#this is a biased post because i just want to hear about lucy's backstory already LMAO

[halforcdad]

Thoughts on how they will explain a possible 3 episode Lucy absence?

The first thing that comes to mind that makes sense to me is Lucy's family.

We don't really know much about Lucy. Take it from her, her entire life is just work, gym, and Kate. She doesn’t really have anything else going on (I really thought her being a junior agent and wanting to follow in Tennant's footsteps was gonna be up there, but they seemed to randomly drop that after they futzed with the timeline to give us that Kacy backstory). The only thing we really know about her is that she has issues with her rich family and potentially burned that bridge when she left Texas. Given NCIS: Hawai`i's focus on ohana and the crumbs she was dropping last season (they were her third-most talked about thing behind work and Kacy angst lol), Lucy’s family troubles seem to be shaping up to be her other big long-term storyline. 

Among the bits of bts we've gotten from 2x07 (presumably the last episode she would be in if she were to be absent for 3 episodes) was this interesting little sneak peak:

(from a bts video a crewmember uploaded, these are tori and yas's stand-ins while the crew is setting up the shot)

Looks like the perfect set-up for them to get personal, like talking about Lucy’s fear of the water or quietly reflecting on her insecurities or her family/childhood (we already have a Whistler focused episode so this could be Lucy’s moment). Like something on the same level of seriousness as the scene where Lucy’s comforting and encouraging Kate outside of the FBI BBQ, but maybe with less anxiety and more chill vibes lol. It could be a great opportunity to finally introduce some substantial Lucy backstory and or a long-term background storyline that isn’t just about her and Kate.  

I know a lot of people theorize that her family has cut her out completely or vice versa, but NCIS: Hawai'i already has one parent-child relationship that started out like that with Wally and Kai so maybe they want to differentiate a little (though they could use that similarity as an opportunity to get them to bond over it whenever that storyline happens, a more in-depth version of 1x04). I could see her not reaching out, but not having their numbers blocked either or still keeping minimal contact with them, birthdays and whatnot. Maybe something happened with a niece or nephew or her parents and she needs to go back and see them. It would warrant Tennant giving her extended personal time to take care of it. Plus, it would be easy to explain why she’s not in the episode at all if she’s back on the mainland and if they wanted to, they could include her without her needing to be on location/the sets via either phone or video calls and she could record all her scenes ahead of time. Though, the cons to this would be that if Lucy was absent from the episode, that means we wouldn’t get to see any of the angsty family scenes! (unless there were flashbacks shown later) and it could turn into a lot of tell not show type story writing which I hate. It would be a neat way to introduce angst though if Lucy is keeping it all in and not telling anybody about what happened even though its clearly affecting her (or if Kate feels hurt that Lucy didn't want her to go with her/isn't telling her either). It would be an interesting bump in the road in a season where she's been building trust and communication with Kate. My dream would be for it to progress slowly, more mentions of her past here and there, her family slowly becoming more present in her life (good or bad), maybe a brother or sister shows up in an episode down the line as a suspect or to visit and that throws her off, but I want the parents showing up to be an unexpected monumental thing that doesn't happen until like at least late s3 or s4.

Each of their cases takes places over the course of a few days minimum and that’s not even accounting for the amount of time that might take place in between them. Unless they threw in a few Nightwatch type cases (which they solved in one friday night and one entire saturday) then I don’t see how you explain away that big of an absence in-story unless you introduce a big storyline like Lucy needing to go back home for some reason. 

Another possibility I’ve seen floating around is Lucy getting hurt in the upcoming episodes, which is very doable and I would not hate it at all. My only potential concern with that is I would want her to have scenes with the whole team and not just Kate while she's recovering. So maybe if she’s in the hospital, Tennant comes by to see her and tells her about the case or the boys throw her a little party in the hospital or they video call her because she’s bored out of her mind. Though, since Lucy’s in the crossover, I don’t know how keen Tennant would be bringing an agent who was recently seriously injured with her to LA on a mission like the one being described in the crossover (Noah is also listed as being in the crossover, but I don’t know if I’ve heard or seen anything at all about him filming out of state). IIRC, the synopsis mentions something about agents being targeted so Lucy being separated from everyone while in Texas could make her an easy target? Or if she hears about Tennant going to LA, it would make sense why she’s the one accompanying her because she’s already on the mainland and would probably be looking for an excuse to leave her family (or maybe she wants to leave Texas to protect them since she’s a target). 

Hell, since we're speculating let's just throw shit at the wall. Maybe they do something wild like Lucy went on a long undercover thing or oh she's suspended because she fucked up.

Of course, they could still go with, “oh Tennant just shipped Lucy off to help another division since she's the only one who doesn't have family they need to take care of in Hawai’i or Lucy needed to help a friend or something it’s nbd,” and have her come back like nothing happened. 

tldr; keeping up with the taras, she gets hurt, they just brush it off casually, or they throw something out of left field

(i am in the camp that if she were to be absent entirely, id lean more on it only being a one or two episode absence at most)

[tvitr]

uwu I don’t make the ruwules

(Okay fine, reasons/opinions below the cut but be warned! I won’t be holding back on game or book spoilers. Or rambling. This got longer than I anticipated lol)

BETTER IN THE BOOK

Eis “Fireman Sam” Glover: I don’t know what the game was trying to do with this one. I guess he gets overwhelmed by the fire and loses his composure or gets scared or... something?  Also why did he not bring a hose. Or a mask.  This is why so many reviewers thought Wonderworld was a metaphor for purgatory and all the inhabitants are dead I swear. Who cares, the book handled it a lot better. I wouldn’t say it’s perfect, but there’s definitely a good idea here with some interesting themes. The gist is that he feels ashamed following his captain’s orders to retreat during a serious blaze, which his colleagues disobeyed, and his colleagues are later hailed as heroes by the press.  Is Balan the Book trying to take on toxic masculinity...? How brave. Tl;dr, the book conveyed the story a Hell of lot better than the game. Honestly I’m surprised this is the only one.

BETTER IN THE GAME

Haoyu “Airplane Boi” Chang: So the book tried waaaay too hard to draw a parallel between Haoyu and Fiona (aka, Dolphin Girl) to the point that they both share a similar backstory, in that they had a hobby which led to a near-fatal accident and now they’re too traumatised to resume said hobby. And that’s not a bad thing per se but... “near fatal accident” was already Fiona’s backstory. We didn’t need a duplicate. And this is more personal preference, but I kinda liked Haoyu’s story in the game anyway. His failure at building a functioning aeroplane out of crap he found in his garage is endearingly funny in the game, and the resolution of him taking time out to sit down and study before building anything is a nice spin on the whole “if at first you don’t succeed” theme the chapter wanted. 

Sana “Bird Lady” Hudson: So the book decided they didn’t want to make Cal an angry sore loser so guess what? They made Sana an angry misanthrope. Wonderful. Okay maybe that’s harsh, but she definitely came off as very bitter and unsympathetic in the book. Like there’s a scene at the end where she harasses a firefighter and tries to steal a fire engine because they’re working on a building fire and not supervising her park. That’s not a character you wanna root for. That’s a Karen. The game had a better plot thread and resolution to her story rather than a boring cookie-cutter “humans vs. nature grrrr humans are so evil” story, like the game story here had a bit more depth to it and approached the topic more maturely than the book did. Which is ironic considering how hilariously edgy the book gets sometimes, but I guess throwing a few smashed eggs and frozen bird skeletons into your story doesn’t mean anything if you’re still going to paint such a black-and-white narrative.

Iben “Frozen Elsa” Bia: This story didn’t need dialogue. Like... we don’t need her to justify why she’s upset her parents are dead because we’d already assume that. They’re her parents! Of course we’d assume she’d be upset! They died! Simultaneously! That’s horrible! WE DON’T NEED HER TO EXPLAIN THIS! Also her dialogue in the book was... pretty terrible, not gonna lie. Like if you’re gonna insist on dialogue at least make it gOOD. I’m actually planning on just reviewing her book scene so I can fully articulate just how bad it is anyway, so stay tuned for that mess lol.

FINE IN BOTH

I mean there’s not really too much to say here but anyways:

Jose/”The Farmer” having a family in the book gives him a bit more depth, even if we never hear from them again after his backstory dump.

Fiona/”Dolphin Girl” almost drowns in a slightly different way, with a dolphin straight up pulling her mask off rather than knocking it out of her mouth, and the book also goes more into detail about her love for diving and dolphins. Also the book ships her and Haoyu like. So hard. Like they never shut up about how similar they are or what they other’s doing or if the other’s okay or not. By the end of it I was expecting them to just start making out in front of everyone, they’re that obsessed with each other. And it would be funny if they didn’t use this to wreck Haoyu’s backstory like I mentioned earlier.

Yuri/”Bug Kid”/”Is that a Pokémon reference?” is now being kinda bullied for liking bugs, which yeah gives her more depth and reason to be upset but I also kinda related to her just being that One Kid with interests that nobody else had. But it’s not as bad as some of the other changes, so I can let it slide.

Atillio/Clown and Bruce/Old Man are the same, nothing to say here.

Lucy/”The Artist” is a total drama queen but then again so are Art People so I can let it slide. I did like them changing her problem from “artist’s block” (seriously?) to her feeling too under pressure to create masterpieces, unless that’s what the game was aiming for? Oh who cares.

JUST A BIG MESS

Cass “Dead Cat Girl” Milligan: This is a weird one because the story is the same between the game and book (though the book mentions she witnessed a more severe car accident rather than a speeding car which she assumes kills the cat, and the cat isn’t even her cat, it’s a stray) but the story itself is... flawed. According to the book, they wanted to convey the idea that running away from the accident was irresponsible, and she just needed to look back and she’d see her cat is okay, but the game kind of makes it look more like Balan turned back time to save her cat, and the book mentions a serious car crash which I don’t think anyone would willingly return to. I feel there’s a better way to convey this idea of being responsible for your pets, like say her cat escapes from the house and gets lost, and her resolution is going out and properly looking for it. That’s a more effective (and natural) way to relay that message, especially as they weren’t going to commit to the idea of grieving a lost pet.

I’M CONFLICTED

Cal “Chess Daddy” Suresh: God this was a tough call. On one hand Cal’s game backstory is one of the ones most YouTube players single out as the weakest backstory in the game. He’s just “that guy who lost one game of chess”. Being right before Iben’s level certainly doesn’t help. I could honestly write a separate post about how bad the story placements are in this game but that’s too long for here.  On the other hand, I still... kinda like it? Like I like this idea of him being a sore loser with a bad temper who needs to learn some humility, sure it’s not as serious as “I almost drowned” or “my parents are dead” but one of the few good things about the game is that it balanced “serious” stories with “benign” ones, if that makes sense. HOWEVER His book scene is... probably one of the best written in the whole book. Which isn’t saying much, but it felt like it hit the intended degree of darkness that the rest of the book was trying to hit. One of my main issues with the book is how much it edged up everyone’s backstory, which doesn’t sound bad but when you have 12 characters with edgy backstories to sit through, it starts to feel like a 14 year old's first attempt at writing an angsty fanfiction very quickly. And yes, Cal’s story is dark and angsty but it felt like the perfect balance of dark and angsty. Or as perfect as the book can get. Like even Balan’s annoying rhyming dialogue sounded good for the tone of the scene. Man maybe I should just do a review of both his backstories in a bigger post.  Obviously I could be biased because I’m a sucker for chess aesthetics and dark skinned men with long permed hair so I’m just putting more thought into him but still.