#she gets one very brief little 'arc' that does little to actually add layers of complexity to her and occasionally she gets captured

[aerithisms]

why does jill need rescuing so many times in ff16 omg. game came out in 2023 and its only significant female lead is treated like princess fucking peach

[elliepassmore]

Crown of Midnight Review

5/5 stars Recommended for people who like: Throne of Glass, fantasy, magic, mystery, court intrigue, multiple POVs, strong female leads I think it’s funny that these first two books focus so much on mysteries when the next five put the mysteries on the backburner. They’re still there, but I definitely feel they’re more present in this one and ToG. As a brief reminder, there will be mild spoilers for the previous books reviewed. We’ll start with Chaol, since he was the one I had the biggest complaint against in the last book. He’s better in this one, in my opinion. Something changed since Celaena won the Championship and he killed Cain, and he’s a lot nicer to Celaena. Unfortunately, it seems to be at the cost of a soured relationship with Dorian, which is a shame since I did like their friendship. There are still moments of it here, but both men are too wrapped up in their emotions, and eventually their own problems, to really be able to fully get over themselves and go back to how they were. Chaol’s eyes are being opened throughout the book to how he’s had a blind loyalty to a king with such vile plans. It takes him a while, but he does come to the realization that his complete obedience to the crown has the ability to do more harm than good. Despite all this, he does still have his moments when he’s unaccepting of Celaena and easily willing to believe the worst of her. I really don’t know what he expected, getting into a relationship with an assassin, but he definitely seems to have issues with her job. All in all, though, reading Crownback-to-back with Throne makes it obvious that Chaol has experienced leaps and bounds of character development. While Chaol moved forward in his development, Dorian seems to have regressed a bit. He’s snippier in this one, and more closed off to the people around him, showing a stark difference from Throne, when he seemed more engaged with the people around him. It’s a bit of clever character-to-plot play Maas has going on, since I think a lot of Dorian’s change in behavior is not only due to Celaena turning him down, but also due to the ancient powers awakening. In this context, it made Dorian and interesting character to have narrate, but in the context the change being based on bitterness and jealousy re: Celaena…then it’s not my favorite move. Aside from that, Dorian has some interesting things going on in his life that make his scenes and POV a bit livelier than they would be otherwise. He adds another layer of complexity to the world of mystery and ‘magic is gone….right?’ that Maas created in the books. I can’t quite tell what I think about Celaena in this one. On the one hand, she’s in character for how she acts and everything she does and says slowly inches her closer to the apex of her overall arc, and especially the arc Maas has planned for Celaena for the first three books. On the other hand, after seeing what Celaena can do in Blade and Throne, I felt like she decreased in skill for a lot of the book. Sure, sure, there are scenes where she’s most definitely the superior fighter in the room and lives up to her name as Adarlan’s Assassin, but there are also scenes were someone with far less training and experience than she is able to get the upper hand, which was frustrating. I really, really liked how dark she got in this book. We saw some of it in Blade, but haven’t really seen it since, and I was glad it was back out during certain parts of the book. Nehemia was a character who definitely came through in this one. We get more scenes with her, as well as some parts of the book from her POV, which was nice. You also get a better sense of how much she loves her country and how far she’d go to protect her people. Having read the book before, and knowing just how many secrets she was keeping during it made me want to t h r o t t l e  h e r. I (perhaps obviously), unlike Celaena, understand why she was keeping the secrets. She looked at all the available options and decided the one she took was the one that made the most sense in the long run not just for her people, but for everyone under Adarlan’s control and beyond. It was a damned shame it had to go like it did, though, and I understand people’s complaints re: representation. But I will say, I do like Nehemia’s character a great deal *SPOILER* and I wish she was in the books for longer*SPOILER END*. Archer Finn was a new character, sorta. And by ‘sorta,’ I mean he was briefly mentioned in Blade. Um…as a subjective reader, not a fan. As an objective reader and as a fiction writer myself, I like how his character was written. Subjectively, he’s oily and a dick, but at least for most of the book he’s a dick that helps rebels, so that’s a plus. The level of ease with which he handles the situations he finds himself in is astounding, which is why, I suppose, Maas has him as the character doing…stuff in this book. Like Celaena, I was easily captivated and fooled by the desperate courtier face he put on, even knowing how his arc was going. It’s easy to say that knowing everything he does combined with his comment about Rourke Farran makes me want to rip his head off on Celaena’s behalf. Objectively, however, I think he’s a wonderfully written character with complexities and motives we only really get to scratch the surface of. Like, we know he wants free of Clarisse—the brothel lady—but it’s not quite obvious just how desperate he is to be free of those chains. In this sense, he reminds me a bit of Sam, as in, he’s one of the few people so far who understand that Arobynn Hamel and Clarisse whatever-her-last-name-is might not put their proteges in literal chains, but that the shackles are there just the same. It makes everything Archer does that much more interesting. One character I’m bummed we didn’t get to see more of in this one was Philippa. She’s mentioned a few times, but I don’t think we get a solid interaction with her throughout the entire book. The only lines of real dialogue she has are toward the beginning when she addresses Nehemia and Celaena while they’re breakfasting. I really liked her character, and she made such an impact on Celaena too, not just in Throne, but in this book as well, and it’s such a damned shame we didn’t get to see more of her. As for the mystery in this book, it really goes round and round in circles for a while before revealing even an aspect of itself. I liked it, since it made it feel contained within the book while also giving off tendrils for the future books and even tying off some of the ones from the last one. Elena is back in this one and we also have a new helper, Mort, who is a pain in the ass, but at least he’s a funny pain in the ass. Elena kind of makes my blood boil with her sympathies and missions and general unhelpfulness. Like before, Elena offers a shred of the mystery and leaves the rest up to Celaena, who then has to deal with whatever slick and dark creature has clawed its way up this time. Despite the mystery creating more questions and problems than it answers and solves, I find it has a satisfying conclusion within the book, with said conclusion making it feel like the mystery has been closed at least a little bit. There’s been a lot of foreshadowing set up in Throne, Blade, and even this book, for what turns out to be a reveal at the very end. If you’re looking for it, you’ll be able to see the pieces and thread them together. I think it’s absolutely brilliant, and love that that’s where Maas took the storyline and all the potential that the reveal brings. While, admittedly, these first two books aren’t exactly my favorites out of the series ( Heir of Fire holds that title, actually), I definitely still enjoyed them and think they’re crucial for the set up of the rest of the story. Plus, it’s funny going back and rereading them after the end of the series and seeing all the Easter eggs Maas put in as well as how much the characters have change over the course of all eight books. Also, I always end up liking these first two books more than I remember liking them, so that’s a bit of an added bonus/surprise.

[nonbinarysasquatch]

I’m Not the Person I Used to Be

I really went through a cycle on the Greg recast this year. I started off just being… shocked. I couldn’t really process it. Then I became nervous about it. I worried that even with good intentions, it would be too weird to deal with.

I believed that maybe he would be Greg in name only and just be a new person who happened to have Greg’s background. I think I kind of wanted that just because it felt like the odds of them being able to pull off having someone act like Santino just wouldn’t work.

I’m happy to say that not only does the recast work but it was the right creative decision. Skylar acts just enough like Santino to make him seem like Greg and the writing is pretty much 80% on point for feeling like Greg (and the remaining 20% is kind of tbd as I need more time to get to know Greg’s new incarnation.)

By recasting Greg they are able to continue his story as intended without undoing the ending they gave him. He left, regenerated and came back a new man. But not entirely. Because… it really feels like Greg. He’s sarcastic, funny and still seems to have a weak spot for Rebecca Bunch.

Greg has returned at the best/worst time possible. Rebecca is tempted by relapse, finding herself drawn to Josh and Nathaniel. In Josh’s case he’s changed and grown a lot and he and Rebecca are actually friends. But the part of her that’s drawn to him still harkens back to a unhealthy part of her. The immature, obsessive part of her.

In Nathaniel’s case, his change for now feels pretty fake and for her benefit. He still seems to be mirroring Rebecca’s arc in the earlier seasons. It’s a little awkward to juxtapose her feelings for Nathaniel and Josh if only because really she’s Nathaniel’s Josh. But either way, Nathaniel represents different unhealthiness. The darker more privileged parts of her were drawn to Nathaniel, though she DID have obsessive problems with Nathaniel, and that’s the very reason she broke up with him the first time.

Greg, though? Greg was always the opposite of Nathaniel and Josh. They are romcom fantasies. The hot, popular guy who was good at sports and the hot, rich asshole. Greg represents the overlooked, friend zoned guy but he was always more nuanced and realistic than Josh or Nathaniel.

Rebecca appreciate Greg the least which is tragic as he may have been the only guy she had some genuine feelings for. Greg may be the closest she’s ever got to a real down to Earth relationship, however brief it was. But she wasn’t ready for that. Greg was too real. And of course, it was an extremely toxic relationship. They were bad for each other. Their pathologies ground against each other in a way that was damaging for them both.

The ending they gave Greg was perfect. It was important that they not undo it. And having seen this episode, I don’t believe they have. That ending still matters. It still counts. This is a new beginning… of sorts.

For a first episode Skylar does pretty good. The idea of having to pull of acting like Santino but not TOO much like Santino and having chemistry with Rachel and nailing the character as written and giving a good performance on top of it is ridiculous but Skylar did a pretty good job. I’m sure he’ll only get better from here. I am grading a bit on a curve just because… look the chances this was even going to WORK a little bit were slim. That it actually works pretty well should be seen as being vaguely miraculous.

So putting aside the casting, what did I think narrative about the Greg/Rebecca stuff? I liked it. A lot. A lot of that relies on the fact that the episode does two things I didn’t want it to do: have Greg just be Greg and have Rebecca accept him pretty easily. Again: those were the right decisions. I was wrong and Rachel and Aline were right. Who knew?

Greg and Rebecca still have chemistry. Though I’m a bit worried for them both. Greg seems maybe a little too eager for a fresh start with Rebecca. I can’t blame the guy. He’s trying to be a better, more accepting person. He’s probably heard STORIES in AA that would shock most people. He probably gets Rebecca now better than he ever did before.

It’s also possible he can tell she’s changed. He certainly seems to realise it at the end. But either way… their history isn’t great. I care about them both so I worry for them both.

Worrying about Rebecca is easy: she’s getting a bit too close to relapse. That she’s even contemplating who she’s meant to be with is troubling. But it’s good that she knows it’s not good. And it’s good that ultimately, she chose to tell Greg about Marco herself. Hearing it from his dad first probably would’ve been harder (though I do hope Marco takes the time to really explain why how he treated Rebecca that night wasn’t OK as it’s a side of the story that deserves to be told, though I’m sure Greg would rather not know any of it.)

I have theories on how the Greg/Rebecca arc will play out over the rest of the season but I’ll save them for later. Suffice to say, I still think she’s not going to end up with any of the guys. I do think there IS a version of an ending with her ending up with Greg that… I would still be iffy about but could work if done a particular way MAYBE.

Meanwhile, Josh Chan: Goddamn, I’m still loving everything they are doing with Josh this season. So amazing seeing his status as the popular kid getting deconstructed. See, Josh has always represented a trope that is more from teen romcoms. He’s the popular guy who is good at sports… but with Josh it’s sort of a what if? Because Josh Chan grew up.

In this episode, he gets to reflect on one of the biggest parts of his identity: being prom king. Which he has now learned is a lie. And worst of all, thanks to George (which, whoa, plot twist) he’s now realised that maybe he didn’t have it as great as he thought. Josh, beneath it all, is really a bit of a dork. But like a lot of jocks he’s had to suppress that to stay popular. We’ve heard him mention his magic in the past but we’ve never seen it. Turns out it was a passion he hid. And he’s not really that great at it.

I would love nothing more than to see Josh embrace his inner dork. It’s already kind of who he is. The cool guy was a facade. And maybe that’s why he’s always struggled in life (well, not the only reason, certainly as Josh still has some other issues in his way, particularly as it relates to how he has treated the women in his life.)

Though I don’t really like it, there is an ending with Josh and Rebecca ending up together I could envision. But ultimately, regardless of anything else, Rebecca’s abuse of Josh should never be rewarded. (And no, there isn’t an ending with Nathaniel I see that makes sense. He’s too far behind and the abuse issues that apply with Josh apply there too. He really hasn’t even approached dealing with his underlying problems yet.)

And this brings us to Valencia…

As a person in my mid 30s… I’ve known a great deal of people around my age (and older of course) who many years later still have feelings for people they knew as teenagers. I can’t really relate as I find getting over people to be pretty easy and my nostalgia for my youth is limited. But it’s pretty common.

The most fascinating thing about this Valencia/Father Brah plot twist is how it relates to Josh and Rebecca. Josh cheated on Valencia with Rebecca, Valencia cheated on Josh with Father Brah. Of course, the situations are entirely the same. Brah and Josh were friends. Rebecca was entirely out of sight and Josh dumped her as soon as summer camp was over. Josh wasn’t really that into Rebecca but Valencia was, in that absurd teenage way, in love with Father Brah.

But then you grow up. You become a different person but for some ridiculous reason those feelings remain. Why? I don’t know. As I said, this isn’t a thing that happens to me. But I’ve known a lot of people my age who… are far enough removed to have nostalgia and that somehow feeds the feelings, making them seem grander than they probably were.

Everything else aside (like Valencia having a girlfriend and Brah being married to Jesus) it’s not like the two of them could just start dating. They are different people. But hey, again: mirroring Rebecca, this time with Greg.

This also recontexualises all those old scenes with Josh talking to Father Brah about his relationship with Valencia and his feelings for Rebecca. It’s one of my favourite narrative techniques, where new information shines a light on old events. And it’s funny but I’ll be gosh darned if I can think of a single direct Valencia/Brah interaction before now. Sure, they’ve been in the same room a few times but… this plot 100% tracks. I’m sure that’s a mixture of planning and accident but hey, nice.

Heather was so fucking funny this episode. It was kind of nice seeing a bit of the older Heather back. That said, I feel like all the weirdness with the pronouns and her assuming Valencia’s ex-lover was a woman were unnecessary. For one thing, obviously Valencia was never close to another woman before Rebecca and Heather (and all the fans) know that. For another… it’s just distracting. I would have preferred at best her speculating about different men and women. I get what they were trying to do but it was a bit of a misstep in an otherwise basically perfect episode.

I do have one other minor-ish complaint about Valencia’s plot and it’s this: ultimately, her plot means very little for her. It does, however, mean a lot for Father Brah. It recontextualises and adds another layer to his relationship with Josh and presents a more nuanced view of a Catholic priest (that doesn’t involve him being a terrible person or a creeper.)

What does it tell us about Valencia? Nothing really. We already know she wasn’t happy with Josh. We already know she was attracted to men who weren’t Josh. And it’s not like she was going to leave Beth for fucking Father Brah LOL. So what was the point for her? None really. Which only hurts in that we’ve been so starved for Valencia development. But whatevs. I’ll take what I can get. This was a (mostly) good plot and Gabrielle always kills with what she’s given.

Am I going to wade into arguing about whether Valencia is bi or a lesbian? No, I am not. It’s not actually important and arguing about it is a waste of everyone’s time and energy given there are straight fans out there who don’t even buy her being with a woman… Maybe we should focus more on that and less on arguing about what kind of woman who loves women she really is? 

That said, the writers and Gabrielle have said she’s bi and that does track with how she’s been presented, so take that as you will. I’m sure we can all agree we wish her sexuality had been better explored but honestly aside from that she’s still one of the least tropey bi female characters I’ve ever seen and nothing about her really contradicts really lived human experiences.

The Songs:

Hello, Nice to Meet You: Look, I’ve been pretty supportive of Rachel taking a rest song wise this season but I’ll be honest: it was really good to see her singing again. This is a great introduction to the new Greg and HOLY COW MY THEORY ABOUT GREG AND REBECCA DOING FOOD PLAY HAS BECOME CANON, I AM TRUE PROPHET. No, this song is great. It’s a very Rachel Bloom number with her humour all over it (just like the arrabiata all over Greg’s dick.)

What U Missed While U Were PopUlar: I friggin’ love this song. Probably instantly in my top 3 for the season. It’s catchy and one of the best songs music video wise they’ve had all season. And it’s a George song??? Who knew a George song could be one of my favourites?

Rating: 10.0 out of 10.0.

Best episode all season and one of the best episode ever. I need to go back and downrate all the other episodes from this season…

[sxpiosexualx]

why do you ship jonsa? my best friend is a hard core jonerys shipper but lately ive been really critical of daenerys, so i cant really hop on that train. i dont really have a preference for jon either way so i wanted to know why you ship them

Oh hello! What a lovely question to ask, though I must warn you this could most likely get draggy and long because I’m so passionate about these two and this ship, they’re my OTP. Actually I only started reading the books last year, before then I was a casual watcher until up to Feb 2016 before season 7 aired. Jon and Sansa had just reunited on the show and I came across this Jonsa instagram on my explore page and I thought, what the fuck is this? It was such an absurd ship to consider - and this is coming from someone who was crack shipping Tommen and Sansa! But I kept scrolling through, the captions in the post came from posts on Tumblr(with credit) explaining the parallels and the ways in which Jonsa could go down and it was sort of like… this strange theory that I subscribed to and was soon convinced of. I tried bringing it up to my friend but she was a casual watcher and didn’t really pay much attention to it so I was craved of my need to discuss this. So come season 7, I rejoined Tumblr and the Jonsa tag was SO rich in content and meta, detailing all the parallels, how it could happen, why it makes sense and how it would wrap up up the narrative in the most satisfying manner. I’ve never shipped something so hard and wanted it to be canon more than with Jonsa(though canon or not I’m not fussy lol).

I’m gonna outline to you some of the main reasons why I think Jonsa has a strong chance of happening in canon, because they’re really why I ship them so hard, they complement each other perfectly though it’s very easy to miss this. I’m keeping this under a ‘Keep Reading’ tab because I know this will get lengthy. Also, any of my followers/people seeing this, do add on in the comments why you ship jonsa or perhaps leave some links to some of your fav meta’s in the comments for OP to screen through if they feel like it!

This will be lengthy but remember I am trying my best to be brief, hopefully the other Jonsa’s will link some metas/parallel series to give you a better idea - I’m only outlining the backbone of the ship!

The Ashford Tourney Pattern

So it actually began when I came across this theory: The Tourney at Ashford was held in-universe, and I wont go much into detail except to mention that all of the 5 champions in that tourney coincide with the houses of the men Sansa is betrothed/married to (i.e. Sansa’s suitors). It goes

Lyonel Baratheon

Leo Tyrell

Tybolt Lannister

Humfrey Hardyng, and,

Valarr Targaryen.

Now, granted the show’s made some changes but ultimately they’re coming to the same conclusion, and as for book!Sansa(i.e. canon) she’s first betrothed to Joffrey Baratheon, then is promised to Willas Tyrell(changed to Loras on the show), marries Tyrion Lannister, is currently in the works of being betrothed to Harry Hardyng(in the Vale - the Ramsay plot is not hers), and so the logical conclusion would be to complete the pattern by marrying her final suitor, the endgame - a Targaryen. That makes Jon the only candidate viable to her, and yes that sounds ‘out there’ but if you take a look at the narrative, it could make complete sense, so let’s go into how this could logically happen.

Logic

Given the story began with the Starks being the heart of the series, you can only anticipate that the final installation, initially named A Time For Wolves would promise a continuation of the Stark line, and that could come about through Jon and Sansa. They are the only Starks left who’s storyline touches on ideas of fatherhood and motherhood - the only Starks left to ever consider having future children(and weirdly enough where Sansa wants to name her children Bran and Rickon and thinks of a girl who looks like Arya in her dreams of children, Jon wants to name his son Robb - even their dreams complement each other, they’d be rebuilding the Stark family with themselves), the only Starks left to think of restoring Winterfell(and they already go on to do this on the show) etc. When you think of Sansa and how she’s had to fight hard to retain her Stark identity and reclaim it, I cannot imagine GRRM marrying her off to some random lord at the end of the series, when she’s just made it back home. For Jon too, he’s wanted Winterfell, and dreamed of that domestic life as Lord of Winterfell, as a Stark, and Sansa, the Key to the North, could give him that - the same way her marrying Jon who’s actually a prince would be fulfilling her childhood dream as well. They both get what they want in the way they least expect it, something very GRRM-esque. There’s the narrative convenience of R+L=J that would allow for some catharsis once Jon realises he’s not her half-brother, and the convenience of them being the only Starks to not have an established relationship beforehand. But despite that, whenever they do think of the other in the books, it’s never with any resentment, contrary to popular belief, they don’t hate each other(they think of each other fondly, even). It’s something that could work politically in show!verse just as well, say word gets out that Jon’s a Targaryen, the Northern lords would never accept him unless Sansa brokers a political marriage to tame them.

History would also be repeating itself in a poetic way, but done right this time. Jon and Sansa marrying would parallel Ned x Cat, they each parallel them so much and S7 has hammered those visual parallels more than ever. A Stark would be wedding a Tully. And if you embraced Jon as a Targaryen, then they would parallel Rhaegar and Lyanna in a sense too by having a Targaryen prince wed a Stark lady. It also nicely twists what happened to Cersei, where she was supposed to marry a Targaryen prince(Rhaegar) but ends up marrying a Baratheon(Robert) - Sansa was betrothed to Joffrey Baratheon, but would be marrying a Targaryen prince in Jon, which only adds another layer to her being the YMBQ from Cersei’s prophecy if you subscribe to that!

Complementary Storylines

If you take a closer look at Jon and Sansa’s arcs, they tend to echo off of each other, always linking the two through themes, yet the author does a great deal to ensure they’re the last two Starks we ever associate with each other which honestly, would be something he’d do if he meant to pull them marrying as a huge plot twist no one would expect. But thematically, both Jon and Sansa:

 start their arcs as naive,

are the Starks most interested in leaving WF - Jon goes to the Wall where he assumes the men are ideal knights, and Sansa journeys South with romanticised ideas of court, and both characters are quickly disappointed. 

Jon gets dubbed “crow” for most of his arc, the same way Sansa gets dubbed “little bird/dove”. 

Both characters at the same time, have to pretend to be something they’re not around their enemies - Jon going undercover as a Wildling, while Sansa had to blend in with the Lannisters. 

They both get dubbed traitor around the same time too, Jon’s seen as a traitor for leaving the Wildlilngs while Sansa gets dubbed traitor/murderer once they thought she poisoned Joffrey as she leaves KL. 

Jon who starts off as a bastard, rises to the title of Lord Commander at the Nights Watch the same time Sansa, who starts off as a Lady, gets forced to pose as Littlefinger’s bastard daughter. 

It’s the same case on the show, and there’s reason enough to believe Jon and Sansa will be the first Starks to reunite in the books and reclaim Winterfell as well(though the circumstances may be different, it’s heavily foreshadowed in Sansa’s final ASOS chapter).

Complementary Dreams

GRRM has a weird way of connecting these two through their shared dreams. Where Sansa’s final chapter in ASOS heavily foreshadows that she’ll come to rebuild Winterfell with Jon(and she already goes onto do this on the show with Jon), Jon is also the only other Stark to think of reclaiming and rebuilding it, and this occurs in the same book. They’re both weirdly also the only Stark kids to be referred to as the Blood of Winterfell. ASOS(the 3rd book in the series) is also where both these characters start to undergo a sexual awakening(Ygritte’s attempts with Jon, and Sansa coming into her own body and developing). 

It’s the same book where Jon considers having a son of his own, thinking he could name him after Robb, and Sansa thinks of giving her betrothed children, noting that in her dreams her children looked like the brothers she had lost and that she wants to name them Eddard and Brandon and Rickon(after the brothers she’s lost). So yes, while that sounds very odd, these two coming together would actually be giving each other what they long for in a family, children who look like named after their pack. Once you remember that book wise, Jon looks like a carbon copy of Ned and Sansa looks like a more beautiful version of Catelyn then you could only assume their children would look very much like the siblings they grew up with too.

It’s actually strange how alike they are and how their arcs tend to echo off of each other but it even comes down to the same romanticised idea of courtship. Sansa remembers the rose Loras gave to her during the Hand’s Tourney, and when met with the prospect of marrying Willas, starts fantasising of sitting with her lord husband in a garden. Lo and behold, a couple chapters later Jon thinks of showing Ygritte Winterfell, and plucking a flower for her from Winterfell’s glass garden. In other words… they would be perfect together.

Their first loves are stand-ins for each other

Ygritte could actually be seen as a foreshadowing for Sansa, namely because so many of her traits are things we’ve come to associate with the latter but GRRM makes a point to keep this out of Jon’s subconscious in his POV chapters. First in the choice of words in her description, her red hair, her blue-grey eyes(sansa’s eyes are blue), but people tend to stop right there and use it as an excuse to mock the idea of Jon x Sansa immediately which honestly, is lazy. It goes deeper than that. Ygritte weeps when she sings and hears the song of the last of giants, and she’s known to favour songs and tales - things we again associate with Sansa. There’s also the instance of her telling Jon Snow that she’s “half a fish” which seems to nod at the fact that Sansa’s basically half a fish too(Half Tully). Strangely, right after Ygritte words out her famous line “You know nothing, Jon Snow,” in Sansa’s chapter, Sansa sees Margaery’s cousins and comments that “they know nothing,” on their naivety. When Jon gets stabbed, the line is again associated with Sansa in his final thoughts:

“Of Sansa, brushing out Lady’s coat and singing to herself. You know nothing, Jon Snow. ”

In Sansa’s case, her first love(crush, really) was a man of the Night’s watch named Waymar Royce(“She had fallen wildly in love with Ser Waymar,”) - who is described as grey-eyed, graceful and slender the same way Jon is first described in AGOT as having grey eyes, being graceful and being slender. The connection between Waymar Royce and Jon Snow is further strengthened in the fact that Waymar(who appears in the very first prologue of the first book) death foreshadows Jon’s death.

Other parallels and easter eggs

There are other ways GRRM’s linked the two in his novels through easter eggs too, for e.g. Sansa calls out for the heroes she knows, calling for Prince Aemon the Dragonknight(from the songs), and then we get a flashback of Jon remembering how he’d play with Robb in the field and pretend to be Prince Aemon the Dragonknight. Sansa also wishes someone would behead Janos Slynt, and Jon goes onto do this in ADWD, unknowingly being the literal hero she asked for. 

They both have a strong connection to the pomegranate symbolism, tying them both to the greek mythology of Persephone. And in terms of actual history, Jon and Sansa share heavy parallels with Henry Tudor and Elizabeth of York(who ended up joining their houses through marriage after the War of the Roses of which one of the main conflicts of GoT was based on). 

There are plenty of other parallels throughout their chapters, one off instances of both characters put in the same environment or situation, more than I could count really. But what I personally find most odd is how some of their chapters completely mirror each other’s in terms of environment, theme and situation. Look to Jon and Sansa’s first and second ASOS chapters(that come right after the other’s) and you’ll find it’s almost like reading the same chapter twice. GRRM’s a man with words, it’s strange how similarly he words and crafts the environment he puts them in, unless he meant for their chapters to echo each other.

It’s not beyond GRRM

We know from his original outline that he intended for Jon and Arya to be the first Starks to reunite at the wall and struggle for non-platonic and very inappropriate feelings for each other which would torment them until Jon’s parentage is revealed in the final book - sounds not that far from what’s happened with Sansa tbh. Again, you have to remember that yes things have changed from the outline, Sansa was meant to choose Joffrey over her family, bore him children, then die, and none of that happened. Arya was also supposed to do a heck lot more in her storyline but what seems to happened is that GRRM knew he could never have Arya accomplish that much plot in so little time and so he might’ve split initial Arya into a fully fleshed version of Sansa, thus why Sansa and Arya are two sides of the same coin. It would also explain why while Arya looks like Lyanna, both sisters possess her traits and parallel her in their respective ways.

With Jonerys… listen… it’s just a doomed pairing. I was open to the idea but there are one too many kinks in it to have it be endgame not to mention Jonerys on the throne would completely go against the anti-war message ASOIAF has established. Not that doomed pairings have ever stopped me from shipping but they’re just so fundamentally different at this point that the idea of them just doesn’t work anymore(season 7′s rushed tryst was problematic and didn’t sell it to me either).

Additional Thoughts

I could drag on but these I think are some of the main points for me. There are a plethora of other reasons backing this up but yeah I think they have a solid chance. Points aside, I guess I also ship them because there is literally no man who’s a viable suitor for Sansa and her status, that could treat her how she deserves - show!Jon has proved himself worthy, and Sansa has fed him with the well deserved validation he’s needed and craved, acknowledgement of him being a Stark. They work so well together. 

Jon is the only man in her arc who canonly has acknowledged that “Winterfell belongs to […] Sansa.” i.e. the only man who wouldn’t marry her for her claim. For a girl who came to the realisation that “No one will ever marry me for love.”(which was followed by Jon’s chapter right after btw), that’s a huge deal. A JonSa endgame would be done so out of political reasons but love would no doubt follow. He is the only man to respect her boundaries and treat her as a human being, to see her for more than just her beauty. You can comment a suitor in her arc she was involved with and I will be able to point out how it’s problematic and wouldn’t work for endgame, how Sansa deserves better. JonSa is my OTP because they genuinely and effortlessly are perfect for each other :)

Trust me I could point out more and more, but hopefully people who see this post link some of their metas/own reasons in the comments in case you want to learn more! Thanks for the ask, this was lovely x

[bearxclaws-archive-blog]

Arc Headcanons // PRE-SKIP PT.4

It’s been two weeks since I did one of these ‘cause I was on vacation, but here we go again! Sorry for being repetitive, but there will most likely be mentions of Sanji x Anita.

DUVAL / SABAODY ARCHIPELAGO

— ARC OUTFIT

— After almost watching Sanji’s upper half disappear on Thriller Bark, it’s going to become a habit for her to touch a bit more. Not that she was why about it before because she’s just a physical person, but she’ll touch his arm, chest and anything from the neck up as a weird way of making sure he’s there. Totally brushes it off as just making sure he’s still mostly intact.

— She doesn’t know him, but Anita is worried about Ace too. She doesn’t like that his Vivre Card is burning. Still, she trusts Luffy’s judgement and doesn’t insist that he go after his brother. By the sounds of it, Ace is perfectly capable of defending himself.

— While Chopper and Usopp are relaxing and the rest of the crew is dealing with the submarine, Anita is in the kitchen pouting because she wanted to go underwater. With her Devil Fruit, she can’t. Oh, well, it’s sort of given her the chance to indulge in her stupid crush and watch Sanji work.

— Him getting decked by Keimi’s whole body when she lands on him cracks her up, though. She really needs to stop laughing at other peoples suffering. Not really sure why she does, but I feel like she just would.

— Having not been there during the Arlong Park chaos, she isn’t sure who Hachi is. Learning about it infuriates her, and so does learning that mermaids are sold.

— A thing I am realizing; when her island was taken over, her and her troupe were basically turned into slaves. They were a little cleaner and happier looking, but it was part of the act to lure pirates in. If they disobeyed, they were beaten or even put to death. They were scared of the man that had put himself in the position of master. So the entirety of this arc, Anita will likely be pissed and slightly afraid in a ‘ does he realize I’m gone and has he told other Marines so they recognize me’ way. She doesn’t want to be dragged back home yet when she can’t help. Didn’t have the smarts to think that it might happen until now. Whoops~

— Anita goes with the flow, so she doesn’t care who they’re saving as long as Luffy’s the one that ordered it. Although a large part of her wants to meet a talking octopus-man.

— Duval’s existence almost kills Anita. She will be doubled over despite being attacked with poisonous harpoons, holding her stomach and wheezing for breath.

— Because she’s stupid and obvious, I feel like the ones that know she has a crush on Sanji would be Nami, Robin and Usopp. At least one of them is going to be a shit and make a joke about her liking Duval because what’s the difference between him and Sanji? Rude as fuck, but it only makes her start laughing again.

— Flips her shit when they trap him in the water and announce they’re going to drown him. God, sometimes she hates that she has a Devil Fruit. When he does get rescued and has his dumb little nosebleed, Anita will poke him with her foot. Moron.

— Luffy and Anita have a contest to see who can put the most takoyaki in their mouth at once. Anita loses, obviously, and ends up almost choking. Sanji goes to help but Luffy smacks her hard on the back and ends up coughing it up. Ew.

— I’m wondering if Anita would know who the Celestial Dragons are. What I’m thinking is that their conditions at the circus were a lot worse than I first made them out to be. That they were treated like slaves, and that because the corrupt part of the government turns a blind eye ( and sometimes encourages ) the buying and selling of people. So if they were treated and seen as slaves, then I wonder if Celestial Dragons visited the island to be entertained and buy some of the troupe members. 

One day she will have noticed that a certain member has gone missing and not come back. Would destroy her to see them being treated poorly years later while visiting Sabaody. Not sure if that’s giving her too much personal involvement in the arc, though. But, honestly, I’m liking this idea because she’s not going to get a major arc of her own like the canon Straw Hats to. This is the only personal things I can think of to make up for her lack of an arc and a slight foreshadowing that she won’t have a home to come back to.

— Anita debates being a love-struck idiot and staying on the ship with Sanji while it’s getting repaired by Franky and Usopp. Decides against it because she knows she’s being stupid and doesn’t want to look at his dumb, handsome face. Stupid cook.

— Like Zoro, she wasn’t there for the briefing about not dealing with Celestial Dragons. She’s off on her own thing, probably notices someone that used to be in her troupe but sees they have a collar and are being treated like an animal rather than a person. Follows after them, tries to call their name and get their attention. Might get a small, frantic look as the only warning not to say anything else! Gets confused and ends up losing them before she realizes that she’s where the rest of the Straw Hats are. Is yanked down onto her knees by one of them and doesn’t get why. Learns real quick and decides just as swiftly that she doesn’t like this place.

— Doesn’t care about Law’s crew, except for Bepo. Bear! Walking, talking bear! If they weren’t trying so hard to get Keimi back, she would have scrambled over to talk to Bepo. Wants so badly to be his bear-buddy.

— Adds a kick of her own when Sanji asks if they can buy the dancing girl. Come on, Sanji.  .  . Really? You’re my most beloved muse and I wanna kick your ass for that.

— Anita doesn’t get why people are reacting so badly to Hatchi. She isn’t the least bit against other races because there were too many different kinds of people that worked for the circus, so she only sees them all as people.

— She’s secretly enjoying learning about all these old pirates because she never met Crocus, and she doesn’t hear about Roger much. Always a sucker for good stories.

— The idea of splitting up doesn’t appeal to her. She has a bad feeling in her gut that she blames her animal-like instinct on. Assume Chopper can feel it too even though they’ve got got human in them too. Doesn’t mention it and almost approaches Sanji to ask if she can tag along with him wherever he plans on going.

— Anita can be incredibly dumb sometimes, but I feel like she would quickly notice that it wasn’t Kuma they were fighting. Or, at least, notice that he doesn’t have the paw-pads. Kind of hard for her to forget those when she’s so closely associated with bears.

— Probably tried to bite at the Pacifista’s and only managed to get through the ‘skin.’ I know Brook couldn’t get through it, but she’s a gigantic bear, come on. They’re supposed to be able to bite through iron, so she’s going to get her jaw into PX-4 and shed some of that outside layer.

— Running would be so easy for her in her bear form, but she doesn’t flee like she’s told. She’s taking on too much responsibility as a tank and trying to protect the groups that look like they’re under attack the most. 

— Because of that, I feel like she would end up being the first one ‘erased’ because she would make every attempt to lunge in front of Zoro when the real Kuma comes. I know Zoro disappearing first was important, but she’s the one that jumps out first to do her job. She won’t get to see what happens to Chopper while he’s rampaging again, and doesn’t get to see what happens to everyone else. I wanted to be more despair inducing for her, but she would be one of the first gone and won’t have time to see them vanish.

URSA ISLAND / TWO YEAR SEPARATION

— Anita crash-lands on an island inhabited entirely by large, beastly bears. They’re all larger and stronger than she is, and they aren’t the least bit welcoming to find a human on their island. Unlike actual wild bears, these ones are barely smart enough to have a system of roles, the most important being tribe leader.

— The tribe leader, Anita dubbed King. He was a large, black, monstrous bear with nasty scars and gnarly teeth. He looks like a cruel leader, but he’s actually as kind as they come. He only wants to frighten her away because they can’t stand humans. He seeks only to protect his people. That’s what she’s come to understand, at least.

— There’s only one place that’s safe on the island, and it’s the largest tree in the entire place. They can’t climb to the top, and she can in her human form. Discovers, however, that she’s not the only human stuck on that island. A young girl is also trapped there. She doesn’t know herself very well and is nameless. She lives in the trees to avoid the bears and has lived there so long that she smells like them. Eventually, they agree that she will be called Ylde. Pronounced like ‘wild’ but Anita can’t spell and just went based on the sound.

— Ylde: Isn’t it spelled w-i-l-d?     Anita: ...How the fuck does a two-year-old stuck on a bear island know how to spell better than me?     Ylde: I’m thirteen.     Anita: Silence, small baby.

— Ylde attempts to convince Anita that there’s no point in trying to integrate herself into the tribe. Even as a bear, they’ll know she doesn’t belong from her scent and size. Anita corrects her and says she only wants to get off the damned island so she can get back to her friends.

— Because it will be a while before she gets the paper and she’s determined to leave, she gets into her bear form and readies herself to fight through the swarm of bears just to get to shore and find one of the many boats Ylde says have washed up over the years.

— End up coming back to Ylde’s tree because she gets her ass kicked. Tries this every single day until the moment the News Coo comes with the paper saying. She understands the hint given by Luffy and is immediately relieved to see he’s still alive. Doesn’t know if the rest are, but she’s hoping so. Didn’t even occur to her that they might be dead because she managed to survive the crash.

— Spends the next to years fighting and learning on her own. Ylde doesn’t stick around when, during the first year and a half, an intact ship is discovered. She insists Anita come with her, but she refuses. Ylde, having gotten attached to her, promises to come back to that exact spot in two years to pick her up and take her where she wants to go.

— Anita’s goal, like everyone else, is to get stronger. She realizes after being beaten again and again that she’s too weak in her bear form. Seeing as how that’s the part she wants to strengthen most, she dedicates herself to staying a bear as long as she possibly can. Day in and day out, from sunrise to sunset, she wants to stay a bear. She does this and does get stronger, but doesn’t realize that in the process she was inching closer to becoming the tribe leader herself.

— Over the two year separation, the following happens; she learns armament haki that she uses only on her teeth and claws, gets even larger than before, earns more devastating-looking scars, gets even greedier with food because of how unfair the tribe was to her before she became leader, eventually becomes the leader and earns the respect of the entire island.

— But because the rest of the tribe refuses to fight her, she becomes lazy and antsy. She will absolutely crave a fight whenever it feels like one is brewing now.

— New moves:           Mighty Roar: Can either a. instill fear in an enemy and send them fleeing or b. temporarily disable them because the intensity of the sound is mind-numbing. Not to be confused with Conqueror's Haki ;;

          Bear Trap: Bites through any part of an enemy that she can and fuses her jaws together with her Armament Haki as long as the teeth are touching, leaving it nearly impossible to shake her off.

          Bearrel Roll: Yes, it’s a pun to barrel roll. Doesn’t actually suit the move because she’s not doing a barrel roll, but she does curl up and roll into her target to catch them off guard. Is a good move to use with people she trusts to throw / kick her.

[richincolor]

Group Discussion: Love, Hate & Other Filters

A searing #OwnVoices coming-of-age debut in which an Indian-American Muslim teen confronts Islamophobia and a reality she can neither explain nor escape–perfect for fans of Angie Thomas, Jacqueline Woodson, and Adam Silvera.

American-born seventeen-year-old Maya Aziz is torn between worlds. There’s the proper one her parents expect for their good Indian daughter: attending a college close to their suburban Chicago home, and being paired off with an older Muslim boy her mom deems “suitable.” And then there is the world of her dreams: going to film school and living in New York City—and maybe (just maybe) pursuing a boy she’s known from afar since grade school, a boy who’s finally falling into her orbit at school.

There’s also the real world, beyond Maya’s control. In the aftermath of a horrific crime perpetrated hundreds of miles away, her life is turned upside down. The community she’s known since birth becomes unrecognizable; neighbors and classmates alike are consumed with fear, bigotry, and hatred. Ultimately, Maya must find the strength within to determine where she truly belongs.

Review copy: ARC via publisher

Welcome to the Rich in Color discussion of Love, Hate & Other Filters. **Beware, there are some spoilers ahead.**

Crystal: There are so many reasons for me to love this book. Maya’s voice had me from the very beginning with the words, “Destiny sucks.” Her wry humor had me smiling so many times. Her passion for creating movies is also awesome.

Jessica: Seriously, what an opening line. Maya’s voice definitely grabs you from the get-go. I didn’t think of this until you brought it up, but the way Maya’s passion for filmmaking provides yet another lens for her life is fascinating. I’m looking at the cover (what a great cover), and what the title means is finally registering. I know, I’m a little slow on the uptake. Maya see her life through the filters of love, hate, and the narrative bent of filmmaking. And, on a meta level, the reader sees Maya’s life through her romance, the Islamophobia that harms her, and the snapshot moments of other people’s lives leading up to the terror attack and its aftermath. It really paints a complete picture.

Audrey: I agree, I really enjoyed Maya’s voice and the frequent camera/filmmaking references. Her little asides about how things would go if this were x sort of movie were fun. I really enjoy reading about characters who have passions that seep into many corners of their lives, and Maya’s habit of filming things was a great way to establish her character (and plot-relevant). Sometimes the best way to get to know a person is to dive deep into the things they geek out about, and Maya’s passion for filmmaking was a great way to get to know her.

Karimah: I liked Maya’s voice as well and agree with you Audrey that her “teen movie” asides were great. It gave us a great insight into who she is and how she sees the world, and I truly connected with her. I giggled a couple of times at some of her comments and loved that she had a great sense of who she truly at such a young age.

Crystal: Maya is facing several challenges because of family expectations. Her dreams do not exactly match up with their dreams for her. The love in the family is easy to see, but that doesn’t mean there is smooth sailing. In some ways it makes it even more difficult. It’s hard to go against the wishes of people who love you and want the best for you. I adored Maya’s aunt. If we all had a Hina in our lives, what a wonderful world it would be.

Jessica: I think what really grabbed my heart early on is Maya’s introduction of Hina, where she says that despite being so different, Hina and Maya’s mother are actually best friends. This really set the tone for me of how much love Maya had in her family. Her parents may have had very specific ideas and goals for Maya, but you knew that in the end, they would come to accept what made Maya happy — just like how Hina and Maya’s mother are best friends.

And of course, on the surface, Maya’s parents seem unreasonably strict, and Maya struggles against those restrictions. But when her parents shut down and rule out Maya’s dreams, not out of a desire to control her, but a desire to keep her safe in the aftermath of a terrible event, you can again tell that they do it out of love, even if they aren’t necessarily right. I think anyone – especially anyone from an immigrant background – can recognize that parental instinct, those warnings to keep your head down, do the safe thing, don’t stand out, stay safe. That really hit home for me.

Audrey: As an adult, when I’m reading YA, I often find myself torn between the parents and the teens. On the one hand, I totally get why Maya’s parents have those expectations for her and why they’re so upset when she springs her own desires on them; on the other hand, I sympathize with Maya wanting to forge a life outside of those expectations. Hina was a great character, not only because she often took Maya’s side, but because she established a model for Maya to follow. Hina is living proof that Maya can build a life that suits her while–someday–forging a more equal relationship with her parents.

I really empathized with Maya’s parents’ fears after the terrorist attack and how immediate the backlash was for their family. They remembered the Islamophbic outbursts of violence after the September 11, 2001, attacks, so of course their first instincts were to protect their daughter. While I wish they would have listened to Maya more, I can’t entirely fault them for their reaction.

Audrey: Were there any other characters you particularly liked besides Maya? I was very fond of Violet. She was close to everything I want my YA heroines to have in a best friend. She didn’t have as much screen time as I’d hoped, but I appreciate her support for Maya and how she cheered her on all the time.

Crystal: I totally loved Hina. Like Audrey said earlier, Hina proved that it was possible to carve out a life that fits your own dreams. She knew what she wanted and worked on maintaining relationships in spite of the hurdles.

Karimah: I liked Violet as well. I’m glad that she knew how to best support Maya in her budding relationship with Phil and was completely supportive of her after the terrorist attack. She was a great best friend for Maya and I love that she was written in such a manner. I also liked Phil as he was much deeper than the typical romantic lead. Usually the romantic lead is this idealized version the “popular hot guy” but he was actually the total opposite. I mean, the way Maya described him he seem attractive, but he had a secret himself and had the same family tension as Maya. He was also so sweet to Maya and supportive of her as well.

Crystal: The format of the book is a little unusual. Maya’s story is sequential, but it is interrupted with brief moments from another perspective. These interstitials (a new word for me) definitely add mystery and suspense. Some of them are also very unsettling. What did you think of this choice in the storytelling?

Jessica: At first, I was a little on the fence about it, because I knew where the story was going. I didn’t know how I felt about portraying someone about to commit a terrible crime. It was haunting and beautifully written, and definitely added a layer of suspense. It was, ahem, a great filter for the book. At the same time, I still am not sure how I feel about the portrayal of the terrorist in the aftermath (spoilers ahead, stop reading if you haven’t finished the book) — I guess, I’m always a little leery of narratives that show an abused child becoming a criminal when all too often, people who commit hate crimes are the privileged and angry, not the people who are most vulnerable in society. The terrorist had a mix of privilege and resentment, along with a terrible upbringing, so it’s certainly not a black-and-white narrative that I’d condemn. But it does unsettle me.

Anyway, that’s my long-winded way of saying, I think it added a lot to the book, while also shaking up my preconceptions about a lot of things.

Karimah: Since my WIP has interstitials (didn’t know that is what they were called) has them, I really enjoyed them. I felt like it gave us an insight into the terrorist’s mind as he leads up to the act. I like how they allowed us to connect to different people who were affected by the act as well. It brought the terror of the act, aside from how Maya’s family is affected, to life. However, like Jessica, I was a bit annoyed by the narrative of the abused child becoming a criminal. I felt like it was an “easy out” for the terrorist instead of being real with that he just had hate in his heart and a desire to cause destruction. I get it was trying to humanize him, but with so many terrorists of his ilk called “lone wolf” and humanized when Black and Brown victims of police are demonized, it hurt.

Audrey: The interstitials felt very cinematic for me. Maya’s the main character of this movie, if you will, so the camera mostly sticks with her, but the interstitials were brief cuts to the danger that had been building unbeknownst to her. That ramped up the tension for us as a viewer/reader, and then afterwards we got to see the truth unfold on the periphery while we stayed with Maya (because her story was the emotional center of the story). I think it was a fitting narrative device for this book.

But like you said, I was really disappointed that the abused child backstory showed up. Maybe I’m just bitter and angry and frustrated (hi, all of last year), but I’m entirely uninterested in any story trying to mitigate angry white men’s hateful actions, especially when we saw how much Maya and her family were hurt because of it.

Crystal: One last note about the romances. I had to smile with her first love interest. The actions were fairly innocent, but the descriptions were still quite sensual. The second romance was filled many roadblocks, but was a unique set of circumstances. It was complex and I also appreciated the ending that seemed very realistic. (Trying not to spoil too much here, but it’s not a fairy tale.)

Audrey: I thought it was great that Maya had two love interests and how both of those stories came to different conclusions. It was nice to see how messy feelings could get and how Maya tried to navigate both romantic options. (As a side bonus, I really liked the fact that the guys didn’t know about each other, so we didn’t have to endure any jealous posturing.) I’m really happy we got to see Maya exploring her feelings and sorting out what her heart really wanted.

Karimah: I really, really loved both romances because they were just so real and I feel that Maya handled both of them so well. She was honest with herself and her feelings and rightfully made the right call with her first romance and I loved the slow burn that was the second. It was refreshing that all of them were honest with each other and were able to talk through their issues. It’s so healthy and teens need to see what healthy relationships can look like. And I like that the end was more about Maya being in love with herself, standing up for herself, instead of a “happily ever after” with a significant other (sorry for the spoiler).

If you’ve already read Love, Hate & Other Filters, we’d love to hear your thoughts! If you haven’t had a chance to read it yet, we recommend you get it soon.

[rcrantz]

Reviewing Doctor Who: What Have We Learned, Class?

Now that I’ve watched every Doctor Who there is to watch, you may be surprised to learn that I have some opinions! So, since you’re all here, I suppose I may as well share.

The Classic Era. You know that old cliche about the one constant characteristic of Doctor Who being change? It’s absolutely correct. It started its life as a low-budget show about a grumpy old man with a very inaccurate time machine and became . . . a lot of different things over the years. But it started to feel like Doctor Who pretty early on in its run--much like the character of the Doctor, the themes and faces change, but there is a core idea that never quite goes away.

As such, it’s hard to give the classic era one defining trait--each Doctor is very different from most of the others--but I think it’s safe to say that characters are handled differently. In the classic era, character arcs are less of a thing. We seldom meet the friends and family of our companions, and there are very few character-driven stories. That’s not to say there aren’t excellent characters and excellent character dynamics, but the focus is generally elsewhere. (There are, of course, exceptions.)

The interesting thing is how casual this makes some of the companions’ departures. Modern Who won’t let a companion leave without giving them a whole climactic episode (and Moffat won’t let a companion leave without having them pretend to leave six times, then have them seem to leave forever only to come back and travel through space and time with some random interstellar badass); in contrast, many of the companion departures in classic Who are fairly abrupt. The Doctor ditches Susan so she can get married to the dude she was hanging out with; he leaves Sarah Jane Smith in the wrong city because humans aren’t allowed on Gallifrey and he’s been summoned; Nyssa decides that she’d rather stay and help plague victims than keep traveling; and so on. Sometimes they decide to leave, sometimes the Doctor leaves them behind, but the show seldom dwells.

On the one hand, if you don’t like a companion this is fantastic. Classic Who relies much less on continuity (due, I think, largely to the format): if a character is gone, chances are we won’t hear about them again. But it does mean that some interesting character dynamics aren’t fully explored.

All told, I had a lot of fun with the classic era, and I think a lot of it is worth revisiting. Due to the episodic nature it’s pretty easy to just drop in wherever; you’ll probably figure out what’s going on without too much trouble. (I think Romana is the only companion who benefits from a bit of explanation, and even then all you need to say is “Romana is also a Time Lord.”)

The Davies Era. When I started watching, of course, Davies was all there was. I think I picked it up right after the End of Time had aired, before Moffat’s era started. Davies loves his character drama (see also my “rose is sad” tag), and lingers a lot on the effect the Doctor has on the lives he touches--and on the lives of their family and friends. Though this sometimes goes spectacularly badly (see: Father’s Day), for the most part I appreciate it. The companions feel more real, and it adds a layer of complexity to the Doctor’s character and his relationship with his companions.

He also likes big explosive finales where the fate of the world/universe is in balance, and meta-arcs which aren’t so much story arcs as they are a series of references that make you go “ah-ha” when you finally hit the finale. I actually like that, for the most part: if the finale is bad, you don’t feel that the whole arc is ruined; if it’s good, it adds a little bit of extra satisfaction to the resolution.

Early on in Davies’ run, the Doctor was usually an unknown character. He later starts running into people he’s encountered before, and of course the Daleks have a personal vendetta, but only once (during a Moffat-penned episode) during the Davies era does the Doctor save the day by just saying “I’m the Doctor, look me up.”

The Davies era is still firmly in the classic style: the Doctor and his companions live on the TARDIS. In the modern era they now visit their homes with some regularity, but they’re still primarily travelers. On some level, even if they’re expecting to be able to go home again, they give up their lives to travel with the Doctor.

The Moffat Era. I was actually pretty stoked to hear Moffat was the new showrunner when time rolled around, because his episodes thus far had all been top-notch. And while doing this rewatch I did not dislike it nearly as much as I’d remembered. So why was it frustrating my first time through?

I think most of it is that Moffat likes to set up interesting mysteries without having a good resolution in mind. Sometimes he simply fails to resolve them, sometimes the resolution is a cheap cop-out, and sometimes it’s just unsatisfying. And the seasons are now woven into the meta-plot to some degree or other, making it harder to extricate.

Moffat’s meta-plots are more involved than Davies’ were, which also means they’re less subtle. They will regularly feature brief segments, usually at the end of an episode, where the ongoing mystery happens: In Series 5, it would be a shot of a Crack in Time; in Series 8, we had Missy; etc., etc. I didn’t like most of these meta-plots, as you can probably see from the fact that I gave most of their conclusions relatively poor grades.

Moffat is also much more focused on the Doctor as a character, and especially early on it’s focused on the Doctor as the Most Important Being In The Universe. This leads to some really goofy situations (the Pandorica Opens), and there’s a lot more reliance on “I’m the Doctor, look me up” as a resolution to plot devices. (There’s also a lot more reliance on “time travel!!!” as a resolution, which Doctor Who actually usually tries to avoid, I think because it’s usually not as clever as Moffat thinks it is.) He tries to back away from this later on, but there are still some lingering traces. (He literally makes the Doctor the President of Earth. This is wrong on so many levels.)

It also seems Moffat does not particularly like two-part episodes. So, so many of these stories I’ve had the thought on initially watching them that “if this had a second part, it would have been great.” The pacing feels rushed. Worse, often when we do have two-parters, they frequently follow the “part one is a completely different story from part two” formula. This is fine occasionally, but often it makes it feel like, rather than resolving the cliffhanger from the previous episode, we’re just assuming that was resolved off camera and we’ve got a new, related story going on. 45-ish minutes is not a very long time to tell a good story; it’s doable, but many of the stories want us to care about characters we’ve hardly had time to get to know.

For some reason partway through Amy and Rory’s time on the TARDIS, Moffat decided that his companions now lived primarily at home, and the Doctor only stops by occasionally for Adventure Purposes. I don’t think this decision made anything better.

Still, though I have many critiques of the Moffat era, it’s still Doctor Who. It produced some fantastic episodes, and Twelve is probably my second favorite modern Doctor (despite a seriously rocky start).

Stray Thoughts. Doctor Who experiments. I think that’s at the heart of the show. Sometimes those experiments fall flat, and sometimes they accomplish great things, but despite being a show with a strong formula, it’s never afraid to innovate. It’s true we’d probably have missed out on some of the less enjoyable stories if the show had been more conservative, but we also wouldn’t have stories like Midnight. (Hell, we probably wouldn’t even be here. I don’t know if I would have made the decision to have the Doctor transform from a grumpy old man into a bumbling clown way back in the day, and I think that change, more than anything else, helped bring us to the modern era.) It’s a show with the spirit of an explorer, and even when it falls flat it doesn’t diminish the effort.

By the time this gets published, it’ll only be a few months til the Christmas special airs, which will be the end of the Moffat era and the end of Twelve, and very probably will be our first “official” glimpse at Jodie Whittaker as the Thirteenth Doctor. The show’s about to change--that’s what it does. That’s why it’s still here, fifty-odd years later. I, for one, am looking forward to it.

[thousandmovieproject]

I’m a fucking idiot: I thought this was directed by Billy Wilder and wrote a whole long thing about how it both fits with and departs from his other work (Double Indemnity, Lost Weekend). Now I’m looking at the movie’s info online again and I see that it wasn’t Billy Wilder who directed this. it was William Wyler (Dodsworth, Jezebel, Wuthering Heights, Mrs. Miniver). This is like the frustration I kept having int he ’30s when talking about the Howards Hawks and Hughes.

Anyway. Here’s the other salvageable bit.

William Wyler (Best Years of Our Lives, Jezebel, Mrs. Miniver)

Billy Wilder (Double Indemnity, Lost Weekend)

The Best Years of Our Lives is a gorgeous, moving, totally engrossing movie that’s both big as shit, in terms of runtime and intensity and its handling of delicate subject matter, but it also feels kinda small, intimate, and while it took me two sittings to get through the whole three-hour runtime, and even though I still don’t think I’ve totally understood or appreciated it, I can say that it didn’t feel at all like a schlep, and that I’m totally aboard for running through it a second time.

Settling in for a three-hour movie, incidentally, felt like a nice big leap back into routine cuz remember that norovirus I talked about in Brief Encounter and Battle of San Pietro? Well Id’ just gotten over it when I sat down to watch this. Here’s the scene: it’s like December 28th, I’m eating full meals again (slowly!) and moving on now from drinking just little sips of ice water and Gatorade to finally putting down some coffee. Some energy drinks. And seeing as it’d been about four days without caffeine, it was like I’d lost all tolerance for it. My receptors were fresh and clean and ready.

After testing the gastric waters with a light breakfast at home, then sitting around cautiously for a couple hours with no bad outcome, I took my laptop to Starbucks and got to work on the essay for Adventures of Robin Hood, sparked into speedy productivity by a single shot of espresso, and then when that was done I went back to the counter and got a large strawberry refresher — which looks like a big fruity sugar drink, and it totally is, but it’s also jacked with caffeine. So I got that and gulped it down and felt like I’d grown another pair of eyes when I finally put the movie on. Felt like I was watching it with more intensity than I’d watched anything else on the List — even though, obviously, I’m just sitting there with my eyes a little wider and my legs jiggling faster.

The movies’a bout three guys who come back from the war (Harold Russell, Dana Andrews, Frederic March) all fucked up in different ways; the latter two are plagued by emotional trauma, and their arcs make for a study of how soldiers with PTSD acclimate back into civilian life: the indignity of getting back into a low-paying job, the struggle to understand a laxity of youth culture’s mores, the back-riding monkey of alcoholism. The need for each other. The need for patience from everybody around them.

It’s Russell, however, who comes back with the physical trauma. He’s lost both hands in battle. They’ve been replaced by hooks — hooks with which he’s remarkably dextrous and, for the most part, contented. What gets to him is the way his family and neighbors treat him so differently. How they look at him with pity. Engaged to the love of his life, Russell starts to wonder if it might not be a greater gesture of love to break things off, and spare her a life of worry and marital servility.

I was wondering all through the movie if this actor actually has no hands or if he’d just gone all-in on mastering the prosthetics — turns out he really doesn’t have any hands, which adds a whole complex and immersive layer to the movie, but so does the fact that, as a three-hour flick that isn’t just taking PTSD but actually devoting itself to the topic, The Best Years of Our Lives feels like a curtain being drawn over the proscenium of wartime cinema. Feels like it’s an official induction to the post-war landscape — one that will still be obsessed with the war, and exploring the pertinent themes, but will probably also mostly revolve around processing the trauma.

As with Phantom Carriage and Lost Weekend I do feel like I can relate to the drinking problem on display here, and given my ostensibly complete but potentially ongoing breakup with Rosie I feel I can relate to the romantic issues faced by Dana Andrews’ character, whose girlfriend wants a more active and exciting life than he cares to provide (OK maybe I can relate to it a lot). Andrews ends up falling slowly in love with his friend/superior’s adult daughter, played here by a Teresa Wright who, just a couple years after her girlish turn in Shadow of a Doubt, comes across as an adult (which might be a bit of a hindrance, actually, since she’s playing a very similar character).

Where the movie also rings my bell is its depiction of male friendship — which, as I think I’ve mentioned in the past, is seldom communicated with emotional heft. One of the ways I was comparing this to Double Indemnity, back when I thought that Billy Wilder was the director of both, was in the way that it takes those male relationships seriously and doesn’t shy away from the idea that, apart from just loving each other, these men need one another. It’s the kind of idea that’s illustrated with zero inhibition in stories about women, but the depths of male friendship in lotsa films seem to be communicated through steely glares and wry smiles, curt nods.

Going back to that thing about this inducting us into the world of postwar cinema: it’s also sparking my interest for what movies of the 1950s will look and feel like. It’s a decade I’ve been kinda dreading, because it doesn’t have a major event like the Great Depression or the War around which everything revolves, but I’ve also been really interested to see how the worms and demons in the American psyche will come to the surface in a decade that’s known for its placidity and materialism and propriety.

#181. The Best Years of Our Lives (1946) I'm a fucking idiot: I thought this was directed by Billy Wilder and wrote a whole long thing about how it both fits with and departs from his other work (