#this episode was a bit odd

[respectthepetty]

The beginning of Your Sky's seventh episode could've been the end of the series for me because the boys waking up in the bed with Rak in pink and laying all over his boyfriend would have been the perfect way to wrap this up!

But nooooooo! I, and Fah, must feel pain first!

So even though Fah is in full Blue Boy mode and Rak is IN PINK BECAUSE HE LOVES FAH, Rak decides to hurt us all and keeps his distance from Fah.

Thankfully that is not the case for Black Brooder Real who seems to be trying to make that love connection happen with Red Rascal Hia after seeing him naked in the shower.

So it makes it painfully clear the different dynamics happening simulateously at the table.

And everyone notices.

But once they return from the beach, it's back to black business.

Well, someone is still thinking about his Red Rascal . . .

Which is why when shit goes down in the club, Real jumps in front of his man to protect him from harm.

But personally, I think they should've let James & Co handle it and not have requested the group pay half the damages since this was not any of their fault but instead that grubby scheming man's.

But then again, Fah was dealing with his own queer rights moment.

So it's a bummer that Rak didn't tell Fah that he loves him when he was tending to his wrist.

But it's okay, because he was wearing Fah's blue, so I already know that Rak loves him. Fah doesn't, but I do.

So maybe that's why the show tried to make me feel bad for Oh doing *ALL THE THINGS* by having him confront his mother for being self-centered and uncaring, and by trying to convince us that Oh truly believed he had a chance with Rak even though it was extremely clear he did not but if Fah doesn't realize Rak loves him, how was Oh supposed to know? You know? No?

Anywho . . . he gets his own little happily every after in the form of a cutie patootie with glasses!

And I know it's love because he hands Oh a pink handkerchief to wipe away his tears, but apparently only I understand the colors, so Oh will never realize he is loved now just like he never knew that Rak did not love him.

But Rak's buddies get the color-coded assignment, so Pink Person Joy has a pink straw, Green Guy Type has a green straw, and Yellow Yal Rak has his yellow straw when Rak decides to confess his newly-realized feelings (even though I've been knowing).

But Lee is playing color games with his purple straw!

Which doesn't surprise me because he was acting like he didn't even know his brother and Rak were actually in love even though he has been doing the most to make sure his ship sailed this entire series like constantly playing middleman between them!

But I think both Fah AND Lee are Blue Boys just like their dad who can't even take a proper rest from work.

So of course his two loyal sons fly overnight to take care of business for their dad.

And I'm sure that's why Rak's family, who are magically wearing blue, will love Fah once they get to know him.

But first this Yellow Yal needs to do what he does best and communicate his feelings.

Because Fah loves him for exactly who he is.

A bright ray of sunshine in his blue sky.

[madbard]

The TMA to WTNV pipeline is… fascinating.

[perhapspen]

it's nearly 2025. tommyinnit is a bicurious comedian podcaster and somehow actually funny again. coy piso is getting ever closer to announcing that he's moving to new york. mumbo jumbo is uploading new hermitcraft videos that simply ooze joy and excitement 3 times a week. and somehow i'm watching all of them enjoying myself like it's covid era again

[wickmitz]

you know rereading the comic got me thinking and i feel ur the best person for this. im very intrigued by mitzi and asa's dynamic pre, during, AND post atlas. i really wish we saw more of what happened before atlas' passing bc mitzi herself said asa used to be so nice to her and i'm just like YO WHAT HAPPENED anyways hi hello love ur blog

hi! i’m flattered you love my blog! and even more so by the fact you think i’m the best person to go to for this question! i’ve briefly talked about mitzi and asa before when analyzing the lunch scene in my long analysis for mitzi’s and wick’s relationship, where i said this on the matter :

to touch upon asa’s treatment of mitzi, even from as early as the phone call we see that mitzi is forced to have a conversation with asa on his terms rather than her own terms. mitzi sets out with a clear goal in mind -- learning why asa sweet would attack the lackadaisy in the way that he did -- and she's repeatedly talked over and threatened, with her questions remaining unanswered. it’s very clear very quickly that asa doesn’t respect mitzi nor view her as someone worthy of his time like atlas was, and almost appears to approach her in a misogynistic manner. he demeans something as simple as her ukulele as a ‘teeny little guitar’ and acts as though mitzi’s tears would be bothersome to him, some sort of burden he’d be forced to deal with rather than a valid emotional response to threats, degradation, and the likes. while asa is by no means wrong with some of his observations, he’s certainly rude and uncaring with how he goes about it. when he tells mitzi that he’s here to suggest that she step down, because he so generously has her interests in mind, she doesn’t buy it ; once again bringing up last nights events, where asa willingly armed the pig farmers with the lackadaisy’s arsenal and sent them over her way without so much as a warning. asa dismisses this coldly, once again dodging any fault and claiming it was ‘happenstance’ and entirely mitzi’s own doing. even now, when he’s actively threatening her and making it clear they won’t stay friendly if she keeps trying to make it in this business, he still won’t fully admit to any sort of responsibility for the disastrous night he helped put her through. while this seems rather typical of asa given his disrespectful streak ( something even mordecai, as valued and as useful as he is, suffers because of ) it’s worth noting that this side of him is new to mitzi and not one she was at all expecting. she even says as much here, in heartstrings.

we also know that mitzi only met atlas due to her performing at the marigold speakeasy first, and it’s likely asa was rather present in her life due to his bond with her now husband. asa even admits that mitzi may be confused because they’ve ’managed a friendly coexistence for so long,’ once again hammering home this idea that up until this point, asa was indeed kind to mitzi, or at the very least cordial. but with atlas out of the picture and mitzi trying to take his position, suddenly asa is more than okay with getting her killed or taking all she has left -- even his plan is nothing short of apathetic and cold, an afterthought, expecting her to give up something important to her and only offering a one time offer to play at the marigold room ‘sometime’ with that ‘old band of hers.’ what’s important here is that mitzi is ruthlessly betrayed by a man who used to like her and is treated as a lesser thing due to his view that she’s too incompetent to run a rumrunning business. he also brings up atlas to, in mitzi’s eyes, ‘intimidate ( her ) into agreeing with him,’ and towards the end of the lunch, she looks particularly kicked and undoubtedly hurt. she leaves this meeting that could’ve stayed a phone call with a potential enemy made and with the world on her shoulders, now more determined than ever to be someone people like asa would be forced to respect. instead of being dissuaded, she’s been encouraged, and it’s not hard to realize why.

so, i suppose those are my very brief thoughts about them post atlas! but as for pre and during, i don’t think there was ever anything really there outside of peaceful coexistence. as atlas’s wife, mitzi garnered respect she probably never had before as a traveling musician! asa wouldn’t dare insult her or belittle her once she became atlas’s wife and probably felt no need to do so in the first place. especially since, after all, asa’s the reason atlas found mitzi at all, back when she played for the marigold room where i assume she was treated well enough given asa’s rather friendly mask. he’s a jokester! he’s well meaning and goofy, always smiling and his eyes permanently upturned looking due to the patterns on his face … mitzi wouldn’t ever really see the asa that many other people deal with, and even when comparing asa to her rather quiet and eeire husband, well, he’d still seem leagues impressionable by default. asa purposely acts like he’s approachable and harmless, and while mitzi definitely knew he wasn’t some angel, i do think she fell for that mask more than she’d like to admit.

how i’ve always viewed their relationship is that the very nature of it was dictated by atlas may simply existing and owning her. his mere interest in mitzi was something phenomenal, and by default, something people had to respect. asa sweet was kind to her because she likely didn’t linger in the marigold room for too long before atlas snatched her up. he’s then very cordial to her, probably armed with compliments and generous gestures of interest because she’s atlas’s wife and asa can respect that role wholeheartedly. it’s only when atlas is removed and mitzi begins putting her paws where they ‘don’t belong’ that asa seems to drop the ruse, because there’s no need to keep it up anymore. even though mitzi isn’t harming anyone and hasn’t tried to step on asa’s toes once, he still steals from her and puts her in danger without care -- not once burdened by any real guilt as he continues to threaten her when she doesn’t back down immediately. with how clinical the removal of affection is here ( because even mordecai hasn’t managed to remove viktor, mitzi, or ivy in such a careful or ruthless way despite his awful actions and words ) i find it hard to believe he ever truly cared for mitzi as an individual person outside of atlas. the way he so casually oozes disrespect and belittles her without blinking an eye is … interesting!

all of this is to say that i don’t think asa and mitzi were ever personally close. they probably never knew each other deeply nor made any real steps to try. they’d see each other because asa had a habit of appearing in the lackadaisy just as much as atlas had the habit of being at the marigold room, and so they’d greet each other and asa would be excessively kind in that bumbling fool way he keenly presents himself and mitzi would be pleased by his presence. very simple ‘this is my friend’s wife’ vibes and nothing more. i doubt asa would even be interested in cozying up to mitzi due to atlas’s implied possessive behavior lol … but it was kindness and it was caring to an extent. it just wasn’t as deep or loyal as mitzi might’ve hoped it would be.

[thenotoriousscuttlecliff]

Chibnall's Master is just a mess of motivations, and it's no surprise that many struggle with this take on the character, but it's frustrating when some get mad about this, insisting that the character isn't badly written, people "just don't understand them" and then rattle off a load of headcanons to explain them that are exclusively things fans made up to fill in the gaps in Chibnall's characterisation.

[realbeefman]

my most crazed borderline-stupid house theory is that. house didn’t survive the fire in the finale. james wilson simply lost his homosexual mind when the love of his life and soulmate died. when house left him alone in those final days of his life when he needed him more than ever. everybody was confused by wilson talking about a phone ringing during the funeral because there WASN’T a phone ringing. wilson just fully went off the deep end and lived out his final days in delusional gay bliss with hallucination-house

[readymades2002]

rewatching gravityfalls since its the topic du jour and running into the exact same hurdle i did when it was airing which is simply aggressively not caring about ford and his associated stuff

[glitched-out-mess]

i watched the new hazbin episode 2 leaked and this is the only good screenshot from it everything else can leave

[luck-of-the-drawings]

TRAINING ARC: START!! BOTHER YOUR GUARDIAN AND EXHIBIT ISSUES. NOW SOLVE THOSE ISSUES BY BOTHERING GUARDIANS. I HAVE FULL FAITH IN OUR HEROS!

[favvn]

From Castles in the Sky to Minding the Clouds: A Brief Look into how The Cloud Minders Came to Be

This episode is one that many in the fandom these days look down upon from what I have gleaned. Not as hated as The Omega Glory or And The Children Shall Lead (bottom of the list on IMDB, ouch), The Cloud Minders is an episode that gets a lot of flak for how it handles its plot, characterizations, and its "non-ending" where everything is essentially forgotten as Kirk and Spock beam back to the Enterprise.

The episode itself stems from a short story titled Castles in the Sky by David Gerrold, one of the writers credited on the episode. The episode underwent 4 outlines and 4 revised teleplays between Oliver Crawford and David Gerrold on one side as the writers and Margaret Armen and Arthur Singer (Singer was the story editor to the series in season 3 and Armen was considered to take on the role) on the other, with producer Fred Freiberger offering page rewrites during filming. Season 3 was intense behind the scenes. Rewrites during filming and multiple outlines and revisions are common especially on Star Trek TOS, but not quite like this.

In his original work, Gerrold imagines a planet, Aronis (which rhymes with baroness), where the affluent portion of the population — the Skymen — live in idyllic floating cities. The Ballakies, a less-affluent group of manual laborers, live in harsh conditions on the planet. Upon arriving at Aronis, Kirk, Spock, McCoy, Uhura and Chekov fly in a shuttlecraft to the sky city of G’aela to meet with the matronly Grandee. En route, their shuttlecraft is forced to the surface by missiles fired from the planet. Upon landing the crew finds themselves in the presence of the elected and unelected leaders of the working-class Ballakies; the former a proper diplomat named Keemar, and the latter a Pancho Villa-type character called Gue’ve’che. Through his interaction with the Ballakies, Kirk learns that disease, lack of housing, malnutrition, and more have made the living conditions on Aronis terrible. Gue’ve’che wants to lead a revolution against the Skymen as a result. In fact, he wants nothing more than to use a missile to shoot down G’aela, but, alas, none of them are powerful enough. Kirk tells Gue’ve’che and Keemar that he will see if he can help the situation and they agree with one stipulation: Gue’ve’che must be allowed to keep McCoy, Chekov and Uhura as hostages. (source)

Ballakies. Say that aloud and tell me what it sounds like. This story summary seems to want to tackle the issue of racism in light of the ongoing Civil Rights Movement and MLK Jr.'s assassination, and it wanted to still highlight the divide between those who labor and those who reap the rewards. Gue've'che looks an awful lot like an anagram of Che Guevara. Add the distinction of "proper diplomat" versus "Pancho Villa-type character" and you have even more nuance out the window with what this summary is pointing towards (as in, the diplomat is the one we root for, the vigilante is the one we are to hate, and it turns into an interesting choice to make when one looks at how MLK Jr. and Malcom X approached the same issues from different sides, regardless of how the summary tries to protect itself from such a criticism by nudging the viewer into making a different connection). No wonder things changed so much with the rewrites.

In good news, this summary provided by startrek.com is probably not what Gerrold's actual short story entailed. Why do I claim such a thing? Because Memory-Alpha produces a different summary of this episode, taken from Gerrold's The World of Star Trek: The Show The Network Could Not Kill! The summary includes the plot line that: "Uhura has been injured in the shuttlecraft crash, McCoy starts treating her in a Mannie (short for Manual Laborer) hospital. But he is so appalled at the condition of the other patients there, especially the children suffering from high-pressure disease, that he begins treating them as well. Meanwhile, Kirk and Spock have convinced their captors to let them go up to the sky city and try to negotiate a settlement to the local crisis."

Both summaries include the division between two leaders for the people who live on the surface and the overall division between those who live on the surface and those who live in the sky, yet in the first summary, Uhura, McCoy, and Chekov are taken hostage rather than given their own B-plot as happens in the second summary. That's an entire developed plot line that was cut, and you don't add large details in the process of a rewrite. You try to simplify the retained elements and cut what cannot be adapted. The finished episode does away with this second leader and there's no plot line whatsoever of a crashed shuttlecraft or of Uhura and McCoy being such a focal part of the episode, so one can safely assume these details would have been part of the very first episode draft and where cut with each ensuing rewrite in the process of creating the finished episode.

A great question to ask, of course, would be why did they choose to cut such a plot out as it is a great story line for Uhura and McCoy? Possibly due to its initial ending and budgetary restraints:

In the end, as the Enterprise breaks orbit, Kirk remarks on this, as if inaugurating the problem-solving procedure is the same as solving the problem. He pats himself on the back and says, "We've got them talking. It's just a matter of time until they find the right direction." And McCoy who is standing right next to him, looks at him and says, "Yes, but how many children will die in the meantime?" This answer was not a facile one; the viewer was meant to be left as uneasy as Kirk.

While it is true that Star Trek could have and should have elected to use this, especially given what they did prior to season 3 (see: A Taste of Armageddon, the ending from The City on the Edge of Forever or how the ending to Metamorphosis points to larger, unresolved issues despite Shatner's stupid decision to read the lines like a joke), season 3 saw more and more issues happening behind the scenes that impacted production times and how episodes were filmed to begin with. It's entirely possible that the series no longer had the budget for such an episode, from the sets and props needed to paying the actors accordingly (I know a lot has been said about how the actors were placed in tiers according to starring / also starring / guest star / co-starring / etc. but regardless of salary negotiations and contract disputes, that's still money that is needed on hand every week for everyone involved). Adding rushed re-writes to keep the production on schedule would only make the story's adaptation worse and lead to more cuts to the initial draft, and if characters are cut from the episode, that's more money saved.

*Obligatory disclaimer: I could be wrong on these points. I cannot find Gerrold's original short story and I do not have access to what These Are the Voyages may say about this episode's production. I'm making all of this from a few details and one big educated guess.*

[normal-sea-urchin]

am i supposed to find it as weird as i do that in the 2010 mighty morphin power rangers they black guy was the black power ranger and the asian girl was the yellow power ranger?

[sporkandpringles]

Been thinking a lot lately about how Voyager could have used more recurring characters, but how difficult that is with the fact that Voyager does not stay in the same place for very long, and it's making me think that the Temporal Cold War might have made a better Voyager plot than an ENT one.

[quietwingsinthesky]

im thinking about clara’s ending, though. like, on a very self-indulgent level, i do enjoy that she gets to live (kind of) and time travel and get an immortal girlfriend to do it with. but on another level, i’m kind of curious… why? given how much emphasis this episode and the last put on how clara herself made her choice and didn’t want the doctor to go through all of this to bring her back, i mean she’s horrified by it, both for his sake but also for the sake of her own memory that was used to bring him to this point. and then, of course, the exchange at the end with Me and the Doctor, “summer can’t last forever” “it can if you have a time machine”, that is so obviously meant to be this desperate, denying plea from the doctor to a universe that can’t care about the time he wants because it doesn’t even have enough for itself to keep living, and an immortal who has all the time in the world and can’t even remember all of it, even remember herself most of the time.

which. it’s just odd, then. that the episode ends with clara getting to have that forever summer. you’d think it goes both ways, not just that the doctor can’t run forever but neither can clara. she says they’ll be going back to gallifrey eventually, but words are a bit cheap against her literally running away with the last second of her life in a time machine. (and uh. given what eventually happens to gallifrey. lol. lmao. girl no one is putting u back there ever.)

i don’t think i’d call this a criticism exactly. just a strange choice to make, that the ending there seems completely at odds with everything else Heaven Sent/Hell Bent have been about. that this grief and denial are so destructive, and to no one more than themselves. but then clara escapes through a loophole anyway.

[bookwyrminspiration]

i have now rewatched the entirety of sanders sides and come to the conclusion that past me was so tasteless and Janus is an absolute fucking delight

[mariocki]

New Scotland Yard: The Come Back (1.2, LWT, 1972)

"This wasn't a sudden impulse. It was deliberate and calculated. He had to break in to get at the old man, and then - well, you saw what he did to him. I don't know if he's a psycho or not, but I do know he's a sadist and I know what treatment I'd hand out."

"Yeah, I can guess."

"It's the only way."

"You've a right to your opinion, just don't try and convert me."

"I wouldn't dream of it, I know what you think."

"I think it's just as well your job ends when we catch him."

[thelittlemermage]

The ending to brain to the future was wild too

Much to consider.....