also prevented from committing suicide).

26. Sherlock predicts the future repeatedly; for some odd reason he knows two weeks in advance that John will get a new therapist and that John will want Molly to examine Sherlock, and he knows exactly where and when it all will happen, in spite of being kidnapped and brought there in handcuffs in the boot of Mrs Hudson’s sports car.

Earlier event: In ASiP Sherlock tried to convince John that he could predict the fortune cookies in chinese restaurants, but John didn’t buy it.

27. John disarms, assaults and beats the sh*t out of Sherlock when Sherlock is high, frightened and starts waving a scalpel. (It’s a completely horrible, abusive scene, where John is uncontrollably violent, but the event is treated like it was Sherlock’s own fault, as if he somehow deserved the beating. Which is truly disturbing).

Earlier events: In TEH John punched Sherlock in the face three times after Sherlock revealed that he had faked his death and tried to joke about it. In HLV John disarmed and sprained a ‘junkie’ (Bill Wiggins) who was waving a knife, using far more violence than the situation craved.

28. In the hospital, Culverton Smith tries to strangle Sherlock, but John comes to his rescue and fights down Culverton.

Earlier event: In TGG The Golem tried to strangle Sherlock at the planetarium, but John came to his rescue and bravely tried to fight down the much bigger Golem.

29. John seems furiously jealous when Sherlock receives a text message from Irene Adler, who is using a provocative personalized ring tone.

Earlier event: John seemed very jealous already in ASiB when Irene Adler was texting Sherlock, using the same provocative ringtone. He even kept track of the number of messages Sherlock received.

30. Sherlock puts on the deerstalker before leaving 221B because he thinks that’s what people expect from him.

Earlier event: In TEH Sherlock put on the deerstalker before leaving 221B to talk to the press, because he thought that’s what people expected him to do:

Events in The Final Problem

31. A little girl is on board an airplane full of unconscious people, and she cannot make her Mom wake up.

Earlier event: In ASIB a little girl (the same actor as in TFP!) and her sister claimed that they weren’t allowed to see their Granddad when he was dead. And then Sherlock was confronted with Mycroft’s plan to fool the terrorists: an airplane full of dead people (among them is the girl’s Granddad).

32. Sherlock’s flat at 221B Baker Street is blown up by an exploding drone (yet surprisingly intact at the end of the episode).

Earlier event: In TGG Sherlock’s flat was damaged by an explosion in the opposite house (the apartments at the centre of the explosion seemed totally destroyed). The whole thing was set up by Moriarty.

33. By using disguises and deception, Sherlock, John and Mycroft enter Sherrinford; a highly secured governmental establishment.

Earlier event: In THoB Sherlock and John, aided by Mycroft’s key card and claiming to be supervising officers, enter Baskerville; a highly secured military establishment:

34. Euros, and later Sherlock, john and Mycroft, are kept in an isolated cell at Sherrinford.

Earlier events: in THoB James Moriarty is kept in an isolated cell and interrogated (tortured, as it seems). In HLV, he shows up in a padded cell and a straight jacket in Sherlock’s Mind Palace after Sherlock has been shot.

35. Euros uses Sherlock, John and Mycroft, without their consent, for her frightening psychosocial experiments.

Earlier event: In THoB Sherlock uses John – without his consent - for a frightening experiment on a hallucinogenic drug.

36. First experiment: Euros forces Sherlock to ask John to shoot the Governor of Serrinford, in order to save the Governor’s wife. John at first seems ready to do it, but he can’t manage it in the end. And it was all useless anyway: the Governor killed himself and his wife was shot anyway.

Earlier event: In ASiP Sherlock (unknowingly) made John shoot the serial murderer Jeff Hope, in order to save Sherlock from committing suicide with poison, in his gambling with the murderer just to prove himself clever. The whole thing could have been stopped if Sherlock just had handed Hope over to the police.

37. Second experiment: When Sherlock focuses on solving the crime of the three Garridebs and points out which of them is the guilty part, in order to save the two innocent Garridebs, Euros ends up killing them all anyway.

Earlier event: In TGG, when Sherlock wasted time, concentrating on solving the case of Connie Prince’s poisoning and get one step ahead of the murderer, rather than thinking of the victim’s prolonged suffering (he thought he’d help the old blind lady best in this way), the hostage and a bunch of other innocent people got killed by Moriarty anyway.

38. Third experiment: Euros forces Sherlock to make Molly reveal her love for him, which hurts her deeply, making Sherlock feel horrible afterwards. And it was all for nothing, since Euros later revealed that Molly’s life wasn’t in danger.

Earlier event: In ASiB Sherlock deduced out loud Molly’s attempt to dress up for a love interest and mocked her in a cruel way. When he realized that her love interest was he, Sherlock, he felt guilty and apologized:

39. Fourth experiment: Euros tries to force Sherlock to shoot either his best friend (love of his life) or his brother. Moriarty reveals that “Holmes killing Holmes” is indeed his end goal. But instead Sherlock chooses to kill himself, which makes Euros abort the experiment.

Earlier event: In TRF Moriarty tried to force Sherlock to jump from Bart’s hospital’s rooftop and kill himself. Instead, with the help of his homeless network and Molly, Sherlock faked his death. Which later had disastrous consequences on John.

40. Sherlock is shot with Euros’ tranquilizers and falls backwards into unconsciousness.

Earlier event: In HLV Sherlock was shot with ‘Mary’s bullet and fell backwards into unconsciousness.

41. John is trapped inside a well with a rising water level, but Sherlock manages to break a code from the perpetrator and rescue him. Strangely, already in TLD Sherlock is complaining to John: “I’m at the bottom of a pit and I’m still falling, and I’m never climbing out”.

Earlier event: In TEH John was trapped inside a pile of wood, which was being set on fire, but Sherlock managed to break a code from the perpetrator and rescue him.

So far, I’ve found over 40 events that have similarities in earlier episodes. I’m sure this list could go on and on. These are far too many repetitions of the same, or very similar, events for them to be mere coincidences. (perhaps someone could find out some really unique events of Series 4 and do a statistic significance test on the relative proportions).

Some people have written this off as bad or lazy screenwriting. But I think this could only be true to a certain extent, because otherwise we would have found a similar amount of repetitions in the earlier series. And to me there’s no way – absolutely no possibility – that the authors would repeat a case like The Six Thatchers, which has been thoroughly described on John’s blog several years earlier, with no intention of the fans noticing this. It seems very deliberate to me.

Conclusion – the only one that makes sense to me about Series 4 (and most probably the last half of HLV as well) - is: IT’S FAKE. The whole of Series 4 is happening inside Sherlock’s head; Sherlock is re-hashing a series of memories from his life together with John and combining them in new ways, just like a human brain does when it’s dreaming. Some of these inner experiences seem to produce emotional and/or moral growth in Sherlock. It might be EMP, simulations, delirium, drug-induced hallucinations or whatever. But Series 4 just can’t be real; it happens in Sherlock’s head.

So, basically: Sherlock needs to wake up to a Series 5 and help throw out all the demons that are keeping him and John apart. ;)

#emp theory #johnlock #series 4 is fake #recurring dreams #TJLC #mind palace

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