#they could have done SO much more

[eelfuneral]

Things That The Jedi Could Have Done For The Clones

If you’ve been following me for long enough, then you will know that I have some, shall we say, concerns about how people discuss the relationship between the Jedi and the Clones and the thorny ethical issues that it entails. A lot of folks figure that because the Jedi are meant to be the “good guys” and because they are “nice” to the Clones, they are basically absolved of any responsibility or complacency in the Clones’ enslavement. I disagree. Yes, the Jedi couldn’t free every Clone overnight in the middle of a war and no, they weren’t the ones who decided to create and enslaved them, but I still feel like there are actions that they could have taken to establish that they wanted to help the Clones beyond a kind word or two. So in no particular order, here is a list of things that the Jedi could have done.

On an institutional level, they could have:

1. Advocated for Clone citizenship. The Jedi were more enmeshed with the Senate than they would ever admitted, and they could have discussed drafting a bill with senators to legally give the Clones citizenship.

2. Advocated for Clones to be paid a living wage. See number one.

3. Set up vocational and life-skills courses for Clones to help them prepare for life after the war.

4. Punished and investigated Jedi like Pong Krell who dehumanized and/or abused clones. The fact that an unusually high number of Clones were dying wherever Krell went and the Jedi didn’t even think to look at why that was kind of blows my mind and makes me think that they were being negligent.

5. Given Clones like Slick (who would have been rare due to the Kaminoan’s indoctrination of the Clones before the Jedi even came into the picture) the option of doing things other than being soldiers.

6. Pushed the Kaminoans and Trainers to cease any and all abuse and dehumanization of Clones in Tipoca City. The “you can’t outright kill disabled clones, but you can give them Janitorial Duty of Shame™️” and the “when trainers abuse Clones, we’ll just look the other way” approaches that they adopted in canon were not ideal.

As Individuals, they could have:

1. Personally advocated for Clones who came to them with complaints of abuse and sentient rights violations.

2. Refused to participate in the enslavement of the Clones, left the Order, and became an advocates for their rights outside of the confines of the Jedi Code.

3. Secretly helped Clones who expressed that they did not want to be part of the GAR to escape and find happiness, no questions asked.

4. Kept their Clone colleagues in the loop about advocacy work being done on their behalf.

5. Allowed Clones serving under them who expressed interest in doing so to make suggestions about and/or participate in said advocacy work.

6. Really taken a moment to sit down and talk to Clones about how they were living and what they wanted.

[myrealitynow]

alright fanfic writers I'm going to need five new stories on my desk by 8 am

[nephilimeq]

The Crap that is the True Alpha Plotline in Teen Wolf

Can someone explain to me what a “true alpha” is in Teen Wolf please? I see it all the fucking time (always delusional Scott McCall and Tyler Posey stans using it to prove that Scott is superior and smarter and better than everyone else and blah blah) but I have no idea what the fuck it means

--

Okay. Here we go.

Apparently (according to the writers), a “True Alpha” is when a beta werewolf becomes an alpha without killing, and instead through their own sheer strength of will, and that somehow makes them “better” than other alphas (stronger, faster, etc.).

It is the biggest bullshit that I have ever seen written into a show.

I did an entire post about how it was the equivalent of handing Scott a “get out of morality jail free” card. I honestly feel that they wrote it into the show to try and salvage Scott’s character because no one was liking him anymore, and all the fans really wanted was more of the side characters. (that’s what happens when you write better side characters)

It was a pathetic, half-handed attempt to try and make the main character special and likeable again, and it failed at both.

Also, that entire plot line was one of the worst bits of acting I’ve ever seen. Look, Posey could have played Scott as sweet and bumbling and I would have loved the character! It would have been great if they had leaned into Scott’s caring side as we saw how he was with his mom in the beginning, so it would have made perfect sense! Posey was great at playing sweet and trying too hard, but putting him into a position to play a morally righteous powerful alpha was just a hard pass.

I honestly think Scott would have been likeable if he’d been more of a himbo. I liked him as a himbo in the beginning because it was the perfect foil against Stiles’ shrewd and silently malicious nature. They could have done so much with that...but instead they turned Scott into a self-righteous prick, who was all “I’m the True Alpha, and other people can deal with the consequences of my shitty, under thought actions on their own” kind of guy.

So, to sum up, a True Alpha is a douchecanoe -- it is the cheap, crappy tampon of writing, trying to soak up all of the character deficits of Scott McCall that the writers decided not to address or fix by being better writers.

[queenofavalon3]

Where’s that deleted scene where he is talking to Gwen about being in the shadow of his father’s reign and magic isn’t that evil. I swear if they just let this man develop

I know. Witchcraft is an evil, father. So is injustice.

[egophiliac]

everyone out of the way, this is the only thing I'm going to be thinking about from now on.

(okay, there is one more thing)

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

How much longer 'til your luck runs out?

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[cozylittleartblog]

Columbo and the Knight (1984)

put me in the universe where Columbo ran through the 1980s and had a crossover episode with Knight Rider. I think they deserved it, and I am not just saying that because they're my two favorite Old Shows. @telebeast wrote a little fanfic blurb about it and I HAD to visualize it into a comic (which is also the longest comic I have finished thus far at five pages...), so writing credit goes to them.

Autism W!

[tuttle-did-it]

@quodo-brainrot cheers, friend. I mean.... with regards to ST:PIC, all I can say without going into a very long rant is that it made me hate not only ST:PIC and nearly every character on that show, but it also retroactively made me never want to watch TNG again. Aside from showing a friend two episodes - 'Threshold' and 'Sub Rosa'- I have not watched Trek since. I haven't wanted to. And when I think about TNG now, the characters are so retroactively poisoned with how much I absolutely loathe ST:PIC, I may never watch TNG again. Not even the episodes I enjoyed. Because sometimes, things are destroyed and you cannot save that.

Why did I show a friend 'Sub Rosa,' and 'Threshold' you ask? Why, Tuttle, out of all the episodes of Trek would you do that to someone who has never seen any Star Trek? Simple. We were all celebrating the annual holiday Threshold Day, and she asked what I was going on about. And I explained Threshold Day because she didn't believe me. Then after we watched 'Threshold,' she said 'so, that's the worst Star Trek episode, ever? And I said 'of course not. Each show has several of the worst. Then, I explained 'Sub Rosa' and the granny ghost sex candle. She didn't believe me. So we watched it. I think she regretted the conversation.

Anyway... one of the reasons people were so mad at the Enterprise finale is because they shoe-horned in the TNG crew, made it all about them, and ENT didn't even get to finish their own show. PIC does this-- but for their entire last season!!! like, the premise of the show was his adventures after TNG-- new crew, new adventures, moving on the way people move on. For two awful seasons. Then season 3, they just jam in ever TNG character they can with the worst storylines possible-- if they got storylines-- and just took over PIC-- for an entire season. And in doing this, they pushed all the PIC characters aside- they either disappeared completely or were turned into wallpaper. It is not PIC s3, it is TNG S8, and it's the absolute worst.

Seven -- one of the most dynamic Legacy characters-- spends the entire last season sitting in the dark listening to Picard's *horrible* son monologuing, or being abused and deadnamed by some arsehole shit man. She's not even allowed to be with her lover-- Raffi, a Black woman who was, arguably, the best character in the show-- because Raffi spent the entire third season getting told that she needs to learn how to control her anger by a man. Yeah. They literally went there. I thought we left telling a woman of colour to control herself behind with B'Elanna, but here we are.

I have hundreds thousands more reasons to hate PIC, but the main point is that not only was PIC hijacked by the TNG crew-- something Patrick Stewart promised would never happen when the show began-- but they then spent that entire last year torturing the queer women on the show mand making me absolutely hate every single TNG character to the point where I wanted every one of them to die.

Oh. Oh. And they fucking fridged Ro Laren. In her ONE fucking episode appearance. The rage. I cannot tell you the rage I have for them all.

I grew up watching Trek. I grew up loving it, I grew up loving TNG, and have spent over 40 years loving it. DS9 is still some of the best TV I've ever seen, and I used to rewatch TOS, TNG, VOY and DS9 regularly. Like, as in, I've been rewatching it for over 40 years -- on VHS and then on DVD/streaming. There has been very little time in my life I was not rewatching some Trek.

And PIC made me never want to watch Star Trek again. In just a few months, it will have aired 2 years ago. And in all that time, I have watched two episodes-- 'Threshold,' and 'Sub Rosa' - and that was for my friend. Had she not asked to watch them, I would probably not have watched ST since. And I have not had the urge to watch ANY of it. Closest I've come is watching the Delta Flyers podcast as Terry and Armin talk about DS9 with Robbie and Garratt. Terry, Armin and Robbie often have a lot of interesting things to say about how they really feel about storylines, how they really feel about certain characters or Trek in general. I find they add interesting context to it, so I have watched that. But I don't rewatch the episodes they talk about. Because PIC has poisoned it all for me. Every Trek. All of it.

So.... mayyyybe watching ST:PIC will help? If you are a cis het white man who consistently fails upward, it might be your bag! Or maybe, like me, it will contaminate any love for Trek you've ever had. A tv form of Russian Roulette, I guess? Good luck to you, friend, if you do.

star trek characters will literally go through the most life changing traumatic multidimensional extrasensory eldritch hell torture imaginable and then they're fine and the next episode they gotta deal with a guy who is bald

[chronalshifts]

i think a lot of people are calling viktor’s reaction to waking up changed and then almost immediately leaving for zaun unrealistic and like… yes it would be. for someone whose mind has not been affected by the hexcore. he speaks differently, he hears sky’s voice through its influence, he can no longer feel the cold, or the warmth of jayce’s hug. he walks away from jayce because he can no longer feel the affection that kept them together, and he sees no logical point in remaining when they have no common ground anymore. he might not be a machine externally, exactly, but his mind certainly isn’t human anymore.

[beets]

[dykedvonte]

Curly's little blurb on his steam trading card just keeps reminding me he is a much more miserable person than people realize.

We don't get a lot of his thoughts, inner confliction that aren't bogged down by what Jimmy says or does. Even in the The Last One and Then Another, his dialogue is reflective, not the Curly before the crash but the result of everything. Parts of the him he was are there of course, but also disfigured and warped beyond recognition just like he is physically.

Curly really doesn't think much of himself and desires. He clearly chases fleeting moments of happiness. He doesn't really have prospects for himself, assumes in a similar way to Swansea, that if it should make it happy then he is happy. Though, he hasn't reached the point Swansea did to admit it doesn't. He neither sees the glass half full or empty, it's just water, something he needs and he'll take it from any perspective.

He wasn't running from anything but he's never really been going towards something either. He's listless. I've been using the term complacent to describe how he feels about his life and the closest people (really just Jimmy) in it, but now that word feels too neutral, too nice. Happier than Curly really was. There isn't just one word for it, he's unfulfilled, uncertain, uninspired. There are no active problems he faces and that's the issue, why should he be upset?

I believe he really is a person who doesn't know who he is or wants to be. He follows a structure. I don't think he's suicidal, but he clearly doesn't think about what makes him happy. He's numb. I suppose that is a better word than complacent, used to the feeling even if he hates it. It doesn't hurt so why stop it?

[ohitslen]

*Vampirizes your Vashwood*

keep reading for more :)

If there needs to be much closer close-up please let me know!

[justaz]

merlin (immortal) giving arthur (pendragon) the only blade that could kill him

[tordoise-x3]

Just my drawigs from today cuz I haven’t been finishing anything 😞

[a-s-levynn]

I stumble into your tar trap, an addition to your collection~

[s0fter-sin]

one of my favourite aspects of supernatural that you very rarely see in paranormal shows is that sam and dean are already versed in the world they live in. there’s no sudden discovery of ghosts and demons and now they have to learn about them along with the audience; they are born into it and already know all about it. it allows the audience to follow their personal story instead of also trying to figure out this new world and its rules

the first season is full of knowledge we never see them learn; “w*ndigoes are in the minnesota woods or- or northern michigan. i’ve never even heard of one this far west.” […] “great. well then this [his gun] is useless.” (1x02), “you don’t break a curse. you get the hell out of its way.” (1x08), d: “it’s a god. a pagan god, anyway.” […] “the annual cycle of its killings? and the fact that the victims are always a man and a woman. like some kind of fertility right.” […] s: “the last meal. given to sacrificial victims. d: “yeah, i’m thinking a ritual sacrifice to appease some pagan god.” (1x11)

almost every episode in the first season is a monster they’ve faced before that they then explain to the audience in a way that should feel patronising; like it’s the same speech given over and over again but instead, the audience almost feels included in the knowledge. it’s stated with such an innate confidence and comfort in said knowledge that it feels like we already knew it too; “spirits and demons don't have to unlock doors. if they want inside, they just go through the walls.” […] “the claws, the speed that it moves; could be a skinwalker, maybe a black dog.” (1x02), “it's biblical numerology. you know noah's ark, it rained for forty days. the number means death.” (1x04), “no no no, not the reaper, a reaper. there's reaper lore in pretty much every culture on earth, it goes by 100 different names.” […] “you said it yourself that the clock stopped, right? reapers stop time. and you can only see 'em when they're coming at you which is why i could see it and you couldn't.” (1x12)

they already know and, at least in the first season, already have what they need to kill whatever they’re hunting; already know to salt and burn bones for spirits, fire for a w*ndigo, exorcisms for demons, a silver bullet to the heart for shapeshifters. there’s only three times in the entire first season that they run into something new to them; 1x14 when sam gets his first vision that leads him to another psychic, 1x16 when dean calls caleb for help on the sigil he put together and he tells him about daevas, and 1x20 when they find out vampires are real- and they only don’t know that bc john thought they were hunted to extinction and not worth mentioning

(there’s also technically two half instances if you count one of them knowing something the other doesn’t - sam figuring out the tulpa in 1x17 and dean already knowing about the shtriga in 1x18 - but those still rely on sam and dean having prior knowledge)

even when they’re uncertain about facing something, it’s not bc they don’t know what it is; it’s precisely bc they know what it is and acknowledge that it’ll be a difficult hunt (“i don't know, man. this isn't our normal gig. i mean, demons, they don't want anything, just death and destruction for its own sake. this is big. and i wish dad was here.” 1x04)

so much of the tension in paranormal shows typically comes from the main character(s) not knowing what is happening to them/the people around them and having to find out how to resolve it. supernatural is unique in that it operates more like a police procedural. the tension comes from solving the clues and identifying patterns to figure out who (what) the killer is and intercepting before they can take another victim

it’s such a different tone to go for when compared to other shows that came both before, during, and after its run. it sets sam and dean on even footing with each other since they both have the same knowledge going in, and it puts them in a place of authority usually reserved for an outside character

the shows i compare spn to most is charmed, buffy and teen wolf; every main character in those shows are brought into the paranormal world knowing nothing, putting them on the same level as the audience, and they have their mc interact with others already knowledgeable about that world in order to overcome their problem/monster of the week. the audience organically learns about this new world as the characters learn about it. it’s a sound writing strategy that prevents “as we already know”-style exposition but something that complicates it is if your world building isn’t unique or intriguing enough, this slow introduction can become boring

we’ve seen shows like these before; sitting through the same tropes of characters learning to use their powers, struggling with no longer feeling normal/relating to the regular world around them, and not knowing how much they can trust the people already involved in this new world gets repetitive. all three shows eventually reach the same level of comfort with their new world that spn starts with but if the characters aren’t enough to draw you in, you can end up dropping it before they reach that point (and often, before the overarching plot can really kick in and evolve the show beyond the villain of the week format)

it’s the superhero origin movie in tv format; dragged out and overplayed. dropping the audience into an established world of course comes with its own problems but you also have the benefit of pre-existing established character dynamics that let the audience slot in like they’ve always been there instead of just getting to know all the characters while the characters also get to know each other

sam and dean already knowing about the supernatural lets the audience immediately get to the core of the story; the conflict between sam and dean, the search for their father, and the mystery of what killed their mother