#the majority of his storyline?

[heymacy]

IAN GALLAGHER + his journey with bipolar disorder

╰┈➤ “At times, being bipolar can be an all-consuming challenge, requiring a lot of stamina and even more courage, so if you’re living with this illness and functioning at all, it’s something to be proud of, not ashamed of." - Carrie Fisher

[phantom-of-the-501st]

The thing is, it's framed as a happy ending, so much so that it makes you think it's a happy ending until you actually apply any level of critical thought to it.

Omega gets to live the rest of her childhood with her brothers (well... 3 of them at least) and goes on to fight in the Rebellion, which is fitting for her tbf. Hunter gets at least some degree of peace, as does Wrecker, but that doesn't mean a whole lot seeing as they did almost nothing with Wrecker over the course of the show. One of the only differences between Wrecker at the start and Wrecker at the end is that his brother is dead, so a very happy ending for him! Oh wait...

And don't worry, Crosshair may be suffering from a severe amount of trauma and unbelievable levels of guilt, but he doesn't have a hand tremor anymore. It was resolved by *checks notes* cutting his hand off? Errrm... okay.

And Echo? Fuck knows where Echo is. You'd think he'd actually get an ending in the episode that is supposed to wrap up the stories of all six of your main characters? Haha nope! Echo doesn't count apparently.

And we don't need to talk about Tech.

Okay, by the epilogue it's been years. That gives them time to process certain events and heal and find some level of peace, but it never shows that. And that's one of my biggest gripes with this show. I love it but why is all of the important stuff happening off screen?

The Batch processing Tech's death? Crosshair finding out about Tech's death? Processing trauma? 90% of Echo's whole storyline???

Sure, stuff can happen offscreen, but to have so many of your key character development points happening where the audience can't see it isn't useful. It makes me think of an interview Jennifer Corbett did where she said she believes that Echo and Rex have spoken about Fives multiple times. Okay great but like? We never see it? So how tf are we supposed to know this??? We were all watching S3 thinking "Wait does Crosshair even know about Tech dying???" Which isn't how that's supposed to be! That's not a plot point you leave that vague!

I didn't intend to go on this much of a rant but for how much I love this show, it grinds so many of my gears sometimes 😓

every time I see 'but the Batch got their happy ending it's so sweet how amazing' I'm like mmmmmmmmmm well some of them did, anyways...yes very sweet...

[markantonys]

rotating potential Mat Show Structures in my brain...........assuming that ebou dar is cut (which feels likely if mat is indeed already having a southwestern coastal roadtrip with elayne and nynaeve in s3), what if:

s3: gets his marriage prophecy, tanchico trip with the girls, meets tuon (without knowing she's Prophecy Wife) but they go their separate ways by the end of the season

s4: returns to rand's side, forms the band, leads the band as part of the dumai's wells rescue mission because dumai's wells needs to involve as many main characters as possible goddammit (and because i need the romance of mat helping rescue rand)

s5: leads a campaign against the seanchan with rand and/or on rand's behalf (depending on what else rand has going on this season), reencounters tuon and kidnaps her (but may or may not yet know she's Prophecy Wife; either way, kidnapping motive is instead something calculating like taking a high-ranking seanchan as a prisoner of war, or something morally righteous like rescuing her from her own people's assassins and taking her off with him to keep her safe)

this would be adding mat into rand's TPOD storyline, of course, but at the same time it would ALSO be mat absorbing ituralde's storyline from the next few books. i remember talking once with @butterflydm about how ituralde is basically Knockoff Mat in that he's getting a whole spotlit Clever General storyline while mat, who's supposed to be our main Clever General, is off fucking around in the circus.

so i feel like involving mat in the seanchan campaigns could be an elegant solution all around. mat actually gets to fulfill his narrative role of leading armies on rand's behalf, the seanchan campaign storyline is in the hands of a main character (vs. rand doing it only briefly and then ituralde taking over the bulk of it), mat gets involved with the seanchan in a manner more organic than "author drops a wall on him to force him to encounter them", and it lends a huge amount of much-needed enemies-to-lovers narrative tension to the mat/tuon relationship if he is actively leading military campaigns against her forces (like he did for about.......5 pages in the books).

now wandering off into very-hypothetical ship-related territory thinking of what mat/tuon would look like in this scenario.

i'm thinking mat never finds out during s3 that tuon is a high-ranking seanchan and thinks she's just His Good Buddy Tuon (because she's disguised and undercover). but as the s3 finale stinger, the audience finds out that tuon is mat's Prophecy Wife AND is the heir to the seanchan throne, so we've got some tasty dramatic irony. s4 has tuon doing a solo storyline of seanchan political intrigue, either still in the western westlands or back in the actual court in seanchan (the latter would be sooooo cool, but it depends on how many times they want her zipping back and forth between continents). but her time spent with mat, elayne, and nynaeve (two marath'damane who are in fact people!) in s3 has got the gears turning, and in s4 we get to see tuon in her natural habitat but we also see that she's starting to question and doubt some Seanchan Ways because our kids have expanded her worldview.

in s5, tuon is tasked with heading up the next wave of military efforts in the westlands. so when mat crosses her path again, she is decked out in full seanchan regalia and he realizes that His Good Buddy Tuon is a high-ranking seanchan and must have been using him in s3 when she acted like his friend, so he's all hurt and betrayed (alternately, this reveal could happen as their final scene in s3 and mat is still feeling betrayed when they reunite in s5), but tuon genuinely did like him in s3 so she's hurt that he now hates her but she also can't reveal any of this weakness because he's the enemy general and her people would think she's a traitor if she shows any hints of non-hostile feelings towards him, and despite his anger mat can't help holding onto some non-hostile feelings for her which makes him even more angry with himself, and it's all very delicious.

kidnapping happens, and for s6 they embark on a roadtrip back across the continent (maybe with mat intending to deliver tuon as a hostage to rand; we could even mix the 2 motives i brainstormed, where he impulsively saves her life out of feelings but Then justifies it as taking her with him as a hostage), and all this prior development means several good things for the show being able to sell their relationship as a bona fide romance (and tuon as a dynamic, complex character).

1) tuon having spent time with westlanders and free channelers already in s3 and having spent s4-5 questioning Seanchan Ways on her own means she is now primed for a final push over the edge of unlearning seanchan conditioning and admitting that slavery is wrong (which she has to do IF the show wants mat/tuon to be a bona fide romance rather than a political marriage; a political marriage with an unrepentant tuon would also be a viable route, but show!mat would never ever ever fall in love with an unrepentant slaver so if it's going to be a bona fide romance then she has to repent) and ideally admitting that she herself can channel (feat. tasty scene early in the season of her accidentally channeling for the first time to protect mat). now tuon is a complex character who grows and develops over the course of the story, and it does not defy all reason, credibility, and established characterization that mat could fall for her. improvement!

2) if mat is feeling angry and betrayed by the discovery of tuon's seanchan identity, and if tuon is hurt by this because she genuinely likes him and wasn't faking friendship in s3 and wishes he would believe her, now mat has the "upper hand" in their roadtrip dynamic, so to speak, and tuon is in the position of needing to work to earn mat's trust. so rather than mat nonsensically handing over his loyalty and protectiveness at the drop of a hat to tuon who's used to being worshipped and takes mat doing so as her due and walks all over him with no pushback, now it's a more equal dynamic and a better power balance because tuon has to work hard to give mat (and the audience) a reason to believe she's Better Than Other Seanchan. improvement!

imagine how hard the "you're not my enemy, but your empire is" line would go in this context!

and i haven't even thought about when mat would find out tuon is Prophecy Wife in this structure. i would love for it to be not until after he's already falling for her naturally, but if he's fighting against a seanchan army that she's leading in s5, he might not be able to go very long without hearing the "daughter of the nine moons" title. idk! even if he does find out fairly early, i know that show!mat would not let this information immediately remove his spine from his body, so i have faith either way.

[theflyindutchwoman]

You know, the more I think about it, the more I feel like this episode was the beginning of untangling this whole web of 'lies' that Tim and Lucy have been telling each other - and telling themselves - when it comes to undercover… One thread at a time. This episode zeroed in on Tim's thread and how he truly thought he was fine with Lucy doing undercover work. How he needed a lie detector to realise just how deep his denial was. And while yes, it seems that the onus was all on him here, the narrative did imply that Lucy might have a similar issue. The way she immediately denied the possibility that she might be projecting mirrored Tim's similar objections. Right now she's all focused on him… but the seed is there. This is just the beginning of the unravelling so they can get to that place of honesty - with one another and with themselves. I get the feeling that we will soon get to pull Lucy's thread and explore her side of the story and her doubts. (Or maybe that's just wishful thinking on my part).

[rosetinted-escape]

Seeing people whine about Dragon Age: The Veilgard in YouTube comments sections about the fact you can give your Rook pronouns and top surgery scars.

I am about to make the GAYEST most TRANGENDER Rook ever. That mf is gonna have blue hair and pronouns. He WILL be a mage, and he WILL be romancing Lucanis.

[eddiediazenjoyer]

can i speak. i think that eddie Catholic Guilt is hard to believe and dare i say. not real. for many reasons. one of them being Not All Latinos Have Catholic Guilt especially not in the way that white catholics conceptualize it. and TO ME it’s a bit of a cop out . and i don’t think we should believe eddie when he says that’s the reason for literally anything bc it’s a really convenient excuse for being insane and repressed but i just don’t think it’s true . and i think that something much more nuanced is afoot (aka a complex racial identity and relationship with expectation).

to me he was really like. barely raised catholic tbh. he was raised AROUND folk/cultural catholicism which ofc impacted how he was raised and his perspective. but this kind of catholicism is so different from institutionalized (and white) catholicism it's difficult to even compare the two. and i honestly don’t think that the catholicism is the main problem. like his parents just don’t strike me as being devout in the way that imparts guilt onto their children (they have fun OTHER ways to do this). i think they are traditional and crucially. catholic when it’s convenient and when it allows them an avenue for control (biggest example here is eddie getting pressured into getting married to the girl he impregnated as a teenager.) but to me. this stemmed from complex cultural traditions and beliefs. which catholicism is an easy simple explanation for . but isn’t really the root of the problem. it's a part of it ofc but honestly i think things are often ascribed solely to catholicism bc catholic guilt is a widely applicable perspective when it honestly doesn't make much sense. like i think that eddie being a mixed race mexican-american has more to do with anything than catholicism does. and again. these things are interwoven. but not in a way that it makes sense to blame capital c Catholicism for things where culture (and cultural catholicism) makes way more sense as an explanation

like ik that eddie talks about how he was raised going to mass every sunday etc etc. but even the way he says that he just... stopped... says so much. like the fact that he was even allowed to do that tells me that his parents honestly never really cared that much about that kind of devotion. and the way he talks about it really makes it sound to me like he was one of those kids that never really bought into it at all and so the institutionalized teachings of the church never really got to him. what did get to him however is the folk catholicism/mexican-american teachings of Right and Wrong (aka you get somebody pregnant you commit to them. you feel emotions you tamp them down in order to protect others etc.) and this is not necessarily Catholicism in it's classic conception.

i have no idea if this makes sense and it is really hard to explain how this interplay works if you haven't grown up in it but basically.... hegemonic constructions of catholicism are vastly different from the kind of "catholicism" that i think eddie was raised in. and bc of that i think that "catholic guilt" is a weak explanation for eddie's perspective and best and just. inaccurate at worst. and we should NEVERRRR listen to eddie when he gives too clean of an explanation for his repression. that man is a liar

[cuntmand]

this was kinda the worst episode out of the entire series tbh simply because of the pacing. i liked the episode, but it was all over the place. they tried to tie in all the lose ends in 50 minutes, and that just wasn’t possible. louis being imprisoned, then released, losing his mind, recovering, AND burning down the theater and killing santiago, all in the span of like 5 minutes, the whole louis/lestat/armand scene, daniel exposing armand, loumand divorcing (that was so underwhelming, esp after 2x05, like, i needed these bitches to have a proper verbal argument, i needed them to be AT EACH OTHER’S THROATS), armand turning daniel (offscreen, cause they didn’t have time to get into all that, cause like… no way it was that simple lol there were too many devil’s minion hints throughout both seasons), louis flying to nola, reuniting with lestat (they have far too long and complex a history for it to be resolved so quickly, it would’ve been far more meaningful had it been done right), daniel publishing his book (compiling, writing, editing, publishing it AND selling 4-5 million copies must have taken a lot of time, so time jump, i guess?)… just by typing this out, it’s too much, way too much to cover in a single episode. the hectic pace left me unsatisfied and it also left a lot of room for plot holes (no more unreliable narrators now, cause the interview is done). idk i think they really should’ve split this into two episodes, at least. one of the things that i really admired about this show was the pace. in season 1, they managed to cover 3 decades in the span of only 7 episodes, while simultaneously showing us what was happening in dubai in 2022, and it never felt rushed. season 2’s pacing was still amazing and satisfying, up until this episode. idk man… i hope this doesn’t happen again, cause it really left a bitter taste in my mouth, and it was the finale, so my expectations were high.

[tytoalbatross]

can people be normal about dorian pavus

[theoakleafpancake]

Crowley Meratyn was the first person Halt traveled with since his departure from Dun Kilty. And sure, while the Ranger was a welcome relief and perhaps annoyingly cheerful distraction from the memories, it took him a while to feel at peace.

The first night, Crowley had suggested they sleep in shifts. And of course the Ranger had taken the first shift. Halt, of course, had demurred, not wanting to cause unrest, and he had indeed turned his back to his new companion, but he didn’t sleep.

He didn’t trust this Crowley, plain and simple. There was almost a glimmer of Ferris from their younger years. Back when the responsibilities of the throne had been a fleeting whisper, back when their parents had left them to the care of their nurses and tutors. Back when he could laugh and smile and not worry about the future. Ferris had been happy, then. And so had Halt.

And then over time, things had changed. His brother had kept the front everywhere else, but when they were alone, he was distant and cold. Halt knew himself to be a fool for not seeing it sooner, or perhaps he had simply been willing to turn a blind eye. After all, Ferris was his brother. His friend, his confidant. He would never betray his kingdom, let alone his own blood.

Halt had learned that lesson the hard way. And he was determined to catch Crowley’s facade the moment he saw one slip up. He would not be taken in this time.

He would not be betrayed a second time.

[puppy-phum]

tbh i was super nervous for this ep bc this was technically our ep 11 and those tend to be the angst eps. i was holding my breath when the convo about phum bringing peem to his house came up. even if it was focused on his mother and not the whole family bc phum obviously does not want to even exist in the same space with his father. and i think that's valid. i think phum has a good reason to feel resentment towards his father.

but yes, i was nervous about the "let my parents meet you" -part bc i know how that goes in the novel. i've read bits and pieces of it before the ahow started airing bc this one amazing person on twt was sharing their translation. and let me tell you, even without much context bc i haven't read the whole novel obviously, the part with phum coming out made me bawl bc am sensitive to such topics, especially when it causes drama within the family.

it's a heartbreaking moment in the novel and i was super scared they would suddenly hit us with it in this ep. i was thinking that phum's dad would walk in and go all insane about his son dating another man right then and there. that maybe peem would kicked out or something. that everything would go up in flames.

but am glad they didn't try to fit that in bc there's only one more episode left and i feel like that wouldn't have been enough to solve everything AND give us a good ending. but also damn. i kinda wanted to see that on screen. i know how well ppw deliver angst and heartbreak, so i wanted to see the phumpeem coming out struggle, but well. i am happy like this! just keep the show lighthearted and more focused on the friendships. it makes it more cohesive.

[rahabs]

The Tudors ran so Wulf Hall could shuffle awkwardly around reiterating the same tired old Tudor stereotypes while claiming to be something new.

[amphibifish]

why is maloki the only media aside from magnus chase that uses utgard loki as a character. bashes my head against the wall

[markantonys]

it continues to baffle me how many readers advocate for the show entirely cutting the andoran succession arc, aka elayne's ONE big Main Character storyline that she leads herself (vs. being a sidekick in nynaeve's storylines). what would you do if i started advocating for cutting mat forming the band of the red hand? you wouldn't be so happy about that, would you? well, that's the equivalent of what you're suggesting for elayne, just gutting her entire arc and reducing her to a secondary character.

some readers really need to learn that "i don't like this storyline" doesn't automatically equal "this storyline is just unimportant filler that can and should be cut from the show" (and that "i like this storyline" doesn't automatically equal "this storyline is crucial to the series as a whole and the show will be unwatchable if it's cut")

[ilynpilled]

i hate to be this big of a hater but every time i see people complain about show jaime in s8 with “all that development and for what?” what development exactly?

[apotelesmaa]

I feel so bad for people who just watched the soul eater anime because make no mistake it was very good but if you don’t read the manga you miss out on crona’s war crimes arc and the fact that the big climactic battle is on the fucking moon & these are only two examples of how off the rails it gets

[toxcicada]

That blimp in the final scene BETTER BE HERS! SHE BETTER BE FLYING THAT THING LIKE BABY POWDER SAID SHE WOULD! I get leaving her end ambiguous; like one article I read [skimmed] said the blueprints Cait was looking at showed that the hex gates had ventilation in the bottom, so maybe Jinx landed on wolf Vander and ducked into a duct as the bomb went off. I *personally* think it's a cowards writing to kill her off... sure makes CaitVi conveniently work tho since Jinx and Cait don't have to reconcile their shit now. Vi just has to grieve her father *again* and now her sister who she never got to *properly* reconcile with. Not that leaving it ambiguous and letting people hold out hope that she's just fucked off to who knows where on a blimp is less of a messy option. But I like her too much to just accept "Oh she sacrificed herself." Also since Arcane is meant to be a prequel to the general premise of League, and she's a main champion [one that came *before* arcane unlike Ambessa who was released as a champion in League apparently in 2024] I don't think she's dead. I'll buy that Ambessa is dead and her being a champion is a promo thing. But Jinx was a staple of the lore before Arcane ever happened... I think if they make another show focusing on a other region, she will make a cameo of some sort. Faking your death to end the cycle is something I *could* accept Jinx doing. Her whole "the past me is dead, time for the new one" type shtick.