#this is similar to s2 pacing problems

[farahtissaiamyloves]

Lady of night

A Farah Dowling x fem!reader story

I wrote this a while ago but decided to wait for s2 in order to publish it. We should have had more Farah, so here's a one-shot for her !!!

Enjoy.

You had been doing your daily duties when Luna called for you.

You sighed. Luna had just returned from Alfea and the first thing she did was to send a servant to you to request your presence.

This wasn't going to be good.

You were very well aware of Stella's slow progress and chaotic magic, so was Luna, even if she was unwilling to acknowledge it and take responsibility for it.

But Luna couldn't blame Stella for being 'weak', that would mean calling her own self weak, calling the crown and the most powerful realm of the fairy world weak.

Meaning, that the easiest person to blame - because Luna loved accusing other powerful people of being weak - was Farah Dowling, headmistress of Alfea.

Farah Dowling, one of the most - if not the most - powerful fairy of her generation, was the unfortunate victim of Luna's unwillingness to take the blame.

The problem was, that Farah wasn't only an experienced, powerful, graceful fairy, but also your former fiance.

You, younger twin of the leader of the bigger and more prominent realm currently was to be the headmistress' wife.

Twins in Solaria's royal family was extremely rare. However, they existed.

One of the twins would be completely normal, just like all of the children, unlike the other one.

The other twin was doomed to be allergic to the very thing that was Solaria's symbol.

The light.

Skin as pale as snow. Hair as black as the starless night sky. Eyes green like two stars sparkling during the night.

The rest of your characteristics were similar to Luna's.

The two of you were of those twins that were looking exactly alike, if someone ignored the differences of your allergy, then you would look like the same person.

Luna was the Solaria's sun and you were its moon. 

Unfortunately, when the two of you were born, Luna's skin was paler than yours so she was the one named after the moon.

This was never a problem for the two of you, though. The name was pretty and both you and Luna were fond of your respective names.

You and Farah had broken up a couple of months before Astrer Dell.

After plenty arguments about Rosalind's mysterious and suspicious motives, you couldn't stand Farah's blind royalty to her.

You were a tiny jealous of Rosalind. Farah was literally running to do Rosalind's biding.

But then again, it was obvious that Rosalind was manipulating Farah and the rest of her four.

Eventually, after a very frustrating argument, where for the millionth time you tried to talk some sense into her, you left.

Farah didn't dare to pursue you afterward, you assumed that Rosalind forbade it.

And after what happened in Aster Dell... Farah was too ashamed and depressed to face you.

So you both let go.

Or that was what you were saying to yourselves.

None of you had any relationships after this one.

Neither you nor Farah could imagine yourselves with an other partner.

You shake off the feeling of uneasiness in your gut. Luna's your teen. You had nothing to be afraid of.

There was no need for you to knock, so you quietly entered her study. 

Luna had been pacing around, clearly deep in thought. 

You didn't interrupt her, just walked toward the chair in front of her desk and sat.

A glass of whiskey was already placed in front of the chair, waiting for you. You smiled faintly at your sister's action.

You took it in your hands and waited for her to break the silence.

" She's not progressing. " Luna said, her pacing finally coming to a halt as she abruptly turned to look at you.

You looked back at her. " She's a first year. Progress is slow and nearly non-existent in the beginning. Just give her time. "

Luna glanced sharply at you. " But she's also a princess and the heir of Solaria's throne ! She is depicting Solaria's power ! She is Solaria ! "

You raised an eyebrow. " However, she's a sixteen-year-old teenager and she needs to live her life ! Luna, should I remind you how were we back then ? " 

Luna bit her lip trying to hide a smile. " Please, don't. " She shook her head taking a sip from her own glass of whiskey.

There was a comfortable silence for a while. Luna walked to her window and stood facing it, staring at the night sky.

" I need you there. " Luna suddenly spoke.

You choke on your drink. " What ? "

Luna turned to lock eye contact with you. " I need someone to be my eyes, ears and mind there. Stella may feel better with a familiar face and you have already teaching experience. "

You couldn't believe what you just heard her saying. Luna wanted to send you at Alfea. 

Luna wanted to send you to Farah.

You gazed at her for a second. " You don't mean it. " You said unable to believe what she just stated with so much certainty.

" I know that it will be awkward, but you are single, she's single and if you go there, Stella will finally have a true professor. See ? All of us win. " Luna explained with a pleased smile.

You froze. Normally, you would be offended after such a bad and wrong implication for Farah but you were frozen and mainly focused on Luna's previous sentence.

She thought that the two of you could go back together ?

" And you can also keep an eye on her, even though I'm sure you are going to do this without my special request. " Luna continued.

Your eyes widened. " There's no way I'm spying on Farah for you. "

The twin let out a low chuckle. " Of course you aren't. "

" Soooo, do I have a choice on this matter ? " You asked already knowing the answer.

" No. "

꧁☾︎❥︎☽︎꧂

Farah's throat burned due to the shot she just drank.

The woman had sad on a chair in front of her bed seeking the alcohol's comfort.

She didn't have any choice but to accept the Great Princess of Solaria who wished to return back to teaching.

You were going to start in two weeks, Farah had two more weeks to decide how she should act around you.

She knew that she needed to apologize. She learned her lesson, she saw where blind loyalty led.

But it was never a loyalty, it was more of obsession. Obsession to be the best, Rosalind's first and most trusted.

Farah gulped an other shot.

She still loved you. After all of these years, she wanted to see you, touch you, talk to you.

However, she dreaded the moment as well. 

She hurt you while you tried to protect her from the inevitable.

You had every right to despise her.

Farah had obviously thought of apologizing but preferred not to.

Not because she didn't want to or chickened out, but due to Luna's coldness.

Something she and all of your friends learned through the time was that if one of the teens didn't like a person, so did the other one.

However, Luna decided to bring you here. What did this mean ?

Did you come here only for Stella or Stella was only a pretense ?

Farah didn't know. She didn't know what to do.

She wanted to apologize, try the relationship thing again.

People change in 16 years, she knew that but she wasn't one to give up easily.

The problem was that she was, apparently, afraid of rejection.

You deserved more than just a stubborn as hell killer who also happened to be a former soldier.

Farah got drunk that day. Luckily, the next day was Sunday and she didn't have any classes or meetings to attend to.

She closed the curtains not baring to look at the night sky.

Everything related to it reminded her of you.

꧁☾︎❥︎☽︎꧂

" Miss Dowling, I'm so sorry. I tried to talk them out of it but they did not listen. " Stella apologized.

Farah smiled at her, Stella run to her office first thing in the morning.

She had probably informed, just like Farah, of your new career late at the evening.

Farah had a terrible headache but pushed it away. If someone was to be affected from such news, it would obviously be Stella.

" It's alright, dear. You have nothing to apologize for. I'm sure that the school would only benefit by accomodating two royals and powerful fairies. " Farah assured the young princess.

" Yes, but... you and her are not in the best conditions... It must be so difficult for you... and it's all my fault. I have no progress and- " Stella was cut off by the headmistress.

" You have progress and you know that. "

" Well, yes. But- "

" There are no buts ! " Farah slightly raised her voice inadvertently accelerating the pain caused by the hungover. " Now, off you go. It's Sunday. Enjoy this great... "

Farah made a pause. " Sunny day. "

Stella shook her head. " There will be many sunny days, miss Dowling, but only one- "

" Some of us, dear Stella, don't have this opportunity. You are dismissed. " Farah couldn't do this anymore. She crossed her hands and stared at Stella expectantly.

Stella who was shocked by Farah's implication just nodded and left the office.

Farah sat on her chair and held her face in her hands.

Where had she put that bottle of vodka ?

꧁☾︎❥︎☽︎꧂

Everyone was dressed formerly waiting in the entrance for your arrival.

Your convey finally made it to Alfea. The driver came out and opened the door for you.

You stepped out of the car and Farah's jaw almost dropped.

Even if she couldn't see your face, you were stunning.

You were wearing a long black dress paired with black heels, black gloves to protect your hands from the sky and a black hat which had a veil to hide your face and neck.

" Stella, dear, you look lovely ! " You greeted and gave her a quick hug.

" Thank you, auntie. " Stella replied awkwardly.

Stella noticed your polite smile from behind the veil due to the close proximity.

" Y/N ! " Saul called before embracing you.

You wrapped your hands around your old friend. " Oh Saul ! I'm so happy to see you ! "

Both of you pulled away but you were still a tiny too close for Farah's liking.

" 15 years ! Long time no see ! " Saul spoke placing his hands on your arms. 

With a small and an awkward pat on the shoulder, you pulled away to greet Ben.

He preferred a handshake instead which you were more than happy to reciprocate.

And then Farah. You had never seen her so tense.

She was wearing concealer, probably had to sleep for a little while. 

She wasn't the only one, however, unlike her, you were very capable of hiding your lack of sleep.

Farah, like Stella, payed a lot attention of how she would look today.

And she was pretty. Hell of pretty. Aging only gave her that authoritative face that made her look even hotter than she always was.

You checked her out thanking the gods that she can't see you through the veil.

You approached her carefully before stopping in front of her.

You hesitated to exchange a handshake, you wanted to touch her but that's not the way to greet your ex.

So, stepping closer to her, you lightly patted her shoulder. " Nice to see you again. " 

Farah understanding your awkwardness nodded. " Yes, I missed you. "

You both froze. Both hers and yours cheeks reddened.

Realizing the bullshit she said, Farah run to cover it. " Saul's right, long time no see, we should have kept contact. You know, as friends. "

You nodded slowly. " Yes... "

After a minute of extremely uncomfortable silence Farah broke it. " It's better if we went inside. For obvious reasons. Tea at my office ? " 

Everybody agreed saying that they had catching up to do.

Stella found a believable enough excuse to be dismissed and vanished out of sight.

You sat at the one corner of the couch with Farah sitting on the other edge. Ben was leaning against the window while Saul was seated on Farah's desk.

You looked at your hot tea, you needed to drink it in order to be polite but you had never been a tea lover.

You hesitantly took a sip and then placed the tea cup on the coffee table.

You looked at Farah to see whether she would be offended if you didn't touch your tea again.

The headmistress gave you a tiny smile understanding your unwillingness to drink your tea.

" Tell us everything. How boring had life been without us ? I want only honest answers. " Saul mocked.

You laughed at that. " Pretty boring but peaceful. You need peace when you have a baby around. "

" That's what me and Farah had been telling him for the last 16 years. " Ben agreed.

After that the three of you - You, Ben and Saul - started talking about your children.

You told them about Stella's childhood, Saul spoke about Sky's and Ben told you about Sam amd Terra.

In the beginning both you and Farah were tense because of each other's presence but you soon lost yourselves in the conversation.

Minutes became hours and the conversation reached the inevitable end.

Saul and Ben excused themselves with the pretense of having work to do.

So, it was just you. And Farah.

You sat awkwardly for a while; neither of you knowing what to say.

Taking a deep breath Farah looked at you. " I'm sorry. "

You, who had found the floor to be extremely interesting, turned to gaze at her. 

" I'm sorry. You were right. Rosalind had been using me for her ill wishes. I should have heard you long ago. You wanted the best for me, for us and I pushed you away. And for that I apologize... Can we at least be friends ? " Farah elaborated.

You gazed at her for a second. Farah had teared up, so had you.

You took a deep breath before approaching her and pulling her into a hug.

Farah embraced you like there was no tomorrow, she rested her head on the crook of your neck.

One of your hands found its way into her soft hair as you inhaled her sent.

And you couldn't help it but make a silly comment at the most serious moment of your entire life. " Still that same shampoo ? "

Farah laughed. Truly laughed. " Always. " Came her response.

You smiled, smelling her hair again. " Nice. I really like it. "

Farah shifted to look at you. " I know. "

You raised an eyebrow. " So that was your plan ? Make me refall for you with your shampoo ? "

She shook her head. " No. But I wouldn't complain if that happened. " 

You chuckled playing with her hair. You always loved her hair.

" It's longer now, you know. I don't have to cut it shorter because of the lack of time to wash it or for the whole betallion thing. " Farah told you referring to her hair.

You hummed. Your focus left her hair to fall on her eyes. 

She was so close. So close. Just like the old good times...

You unintentionally leaned toward her, she leaned too decreasing the distance between you.

Your lips almost touched when you abruptly came to a halt.

Farah stopped too feeling your hesitation.

" Darling ? " The headmistress called.

Her eyes looking at you with a lot of feelings.

You opened your mouth to reply but you felt it too dry.

Closing your mouth, you turned your head both pulling and looking away.

Farah sighed before giving you your space. " I- I'm sorry if I made you feel uncomfortable. Your trip here must have been exhausting, especially under so much sunlight. You should probably go and rest. I will have Callum to send you your teaching schedule. "

" Thanks. " You said and stormed off Farah's office.

꧁☾︎❥︎☽︎꧂

You had been avoiding her ever since. She had been avoiding you as well.

Different meal times, patrol times, teaching schedules, everything.

There had been two months since you had returned to your old home.

It was a sunny, happy Sunday.

Without any classes both students and faculty were having their fun outside.

Farah finished her paperwork early to have time to join Saul and Ben at the training grounds to spar.

The headmistress stopped suddenly on her way outside, eyes wide opened and mind blank.

There you were, standing in front of the window of the highway, staring at the students playing and having picknics in the huge Alfean grounds.

Guilt, pity and sadness washed over Farah.

Of course, you couldn't go outside to enjoy the nice weather unless you wanted to become a bacon.

She took a deep breath trying to come up with something to do.

She couldn't leave you like that; she had never done that in the past, even before your relationship.

Farah took a second to reminisce her first year at Alfea. When she was sitting with you at the living room of the Winx's suit playing either cards or a random boarding game while the rest of your friends were happily playing football outside.

She slowly approached you, it didn't come as a surprise when she saw your teary eyes locked on a laughing Stella accompanied by her friend Ricki.

Farah hesitantly placed a hand on your shoulder. " I'm here if you need me. "

Your eyes widened. You didn't know from where she had appeared.

You slowly turned to face her. Her face was saying it all. You gazed at the brown eyes you grown to love.

She was so beautiful, even after all of those years. 

You would give everything in the world to see her happy and innocent as she had once been.

Unable to hold her gaze, you looked at her feet.

A tear run down your cheek.

Farah didn't know whether you were crying because of the weather or due to her presence, but she wiped your tear with her thump nevertheless.

Her thump stayed on your cheek tracing soothing patterns on it. 

You closed your eyes and sighed. Farah's touch relaxing and comforting you.

After some moments you leaned into her, Farah instinctively wrapped her hands around you in a tight hug.

You rested your head at her chest as your hands were wrapped around you. 

Your nostrils filled with her smell, her lovely shampoo in particular.

You smiled at that, calming even more.

Farah who had been watching you slowly smiled at your thought too.

She was always entering your mind when you were having those 'crisis' as the two of you had been calling it. Her magic was helping you relax.

" Farah, I'm fine now. Get out. " You told her implicating your mind.

Farah did as she was told to but didn't break the embrace.

You were thankful for some seconds but found the position too awkward afterwards so you pulled away.

" Thanks. I needed that. " You commented with a sad smile.

Farah reciprocated your smile. " Of course. I'll always be here whenever you need me. "

You froze. Why had she to be so kind, pretty, amazing, wonderful...

But then was when you noticed that she had been wearing her coat. 

She had been going outside.

" I like your coat. But you are probably going to be late to whatever rendezvous you have. " You stated pointing at her light blue coat.

Farah grimaced remembering why she was walking down the aisle in first place.

" Oh no worries. I was just to pay a visit to Saul and Ben but I can always arrange it an other time. " Farah immediately dismissed it.

" But. But they are your friends. " You reasoned.

Farah smiled at you. " And they have each other's company. You are my friend too and you are alone, you obviously need someone to pass such a wonderful day with. "

You shook your head. " This day is everything but wonderful. "

" No, don't say that ! Every day with you is wonderful. " Farah retorted.

Your cheeks flushed at that. Farah blushed too but flattery was always a way to fix your mood.

A smile found its way into your lips. " You think ? "

Something shone in Farah's eyes at your reply. Were you flirting with her ?

" Think ? I know. " Farah corrected you stepping closer to you.

This time you didn't move away, you didn't even blink. Instead, you raised your head to meet her gaze ( because Farah is higher than you ).

Her eyes left yours to fall on your lips. " Why now ? We could have spent two great months together if you hadn't pulled away. "

You sucked on a breath. You wouldn't lie, you were waiting for this question. " I- it felt too soon. You just apologized, it would feel like we were rushing things and... "

You paused for a second. " We had to see each other for sixteen years and I needed... time to feel comfortable around... Rosalind's school. "

Farah grasped your hands in hers. " I am the headmistress of Alfea. That's my school, not hers. "

You sighed. " I know, I know. It's just... it feels weird, ya know ? "

" No, it doesn't. I had been doing her paperwork for years before her capture. Remember ? I had been more headmistress than her for all of those years I passed in her battalion. " Farah pointed out.

You smiled sadly, stepping on your tiptoes you kissed her cheek leaving her breathless. " I do remember. Especially the nights when you were staying awake solving Alfea's economic problems leaving me alone on our bed. "

Farah mimicked your facial expression. " I'm still sleeping on our bed. And kept your favorite red silky sheets. "

Such a teaser.

Farah Dowling was the biggest teaser in the history of teasing.

Instead of slapping her playfully, like you used to, you gave in.

You crashed your lips into hers, kissing her passionately. Farah kissed you back with the same passion.

The headmistress pushed you against the nearest surface, the window so we could deepen the kiss.

You moaned into her mouth; you missed her so much and Farah took the chance to taste you by invading your mouth with her tongue.

When you pulled away, you were both out of breath. You rested your foreheads together.

" When did you learn to do your hair like that ? " You asked out of curiosity.

Farah giggled. " YouTube. "

[iredreamer]

(1) Hi! I'm the anon whose questions about 2.04's editing/lack of score etc. you answered in a 17 May post - no problems about taking a little while to get to it, I really appreciate your answer! Now I have thoughts about 2.06, in particular that final amazing exchange between the Ann(e)s, when Anne was both angry and anguished at the thought that she might not be enough for Ann, without children. It came to me today that I was reminded of the devastating "you came so close" 1.06 scene, when

(2) Anne cries in bed with Ann, exposing both her love and need for Ann’s affections, and sadness that she can’t (she thought) enjoy it in the long-term, stable way she craved. I haven’t liked a lot of the pacing of this season, and your great analysis a while back re the detachment of the camerawork (e.g. steadycam vs handheld, medium-range vs closeup) compared to S1 highlights another reason S2 seems less emotionally engaging. But this 2.06 scene went a long way to make up for all that! (3) And regarding pacing, I had found the scenes of Anne dealing with others (men) in her business ventures etc. to be somewhat too numerous, since they detracted from Anne/Ann scenes. But I guess they were meant to help contrast the public Anne from the one that only Ann sees on a regular basis, and to also show why Ann's full acceptance and love is so important to Anne ...

Hello friend :) lovely to read your messages. You mentioning the 1x06 scene compared to this scene made me think about a couple of things I wanna share...

It’s a rant, baby!!!

The – You came so close – scene is one of my absolute favorites, one I’ve tried many times to analyse and failed. It’s so personal for me that I really can’t put into words what it all means and what it makes me feel... but I digress. What I love is that these two scenes have some similarities but also Anne’s reaction is quite different.

In the 1x06 scene Anne completely breaks down because she sees her future, the future she longed for her whole life – I thoroughly intend to live with someone I love. I thoroughly intend to spend my evening hour with someone who loves me, someone who is there all of the time, to share everything with – completely vanish after she allowed herself to hope that it could become something real. And we see complete desperation, she doesn’t hold back at all – she tries at the start, but really, she doens’t try that hard. She’s not trying to be strong or stoic or anything of the sort. She makes herself completely vulnerable and I think she does it because she knows there’s nothing she can say or do in that moment to make Ann Walker change her mind. There’s nothing to lose because nothing actually became real. She also understands Ann and why she “can’t commit” to her, so she’s not mad or confused about Ann’s choice in the end. The whole thing doesn’t really come as a surprise to her. It still hurts her but it’s a kind of pain she knows.

What happens next is that Ann Walker, as always, surprises Anne (in the hilltop scene) and shows her that she’s brave and strong enough to commit to her, to face whatever may come next. At this point – after season one, after the reunion, and the wedding – things change significantly between them. Ann has made her promise and with that promise she’s basically saying that she understands all the implications of her choice. Their relationship is at a new stage and it is very different from the one we see in the 1x06 scene. They moved past all that. Or at least they should have.

When in 2x06 Anne sees that some of the things she thought were settled between them can still jeopardise their relationship she’s completely caught off guard. And we see how scared she gets as soon as Ann mentions children. This scene is quite different from the – You came so close – scene for a number of reasons:

their relationship is at a very different stage;

Anne – till that moment – was sure that their union was a strong one and now, all of a sudden, she’s not so sure anymore;

Anne’s completely caught off guard by what’s happening;

Anne has a LOT to lose here because the future that was only a possibility in season one now has become a reality;

everything is new – what happens in 1x06 happened to Anne before, many times – but this, now, her commitment to Ann, Ann moving into Shibden, their life together and all that, is a completely different thing, it’s new and Anne has no previous knowledge of how to navigate it all.

I think that these things are what make Anne react a little bit different this time around – we still see her be vulnerable and scared but in this new scene she handles the situation in a very different way.

Again, she has so much to lose here now that the future she longed for actually became a reality, and her fear to lose it all is even greater. Plus, she finds herself in unknown territory. She has no idea how to handle the whole exchange with Ann, she’s not sure what’s the best thing to say, she’s not sure what could happen next, she’s not prepared for this kind of pain. She doesn’t know it.

What does it feel like when your wife leaves you? What do you do after? I imagine those are some of the things that really hit Anne in that moment. And she has no answers to those questions. It’s all new. And she’s terrified to find out what the answers are. From all this, I think, comes the way she reacts and the fact that she tries very very hard to not break down till the very end. The pain she’s feeling, the extreme fear, the confusion are very new to her. And she doesn’t really know how to handle them properly.

She tries to rationalise and be strong, she doesn’t want to break down and cry. She’s calm at the start, trying to understand what Ann si saying. Then she can’t stay still anymore and she raises her voice. Then she reacts in a very impulsive way burning the letter. Her voice shakes when she tries to communicate what she’s feeling and what she needs from Ann. She raises her walls at first because she thinks she’s about to lose Ann and she won’t let Ann see her be vulnerable if that’s the case.

But finally she shows her vulnerability. And at the end it is Ann Walker who – with her caring touches, and extreme delicacy – let’s Anne know that she’s not going anywhere, Anne can break down if she needs to, she doesn’t need to keep it all in, she can feel scared and vulnerable because ultimately she’s not alone anymore. She won’t be left alone with her pain – Ann Walker is there with her.

I think both these scenes really shed light on how different the Ann(e)s are when it’s time to share and communicate things that scare them. In the scene from 1x06 it is Ann Walker who pushes Anne Lister to be sincere and open up about what is bothering her and in this new scene it’s Ann Walker the one who doesn’t shy away from dicussing difficult, potentially painful matters. Anne Lister is the opposite, when things scare her – when she’s scared she might lose Ann – she tends to not address the issue. For example she doesn’t open up about what happened with Mariana (even tho Ann Walker gave her more than one chance to do so) and in this latest episode (2x07) she doesn’t address the fact that she won’t be able to introduce Ann to her London friends.

Anyway, I’m not really sure where I’m going with this but yes, the last scene of episode 6 was the best scene of the whole season and really the whole episode was just exquisite.

[lucemferto]

I talk about the current troubles of the Dream SMP.

If you want to help me out, please reblog! You can also retweet my tweet and upvote my reddit post. Thank you.

Script under the cut

I really hope Technoblade succeeds in breaking Dream out of prison.

Now why would I say that? Well, it’s because there’s this feeling in the fandom right now that Dream SMP Season 3 is … going slow. That there’s not much happening. Some have blamed it on the pace of how lore streams are doled out, saying we get too little lore stretched out over too much time. Others postulate that it’s the quality of the lore – that the individual plot points are badly told or that the high production value of certain streams prevent the story from gaining momentum.

Now, because I’m me, I think I identified the problem as something that’s structurally wrong with Season 3 as opposed to Seasons 1 and 2. In order to explain that we must look at one of my favourite narratological theories: the Three-Act-Structure.

But before we get into that, here’s your obligatory reminder to please like this video, comment your thoughts down below in order to help me with YouTube’s algorithm and subscribe if you really like my stuff. Please feel free to check out my social media presences and share my videos on there so that more people have the chance to see them. Thank you so much.

Let’s get back to the video:

 Chapter 1: The Three-Act-Structure Explained

The Three-Act-Structure as a model to explain narratives finds its roots far in the past with its earliest recorded instance being in the fourth century by the Roman grammarian Aelius Donatus though similar ideas were also expressed by everyone’s favourite Greek philosopher Aristotle.

Since then, the model has been continuously evolved and used throughout recorded history. There are also alternative models such as the Five-Act-Structure, the Six-Act-Structure, the Eight-Act-Structure, the … Nine-Act-Structure, Jesus Christ. But the Three-Act-Structure has reigned the undisputed champion in modern-day creation and analysis of narratives.

The particulars of the Three-Act-Structure as we know it today were codified in Syd Field’s 1979 work “Screenplay: The Foundations of Screenwriting”, which has since become the Go-To-Work when it comes being a screenwriter in Hollywood. You want to write a script? You need the read the “Screenplay”.

The modern Three-Act-Structure is comprised of the following points/sequences:

-       The Backstory/Exposition: Exactly what it says on the tin. Sets up the Ordinary World that the characters inhabit, let’s us know about what character’s general deal is. It serves as an introduction to the story and world of your narrative.

-       The Point of Attack: This one is not often talked about and doesn’t feature in every story, but it’s still worth mentioning. This is where the major tension/conflict/dramatic question (structurally, these terms fulfil roughly the same function) is set into motion. It usually doesn’t include the protagonists of the story, but rather the antagonists.

-       The Inciting Incident: This is where the protagonists are sent on their way. We are introduced to their personal conflict and given a reason as to why they would have to leave the Ordinary World behind.

-       The Turning Point: This marks the end of Act I, where the personal conflicts of the protagonists and the major conflict of the overarching story intersect and coalesce. It is the natural fallout of the inciting incident, the big dramatic status quo change that we need in order to get the story going.

This naturally leads into Act II, where all the minor character conflicts are resolved and integrated into the larger conflict. This is what is referred to as the Rising Action: through the resolution and incorporation of the minor conflicts into the major conflicts, the story gains momentum. The action rises.

This act has two big culminations:

-       The Mid Point: The first culmination or Mid-Point sees some sort of shift in the major conflict. Maybe all the minor conflicts set-up in Act I are resolved and thus the major conflict becomes the full focus or the major conflict gains an additional factor. Instead of defeating the evil bad guy, the Heroes now have to defeat the Bad Guy and save the Damsel

-       The Lowest Point: The Lowest Point marks the end of Act II. Here the villains are just short of victory or maybe even achieve victory. In a romantic movie, this is the cliché end of Act II fallout which naturally leads into chasing the Hero chasing the love interest into an airport.

With the Lowest Point, the Heroes begin the third act almost or fully defeated. The stakes are high and everything seems hopeless. But then comes:

-       The Twist/Resolution: Usually, the twist coincides with either the protagonist or some sort of character having a eureka-moment or resolving their personal conflict – their Want vs. Need.

-       The Climax: With their problems resolved, the protagonists can venture forth to stop the villains or antagonistic force or save their love life.

-       The Dénouement: After the villain’s defeat/the resolution of the final conflict, the protagonist returns to the ordinary world, but changed by their experiences. The Dénouement is the one part of Act III, that can really drag it out – think the many, many endings of Return of the King for instance.

Up until now, I usually focused on that end of Act II/Act III-part when discussing the storytelling of the Dream SMP such as the Final Disc War, November 16th or Doomsday. Because Doomsday wasn’t just the Lowest Point in terms of storytelling quality.

But for Season 3, I instead want to focus on this section, The Inciting Incident and The Turning Point. Because this is where the current storytelling falters. The narrative has failed to pick up momentum, something that is achieved through a successful Inciting Incident and Turning Point.

So, I want to make the theory palpable and apply the Three-Act-Structure – with focus on Act I and early Act II – to all three Seasons of the Dream SMP to see where Seasons 1 & 2 succeeded and Season 3 failed.

 Chapter 2: The Three-Act-Structure Applied

Despite being much less written out and planned and more focused on the roleplay-aspect, both Season 1 and Season 2 somehow stumbled into recreating the Three-Act-Structure pretty well (S2 had its problem, but on the whole, it was still generally discernible).

I’m not here to discuss why narrative conventions and tools of literary analysis are applicable to something as seemingly idiosyncratic as the Dream SMP, I will do that in a future video. For the purposes of this video, we will simply have to take it at face value that these tools are applicable.

Season 1, which was probably the most consistently and competently written out of the three seasons thus far, has a very clear major tension/conflict: Who gets to steer the fate of L’Manburg, whether that be through stewardship or dissolution. It ties deeply into the personal conflict of our protagonist Wilbur as well as the external threat as represented by our villain JSchlatt, the best character in the story.

And not just that, basically every character whether that be Tommy, Tubbo, Niki, Fundy, Dream or Technoblade is invested in seeing this major tension resolved.

All this is achieved through a wonderful inciting incident and turning point. The inciting incident, the personal conflict for our protagonists, is Wilbur calling a presidential election. He wants to solidify power; his personal conflict being gaining full control over L’Manburg – I will talk about it more in my Wilbur-video.

This leads to the Turning Point, which in this case is a very natural cause and effect: Wilbur loses the election his sense of self shattered and JSchlatt, best character, takes over L’Manburg declares himself Emperor and exiles Tommy and Wilbur. The protagonists are forced out of their Ordinary World and the dynamic of the server is changed forever. The Main Tension or Major Conflict has been fully established.

This has server-wide consequences that every character is impacted by. All the many personal conflict are now framed by this all-encompassing major conflict. Thus, everything feels like it’s building up towards the same climax. Whether that be Fundy’s personal conflict as a deep-undercover spy, Niki’s conflict as the resistance in Manburg, Quackity’s struggle for power under Schlatt or the threat of Schlatt trying to expand Manberg into Dream SMP territory.

This even applies to the most disconnected conflict in Act II: The War between Sapnap and Tommy. Because even here, Sapnap’s stated goal is to gather enough power to take over Manberg. Now, that the power dynamic has shifted once it has signalled to other antagonists that the power dynamic can shift once more. The Balance of the Ordinary World is disrupted.

And from the Pogtopia-side, this conflict serves as a great way to not only build up their team, but also as a mini-version of their major conflict. If they cannot defeat Sapnap, what chance do they stand against Big Bad Emperor Schlatt.

Season 2, in spite of all the problems that it has, also managed to pull off the inciting incident and turning point rather well. The Inciting Incident here being Tommy burning down George’s house – his intent being to gain some leverage to win his discs back – which then again lead very gracefully into the Turning Point: Tommy being exiled from L’Manburg.

Tommy’s personal conflict – regaining his discs – was folded into the major conflict: Breaking Dream’s grip over the SMP (and in effect creating a new power dynamic on the server).

Tommy’s exile led to Tubbo being pushed by Quackity to institute the Butcher Army – an antagonistic force intent on making L’Manberg the strongest nation on the server; in effect dethroning Dream. This would of course lead to Hog Hunt and Technoblade’s involvement; ultimately bringing a lot of momentum into the narrative.

Now, Season 2 doesn’t pull this off as graciously as Season 1: You will have noticed that both the Inciting Incident as well as the Turning Point are pretty exclusively focused on Tommy which leads to the major conflict revolving mostly around Tommy and the characters in his orbit – which is not ideal when dealing with an ever-expanding ensemble cast.

While Season 1’s Inciting Incident and Turning Point also had Wilbur as their centre point, they were open enough to allow for other characters such as Quackity, Sapnap and most crucially Schlatt to naturally integrate themselves into the narrative.

What also doesn’t help is that the Rising Action up until the Midpoint is almost exclusively focused on Tommy as I discussed in my Philza-video. There is dramatic and narrative momentum, but it comes at the expense of basically every other character or storyline. The Butcher Army and New L’Manburg are painfully underexplored.

But still, despite its flaws, Season 2 managed to get the ball rolling. So where did Season 3 go wrong?

The main problem that Season 3 has is that it presented us with a large number of potential inciting incidents, but no concrete turning point. We have a lot of personal conflicts, but are as of yet missing the big major tension or conflict that ties it all together; that gives the framework in which the personal conflicts of the characters can intersect and resolve.

I think just to showcase how scattershot Season 3’s storytelling is right now; I’ll have to list all the big plot points of the season as they happened:

1.    Tommy meets with the Egg and shows an immunity to it. The Egg orders the Eggpire to kill Tommy in order to proceed with their plan

2.    The prison gets into lockdown mode, while Tommy is visiting Dream

3.    Tommy gets killed by Dream

4.    Tommy gets resurrected by Dream

5.    Technoblade and Ranboo come into contact with the Egg

6.    Quackity comes into contact with the Egg

7.    The Syndicate meets up and checks out Snowchester

8.    Tubbo loses a nuke

9.    The Red Banquet

10.  Tommy breaks into the prison

11.  Wilbur gets resurrected

Now, quite a number of those could have worked as either inciting incidents or turning point with some narrowing the scope of the narrative more than other. The early points involving Tommy for instance would have pushed him again into the role protagonist akin to how it worked in Season 2, while others like the Syndicate, the Red Banquet or Wilbur’s resurrection would have established the respectively involved groups or characters as the drivers of the major tension.

But none of these avenues are taken. All these conflicts are still insular; their resolutions don’t build to anything.

Tommy’s resurrection – which in my opinion is the first plot point that could have been used as the Turning Point relatively easily – changes the course of the prison and Las Nevadas-storyline, but has little to no impact on the Eggpire, Syndicate or Nuke-storylines.

Similarly, Tubbo losing the nuke could have led to the major tension becoming every faction hunting for the missing nuke in order to fulfil their personal agendas. But again, no dice.

And this just keeps adding up and up. Each new plot point subconsciously leads the viewer to expect that this will be the one to establish a major, unifying tension for the season – and then nothing comes of it. Though the volume of “lore” is still relatively high, the narrative momentum that is needed in order to make the viewer invested in the storyline is diminished with every potential turning point that is ignored in favour of more set-up.

And this structural problem of Season 3 when compared to Seasons 1 and 2 is made the most apparent when looking at …

 Chapter 3: The Eggpire

Oh, my poor boys. Where did it all go wrong?

To give some context: The Eggpire or Crimson-storyline actually started in the middle of Season 2, where they managed the impossible: Establishing a storyline with some narrative momentum and impact outside of the major conflict.

So, how did they do that and do it successfully at that?

The first thing we need to understand is that the Season 2 Eggpire-storyline basically involved no one from the “principal cast”. As such, the story was not chained to the developments that were going on there – such as Exile, Hog Hunt, the Green Festival, etc. – and instead had more freedom to do their own stuff.

The Eggpire-storyline in Season 2 was for the most part self-contained. So much so, that people were viewing it not as a part of the on-going narrative, but rather in the vein of Tales from the SMP: A story that stands alone, the resolution of which would have no impact on the server as a whole.

And, to be fair, they could have gone that route. But the writer(s) behind the Eggpire-storyline decided to be more ambitious.

The Eggpire-storyline in Season 2 follows its own mini-version of the Three-Act-Structure, with BadBoyHalo serving as its protagonist. The big narrative movements coincide and are influenced with dramatic movement in his own personal conflict. He is the Wilbur of this storylines – the once good man (relatively speaking), who falls from Grace.

Now, the thing that makes the Eggpire-storyline in Season 2 quite brilliant is that they ultimately tied the resolution of their tension into the major conflict/tension of the Season 2.

Doomsday saw the Lowest Point of the main storyline of Season 2. With L’Manburg’s destruction and Dream’s future imprisonment, there was a huge power vacuum on the server – a power vacuum that BadBoyHalo, now fully under the control of the Egg, was ready to fill.

The climax of the Eggpire-storyline in Season 2 saw the rise of the Eggpire as they spread the seeds of the Crimson in the L’Manburg-crater, intent on taking over server – thus adding onto the dramatic tension that Doomsday already established, making the Lowest Point feel even more foreboding and successfully linking their erstwhile separate storyline to the main tension of the overall narrative. The villains for Season 3 seemed to be perfectly set-up.

And then Season 3 rolled around and they … bungled it completely.

Though the Eggpire eventually came into contact with almost every active character in Season 3 – such as Tommy, Tubbo, Ranboo, Technoblade and Quackity – they completely failed at driving the major conflict and establishing themselves as the main antagonistic force of the storyline the same way Schlatt and Dream had done in the Seasons prior.

The biggest missed opportunity in that regard is without a doubt the Red Banquet. Now, I talked in the past about how the Red Banquet failed just on its own – at least a specific aspect of it – but now we’ll have to talk about how the Red Banquet fails in the context of Season 3.

Because this was the moment that all the storylines could have been brought together. The Eggpire could have succeeded in their endeavour and established themselves as the most prominent force on the serve. This event would have impacted the server as a whole and thus the entire storyline.

Immediately we would have had a major conflict to drive all other storylines – such as Tommy’s storyline, Snowchester, the Syndicate, Kinoko Kingdom and Las Nevadas – to stop the Eggpire from fully taking over the server. All the character-specific conflicts could have then happened within the framing of this major tension.

Maybe Tubbo and the rest are hunting for the nuke, because they think it’s the only way to stop the Eggpire. Maybe the Eggpire wants to free Dream, because he could be of use for the Crimson. Tommy could get abducted by the Eggpire because he is some sort of chosen one or whatever and the onus would fall on the other characters to save him and stop the villains – so Tommy would become the damsel effectively.

Maybe they decide that the only way to defeat the Eggpire is to bring back Wilbur and that’s how that storyline gets integrated. Maybe the disparate forces disagree on that or other plot-points and there’s some infighting between them.

But still: All conflicts would be unified by this one major tension. The Red Banquet would have been the Turning Point to lead into Act II of Season 3, where all the problems would be viewed with the knowledge that the Eggpire and the Crimson was looming in the distance.

Alas, we did not get that. Instead, the Red Banquet turned out to be just another plot point in a long line of plot points that promises more in the future. Smaller personal conflicts are resolved just within the limited scope of their individual storyline and a major tension is yet to be seen.

When Bad says that there’s just one more Egg-stream planned, I hope he’s either misleading or not being clear enough on what he means. Because if this was it; if the Eggpire-storyline just kinda dies here – too connected to all other storyline to be seen as standalone and yet too separated to be enjoyed in the context of Season 3 as a whole – then it would be a worse writing choice than Doomsday.

 Epilogue: How the Prison Break can bring it all together

To bring it all back to the sentence I opened this video with: I hope Technoblade succeeds in breaking Dream out of prison, because this could finally be the Turning Point that introduces a major tension to the narrative of Season 3.

I hoped that Wilbur’s resurrection would fill that role, but disappointingly that plot point is again relegated to driving the tension of a few chosen storylines instead of providing a major tension for all players involved.

And with five months into Season 3, this Act 1 has gone on for far too long! For comparison, the entire written storyline of Season 1 encompassed 4 months. Season 2 took place in only 2 months. Season 3 has already exceeded both their runtimes and still seems to have yet to truly start.

Whether Technoblade breaks Dream out or Quackity succeeds in trapping Technoblade in Pandora’s Vault – there needs to be a turning point somewhere in sight.

Because my biggest fear is that we’re already past it. That the Eggpire-storyline will just fizzle out and that some other plot point will retroactively reveal itself as the turning point – because that would mean that Season 3 would have a horrifically unfocused, saggy and just generally unengaging second act. And that would be a shame.

Thank you so much for watching. Once again, please feel free to like, comment and subscribe. The links to my social media are all in the description down below. I have a bunch of stuff planned for the future including a very long video on Wilbur as well as two videos that have nothing to do with Dream SMP.

Until then, please be excite.

[imthepunchlord]

Nino’s Best to Least

Marinette, Adrien, Alya, Kagami

Nino is a bit of a hard character to get down as, canon wise, he hardly gets any focus and you really got to pay attention to him to get a sense of his character together. What I’ve found is that, just as Alya and Adrien are similar, Nino and Marinette are actually similar too. Like Marinette, Nino is a character ruled by both his heart and his head. As seen with Alya and Adrien, when he loves, he loves deeply, and is always there with physical affection and support, whatever may be needed. Pixelator shows us he is diligent and helpful, not only taking over Adrien’s job but working on his homework at the same time. And Party Crasher shows us he can be an elaborate planner. And with all of these, we see that he is an incredibly passive character, one who likes to move at his own pace but can be quick to follow along. Similarly to Alya, he has his bouts of being oblivious to others or prioritizing his own wants more. And unlike the other 3 of this friend group, he himself isn’t really one to be in the thick of things or get direct with anyone or anything. He has his moments of standing his ground and is able to, but its not something he’s inclined to do often. With this, Nino has two best matches. 

NIno’s best are Peafowl and Butterfly. Both give him flexibility and options, Peafowl matches his preference to work as he wants to, Butterfly works off Nino’s strong sense of empathy and the connections he can easily form with others.

Starting with Peafowl, this works off Nino’s preference to move at his own pace and to play by his own rules. As a want to be a director, this sets him up to be a background role, directing others from a distance, and having a sense of control. With a power to create golems that serve out one purpose, this is the most ideal power for him as golems will do as he wants them to and offer him the control he wants. This also opens up a chance of creativity and exploring possibilities with his golems. This miraculous also isn’t a must be on the battlefield, which can allow Nino the chance to have as much distance from the heat of things as he likes, and can join in if he wishes. This probably fits his comfort zone most out of all 5. 

Growth wise, this can work on his danger response without overwhelming him, and by extension, his courage. Watching him in the background, when akumas show up, he’s typically the first to hide (Refleckta hiding behind Alya) or runaway (Animan). Anansi was his bravest moment, but it was also incredibly reckless and dangerous. The tricky thing about learning courage in this aspect is that he’s learning courage in the face of danger. You don’t exactly want to encourage someone getting brave with something dangerous that can hurt them or worse. You want them to be smart in how they address the danger without risking themselves as well. Peafowl allows his courage to grow while giving him that distance and means to provide help. And as his comfort and courage grow, he can involve himself more, but be smart and cautious in his approach. This also helps him address his biggest issue and flaw as a hero: his attachment. Seen in the s2 finale and in Zombizou, when Alya is knocked out, Nino had immediately given up despite both instances, he actually could’ve done more to help. This miraculous can help him put distance between himself and this strong attachment that has him fall apart when someone falls, and his golems by extension can help him with that. They’re not always going to work and there will be instances that they fail and are destroyed. In the wake of their fall, this can help Nino prepare for cases like these and become aware that there is more that he can do. 

With Duusu, I find that she’d probably be the best match for Nino out of the 5 kwamis. She has ideal differences to counter him but also enough similarities to work well: where he is passive, still, and calm, she’s incredibly animated, energetic, and expressive. And in terms of similarity, both are very affectionate and live by their feelings. Technically is a headcanon right now, but Duusu should be a very observant kwami, one who will catch Nino’s attention if he’s ever inconsiderate or oblivious with others. I also have a little headcanon that he calls her “Little Blue” instead of “Little dude/dudette”. 

Butterfly has a lot of the same appeals and matches that Peafowl has for Nino, but more works off his empathy and connection with others. As this is a miraculous about giving power to another, being supportive, and helping build people up, this is up Nino’s alley as someone who is very naturally a big supporter of others. We this with Adrien and Alya that he strongly works off being there for them. Butterfly works very well off this strength and aspect of him. And when watching Nino in the background, he’s actually second to Marinette in having the most friends, making him a very desirable social butterfly that is far more ready to reach out to others and be open to who he may get. And empathic and calm as he is, he’d be able to have people agree to be his champions readily, and allow them a chance to address the problem. And much like Peafowl, this offers flexibility in where Nino would like to be in the field. If he himself isn’t comfortable being there, he doesn’t have to be and can be allowed to join at his own pace. 

Growth wise, this miraculous can address his occasional issue of obliviousness. It’s not often, but Nino does have issues of noticing the discomfort of his friends (specifically Adrien around Lila and Chloe, he has offered both once a chance to help them hook up with Adrien). Being based around emotion and empathy, this can help him be more conscious of others and their emotional state. And the biggest appeal, this miraculous can help him with distance, also addressing his biggest flaw. A Butterfly needs to know when to back off and put distance between themselves at a situation. This distance can help Nino with his attachment issues, and not fall apart when his champions or allies fall, realize that he himself can do more if it comes to that. 

I see Noroo and Nino getting along very well, both appreciating a shared calm and gentle personality. Nooroo himself would be an observant kwami, and when he voices concerns, Nino I see listening readily. 

Nino’s second best are Fox and Turtle. Fox allows the distance and creativity to flourish. Turtle plays off Nino’s strength as a supporter and having his allies’ back. Despite these matches, their not so ideal. 

Fox allows the distance Nino wants, though it doesn’t allow that flexibility to join in if he really wants to, but chances are good that it may not come to that. Mirage can work off his creativity and elaborate planning, and can give him that desired practice to direct, put on a show and work his audience into believing what they see. The issue stems that Nino himself isn’t the cunning or manipulative sort. We can even see that he can be a little loose lips as Animan, he almost dropped that Alya told him about Marinette’s crush on Adrien (not cool Alya). It’s not entirely true to his character that we see him be underhanded, and the few times that he does something underhanded (change the script in Horrificator and threw a secret party in Party Crasher), it doesn’t take long for him to get caught. The lack of subtlety can be an issue with him as a Fox. Not to say he can’t pull it off, but things aren’t always going to work out when he tries to be crafty. Animan is another good example of this as he almost revealed to Marinette that Alya told him about her crush on Adrien until Alya had cut him off. And similarly to Alya (and by extension Adrien), there’s an issue with Lila, and the factor that Nino is easily led and manipulated by her. A solid Fox would catch onto Lila’s game, but Nino has yet to. 

Growth wise this can work on his observation skills as there are factors and issues that can go over his head (Adrien’s body behavior around Chloe and Lila). Fox can also have him work on subtlety and be smarter and sharper about how he goes about things. I don’t see him going full manipulator, but will have an edge of subtlety to him as he works with others. 

Nino would be another that’s easily led with Trixx, though I can see him having a few bouts of getting frustrated with the kwami. Trixx is the sort to be vague/beat around the bush as he wants his users to figure stuff out on their own with the smallest nudge in the right direction. Nino’s the sort that likes things to be more direct and clear. But Trixx ultimately will help Nino in catching details, and can work on Nino’s attachment issues. 

With Turtle, it matches Nino as someone who wants to be there for his friends and have their back. And it matches Nino in that he has capacity to stand his ground and be rooted in where he is, and can be willing to be in the heat of things (Lady Wifi easily standing up to Chloe, the entirety of Horrificator, and Anansi, going up to face the akuma). But those are far and few in between. It’s not a persistent trait to see in Nino that he is willing and ready to be in the heat of things. He can if he really wants to, but its not something he naturally prefers all the time, and this miraculous who is quite ready to be in the heat of things and brave the dangers. As such, this miraculous puts Nino where he’s not comfortable, and he has no means of naturally adjusting that comfort level as he’s essentially dropped into the middle of the ocean and expected to swim. And when watching Carapace closely, most of the time he is fumbling in battle (specifically the s2 finale) or hardly does nothing, like Anansi. You could probably cut out Carapace easily from Anansi. He never fights her himself and it's in the realm of possibility that Chat could turn his hand to Cataclysm the web. It is a possibility for him as he can stand his ground and he’s all for having the backs of his friends, but its not entirely an ideal match as it shoves him where he largely doesn’t want to be. 

Nino’s least fit is Bee. 

The Bee has the same issues as Turtle, plus being a more aggressive miraculous, and Nino himself is not the aggressive sort. He’s not one to go out of his way to approach and be on the offense. The most aggressive we ever see is him being snide and underhanded, but those are rarities. Another factor that Nino himself isn’t very involved in a lot, which is a tad ironic as he’s the 2nd to Marinette in having the most friends. He’s there to have other’s backs, but typically he involves himself when needed, not taking initiative. And this miraculous is more active, involved, and direct. Which are just all things Nino isn’t. 

Growth wise, this can help Nino step up as a leader and have him involve himself more with others and be more active in helping out; but that is something that’s going to take time. Especially in building enough courage to approach a volatile target to use Venom. It can be done, but I don’t see Nino pulling it off immediately with ease, especially as this power requires tact, subtlety, and acting quickly. He needs more time to process and prepare. Bee doesn’t offer up that time. 

And Pollen, assuming she’d treat Nino the same as other girls she’s being used by, I can see her interactions with Nino helping her grow. And if she has capacity to call out her humans, she can call out Nino when he’s being inconsiderate of others. I do want to say that I see him listening, but chances are also good that I can see him brushing her off when he’s in his rare uppity moods. 

Between Ladybug and Cat, Nino would do better with Ladybug. 

The biggest appeal is that this is a miraculous that requires distance and an elaborate planner, which for Nino is right up his alley as he rather not be in the heat of things and does like to take time to think things through. Biggest issue though is that this miraculous is going to require quick thinking and action. This will lead to some struggle near the start but I see him getting it down. 

Growth wise, this expands on his complex thinking, and can work on his observation skills as this needs a resourceful user who can use what’s around them. This can give Nino leadership practice as this requires giving other direction to assist with whatever plan is required. 

Tikki and Nino I do see butting heads occasionally but otherwise will be a very amiable pair. Tikki can be optimistic and affectionate, enough so that she can work off Nino’s friendly and easy goign nature quite well, and he himself works well off those who are more energetic and active than him. She will swiftly call things out when she sees issues and Nino will be conscious of these; but I don’t see him getting to a similar point as Marinette in accepting Tikki’s criticism as always right or correct., nor to that point to always consider others before himself. As much as others are the world to him, he still has a lot of consideration for his self and his own needs and wants. 

[armageddon-generation]

Articulating Why His Dark Materials is Badly Written

A long essay-thing with lots of specific examples and explanations of why I feel this way. Hopefully I’ve kept fanboy bitching to a minimum.

This isn’t an attack on fans of the show, nor a personal attack on Jack Thorne. I’m not looking to ruin anyone’s enjoyment of the show, I just needed to properly articulate, with examples, why I struggle with it. I read and love the books and that colours my view, but I believe that HDM isn’t just a clumsy, at-best-functional, sometimes incompetent adaptation, it’s a bad TV show separate from its source material. The show is the blandest, least interesting and least engaging version of itself it could be.

His Dark Materials has gorgeous production design and phenomenal visual effects. It's well-acted. The score is great. But my god is it badly written. Jack Thorne writing the entire first season damned the show. There was no-one to balance out his flaws and biases. Thorne is checking off a list of plot-points, so concerned with manoeuvring the audience through the story he forgets to invest us in it. The scripts are mechanical, empty, flat.

Watching HDM feels like an impassioned fan earnestly lecturing you on why the books are so good- (Look! It's got other worlds and religious allegory and this character Lyra is really, really important I swear. Isn't Mrs Coulter crazy? The Gyptians are my favourites.) rather than someone telling the story naturally.

My problems fall into 5 main categories:

Exposition- An unwillingness to meaningfully expand the source material for a visual medium means Thorne tells and doesn't show crucial plot-points. He then repeats the same thing multiple times because he doesn't trust his audience

Pacing- By stretching out the books and not trusting his audience Thorne dedicates entire scenes to one piece of information and repeats himself constantly (see: the Witches' repetition of the prophecy in S2).

Narrative priorities- Thorne prioritises human drama over fantasy. This makes sense budgetarily, but leads to barely-present Daemons, the Gyptians taking up too much screentime, rushed/badly written Witches (superpowers, exposition) and Bears (armourless bear fight), and a Lyra more focused on familial angst than the joy of discovery

Tension and Mystery- because HDM is in such a hurry to set up its endgame it gives you the answers to S1's biggest mysteries immediately- other worlds, Lyra's parents, what happens to the kids etc. This makes the show less engaging and feel like it's playing catch-up to the audience, not the other way around.

Tonal Inconsistency- HDM tries to be a slow-paced, grounded, adult drama, but its blunt, simplistic dialogue and storytelling methods treat the audience like children that need to be lectured.

MYSTERY, SUSPENSE AND INTRIGUE

The show undercuts all the books’ biggest mysteries. Mrs Coulter is set up as a villain before we meet her, other worlds are revealed in 1x2, Lyra's parents by 1x3, what the Magesterium do to kids is spelled out long before Lyra finds Billy (1x2). I understand not wanting to lose new viewers, but neutering every mystery kills momentum and makes the show much less engaging.

This extends to worldbuilding. The text before 1x1 explains both Daemons and Lyra's destiny before we meet her. Instead of encouraging us to engage with the world and ask questions, we're given all the answers up front and told to sit back and let ourselves be spoon-fed. The viewer is never an active participant, never encouraged to theorise or wonder

 Intrigue motivated you to engage with Pullman's philosophical themes and concepts. Without it, HDM feels like a lecture, a theme park ride and not a journey.

The only one of S1's mysteries left undiminished is 'what is Dust?', which won't be properly answered until S3, and that answer is super conceptual and therefore hard to make dramatically satisfying

TONAL INCONSISTENCY

HDM billed itself as a HBO-level drama, and was advertised as a GoT inheritor. It takes itself very seriously- the few attempts at humour are stilted and out of place

The production design is deliberately subdued, most notably choosing a mid-twentieth century aesthetic for Lyra’s world over the late-Victorian of the books or steampunk of the movie. The colour grading would be appropriate for a serious adult drama. 

Reviewers have said this stops the show feeling as fantastical as it should. It also makes Lyra’s world less distinct from our own. 

Most importantly, minimising the wondrous fantasy of S1 neuters its contrast with the escalating thematic darkness of the finale (from 1x5 onwards), and the impact of Roger’s death. Pullman's books are an adult story told through the eyes of a child. Lyra’s innocence and naivety in the first book is the most important journey of the trilogy. Instead, the show starts serious and thematically heavy (we’re told Lyra has world-saving importance before we even meet her) and stays that way.

Contrasting the serious tone, grounded design and poe-faced characters, the dialogue is written to cater to children. It’s horrendously blunt and pulls you out of scenes. Subtext is obliterated at every opportunity. Even in the most recent episode, 2x7, Pan asks Lyra ‘do you think you’re changing because of Will?’

I cannot understate how on the nose this line is, and how much it undercuts the themes of the final book. Instead of even a meaningful shot of Lyra looking at Will, the show treats the audience like complete idiots. 

So, HDM looks and advertises itself like an adult drama and is desperate to be taken seriously by wearing its big themes on its sleeve from the start instead of letting them evolve naturally out of subtext like the books, and dedicating lots of scenes to Mrs Coulter's self-abuse 

At the same time its dialogue and character writing is comparable to the Star Wars prequels, more childish than media aimed at a similar audience - Harry Potter, Doctor Who, Avatar the Last Airbender etc

DAEMONS

The show gives itself a safety net by explaining Daemons in an opening text-crawl, and so spends less time showing the mechanics of the Daemon-human bond. On the HDM subreddit, I’ve seen multiple people get to 1x5 or 6, and then come to reddit asking basic questions like ‘why do only some people have Daemons?’ or ‘Why are Daemons so important?’.

It’s not that the show didn’t answer these questions; it was in the opening text-crawl. It’s just the show thinks telling you is enough and never shows evidence to back that up. Watching a TV show you remember what you’re shown much easier than what you’re told 

The emotional core of Northern Lights is the relationship between Lyra and Pan. The emotional core of HDM S1 is the relationship between Lyra and Mrs Coulter. This wouldn't be bad- it's a fascinating dynamic Ruth plays wonderfully- if it didn't override the Daemons

Daemons are only onscreen when they serve a narrative purpose. Thorne justifies this because the books only describe Daemons when they tell us about their human. On the page your brain fills the Daemons in. This doesn't work on-screen; you cannot suspend your disbelief when their absence is staring you in the face

Thorne clarified the number of Daemons as not just budgetary, but a conscious creative choice to avoid onscreen clutter. This improved in S2 after vocal criticism.

Mrs Coulter/the Golden Monkey and Lee/Hester have well-drawn relationships in S1, but Pan and Lyra hug more in the 2-hour Golden Compass movie than they do in the 8-hour S1 of HDM. There's barely any physical contact with Daemons at all.

They even cut Pan and Lyra's hug after escaping the Cut in Bolvangar. In the book they can't let go of each other. The show skips it completely because Thorne wants to focus on Mrs Coulter and Lyra.

They cut Pan and Lyra testing how far apart they can be. They cut Lyra freeing the Cut Daemons in Bolvangar with the help of Kaisa. We spent extra time with both Roger and Billy Costa, but didn't develop their bonds with their Daemons- the perfect way to make the Cut more impactful

I don't need every single book scene in the show, but notice that all these cut scenes reinforced how important Daemons are. For how plodding the show is. you'd think they could spare time for these moments instead of inventing new conversations that tell us the information they show

Daemons are treated as separate beings and thus come across more like talking pets than part of a character

The show sets the rules of Daemons up poorly. In 1x2, Lyra is terrified by the Monkey being so far from Coulter, but the viewer has nothing to compare it to. We’re retroactively told in that this is unnatural when the show has yet to establish what ‘natural’ is.

The guillotine blueprint in 1x2 (‘Is that a human and his Daemon, Pan? It looks like it.’ / ‘A blade. To cut what?’) is idiotic. It deflates S1’s main mystery and makes the characters look stupid for not figuring out what they aren’t allowed to until they did in the source material, it also interferes with how the audience sees Daemons. In the book, Cutting isn’t revealed until two-thirds of the way in (1x5). By then we’ve spent a lot of time with Daemons, they’ve become a background part of the world, their ‘rules’ have been established, and we’re endeared to them.

By showing the Guillotine and putting Daemons under threat in the second episode, the show never lets us grow attached. This, combined with their selective presence in scenes, draws attention to Daemons as a plot gimmick and not a natural extension of characters. Like Lyra, the show tells us why Daemons are important before we understand them.

Billy Costa's fate falls flat. It's missing the dried fish/ fake Daemon Tony Markos clings to in the book. Thorne said this 'didn't work' on the day, but it worked in the film. Everyone yelling about Billy not having a Daemon is laughable when most of the background extras in the same scene don't have Daemons themselves

WITCHES

The Witches are the most common complaint about the show. Thorne changed Serafina Pekkala in clever, logical ways (her short hair, wrist-knives and cloud pine in the skin)

The problem is how Serafina is written. The Witches are purely exposition machines. We get no impression of their culture, their deep connection to nature, their understanding of the world. We are told it. It is never shown, never incorporated into the dramatic action of the show.

Thorne emphasises Serafina's warrior side, most obviously changing Kaisa from a goose into a gyrfalcon (apparently a goose didn't work on-screen)

Serafina single-handedly slaughtering the Tartars is bad in a few ways. It paints her as bloodthirsty and ruthless. Overpowering the Witches weakens the logic of the world (If they can do that, why do they let the Magesterium bomb them unchallenged in 2x2?). It strips the Witches of their subtlety and ambiguity for the sake of cinematic action.

A side-effect of Serafina not being with her clan at Bolvangar is limiting our exposure to the Witches. Serafina is the only one invested in the main plot, we only hear about them from what she tells us. This poor set-up weakens the Witch subplot in S2

Lyra doesn’t speak to Serafina until 2x6. She laid eyes on her once in S1.

The dialogue in the S2’s Witch subplot is comparable to the Courasant section of The Phantom Menace. 

Two named characters, neither with any depth (Serafina and Coram's dead son developed him far more than her). The costumes look ostentatious and hokey- the opposite of what the Witches should be. They do nothing but repeat the same exposition at each other, even in 2x7.

We feel nothing when the Witches are bombed because the show never invests us in what is being destroyed- with the amount of time wasted on long establishing shots, there’s not one when Lee Scoresby is talking to the Council.

BEARS

Like the Witches; Thorne misunderstands and rushes the fantasy elements of the story. The 2007 movie executed both Iofur's character and the Bear Fight much better than the show- bloodless jaw-swipe and all

Iofur's court was not the parody of human court in the books. He didn't have his fake-Daemon (hi, Billy)

An armourless bear fight is like not including Pan in the cutting scene. After equating Iorek's armour to a Daemon (Lee does this- we don’t even learn how important it is from Iorek himself, and the comparison meant less because of how badly the show set up Daemons) the show then cuts the plotpoint that makes the armour plot-relevant. This diminishes all of Bear society. Like Daemons, we're told Iorek's armour is important but it's never shown to be more than a cool accessory

GYPTIANS

Gyptians suffer from Hermoine syndrome. Harry Potter screenwriter Steve Kloves' favourite character was Hermione, and so Film!Hermoine lost most of Book!Hermoine's flaws and gained several of Book!Ron's best moments. The Gyptians are Jack Thorne's favourite group in HDM and so they got the extra screentime and development that the more complicated groups/concepts like Witches, Bears, and Daemons (which, unlike the Gyptians, carry over to other seasons amd are more important to the overall story) needed

At the same time, he changes them from a private people into an Isle of Misfit Toys. TV!Ma Costa promises they'll ‘make a Gyptian woman out of Lyra yet’, but in the book Ma specifically calls Lyra out for pretending to be Gyptian, and reminds her she never can be.

This small moment indicates how, while trying to make the show more grounded and 'adult', Thorne simultaneously made it more saccharine and sentimental. He neuters the tragedy of the Cut kids when Ma Costa says they’ll become Gyptians. Pullman's books feel like an adult story told through the eyes of a child. The TV show feels like a child's story masquerading as a serious drama.

LIN-MANUEL MIRANDA

Let me preface this by saying I genuinely really enjoy the performances in the show. It was shot in the foot by The Golden Compass' perfect casting.

The most contentious/'miscast' actor among readers is LMM. Thorne ditched the books' wise Texan for a budget Han Solo. LMM isn't a great dramatic actor (even in Hamilton he was the weak link performance-wise) but he makes up for it in marketability- lots of people tried the show because of him

Readers dislike that LMM's Lee is a thief and a scoundrel, when book-Lee is so moral he and Hester argue about stealing. Personally, I like the change in concept. Book!Lee's parental love for Lyra just appears. It's sweet, but not tied to a character arc. Done right, Lyra out-hustling Lee at his own game and giving him a noble cause to fight for (thus inspiring the moral compass of the books) is a more compelling arc.

DAFNE KEENE AND LYRA

I thought Dafne would be perfect casting. Her feral energy in Logan seemed a match made in heaven. Then Jack Thorne gave her little to do with it.

Compare how The Golden Compass introduced Lyra, playing Kids and Gobblers with a group of Gyptian kids, including Billy Costa. Lyra and Roger are chased to Jordan by the Gyptians and she makes up a lie about a curse to scare the Gyptians away.

In one scene the movie set up: 1) the Gobblers (the first we hear of them in the show is in retrospect, Roger worrying AFTER Billy is taken) 2) Lyra’s pre-existing relationship with the Gyptians (not in the show), 3) Friendship with Billy Costa (not in the book or show) 4) Lyra’s ability to befriend and lead groups of people, especially kids, and 5) Lyra’s ability to lie impressively

By comparison, it takes until midway through 1x2 for TV!Lyra to tell her first lie, and even then it’s a paper-thin attempt. 

The show made Roger Lyra’s only friend. This artificially heightens the impact of Roger's death, but strips Lyra of her leadership qualities and ability to befriend anyone. 

Harry Potter fans talk about how Book!Harry is funnier and smarter than Film!Harry. They cut his best lines ('There's no need to call me sir, Professor') and made him blander and more passive. The same happened to Lyra.

Most importantly, Lyra is not allowed to lie for fun. She can't do anything 'naughty' without being scolded. This colours the few times Lyra does lie (e.g. to Mrs Coulter in 1x2) negatively and thus makes Lyra out to be more of a brat than a hero.

This is a problem with telling Northern Lights from an outside, 'adult' perspective- to most adults Lyra is a brat. Because we’re introduced to her from inside her head, we think she's great. It's only when we meet her through Will's eyes in The Subtle Knife and she's filthy, rude and half-starved that we realise Lyra bluffs her way through life and is actually pretty non-functional

Thorne prioritises grounded human drama over fantasy, and so his Lyra has her love of bears and witches swapped for familial angst. (and, in S2. angst over Roger). By exposing Mrs Coulter as her mother early, Thorne distracts TV!Lyra from Book!Lyra’s love of the North. The contrast between wonder and reality made NL's ending a definitive threshold between innocence and knowledge. Thorne showed his hand too early.

Similarly, TV!Lyra doesn’t have anywhere near as strong an admiration for Lord Asriel. She calls him out in 1x8 (‘call yourself a Father’), which Book!Lyra never would because she’s proud to be his child. From her perspective, at this point Asriel is the good parent.

TV!Lyra’s critique of Asriel feels like Thorne using her as a mouthpiece to voice his own, adult perspective on the situation. Because Lyra is already disappointed in Asriel, his betrayal in the finale isn’t as effective. Pullman saves the ‘you’re a terrible Father’ call-out for the 3rd book for a reason; Lyra’s naive hero-worship of Asriel in Northern Lights makes the fall from Innocence into Knowledge that Roger’s death represents more effective.  

So, on TV Lyra is tamer, angstier, more introverted, less intelligent, less fun and more serious. We're just constantly told she's important, even before we meet her.

MRS COULTER (AND LORD ASRIEL)

Mrs Coulter is the main character of the show. Not Lyra. Mrs Coulter was cast first, and Lyra was cast based on a chemistry test with Ruth Wilson. Coulter’s character is given lots of extra development, where the show actively strips Lyra of her layers.

To be clear, I have no problem with developing Mrs Coulter. She is a great character Ruth Wilson plays phenomenally. I do have a problem with the show fixating on her at the expense of other characters.

Lyra's feral-ness is given to her parents. Wilson and McAvoy are more passionate than in the books. This is fun to watch, but strips them of subtlety- you never get Book!Coulter's hypnotic allure from Wilson, she's openly nasty, even to random strangers (in 2x3 her dismissal of the woman at the hotel desk felt like a Disney villain). 

Compare how The Golden Compass (2007) introduced Mrs Coulter through Lyra’s eyes, with light, twinkling music and a sparkling dress. By contrast, before the show introduces Coulter it tells us she’s associated with the evil Magisterium plotting Asriel’s death- “Not a word to any of our mutual friends. Including her.” Then she’s introduced striding down a corridor to imposing ‘Bad Guy’ strings.

Making Mrs Coulter’s villainy so obvious so early makes Lyra look dumber for falling for it. It also wastes an interesting phase of her character arc. Coulter is rushed into being a ’conflicted evil mother’ in 2 episodes, and stays in that phase for the rest of the show so far. Character progression is minimised because she circles the same place.

It makes her one-note. It's a good note (so much of the positive online chatter is saphiccs worshiping Ruth Wilson) but the show also worships her to the point of hindrance- e.g. take a shot every time Coulter walks slow-motion down a corridor in 2x2

The problem isn’t the performances, but how prematurely they give the game away. Just like the mysteries around Bolvangar and Lyra’s parentage. Neither Coulter or Asriel have much chance to use their 'public' faces. 

This is part of a bigger pacing problem- instead of rolling plot points out gradually, Thorne will stick the solution in front of you early and then stall for time until it becomes relevant. Instead of building tension this builds frustration and makes the show feel like it's catching up to the audience. This also makes the characters less engaging. You've already shown Mrs Coulter is evil/Boreal is in our world/Asriel wants Roger. Why are you taking so long getting to the point?

PACING AND EDITING

This show takes forever to make its point badly.

Scenes in HDM tend to operate on one level- either 'Character Building,' 'Exposition,' or 'Plot Progression'.

E.g. Mary's introduction in 2x2. Book!Mary only listens to Lyra because she’s sleep and caffeine-deprived and desperate because her funding is being cut. But the show stripped that subtext out and created an extra scene of a colleague talking to Mary about funding. They removed emotional subtext to focus on exposition, and so the scene felt empty and flat.

In later episodes characters Mary’s sister and colleagues do treat her like a sleep-deprived wreck. But, just like Lyra’s lying, the show doesn’t establish these characteristics in her debut episode. It waits until later to retroactively tell us they were there. Mary’s colleague saying ‘What we’re dealing with here is the fact that you haven’t slept in weeks’ is as flimsy as Pan joking not lying to Mary will be hard for Lyra.

Rarely does a scene work on multiple levels, and if it does it's clunky- see the exposition dump about Daemon Separation in the middle of 2x2's Witch Trial.

He also splits plot progression into tiny doses, which destroys pacing. It's more satisfying to focus on one subplot advancing multiple stages than all of them shuffling forward half a step each episode.

Subplots would be more effective if all the scenes played in sequence. As it is, plotlines can’t build momentum and literal minutes are wasted using the same establishing shots every time we switch location.

The best-structured episodes of S1 are 1x4, 1x6, and 1x8. This is because they have the fewest subplots (incidentally these episodes have least Boreal in them) and so the main plot isn’t diluted by constantly cutting away to Mrs Coulter sniffing Lyra’s coat or Will watching a man in a car through his window, before cutting back again. 

The best-written episode so far is 2x5. The Scholar. Tellingly, it’s the only episode Thorne doesn’t have even a co-writing credit on. 2x5 is well-paced, its dialogue is more naturalistic, it’s more focused, it even has time for moments of whimsy (Monkey with a seatbelt, Mrs Coulter with jeans, Lyra and Will whispering) that don’t detract from the story.

Structurally, 2x5  works because A) it benches Lee’s plotline. B) The Witches and Magisterium are relegated to a scene each. And C) the Coulter/Boreal and Lyra/Will subplots move towards the same goal. Not only that, but when we check in on Mary’s subplot it’s through Mrs Coulter’s eyes and directly dovetails into the  main action of the episode.

2x5 has a lovely sense of narrative cohesion because it has the confidence to sit with one set of characters for longer than two scenes at a time.

HDM also does this thing where it will have a scene with plot A where characters do or talk about something, cut away to plot B for a scene, then cut back to plot A where the characters talk about what happened in their last scene and painstakingly explain how they feel about it and why

Example: Pan talking to Will in 2x7 while Lyra pretends to be asleep. This scene is from the 3rd book, and is left to breathe for many chapters before Lyra brings it up. In the show after the Will/Pan scene they cut away to another scene, then cut back and Lyra instantly talks about it.

There’s the same problem in 2x5: After escaping Mrs Coulter, Lyra spells out how she feels about acting like her

The show never leaves room for implication, never lets us draw our own conclusions before explaining what it meant and how the characters feel about it immediately afterwards. The audience are made passive in their engagement with the characters as well as the world    

LORD BOREAL, JOHN PARRY AND DIMINISHING RETURNS

At first, Boreal’s subplot in S1 felt bold and inspired. The twist of his identity in The Subtle Knife would've been hard to pull off onscreen anyway. As a kid I struggled to get past Will's opening chapter of TSK and I have friends who were the same. Introducing Will in S1 and developing him alongside Lyra was a great idea.

I loved developing Elaine Parry and Boreal into present, active characters. But the subplot was introduced too early and moved too slowly, bogging down the season.

In 1x2 Boreal crosses. In 1x3 we learn who he's looking for. In 1x5 we meet Will. In 1x7 the burglary. 1 episode worth of plot is chopped up and fed to us piecemeal across many. Boreal literally stalls for two episodes before the burglary- there are random 30 second shots of him sitting in a car watching John Parry on YouTube (videos we’d already seen) completely isolated from any other scenes in the episode

By the time we get to S2 we've had 2 seasons of extended material building up Boreal, so when he just dies like in the books it's anticlimactic. The show frontloads his subplot with meaning without expanding on its payoff, so the whole thing fizzles out. 

Giving Boreal, the secondary villain in literally every episode, the same death as a background character in about 5 scenes in the novels feels cheap. It doesn’t help that, after 2x5 built the tension between Coulter and Boreal so well, as soon as Thorne is passed the baton in 2x6 he does little to maintain that momentum. Again, because the subplot is crosscut with everything else the characters hang in limbo until Coulter decides to kill him.

I’ve been watching non-book readers react to the show, and several were underwhelmed by Boreal’s quick, unceremonious end. 

Similarly, the show builds up John Parry from 1x3 instead of just the second book. Book!John’s death is an anticlimax but feels narratively justified. In the show, we’ve spent so much extra time talking about him and then being with him (without developing his character beyond what’s in the novels- Pullman even outlined John’s backstory in The Subtle Knife’s appendix. How hard would it be to add a flashback or two?) that when John does nothing in the show and then dies (he doesn’t even heal Will’s fingers like in the book- only tell him to find Asriel, which the angels Baruch and Balthamos do anyway) it doesn’t feel like a clever, tragic subversion of our expectations, it feels like a waste that actively cheapens the audience’s investment.

TL;DR giving supporting characters way more screentime than they need only, to give their deaths the same weight the books did after far less build up makes huge chunks of the show feel less important than they were presented to be. 

FRUSTRATINGLY LIMITED EXPANSION AND NOVELLISTIC STORYTELLING

Thorne is unwilling to meaningfully develop or expand characters and subplots to fit a visual medium. He introduces a plot-point, invents unnecessary padding around it, circles it for an hour, then moves on.

Pullman’s books are driven by internal monologue and big, complex theological concepts like Daemons and Dust. Instead of finding engaging, dynamic ways to dramatise these concepts through the actions of characters or additions to the plot, Thorne turns Pullman’s internal monologue into dialogue and has the characters explain them to the audience

The novels’ perspective on its characters is narrow, first because Northern Lights is told only from Lyra’s POV, and second because Pullman’s writing is plot-driven, not character-driven. Characters are vessels for the plot and themes he wants to explore.

This is a fine way of writing novels. When adapting the books into a longform drama, Thorne decentralised Lyra’s perspective from the start, and HDM S1 uses the same multi-perspective structure that The Subtle Knife and The Amber Spyglass do, following not only Lyra but the Gyptians, Mrs Coulter, Boreal, Will and Elaine etc

However, these other perspectives are limited. We never get any impression of backstory or motivation beyond the present moment. Many times I’ve seen non-book readers confused or frustrated by vague or non-existent character motivations.

For example, S1 spends a lot of time focused on Ma Costa’s grief over Billy’s disappearance, but we never see why she’s sad, because we never saw her interact with Billy.

Compare this to another show about a frantic mother and older brother looking for a missing boy. Stranger Things uses only two flashbacks to show us Will Byers’ relationships with his family: 1) When Joyce Byers looks in his Fort she remembers visiting Will there. 2) The Clash playing on the radio reminds Jonathan Byers of introducing Will to the song.

In His Dark Materials we never see the Costas as a happy family- 1x1’s Gyptian ceremony focuses on Tony and Daemon-exposition. Billy never speaks to his mum or brother in the show 

Instead we have Ma Costa’s empty grief. The audience has to do the work (the bad kind) imagining what she’s lost. Instead of seeing Billy, it’s just repeated again and again that they will get the children back.

If we’re being derivative, HDM had the chance to segway into a Billy flashback when John Faa brings one of his belongings back from a Gobbler safehouse in 1x2. This is a perfect The Clash/Fort Byers-type trigger. It doesn’t have to be long- the Clash flashback lasted 1:27, the Fort Byers one 55 seconds. Just do something.

1x3 beats into us that Mrs Coulter is nuts without explaining why. Lots of build-up for a single plot-point. Then we're told Mrs Coulter's origin, not shown. This is a TV show. Swap Boreal's scenes for flashbacks of Coulter and Asriel's affair. Then, when Ma Costa tells Lyra the truth, show the fight between Edward Coulter and Asriel.

To be clear, Thorne's additions aren’t fundamentally bad. For example, Will boxing sets up his struggle with violence. But it's wasted. The burglary/murder in 1x7 fell flat because of bad editing, but the show never uses its visual medium to show Will's 'violent side'- no change in camera angle, focus, or sound design, nothing. It’s just a thing that’s there, unsupported by the visual language of the show

The Magisterium scenes in 2x2 were interesting. We just didn't need 5 of them; their point could be made far more succinctly.

In 2x6 there is a minute-long scene of Mary reading the I Ching. Later, there is another scene of Angelica watching Mary sitting somewhere different, doing the SAME THING, and she sees an Angel. Why split these up? It’s not like either the I Ching or the Angels are being introduced here. Give the scene multiple layers.

Thorne either takes good character moments from the books (Lyra/Will in 2x1) or uses heavy-handed exposition that reiterates the same point multiple times. This hobbles the Witches (their dialogue in 2x1, 2 and 3 literally rephrases the same sentiment about protecting Lyra without doing anything). Even character development- see Lee monologuing his and Mrs Coulter's childhood trauma in specific detail in 2x3

This is another example of Thorne adding something, but instead of integrating it into the dramatic action and showing us, it’s just talked about. What’s the point of adding big plot points if you don’t dramatise them in your dramatic, visual medium? In 2x8, Lee offhandedly mentions playing Alamo Gulch as a kid.

I’m literally screaming, Jack, why the flying fuck wasn’t there a flashback of young Lee and Hester playing Alamo Gulch and being stopped by his abusive dad? It’s not like you care about pacing with the amount of dead air in these episodes, even when S2’s run 10 minutes shorter than S1’s. Lee was even asleep at the beginning of 2x3, Jack! He could’ve woken from a nightmare about his childhood! It’s a little lazy, but better than nothing.

There’s a similar missed opportunity making Dr Lanselius a Witchling. If this idea had been introduced with the character in 1x4, it would’ve opened up so many storytelling possibilities. Linking to Fader Coram’s own dead witchling son. It could’ve given us that much-needed perspective on Witch culture. Imagine Lanselius’ bittersweet meeting with his ageless mother, who gave him up when he reached manhood. Then, when the Magisterium bombs the Witches in 2x2, Lanselius’ mother dies so it means something.

Instead it’s only used to facilitate an awkward exposition dump in the middle of a trial.

The point of this fanfic-y ramble is to illustrate my frustration with the additions; If Thorne had committed and meaningfully expanded and interwoven them with the source material, they could’ve strengthened its weakest aspect (the characters). But instead he stays committed to novelistic storytelling techniques of monologue and two people standing in a room talking at each other

(Seriously, count the number of scenes that are just two people standing in a room or corridor talking to each other. No interesting staging, the characters aren’t doing anything else while talking. They. Just. Stand.) 

SEASON 2 IMPROVEMENTS

S2 improved some things- Lyra's characterisation was more book-accurate, her dynamic with Will was wonderful. Citigazze looked incredible. LMM won lots of book fans over as Lee. Mary was brilliantly cast. Now there are less Daemons, they're better characterised- Pan gets way more to do now and Hester had some lovely moments. 

I genuinely believe 2x1, 2x3, 2x4 and 2x5 are the best HDM has been. 

But new problems arose. The Subtle Knife lost the central, easy to understand drive of Northern Lights (finding the missing kids) for lots of smaller quests. As a result, everyone spends the first two episodes of S2 waiting for the plot to arrive. The big inciting incident of Lyra’s plotline is the theft of the alethiometer, which doesn’t happen until 2x3. Similarly, Lee doesn’t search for John until 2x3. Mrs Coulter doesn’t go looking for Lyra until 2x3. 

On top of missing a unifying dramatic drive, the characters now being split across 3 worlds, instead of the 1+a bit of ours in S1, means the pacing/crosscutting problems (long establishing shots, repetition of information, undercutting momentum) are even worse. The narrative feels scattered and incohesive.   

These flaws are inherent to the source  material and are not the show’s fault, but neither does it do much to counterbalance or address them, and the flaws of the show combine with the difficulties of TSK as source material and make each other worse.

A lot of this has been entitled fanboy bitching, but you can't deny the show is in a bad place ratings-wise. It’s gone from the most watched new British show in 5 years to the S2 premiere having a smaller audience than the lowest-rated episode of Doctor Who Series 12. For comparison, DW's current cast and showrunner are the most unpopular since the 80s, some are actively boycotting it, it took a year-long break between series 11 and 12, had its second-worst average ratings since 2005, and costs a fifth of what HDM does to make. And it's still being watched by more people.

Critical consensus fluctuates wildly. Most laymen call the show slow and boring. The show is simultaneously too niche and self-absorbed to attract a wide audience and gets just enough wrong to aggravate lots of fans.

I’m honestly unsure if S3 will get the same budget. I want it to, if only because of my investment in the books. Considering S2 started filming immediately after S1 aired, I think they've had a lot more time to process and apply critique for S3. On the plus side, there's so much plot in The Amber Spyglass it would be hard to have the same pacing problems. But also so many new concepts that I dread the exposition dumps.

[bestworstcase]

We all know that the Gothel twist was terrible and was only there for the sake of having a twist, but if it absolutely have been done, how should it had happened to make it better narratively?

so. i spent a lot of time kind of mulling over and autopsying s3 and my personal conclusion about what went wrong is that tts hamstrung itself with poor narrative structure. and this is going to be one of those posts where i lead with definitions of the terminology i’m going to use, for the sake of clarity and to avoid any misunderstanding. 

to whit: 

story is the sum total of every element of a narrative: character, plot, setting, theme, and structure.  

character is, of course, the people in the story. it’s “who?”

plot is the events that happen in a story. it’s “what?”

setting is the time and place of the story. it’s “where?” and “when?” 

theme is what the story is *about.* it’s “why?”

and then there’s narrative structure, which i think is a little harder to grasp because it’s much more invisible than the other things. but it’s the framework of the story, or the scaffolding. it’s “how?” — how are the characters rendered? how is the setting created? how are the events of the plot strung together along the throughline? how is the story built? 

now… in my opinion, character is the single most important element of a story; compelling characters can salvage an otherwise mediocre story, and nothing kills a story faster than uninteresting characters. 

but the one thing good characters can’t ultimately compensate for is poor structure. if the construction is shoddy, so to speak, sooner or later, the roof is gonna leak. right? and we can see this happen in tts: s1 and s2 are solid, and then bam! we hit s3 and it’s a mess of bizarre pacing and dropped characters, the feelings and motivations of key players get all wonky, the plot loses focus, and things increasingly feel like they’re happening by authorial fiat. the weak structure of the narrative has failed, and it dragged the entire story down with it. 

and we can look back in retrospect and see that, yeah, all of these problems existed before; tts always had odd pacing, always had an issue with maintenance of the supporting cast, always relied more on convenience than a narrative really should. but these things didn’t hit a critical mass until s3. 

so what does this have to do with gothel? well,

in and of itself, “gothel is cassandra’s mother!” is not a terrible plot twist. the problem with it is a problem of execution, which is to say, the flaw is in the structure, not the plot.

#1: set-up

plot twists are kind of difficult to pull off well, because you don’t want to blindside people, but you also don’t want to tip your hand too soon. you want to surprise, or maybe even shock—but you don’t want your audience to go, “wait, WHAT? that makes no sense!”

do you remember the whole “ricky’s quest” thing that went on in s2? we were told that there was an important piece of foreshadowing somewhere in s1 or s2 that no one had picked up on yet and there was this whole thing of people trying to figure out what it was, and then… rapunzel’s return aired, and ricky revealed that the answer was “cassandra briefly glances into the shattered mirror in rapunzel’s tower.” 

and that, + the fact that we know cass is adopted and doesn’t remember her birth parents, + vague visual similarities, is the entirety of the s1-s2 foreshadowing for cassandra being gothel’s daughter.

which isn’t nothing, i’ll grant you, but for something as major as the gothel twist, for something that profoundly changes the worldview and motivations of one of the main characters to such a degree that she completely changes sides because of it, it might as well be nothing.

gothel is afforded zero narrative importance in s1-s2. rapunzel has one nightmare about her, and some lingering trauma connected to the tower that is explored, and of course tromus briefly uses her image to try to control rapunzel in rapunzeltopia. but gothel herself is a non-entity until she abruptly and without warning becomes the emotional lynchpin of the entire conflict in s3. that’s jarring.

cassandra is a complex character whose apparent motivations for turning against rapunzel are meticulously built up over the course of s2… only for s3 to pull a bait-and-switch, sweep all of that set-up under the rug, and replace it with cassandra’s messed up feelings about gothel’s abandonment. even her ruined hand never gets mentioned again—not by her, not by zhan tiri, not by rapunzel, not by anyone. that’s jarring, too. 

to use my own work as a point of comparison here, the bitter snow equivalent of the gothel reveal is cassandra finding out that sirin is her aunt and her parents were innocent. like the gothel twist, learning that information profoundly changes how cassandra sees herself and the world, and it’s intended to be a big shock… but unlike the gothel twist, i did a lot of setting up for it: 

1: sirin has real narrative importance in the first half of the story, pre-reveal. the fic opens with her, her involvement with the separatists is established early, etc. 

2: pieces of cassandra’s backstory are threaded through the first half of the story. by the time we hit the reveal, it’s been established that cass is saporian, that her parents were executed for treason, that this treason involved selling poisoned crops and causing outbreaks of a deadly sickness. 

3: there are many demonstrations of anti-saporian discrimination and prejudice in the first half of the story: the way cass sees herself and the alienation she feels from the rest of corona, past incidents where she was targeted for being saporian, basically every time gilbert opens his mouth, what happened to caine’s dad. 

4: cassandra discovers evidence of the harsh, unjust nature of the crackdown and realizes that at least some of what she’s been taught about coronan law enforcement and recent history is inaccurate… thus planting the seed, for the readers if not for cass herself, that other things might be false too.

5: caine points out that cass is the reason the separatists don’t let parents join up, and though she doesn’t elaborate on that, it’s because cass is proof that corona will steal saporian children if their parents are accused of treason.

and 6: everything sirin says to cass in chapter 14 is wrapped up in her being painfully, painfully aware that a) cass is her niece and b) probably doesn’t know the whole story—while also trying to stick to the plan. so… while she doesn’t spill the beans there, she knows who cass is, she stops andrew from hurting her, she makes a point of not acknowledging the legitimacy of cassandra’s adoption, and obliquely suggests that sir peter is a murderer… and while she tries to stop cass from interfering with what they’re doing, she doesn’t hurt her, even though she very much could.

so… in chapter 15, when sirin comes out with “actually, the blight was a natural disaster no one anticipated and saporians got sick and died too, your parents were just scapegoats because corona wanted someone to blame, and oh, by the way, you’re my niece,” it’s a shock but not one that comes entirely out of left field. cassandra’s parents being innocent victims of an overzealous and prejudiced justice system is a logical extension of all the stuff that has already been set up, and sirin being cass’s aunt helps to clarify motivations that were previously opaque (such as: why does sirin despise corona so much, why didn’t she just kill cass, etc). 

and because all of this stuff is given so much attention in the first half of the story, the way it snaps cassandra’s worldview in half and causes such a massive reorienting of her goals and loyalties feels natural. because it already mattered a great deal to her, and it related to the doubts she was already experiencing. 

which like, that’s the key. setting up a big plot twist isn’t about establishing one basic fact (“cass is adopted”) and tossing in one instance of symbolic foreshadowing (the mirror thing) and nothing else, over the course of two whole seasons of a tv show. it is about priming the audience to be ready to accept the reveal.

how could tts have done this with the gothel reveal? here’s some ideas: 

1: give gothel a greater presence in the narrative. the simplest way to do this would be to really lean in to how fucked up rapunzel is because of her. more nightmares, more overt moments where we see rapunzel still being haunted by her memory. alternatively, lean more into the fact that gothel was a disciple of zhan tiri.

2: give cassandra’s adoption, and the question of her birth parents, even a teeny tiny glimmer of interest. specifically, let “dad found me after my parents abandoned me” be the only thing cass knows about her adoption, and let that hurt her. she doesn’t even have to be curious about who her birth parents were—just have that pain of abandonment more present in the first two seasons. 

3: imply the captain knows more about cassandra’s origins than he lets on. 

4: you know the parallel in RATGT where rapunzel screams at cass the way gothel screamed at rapunzel? more of that. like, how delicious would it be if there were many little instances in s1-s2 of rapunzel lashing out at cass with behaviors she obviously subconsciously learned from gothel, only for s3 to pull the sucker punch of cassandra being gothel’s daughter? like! imagine how that could so EASILY make cassandra recontextualize her entire relationship with rapunzel by linking rapunzel’s toxic behaviors with gothel’s abuse and abandonment in her mind? and then in s3 you can really dig into rapunzel interrogating her own behaviors and struggling to break the cycle of abuse. 

5: if gothel being a former disciple of zhan tiri is narratively important, it can go hand-in-hand with zhan tiri and the other disciples more overtly targeting cass, specifically. even if we don’t know why until the reveal. 

i’ve seen a couple posts from other folks discussing how to “fix” the gothel twist, and many of them involve cass either knowing from the start or finding out much earlier, but while that could work, i don’t think it’s necessary. it’s all about the set up. it’s all about constructing the story in such a way that the audience goes “OH!” instead of “WHAT?!” when the reveal happens, and the specific timing of the reveal doesn’t really… matter.

#2: execution

surprising absolutely no one, i’m going to talk about zhan tiri now. 

based on what chris has said in various interviews, my understanding is this: originally, cass was originally supposed to be a secret antagonist all along and know about her parentage right out of the gate. her characterization softened early on in the process, her knowing about gothel got dropped, and suddenly the creators needed a way for her to learn that gothel was her mom, and thus zhan tiri entered the narrative.

she is a plot device whose whole purpose is to tell cass “gothel was your mom and abandoned you for rapunzel,” and then fuel her downward spiral. the rest of her character exists in service of that, full stop. 

which… like the gothel reveal, having a character whose primary function is to be a plot device isn’t a problem in and of itself. however. “ancient evil demonic sorceress with deep ties to the magical lore of the setting and an entrenched hatred for team hero, whose MO is manipulating people” is a terrible character archetype to use as this kind of plot device, because that kind of character needs to have an agenda in order to function, and as soon as you give them an agenda they develop a gravitational pull on the rest of the story, especially if they’re directly involved with a main character. 

and if you’re willing to roll with that gravitational pull, it can be fine. but if you’re not… you get tts s3. 

chris has pretty much spelled this out in interviews. he said at one point that they debated multiple potential motives for zhan tiri… but found that anything more complex than “wants the drops and to burn corona to the ground, because reasons” sucked oxygen away from the cass vs raps conflict and eventual reconciliation, which… yeah. so they gave zhan tiri the cardboard motives and didn’t really do anything with her other than trotting her out to give cass a good shove in whatever direction the plot needed cass to fall in every so often. 

that zhan tiri is a compelling character in s3 at all is a testament to the strength of her VA and the sheer potential of her established lore, in combination with the fact that she and cassandra are off screen enough to demand that the audience fill in a lot of gaps. but in, like, the actual text, she has all the complex personality of a piece of damp tissue paper and she is, for all intents and purposes, literally just Cassandra’s Brain. every decision, every single decision cass makes in s3 is because of zhan tiri. why take the moonstone? zhan tiri tells her to. why is she so mad at rapunzel? zhan tiri made her that way. why does she attack rapunzel? zhan tiri convinced her she had to. why does she go to gothel’s cabin in TOTS? zhan tiri tipped her off that rapunzel would be there. why does her fragile truce with rapunzel fall apart at the end of TOTS? zhan tiri interfered. why does she try to reconcile again in OAH? she found out zhan tiri was… zhan tiri. why does that reconciliation fail? zhan tiri. why does cass ultimately redeem herself? because zhan tiri stabs her in the back first. 

*deep breath*

this is what happens when you troubleshoot a broken narrative with plot devices instead of opening it up to fix whatever is wrong with the underlying structure. in this case, cassandra not knowing about gothel from the get go broke her planned villain arc… and the creators applied zhan tiri like a bandaid, molding this new character into someone who could railroad cass down the preexisting plan for her villain arc. 

what needed to happen instead was a wholesale reexamination and reconfiguration of cassandra’s villain arc, her reasons for going down that path, and her reasons for coming back. even if finding out the truth about gothel was still the trigger for it, it’s ultimately not about gothel anymore. gothel is just the last straw. 

and in order to work with the characters as-established in s1-s2, the events of s3 would need to be framed that way. if, after all the shit she goes through in s2, cass met zhan tiri, learned that gothel was her mom and abandoned her for rapunzel, and finally just snapped and went after the moonstone because fuck this, fuck you, and then zhan tiri came in with the compassion and emotional validation and the “your mother treated you as a servant and then discarded you for something she thought was better, and so did rapunzel, didn’t she? but i see you, i believe in you, i am your friend, and we can help each other,” and cass bought that because she’s desperate for emotional support and kindness and fuck it, she’s on team demon now, only for her conscience to eat away at her until she couldn’t take it anymore and broke away from zhan tiri for good… then it works, full stop. 

like, you don’t have to change a single plot event for the gothel twist to work. you just have to string those plot events along an emotional throughline that makes sense and feels connected to what happened in s1-s2. you can’t use zhan tiri to graft the s3 arc of evil-all-along proto-cass onto canon s1-s2 and call it a day because that doesn’t work! you have to write for the characters you have, not their early planning-stages iterations. if you make a decision early on that breaks your original plan, you have to commit to redoing the whole plan. 

and if you do that, if you fix the underlying structure, you don’t need a character whose sole purpose is to railroad another character down a predetermined path that no longer fits her characterization; cass and zhan tiri can instead both be characters, acting according to their motivations and goals, and not puppets pantomiming the ghost of a broken plan. 

(you do still have to accept that zhan tiri will pull focus away from the cass+rapunzel friendship, though. them’s the breaks. don’t use zhan tiris if you’re not willing to let them gobble up the spotlight a bit.)

TL;DR: to fix the gothel twist, set it up better in s1-s2 by making the question of cassandra’s parentage, or abandonment by her parentage, important to the narrative at all, or else by focusing more closely on gothel being a disciple of zhan tiri; then execute the s3 villain arc in a way that makes sense for canon cass and what she experiences in s1-s2, rather than using zhan tiri to railroad her down the path evil-all-along proto-cass was supposed to take. 

the problem is a structural one so at the end of the day the solution is to fix the structure. ¯\_(��)_/¯ 

[jacketpotatoo]

What If...? Finale: Quick Thoughts

I would like to do a more in depth thing but we’ll see if I have the motivation

I... was not a fan. I had similar problems for this episode with a lot of the series where having to fit in more content in a short 30 min runtime messed up the pacing pretty badly. Jokes had no time to sit, emotional callbacks don’t feel as earned because the audience and characters barely have time to process them. They bit off more than they could chew with the multiple twists, villains, and the large number of characters. The good material is there, there was just no time for it to play out satisfyingly.

For a multiversal crossover, I’d also have liked to see more exploration of the ramifications and such. I don’t know, I just feel like the premise was a little wasted. I would have had no problem if they stuck to What If...? being an anthology series but if they were going to have a big crossover, do it right and explore the interesting bits of it. It also makes s2 an issue if audiences are to expect a large multiverse-scale crossover finale instead of just fun standalone little stories. May be the minority on this one but ah well.

As a series, the episodes have been a bit of a mixed bag for me but as someone who just wanted little peeks into different universes, What If...? was a fun weekly watch. Kind of like filler anime episodes but in a good way. And that’s exactly what I thought it would be.

[katsidhe]

Sam and Dean Breakups, Part Two: Involuntary

Part One: Voluntary

Sorted by how much longer I think they should have lasted. 

Unlike in part one, pretty much all of these involve Sam or Dean dealing with either possession or grief, which adds additional flavor of

5.22-6.01/6.12/6.22 (Sam in the Cage): a year/a year and a half, one/twelve/twenty-two episodes. Perfect. Chef’s kiss. We get both a long time of Dean without a part of Sam, and a long time of getting to know this significant, different part of Sam. Which all builds delightfully to a crescendo when we finally get Sam back fully—and even then, his memories form yet another barrier. Getting him back in pieces wonderfully, brilliantly permits us to still have Sam present while simultaneously preserving focus on the length and enormity of his absence, and of the Cage’s impact. S10 and s14, take fucking notes: this is how you emphasize offscreen transformation while keeping your characters visible. 

15.20 (Sam after Dean’s death): probably around forty years, part of one episode. I, personally and privately, want to read several different large sets of novel-length fics about Sam’s life after Dean’s death. Under absolutely no circumstances do I want any of these reified as canon. Let Sam’s recovery be nebulous; let it be under perpetual construction; let it be blurry and private and vague; let him build it in a place we can’t see and can’t reach.  

3.11 (Mystery Spot): one day/nine months, one episode. Imagining this as two episodes instead of one is delightful, I will admit. However, I prefer the horror of it contained to just one episode, to really drive home the insignificance of this to everyone but Sam. An event with such horrific and outsize impact on him is contained to what, for the rest of the world, is just one Tuesday. Instead of it becoming an event like 2.21 that Dean externalizes, that is dragged out and explored for an additional episode and then an additional year, 3.11 is totally internal, and not something Sam mentions again.  

2.21 (Sam in Cold Oak): three days, one and a half episodes. Seeing Sam apart from Dean in strange circumstances and yet confident, in his element, is so enjoyable that I’d gladly see this extended. This would also serve to ease how abrupt the ramp-up to the Azazel confrontation is--allow more time to flesh out the idea of demon hunger games. One thing I don’t think requires extension is how long Sam actually spends dead. The brevity of the interruption, how quickly Dean makes his decision, is kinda the point. 

2.14 (Sam possessed by Meg): two weeks, one episode. Similar to Mystery Spot—lots of character impact contained to just one episode, a lot of Sam internalizing. But here, I think the story could have benefitted from more separation: dwelling on Sam alone rather than only on Dean’s reaction to him, lending additional horror to Sam’s true predicament rather than only to Dean’s fears of him ~going bad~, and giving s2 a greater sense of urgency and direction. 

3.16-4.01 (Dean in Hell): four months, less than an episode. Much as I would have personally enjoyed the impact of an additional episode of Dean’s absence, the structure of s4 is such that Sam’s team-up with Ruby is revealed gradually: s4 is told expressly from Dean’s POV, as he struggles with suppressing and then remembering Hell, and discovering Sam’s extracurriculars. To change this would be to change our perception of the manner in which Dean experiences these events. Even so, the significance of Hell to Dean is not dealt with the way it is with Sam, nor is Dean’s absence or Sam’s grief particularly keenly felt. Putting Hell onscreen is a bad idea, and yet having Sam and Dean split up and apart from each other for longer in the beginning of season 4 would please me. Sam apart from Dean and training to kill demons with Ruby, versus Sam apart from Dean and trying to recover with Amelia: united in their forbiddenness, united in their othering.  

7.23-8.01 (Dean in Purgatory): one year, less than an episode. One problem with extending this is that there would be longer Purgatory scenes, and Purgatory is objectively extremely boring. And I can, to some extent, appreciate the structure of s8 as-is: with flashbacks illustrating their lost year and with the emphasis on the lack of understanding between Sam and Dean. But I can’t help but feel that this point would have been illustrated more effectively without the flashback structure, or at the very least with less of it--if instead, we’d gotten a few episodes in the beginning showing Sam’s collapse and subsequent recovery with Amelia, alongside Dean’s friendship with Benny and issues with Cas. The flashbacks add a tone that removes urgency, since we know so clearly and explicitly how everything ends up. It’s basically a less deft version of s4′s structure, which I’m also on the fence about: and there, at least, the mystery was both a benefit for the audience and representative of how Dean was processing, neither of which is really true in s8. S8 needed better integration of the reality of Dean and especially Sam’s separate lives. 

11.23-12.02 (Sam abducted by the BMoL): a few days, two and a half episodes. Sam should have stayed abducted longer. It was definitely the high point of s12, and of the BMoL’s status as villains. I think that Sam having to deal with the BMoL from within their internal structures would have been really fun, and a nice change of pace! Like, arguing his way out from under a bureaucracy, or even letting Sam be persuaded on the effectiveness of their tactics from within the institution—it would have made the BMoL both more distinct and more frightening. Also, look, it’s just plain fun that Sam’s being tortured and thinks Dean is dead, who actually wants that party to end?? 

13.23-14.02 (Dean possessed by Michael): around a month, one and a half episodes. What a missed opportunity. Every day I wake up and I weep for what s14 could have been. The secret good s14 that lives in my head is episode after episode after EPISODE of Jack, Sam, Nick, and Cas all coping with each other and with Dean’s absence. The tangible effects of the events of 13.23 require time to unwind, and they require that Dean not be around: I want to see Sam dealing with victory, with grief, with leadership, and with a mission; I want Sam and Nick to accidentally get locked in some room in the bunker together; I want family dinner with all four of them. I want Jack to yell at Sam. I want Dean to cope with possession in a way more lasting and meaningful than bouts of dizziness; I want Sam to cope with how he imagines Dean might be coping. This is the most ripe for conflict and recovery and pain that the show has ever been in Dean’s absence, prove me wrong. And it was squandered. 

[norgestan]

crisana, norandro, jorgeva and amira x dani

ha, anon just wanted all the canon couples. fair enough!

CRISANA:

see, skam s3 is my favorite season of all time, but it has never been because of the love story. isak's story hits in a lot of sensitive places for me, and isak was also the first main character i encountered that was my age. i have a really special connection to him for that reason. on the other hand... i enjoy evak for what it is, but i never saw a future for their relationship after the season ended. in a lot of ways, isak's season ended just as their relationship started, a trope that i've never liked because how am i supposed to think that they will last? how am i supposed to know how they will work as a couple? it's just, ugh.

i had similar thoughts about crisana when i watched s2, except that the love confession scene and cris as a character made it even harder to get into the couple. moreover, the way people brush other characters' roles and presence on other seasons because they're so caught up on cris and joana is like... blegh. like it makes me forget that they're actually a well-written couple at times. because imo, og they never did anything really interesting with evak once they got together. but eskam........ oh, dear eskam.

there's something so beautiful about thinking of all the girls, the teenagers that will grow up watching a relationship like theirs on popular media. their entire subplot (??? can i even call it that) in s4 is proof of how GREAT of a relationship they turned out to be. like, i just wanna SCREAM thinking about it because, how is it possible that eskam saw evak and said "we're gonna make this SO good and we'll take our time and then tie it up in an incredibly satisfying and emotional way" and then did exactly that!!!!!! the way they respect each other, communicate, genuinely try to get to each other without dumb miscommunication. the way they understand each other and lift each other up! the way joana knew how to recognize cris' intelligence when everyone was telling her she's dumb, the way cris knows how to make joana feel worth it and show her affection in such a selfless, loving way. their last scene on joana's pov in s4 was the first time i cried during that season, just because it was all wrapped up so beautifully. because eskam understood that although the appeal of their relationship comes from the soulmate status of every evak couple, they had to also put in serious work to make it all work and they also managed to get that across with grounded drama, and also a hopeful message for people struggling with mental disorders. like AAAAAAAAAAAAA god what a great couple they are. maybe i'm too much of an eskam bootlicker but they're genuinely the best evak there is. i'll die on this hill. i'm so happy young wlw get to watch them as a guideline of what they should expect of a relationship.

NORANDRO: already done :)

JORGEVA:

i mean... it's eskam's fault, without a doubt. i love what eskam did with them in s1: the change of pacing, the way they created jorge, the little story changes to make it more nuanced, i think come together in a pretty satisfying way to show a teenage romance with no real support to last for more than a while. i don’t think eskam fully got the gist of what jonas was supposed to be, but it’s for the better if we think of the message in season 1. for that reason, jorge is like the one jonas who i really wouldn’t mind coming back to his eva. so why don’t i like them?

the answer is simply that i don’t enjoy their trope and i don’t think eskam made a real case of eva and jorge getting back together. they work well as friends, sure, and it’s clear as day that jorge still has feelings for eva, sure. but like, what tells me that they’re just ready to go all in again? eva goes through a really great arc and i would definitely agree she’s in a good place to be in a relationship again, but we know NOTHING about jorge’s journey. he’s just, silently pining on eva and that’s it. i do think it’s sweet and the hints of their lost romance throughout the show are wholesome, but there’s just nothing more to it. jorge and eva work AMAZINGLY as friends! i don’t see why they should push a romantic endgame for them. in my head, eva kissing jorge at that party was just a mesh of the excitement of a new era, the nostalgia of ending highschool, the high of being on this place with someone she really cares about, stuff like that, but it just ends there, and it’s great that way. nothing about eva’s character really led to her aching to be in a relationship again, and for me it feels right to end things with her being single and surrounded by great friends.

MAYBE if eskam had devoted some time showing us their progress and romantic potential instead of trying to convince us that kasim was a real, compelling character. maybe. lol.

DAMIRA:

(god, i don’t know how long this will be LOL)

i have. so many thought about this fucking pairing. let’s see what we can do LOL. the thing about damira is that i don’t think it’s a pairing that eskam had in mind when they laid out the first two seasons. the little hints of a friendship/childhood crush that happened during cris’ season really got the fandom and they quickly became the most popular non-canon ship in the show, so that’s where i think eskam said “okay, let’s run with this”. but it’s just...... meh. like i can tell that relationships like crisana were carefully crafted (well implemented in nora’s season, greatly wrapped up in amira’s season) but i cannot say the same for dani and amira. it’s almost like virihugo, where they just started giving each other Eyes on the middle of season 3, out of NOWHERE. it just feels forced to me and so i never really felt anything for the couple in question... like, for starters, i think nora and miquel were WAY more shippable than those two, strictly talking about their setup.

if you ever saw any of my posts during s4 then you should know how i actually feel about how they developed their romance (check my anti damira tag for more?) and i don’t wanna go through all those specific points again... but damira is not only an infuriating romance, but also a bad pairing in a narrative setting. like, damira clearly exists to answer amira’s questions about how would the future of a romance with a white guy would be, right? does she get an answer? no she fucking doesn’t, their final clip is like “after all these weeks, we still have no idea so we’re gonna cut things short, go back to our initial dynamic, and wait to see if amira any of us change our minds <3″. so like, even in that sense damira is a HUGE waste of time, and just like everything that happens to amira during her season it has no lasting impacts on her character or her settings.

and personally, i love couples where they’re both equal, and communicate at last, and both make great efforts to change so the relationship can flourish. this is why i offer so much praise to norandro and crisana, where in the first couple both character go through tremendous character growth and work through their problems individually before getting together, and in the second couple they show them clashing and fighting just to display their resolutions and show how willing they are to actually talk to each other and keep their relationship stable. dani and amira, on the other hand.... blegh. eskam wants me to think dani is a knight in shining armor for liking amira but that’s all he ever does. he doesn’t defend her in front of his friends, he doesn’t make efforts to get to know her and her world, he doesn’t communicate his real feelings to her, and the one time he did he humiliated her in public. like, idk, like, even MIQUEL explicitly defended nora when his roommates berated her for not drinking alcohol LOL.

at the end of the day the problem with damira is that it completely misses the point of yousana and its target audience. making yousef a white guy is not necessarily a bad choice if you implement it well (which eskam didn’t do btw), but you have to take into account that sana’s season exists to make a primarily white christian-raised audience relate and stand up for the muslim characters in the show. when the lazier partner of the main couple who makes zero efforts to work on the relationship happens to be white, it just means people will be sympathetic of him, and nor amira - and that’s exactly what happened in the show. people either thought amira was being too harsh by laying conditions for dani before they even began dating and making sure he respected her boundaries, or just wanted all the drama to go away soon so amira could kiss dani by the end of the season. so like, yeah. terrible stuff.

i would’ve liked damira’s impact on the season and amira’s journey a lot more if it had been about a one sided childhood crush from amira’s part. i thought their friendship was charming up to s3, and i simply hate that dani is literally in no way an older brother figure for the girl squad, since it’s a dynamic that’s lacking in the show and it would be a nice way to make dani be some sort of non-creepy eskild for the girl squad (but noooo, his only interactions w the gs are hooking up with eva and dating amira. smh). it would’ve been fun to have amira intimately dealing with those feelings just to learn a lesson by the end of it, at the time that she also falls for her muslim love interest - which is actually the isak/jonas/even dynamic when you think about it, also something that eskam didn’t really do with cris’ season. but also, all of this would mean that eskam had to do the good writing thing for s4, which they kinda forgot to do throughout the entirety of the season so, yeah.

[meandmyechoes]

Anime round-up!

Since I’m back on holiday mode, I burnt through anime at an incredible speed. I finish one each day haha. I followed much less anime the October season than the last, only Mieruko-chan was on the menu and I picked up the Taisho romcom out of boredom. They are alright. 

They are pretty similar but I like Summer’s Kuromaid better. The characters and setting are more interesting with a fantasy element and slight mystery. The flirtations are funnier over there with necessary touching and reflective moments. The Taisho romcom did make use of the titular time period and like it advertised, gives a more ‘pure’ story. Things are very rose-tinted. It was a bit, traditional fairy tale, old-fashioned day drama even - but in a heartwarming enough kill-time way.

Mieruko on the other hand, hits the passing mark but I have to knock a few points off for the excess sexy fanservice. It wasn’t like that in the original manga. You expect maybe some suggestive shots of Hana like the horror girl trope, but it distracts and i wasn’t sure i could continue three episodes in. Luckily the plot starts to pick up as it simultaneously hits your tear spot witht the famed Granny tale and Miko’s father. The scary elements are quite good though, so is the comedy. The monsters are ugly, relying on Miko’s indecision instead of jumpscare. Yulia’s misconception of Miko’s power was particularly funny. It’s off to a slow start, and perhaps not very climatic ending curtesy of the little and ongoing source material. Luckily it did not go off-track like another manga-adptation last season, Shadow House. I look forward to the rest of the story but not sure I do in anime form. Looks likely it’d get a S2. Checked out the manga in under an afternoon.

A shoutout to Uramichi Oniisan. Dark comedy about adulthood and capitalism is my jam. So, the first thing I binged is Vampire Dies in No Time. It was almost a PPT but i lauged out loud so much. Kind of pointless kind of loud, but it was a nice four hours spent.

I really looked forward to the music x battle theme of takt. op destiny before its release. After I finished it, I don’t, I don’t really know what to say. It doesn’t really make use of music itself all that much despite its speeches about how crucial it is. Regardless for its effective atmosphere and emphasis on the appreciation of music, unlimited to classical, the pacing was the biggest problem. I thought it would be all epic battles but it was a road trip but then the world’s ending??? Well, I saw the pretty people on the poster and started watching, but I clicked on the second episode and was all ??? over my head and was like ‘so it’s maho shoujo + pokemon’ but the road trip wouldn’t end and i’m like ‘is this going to stay a character-based sitcom what a waste of worldbuilidng we saw little of’ and episode 11 hits me like a truck and i’m. not quite sure how the boss’s plan world but i guess his motiviation is okay-conveyed geh. The moment I learned it was a prequel to the mobile game its mess makes a lot more sense. But I am concerned about how good a job it does for promoting the game when it’s not really about the same characters. You could even say the emotional core from the anime is not going to get their happy ending. I’m kind of used to these goodbyes so I’m ok, I just feel like, the whole thing is a bit wasted potential. So say if it’s an original anime it’d be even more disappointing. The characters and designs are charming though, so if you come for Madhouse and MAPPA’s visuals, you definitely get your money’s worth. Still worth a watch I’d say, the first nine episodes are pretty good, but better spoil yourself first. That op is a banger though. The exact mix of sensory overload and soothing.

I am not a fan of isekai but since I watched Katarina in April I’m more open to it. Realist Hero fits my expectation that it presents a simplified but plausible manual for rebuilidng a medieaval magic kingdom’s economy. The worldbuilding is surprisingly solid with interspecies/international tension and real-life conflicts like natural disasters. It wasn’t heavy on the comedy like it does with building a harlem but stay focused on the drama of revolutionizing the goverment structure. I can pretend I learnt something. Will be following this season ‘cause I have nothing better to do haha. There’s one with similar permise where the prince is trying to increase the kingdom’s value so to sell it and retire at 25. That one is more sitcom and dumb luck so let’s see.

Started Komi-san Can’t Communicate today. Love it so far. Clever use of the manga panelling and on-screen text effects. The dialogues aren’t bare. Funny and a varied and distinct cast. Look forward to finishing it.

For this season, my money’s on Sono Bisuku Dōru wa Koi wo Suru. Yeah, I don’t know why i’m making myself watch romcoms three seasons in a row. But this show is as close to made for me with a protagonisht who loves to sew and make his own dolls and an anime lover. The first episode is really pretty and smooth. I’d binge it if it’s all release haha.

Another one I had a delight in is Kuroitsu-san from the Monster Development Dpeartment. Yeah! Tokusatsu Saikou! And they featured real local heroes I couldn’t be more proud. I had a great time with Heaven Design this season last year and I only expect it to be even more up my alley with specific tropes and similar realist comedy like Uramichi Oniisan or Hataraku Saibou Black. But even more niche haha.

[paintbrush-stan-babeyy]

uhmmmmm so basic of lly? i get it now. i Understand and i Know. know what, you might ask. 

Him

after ep 14 i did nothing but pace around my house like an excitable fool and while doing so jimmied open my brain cells long enough to finally connect the pieces of knife’s character so liek,,,, here’s a really shitty character analysis for anyone who has trouble writing him like i do dhfgdfhjf **disclaimer: idk how to write a character analysis

1. Da Basics so! knife! what’s up with him? well im here to tell you! he is a bastard nd i like him so much. from the official wiki descriptions we know he is a “ surface level jerk...  with his brash attitude and tendency to bully the other competitors” but then had this turn around in s2 after everyone was like “hey,,, u should be nicer”. there’s more to it but I Will Get There. anyhow the flats of his personality really is him being a dickhead to cover up those soft bits he doesn’t know how to express because he compartmentalizes all the time. who doesn’t do that tho lmao 

2. Da Beginning of a Parable   right now you’re probably thinking “wow rib! that sucked we already knew all that” well watch this *goes stupid goes crazy.* in a show that’s all about the contestants, the only way you can really understand Anyone is to pick apart how they interact with others and in knife’s case he does so Very Specifically. how it works is that so far every major interaction he’s had tends to culminate until it hits a breaking point. for example *points at trophy.* everything that happened there is where i like to mark the start of his character arc. da bully? has become da bullied. it doesn’t last very long but having his softer interests- like dora- exposed, mocked, and then held against him shakes knife up to the very least. having him mention how bad trophy’s blackmail was ten or so episodes later really drives in how Much it stuck with him. it wasn’t the senseless violence he was used too and kind of forced him to realize that “oh shit,,,,,,,, people can?? interact with me???” in ways that got under the walls he set up. *points at nickel nd suitcase* these guys? also reinforced that newborn view he’s looking at. like,,,, he’s still a complete ass and doesn’t quite, Get it? and he doesn’t even know that he’s in a character arc yet but i can confidently say the sarcasm and “random act of kindness” shifted something drastically in him, solely because of how understated these traits are. the biggest issue with seeing knife’s trajectory is the subtlety in it. he is absolutely one of the most subtle characters in the show; his growth shown in snippets, pushed aside for bigger storylines and hidden under his brash nature. he still hides the soft intentions under the asshole and that’s important to remember, but it’s also important to remember that the soft intentions is what you need to focus on.

3. Then Why Is He Acting Like That Now its the subtlety babey!!! its also the compartmentalizing in action. he’s always pushed things into boxes and labels, ie “bully”, “jock”, “nerd”, whatever. in the newest ep he’s doing just that. if you recall, any major external conflict he might’ve had was resolved suuuuper early in the season, so knife has had no way to conflate his problems with the show, unlike other characters. he did all his diagnostics running on the Down Low, influenced by the idea that other characters might know what’s going on in his noggin and then saying “no thanks” to that, all while taking in their advice at the same time. he’s a “take don’t give” kinda guy (except not all the time but I Will Get There). hell, taco technically wasn’t part of the show Either. so basically, his issues? are all internal and ii is really just that to him. a game. y’all might remember a previous post that i made and subsequently lost in the void when i deleted, but when i compared mephone’s memories to the players current situations and then couldn’t for the LIFE of me figure out how knife’s played into it, i was actually lying. my guy’s general “trash” feelings over the show was, at this point, him actually taking it seriously for once. knife got done being “open” once microphone eliminated herself, and it’s back to being selfish because any internal ties, as small as they were, have wrapped themselves up neatly. all that’s left is the game, and gosh darn he really believes he’s got a shot at winning it

4. He Is Not Immune To Being Soft However this is how knickle can still w- “ok then rib, what’s going on in the inside then, huh??” glad you asked! knife has gained delicacy. after suitcase he really did decide to Stop being so thick and actually look at things now, taking up the role of an asshole observer- sort of like mepad in a sense. he got,,, perceptive, coupled with his personal sense of sectionalizing. in the end he likes,,, maybe, three other people, and that influences how he carries any interactions he has later in the series. suitcase? is a ok in his book, and he does give her genuine advice a couple times. microphone is a fairly complex situation that picks up in his box mindset. pickle? hallelujah thats knife’s favorite guy. i can’t say for sure Why he’s knife’s favorite guy but really, there’s no heterosexual explanation on why pickle was the absolute axis of knife’s turning point. ep seven honestly truly is the head of knife’s change overall actually. his random act of kindness Here branches off into any kindness he does Later. suitcase manages to keep up in his head, and microphone probably reminds him of pickle- especially with the similarities of their situations, which is why he pokes and prods at her so much. it’s his very knife way of being nice, it’s him saying “hey, taco? isn’t worth it”. its that hard shell under currented by his arc of playing fair. knife still 100% has a ways to go (apology to marsh in my mouth pls pls pls-) but i can’t wait to see how his one trackedness plays out from here 

[papistark]

hi hello haven’t shared anything over here in a while let alone opinions but here are some Thoughts about the Loki series and why I’m disappointed (for now)

Main Issue: this show compared to the other Marvel shows so far felt like it had SUCH a wide disconnect between character and plot. The premise of Wandavision was a tool in telling Wanda’s story, and giving us new insight to her (and Vis) as characters. Both Sam and Bucky had very clear character journeys that were the focal point of the show, while the plot helped foil it but didn't feel like it overshadowed their personal development. 

Meanwhile the Loki show... didn’t employ either of those things. It felt more like the writers had a big meta story they wanted to tell, and decided throwing in enough scenes of Tom Hiddleston's lovely cry acting would distract from the fact that they didn't give him any real arc. I had high hopes after ep 1, both for plot and Loki’s development! I thought we were getting on a classic buddy cop, Bad Guy Has to Work For the "Good Guys", time traveling ride. and I still feel like there were Moments of what could've been (things like the pompeii scene)

Anyways that’s my main crux. A lesser complaint is just the failure to adapt a lot of fun comic material in any meaningful way (the other Lokis in ep 5 felt throwaway and like they were just there for trailer hype) also not even a flash of Jötunn Loki?? weak sauce

Sylvie complaint: didn't hate her as a chara, I actually enjoyed her quite a bit, especially in the acting and the costuming! But I do think the Lady Loki idea could've been handled better, even if Disney/Marvel still refuse to give any actual representation and found a female version from another universe more palatable than just making Loki genderfluid like the source material... My main problem w/ Sylvie is that I don't get why she wasn't just... Amora?? Other than maybe the writers having a GOTCHA moment on the comic readers, which I also don't support because they’ve done it before, and they've done it much better!!! IRON MAN 3?? The way they subverted The Mandarin reveal was still so good and I stand by that!! They could've easily done something similar w/ the enchantress character and just didn’t. 

I was excited for these marvel shows because Limited Series are one of my fave types of media. While Loki having another season will hopefully improve my feelings on the show as a whole, I don't know why some fat couldn't have been trimmed to make maybe a longer show BUT  my theory is that they need to space it out because other moving pieces in the MCU need to be introduced before they can finish the story. Which I’m still not really a fan of.

EDIT: a friend told me that apparently Loki is being split into 2 seasons bc of covid, which totally makes sense and I’m fine with. It actually makes the pacing of the show so far make a lot more sense as well, namely because I was expecting episode 5 to be a classic “penultimate” episode and it didn’t feel like that at all.

Anyhoo I’m interested to see if they can bring me back around in s2 bc I’m a Loki simp at the end of the day. There were still plenty of things I enjoyed about Loki s1, but I feel like the negatives are kind of on par with the positives, and it just didn’t rise up to WandaVision and TFATWS (Loki was originally the show I was MOST excited for when they announced the D+ stuff)

I’ll be happy if s2 (I guess technically what was supposed to be the last half of s1?) includes more focus on Loki as a character, showing jotunn Loki or some hint of it, and ALSO I wanna get hype for a Final Episode Look of a new, Asgardian Loki fit that’s inspired by comic stuff as well as his previous costuming. As good as he looks in the TVA uniform, Loki’s costuming has always been some of my favorites, and if there’s one thing I can count on not being disappointed w/, it’s Marvel’s costuming department.

[angelhummel]

which season of every character you prefer?

Oof man idek where to start. I think I’m only gonna talk about the characters that we’re/I’m always talking about lol. And although it will be hard as hell for some of them, I am only going to focus on the positives

Kurt - Season 5. I just love seeing sexy mature Kurt being successful in all aspects of his life. He’s going to school, he’s in a band, he’s got a job. He’s making new friends, trying new things, having new adventures. I think he’s the most himself this season and it’s really fun and interesting to watch

Blaine - I like s2 and s6 for Blaine. Mostly because they’re kind of similar. Not that I don’t like seeing Blaine growing and changing but in those seasons he’s just so confident and knows who he is. He’s in a well suited position of authority over the Warblers. He’s helping newcomers (Kurt, Jane) adjust and trying to find where they belong. And especially in s6, he’s not trying to be a people pleaser. He’s looking out for himself and not letting himself get walked over and I love that for him

Rachel - Mid to late s4, early s5. I like seeing her out of McKinley and navigating her adult life, just like I like for Kurt. I also think she’s a good friend in these chunks of episodes and you know that’s important to me. I love her dynamics with Kurt and Santana and even Brody for a while. It’s a nice change of pace from Lima Rachel. Although I do have a soft spot for s1 Rachel. Yes she has her flaws but like she’s so lonely and sad and I really felt for her

Finn - Season 4. And we know what he does in s4. But for positives: I liked how he treated Artie and Unique and helped them with their problems. I liked that he was finding his place and learned he wanted to be a teacher. I liked his mini mentor relationships with the newbies. And he was a better teacher than Mr. Schuester so yay

Santana - Season 4. I hate that she’s not in it a lot but she still manages to have great moments and make a big impression. I love seeing her flirt with, kiss, and sleep with other girls without even a whisper of biphobia yay. I love how fiercely protective she is over Marley, who she just met, in Thanksgiving, and over Rachel in the later half of the season. I love that she went back to her old school to perform one of the main leads in the school play, and had the whole thing about wanting to dance. Because even if she was lost or confused, she still wanted to perform which makes me even saltier that they dropped that half way through s5 so she could fuck off with brittany oops

Brittany - Season 2. Her Britney and Kesha numbers were iconic. I actually liked Bartie, I thought their relationship was cute. I love her little speech to Santana in the season finale. “What are you going to be for Halloween?” “I’m going as a peanut allergy” is one of like four actually funny Brittany lines. And I’ll take a plot about Santa Claus over leprechauns or the Mayan apocalypse any day!

Mercedes - Season 5. Same with all the others, I just love seeing her being happy and successful in New York. She’s more radiant and confident and self assured than she’s ever been before. She’s successful and making her music but she’s still a loyal friend. Never too busy to help out her girls. Also I love that they took the whole “waiting till marriage” thing seriously and she never compromised her beliefs bc she thought it was what someone else wanted. I really do think she matured the most, especially there in the end of s5. 

Tina - Season 1. Her punk and early goth looks were sooo fucking good. She was actually getting lines and solos and chances to shine?? Unheard of. She was sweet and funny and a good friend, but wasn’t about to put up with anyone’s bullshit. I’m not one of these dumb ass tHeY bUtChErEd HeR cHaRaCtEr people buuut they actually used her and appreciated her in s1 and I gotta go with that

Quinn - Season 1. She was the HBIC and it was interesting to see her journey. I said it somewhere else but for me, Quinn getting pregnant is like what kicked off the show. She had some good songs and lines, and tons of closeted lesbian moments lmao. Also this was the last time the show or any characters genuinely cared about her so that was nice to see

Sam - Season 2. Before he disappeared and came back and was kind of weird and then got the Brittany treatment and it was just a mess. I still love him but I can’t deny he shines brightest in s2. Showing up and instantly being better than Finn in every way. Being a loyal boyfriend who didn’t deserve the crap he got. Sticking up for Kurt and not caring about dumb homophobic opinions. And even though they weren’t all great, or all romantic, I love his relationships with Quinn, Santana, Mercedes, Rachel, and Kurt. All their scenes are honestly highlights of s2 for me

Aaand those are all the characters I care about! Or that anyone likes to talk about. I’m not really interested in the other boys, and anyone else who was introduced after s2 doesn’t get enough to do to be different in each season so. There you have it!

[lucidpantone]

I feel like the fandom is being percieved by the actress, the rest of the cast and the production as a toxic and bad community from that statement (she doesn't like the fandom) and it makes me sad. It's obvious that the cast supports her which os normal, they know her personally and we don't know what kind of person she is, maybe she's an amazing person and getting hate from the fandom on her acting, looks, dancing is must be really bad, the cast too must think we are being horrible and ungrateful. On the other hand I feel so fustrated because they made us feel like this, they made us hate this season, they made us hate her character, they made us feel worse and worse with every week and now they blame us which is so unfair. I feel utter disrespect towards us, their audience, they are treating us as we are these simple minded very young easily manipulated people who they thought would buy anything a pretty influencer main would try to sell us. It makes me so mad. Plus it is a highly popular television show where a certain level of acting is requiered and as viewers it's normal to expect that, the dancing too, as they decided to revolve the season around it. So I feel like I am treated as stupid, like my anger and dislike is something I should feel ashamed of and completely unfair.

similar anon: What were the problems that she had with the director?

Ok firstly come over here so I can give you a big virtual hug. Lets take a moment to breathe and shake it off. I actually don't think  the cast thinks we are a bad community Nora made it clear she gets why the fans are angry and Nora, Veerle and Noa have openly criticized the production.I think concerning Romi she just came into the fandom ill-equipped. She just got here she had no relationship with the fandom and she was also probably not aware how much we didn't want her to be our main. We literally as a fandom wanted a black boy/or muslim girl to be our main and we got a privileged white girl so the polar opposite of what literally every fan wanted. So off the bat it was a bad start. So with our disappointment still brewing she needed to captivate us and she was just so unprepared. Romi is way to green for this role, plus it was written by a green writer that attempted to try something new and failed and directed by a green director that couldn't get anything decent out of Romi because she was out of her depth but he was also frustrated too. I mean they literally did like 30 takes of the cafe shot to the point that the director made her cry. I also heard from birdies this happened more then once. The director was the assistant director for s3 maybe even s2. So imagine directing Willem and Veerle and then being given Romi as his first lead director role. It probably sucked and also the director had no relationship with Romi so it just sounds like the script didn't mesh well, the actress didn’t like the script and director wasn't feeling the actress or just struggled with her lack of acting experience. 

Also in the cafe shot I was told Noa noticed this and tried to talk to Romi and make her feel better. I honestly think that the cast are well aware that Romi struggled a bit so I dont think they blame us. Nora knew we wanted to see her and Noa knew if it wasn't Nora we wanted it to be him. I dont think they blame us because they knew what we wanted. I do think they dont appreciate us commenting on Romi’s modeling stuff or making fun of that which is fair but she is an actress bad critiques are part of the life of an actor. However I do blame Romi for not informing herself a bit more about Skam/Wtfock and how important s4 is for racial representation and also how the role of the main protagonist works. Because even from the pacing its clear this was veering far from a skam adaptation. I think the cast actually gets the entire situation from all sides but Romi got a serious reality check and now she is probably frustrated with the outcome but next time do your research before you sign a contract.

[kinetic-elaboration]

December 10: Endings

The posts that have been going around about all these bad, nonsensical, random tv endings we’ve been seeing recently (GOT, T100, SPN), have made me think about what makes a good television ending in my opinion.

I admit that concluding a series is probably quite tricky because most shows, if they’re not miniseries, are conceived without a known end point in mind. A show runner can build an idea around a 5-season arc, but he might not actually get 5 seasons. He might only get 1. Or he might get 10, if the show is popular. So unlike a movie or a novel, the first episodes need to set up a general premise, a universe, a theme, but not necessarily a specific plot with X number of specific plot points leading to a pre-ordained conclusion. There has to be a flexibility to the narrative. But when the whole thing is completed, it should feel, ideally, as if it WAS pre-ordained, as if the show was always meant to have as many seasons as it got and was working toward its conclusion the whole time.

So, roughly, I think shows that stick the landing do so because the showrunner knows what the show is, at its core, about, and crafts a finale that relates to the central theme(s) and brings the main narrative to a logical and emotionally resonant conclusion. 

This is very rough and very general, and it’s a formula that applies more to some shows than others. TV is incredibly varied after all. I mean, first off, not all shows know their last season is their last season going in. You can’t judge the final episodes of, to use two examples of shows I liked that were unceremoniously axed recently, The Society or Altered Carbon as “finale episodes” because they were never meant to be finales. Then you have a show like My So-Called Life, which does have a Classic ending, despite ending all too soon--mostly because every episode of that show was classic, and it only had one season, so its season finale being a fitting ending to the season automatically means its series finale was a fitting ending to the series.

(It’s such an outlier that I can’t really compare it to anything but honestly--this is how to do an open-ended cliffhanger and still make it feel like a conclusion. But that’s a whole different post.)

My formula above also doesn’t apply well to sitcoms, because they aren’t really about anything, in terms of plot. Like the name says, they set up situations: a group of people who are family, co-workers, friends, and then lets those situations play out in a funny manner for as long as there are jokes to tell. Sitcoms to me end well if they don’t overstay their welcome, if they remain true to the characters (because it’s the characters, not the minimal narrative, that defines the show), and if they hit an appropriate ‘ending’ tone. But the biggest thing for me is if the sitcom went on for too many seasons. Even if the final episode isn’t the greatest, it’s fine. But if the last 2-4 seasons were lackluster, it tarnishes the whole legacy.

‘Procedural’ type shows are yet another category, and I’m not entirely sure how to characterize those, or what makes a strong ending for that sub-genre. I’m using ‘procedural’ broadly to include, like, Bad Guy of the Week type shows--for example, Charmed, which I thought should have ended after S7. Again, I think it’s about not letting the whole thing go on too long, and then staying true to characters and tone in the finale itself.

So looking just at dramas that have a season’s warning before their finale--which, really, are the type of shows that are most likely to make people ANGRY with shitty endings, because they lure the viewer in with the idea that a singular, coherent story is being told. Maybe it’s convoluted. Maybe it’s winding. Maybe it’s hard to tell where they’re going with this. But if it all comes together in the end, none of that matters--and if it doesn’t come together, what was the point of all the seasons that came before? It becomes, retroactively, a betrayal.

The more plot-driven the show (if it has a mystery, a conspiracy theory, a quest), the greater the betrayal if all fizzles out. But I think the same feeling can arise from shoddy conclusions in dramas more generally. The L Word is one of my comfort shows but that last season is a MESS all the way down, the finale especially. There definitely wasn’t a point to anything, and it wasn’t even entertaining as, like, a dramatic soap.

But then I think about shows whose endings I really liked. For example, Six Feet Under had a great final season and one of the best finale episodes/ending sequences ever. The show up to that point had been about death, and that theme had always been centered most particularly on Nate: his fears of the family business, his previous brushes with death because of his AVM, etc. So of course the show had to end by killing one of its mains, coming full circle with the pilot, showing real grief hitting home--and of course Nate’s personal journey as the main character had to end with his death. Everything about the conclusion was fitting, not even counting the final montage.

I also really liked the conclusion of Big Love, for similar reasons: it was thoughtful, and it successfully teased out the main strands, both of plot and theme, that had run through the show up to that point. The most important thing had always been depicting this family, their problems but also their strength and their love for each other--so, as the showrunners said, it had to conclude by showing you that the family survives. They are strong, and their bonds endure. But the ending was, and had to be, bittersweet too, because anything less would seem to sweep under the rug the real tragedies of the last seasons. Not everyone gets happy endings. And the unhappy endings relate specifically to the toxic patriarchy that’s haunted all of the characters from the pilot. Alby has a chance to turn away from his father and the compound life--but the forces arrayed against him were too strong, so there was no deus ex machina for him, and he ultimately just became fully the evil villain. And Bill is taken out not by the state or by the compound but by an aggrieved man who feels he’s been emasculated, forgotten, who is raging against being so Unseen. What a way to make clear what the common denominator in all of the threats of the past 5 seasons has been.

I also give major points to shows whose finales feel like they’re trying, even if they’re imperfect, especially if the imperfections are because of factors outside the showrunner’s control. For example, I saw someone list Dollhouse as one of their ‘worst endings’ but I have to disagree. I like the ending of Dollhouse. It wasn’t supposed to be 2 seasons. That’s well known. But that’s how many seasons it got, and I think honestly they turned that into a plus rather than a minus. Dollhouse was its best when it was rushing to a conclusion, when it was fast-paced and exciting. Did it always make complete sense? No. Were there some pretty big holes in the plot? Yeah--S2′s Big Bad was absolutely and transparently a retcon instituted between S1 and S2 and I get that, and I forgive the show for that. I thought bifurcating the epilogue as two extra episodes after each of the two seasons was genius, and I liked that it allowed the show to have its cake and eat it too: a happy ending, with the main, immediate, singular Big Bad eliminated, at the end of S2, and a more bittersweet, more complicated, post-apoc ending in the bonus episode. Yeah, I can see the seams; I know there were a lot of constructed work arounds in there because the show was intended to be longer. I think the ending was presented in good faith.

I also, perhaps controversially, liked the ending of Veronica Mars (the original 3-season show; I didn’t see the reboot). The way the season aired was weird and didn’t do it any favors: having a long break before the last couple of episodes, which existed outside of the two Big Case arcs of S3, makes those final stories feel tacked on and random. Basically impossible to have a strong finish with that kind of structure. But the very end of the last ep had the bitter, dark feel of a noir, which is what the show was, a mash up of a noir and a high school drama. I liked that they leaned on the noir rather than the high school aspect, because it was the more creative way to go imo. Also, I appreciated that S3, in general, learned from S2′s mistakes. Yes, the college years are always going to be lackluster compared to high school, in any series that starts with its characters in high school. But VM recognized that no overarching mystery was going to compare to the Lilly Kane murder, so it split the Big Mystery into two Medium Sized mysteries, and I thought that was smart. All of which makes me inclined to think fondly of the conclusion. As with Dollhouse, its weakest points seem to be compromises it had to make, not really its fault but just an inevitable imperfection of the form.

It’s pretty easy to list aspects of a bad ending: a sense that events are arbitrary, a disrespect of characters, a rushed construction, a jarring tone, and most importantly a disconnect between the finale and what came before. If the show appeared to be a narrative (as opposed to a situation), but it doesn’t feel like a complete and coherent whole at the end, then the conclusion was bad.

I didn’t watch GOT or SPN and I stopped watching T100 at the end of S4 (though I do feel confident from tumblr that the ending was Bad), so I have somewhat of a hard time thinking of shows that I thought had really bad endings. I can think of dissatisfying endings that came from shows being cancelled without warning. I can think of shows that lasted too long in general or otherwise had fallen from their greatest heights by the time they limped to a conclusion (unpopular opinion: Friends fits in this category--that show should have been 4 seasons, maybe 5 tops; Boy Meets World and Dawson’s Creek are comfort show favorites of mine but they both should have ended with high school, like, pretty objectively speaking; iZombie started a slow downturn after S2 and by the end of S4 was kinda unwatchable. I literally stopped halfway through the finale.). I can even think of shows that lost me by the end even though objectively they probably had good endings (for example, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend--I couldn’t get through S4 and the finale sounded... technically well-constructed but like it would have driven me nuts).

But then I guess most shows with shitty finales technically had shitty last seasons in general. Truly notorious crash-and-burns don’t come out of nowhere. I mean I’m sure there are counter-examples to this (what’s that one with the kid and the snow globe lol?) but unless you try for a weird last-minute twist, or unless you’ve got your audience hoping against hope that an impossibly twisty story is actually very smart instead of very ill-planned, it’s generally clear before the last episode if a narrative has lost its way. I don’t tend to watch a lot of ‘twisty-turny conspiracy’ shows, and when I do I am supremely skeptical all the way through, so it’s hard for me to think of examples I’ve personally watched of a last minute “what the fuck was that” conclusion.

[sanoiro]

Lucifer 5x07 - Our Mojo - Spoilers & Speculation

Warning! There is always the possibility that certain scenes might have been mixed up under their non-respective episodes.

Written By: Julia Fontana

Directed By: Nathan Hope

Julia Fontana has written/co-written the episodes:

2x10 - Quid Pro Ho

2x15 - Deceptive Little Parasite

3x08 - Chloe Does Lucifer

3x16 - Infernal Guinea Pig

5x07 - Our Mojo

Cast: Tom Ellis as Lucifer, Lauren German as Chloe, DB Woodside as Amenadiel, Lesley-Ann Brandt as Maze, Kevin Alejandro as Dan, Scarlett Estevez as Trixie, Rachael Harris as Linda Martin and Aimee Garcia as Ella.

Season 5 Recurring Characters: None Officially Announced Guest Cast:

Giovanni Bejarano...Mario Canales

Nancy De Mayo...Nina

Glenn Fernandez...Danilo

David Figlioli...Les Klumpsky

Cara Koh...Madison Evans

Behind The Scenes

As we get close to the Midseason Finale S&S do remember the past seasons Midseason and Season Finales. There were never standalone. You see there is always a pattern to be followed and this will happen with 5x07 and 5x08. The two episodes 5x07 and 5x08 act both as a Finale but also as a medium to the story to move forward and for P2 to bring elements from P1.

Going back we should remember how the following episodes intertwined thus a recap is needed. 

1x12 - #TeamLucifer  & 1x13 - Take Me Back to Hell were based on three elements. One Lucifer’s vulnerability, Malcolm and the Pentecostal Coin. A bargain was made there which moved us to S2 and the introduction of Mum.

2x11 - Stewardess Interruptus, 2x12-  Love Handles and 2x13 - A Good Day to Die built up to the point of where the supernatural aspects of Lucifer’s mythos are explored with Chloe being revealed to be a Miracle while Dr Carlisle acted as a serial killer poisoning his victims and Chloe. What we also tend to forget here is that early in S2 Uriel’s threat was almost materialized as Chloe would have died if Lucifer had not gone to Hell and thus broke the balance of time and effect  Dr Carlisle had started. It is also why in that season we had to focus on Mum and the blade.

2x17 - Sympathy for the Goddess and 2x18 The Good, the Bad and the Crispy used the blade and Mum was set as yet another problem while Lucifer regained his wings. Again we needed two to three episodes if you add 2x16 - God Johnson into this, to build up the story.

In S3 3x09 - Sinnerman and 3x10 - The Sin Bin led to the Mid Season finale which foretold Marcus way of dying by a blade which Lucifer had struck. The end of S3 actually started from 3x19 and was led to the very end but again episodes 3x23 - Quintessential Deckerstar and 3x24 - A Devil of my Word delivered the conclusion of S3 and led to the issues of S4.

Now S4 actually help us structure S5. There were Kinley and the vial, in 4x04 - All About Eve we get Eve and the conclusion happens between the episodes 4x09 - Save Lucifer and 4x10 - Who’s Da New King of Hell. Also, certain episodes were connected like 4x06 - Orgy Pants To Work and 4x07 - Devil Is As Devil Does where Julian becomes the connection between the story as it involves

With all the above in mind, we see what the writers like to use but also how they pace their seasons and what is included.

In S5 up to 5x10 you will see this as far as I understand.

First 5x01 will set in motion an issue that needs to be resolved so Lucifer ascends but a new factor is introduced and that way the episode will end with a question of how things will move from there while the promise of Lucifer staying on Earth will not be that clear.

In 5x02 we get the realization that something is amiss and that action needs to be taken but that connects us to 5x03 so 5x02 and 5x03 connect through the lingering issue from 5x01, Lucifer’s desire to stay on earth or perhaps the insistence of others to keep him away from Hell. Hell you see is like a drug and it acts slowly so at some point we will get a cold turkey Lucifer in 5x02 with 5x03 acting as his re-introduction to society and his old life.

Amidst all that we get the consequence of Lucifer’s actions probably from 5x01 which I suspect will affect Dan and a more permanent solution will be sought which leads us to 5x04. 5x04 offers us a lot of answers but also questions and that is why it is tied so well with 5x05. Lucifer is not the same nothing is but a solution has been found as maintenance does not fix a hole in a sinking ship.

Along with all the above, we also have Deckerstar and revelations which are bound to be set in these episodes and which will lead to the rocky episode of 5x06. Fear not though as 5x06 opens the door to the last two episodes of P1. In these two episodes actions will be made that will turn the tables first to how our characters act but also what they expect from the future. It is also where we will understand why in 5x04 the title was “It never ends well for the Chicken”.

Divine solutions do not come without collateral and thus a sacrifice will be made yet to what extent and what that will mean for our leads it remains to be seen as we only have scattered pieces which hint that Chloe will take the blow but not in the conventional sense the fandom loves to lament over. Chloe dying is overplayed and in my opinion to fan fiction like to be put forward in the mid-season finale. No here we are talking about more revelations on Lucifer’s past but also Chloe’s which may date back to the Pre-Fall era.

So let’s try to go through 5x07 episode first as we connect it lightly to 5x08.

First of all, we know that we have a Serial Killer played by David Figlioli* in these two episodes so I would expect to see a plot similar to Dr Carlisle’s. That means that in one of the two episodes either the effect of the character will set in motion an unavoidable plot that will affect all the leads pr that past actions are bound to fade the immediate future.

*If you do not want to know who that is please do not look him up and think twice before spoiling that element to people who do not like spoilers or like the procedural subplot of the series. I do not add his bts here for that reason. 

Now our Serial Killer has been described as “Nerdy and Creepy” which fits the description from the locations they were used. 

At this point please remember that we usually LOVE to speculate only on Lucifer and Chloe but in reality their story is supported and the plot moves forward through the events on every single character’s life. So certain points might be considered from all angles meaning from every character’s point of view on 5x07 and 5x08. That is practically impossible as we have no idea what has happened to most of them during S5P1, we can only guess so let’s see.

Dan - We expect him to have a health issue that ties him to Lucifer for the most part of the season. As we have said Dan’s arc is very similar to Charlotte’s and also after 5x08 the bracelet disappears but that’s for the S&S of 5x08. So notice that Kevin Alejandro did not appear in the bts of 5x07 and 5x08 while the actor had some other engagement during the shooting of 5x07 and he directed 5x08. Of course, bts are not reliable on how much screen time a character has but is nonetheless suspicious. 

Amenadiel - It seems that Amenadiel according to his garments has decided run LUX early in S5 but in some bts there were some hints of boxing yet I cannot tie them to an episode so I’m just mentioning that here. We also know from the photos at Linda’s fridge is you look closely that he has a calm domestic life but here is the twist we do not know if he is romantically involved with Linda or if in S5 the usual working pair Maze and Amenadiel move from where they left things in S1-S2. Whatever happens, what we know is that Amenadiel is deeply involved in this seasons plot so keep an eye on him.

Maze - You have seen her in different clothes and it does not seem like she has left her demonic character attitudes and choice of wardrobe behind in S5. On the contrary, her relationship with humans like Ella and Linda seem to now be better and I do not think she will be bitter towards Lucifer although who knows, as he left her when he went back to Hell. In short, she seems to be coping well but there are a lot of fights which I’m not sure whether she acts out in S5 towards Lucifer and Amenadiel or tries to fend off whatever attacks them. Do not go to oh the demons have ascended scenario just yet…

Linda - Linda seems to be in a very good place we know she has her son, Charlie is growing and all the baby proof wrapper is still on so you never know when wings or powers might come forward in her life. We do know that she continues to have a close relationship with Chloe and Maze and also an amicable one with Amenadiel. Finally, we know that she resumes her sessions with Lucifer.

Charlie - Charlie is a bit of an enigma and he may be one of the contributing factors of these two episodes. For all, we know the kid finally gets some powers and do expect him to surprise you.

Ella - You just don’t know with this character as all of Aimee’s bts are vague at best yet I do not believe she has found out yet about Lucifer but P2 might be her time to do so. She does not seem to occupy much of S5’s plot but I would keep an eye on her on the second part of the season and especially on 5x10.

Trixie - Trixie’s role is doubtful to be elevated to something more in this part but she has some great moments with Lucifer. At the moment I cannot really speculate about her as whatever happens in the stages rarely gets out so we have very few appearances of Scarlet at the lot…

Lucifer - Lucifer seems to be getting a bit different, you see a different side of him one that the perhaps wanted to forget as his past comes knocking throughout the season. His evolution through the series is interesting but the supernatural elements worrisome. Again the fact alone he is willing to help Dan says a lot.

Chloe - As you saw I was very brief with Lucifer as I wanted to focus a bit more on Chloe. Aside from her relationship to Lucifer in S5 we get to see that every person has two sides even if for some they were unaware it existed. That’s not a good and bad side kind scenario but I’m talking more about Chloe being more than a miracle. Before you speculate and ask I would just say that her being a Miracle is not where S5 will step on so look for clues while you watch because all lead to 5x08. I may be right I may be wrong but I’ll spend some more time explaining this in the S&S of 5x08.

So let’s start with 5x07’s case. It’s the easy way to figure out what is going on or at least put in order the scenes. Here we have two plots and we do not know if the Serial Killer’s victim/s is the case of the week. We do know that the Serial Killer, for the most part, was in the lot so I do not think he was on location much. The reason for this is because we have two locations at the backlot where 5x07 was mainly shot.

The first one is a flower shop which if I can guess is connected to the Serial Killer perhaps. He might be this kind of peaceful guys who run a flower shop and who you would never suspect on killing people in their free time. It adds up a bit but I cannot be sure.

The second one is a house that was used as a crime scene location. In the heart of the WB lot they setup a house that exhibited a lot of wealth and eclectic taste. It’s only normal as this case is also connected to an opera?** performer or at least someone who is seen to be performing at the Los Angeles Theater a wonderful old Cinema and grand landmark in DTLA.

**We cannot know for sure of the genre he performs but the taste of his house shows he is into classical pieces so... 

(See the BTS video there I always include bts that I have not posted before and are all Lucifer related)

^The police car and the coronary’s car outside the lot house location. 

First, we need to remember that during a quick ext the cast and crew had to do from the Stages there was also an actress that played a human body. She wore a lot of grey and blue makeup and we can assume she was part of this story. I cannot tell if in 5x07 a body of that kind will make it to our screens but a cemetery will.

The cemetery most probably is though related to the season’s supernatural plot. They filmed at the Rosedale cemetery with several stunts and from the videos you can see that Lesley Ann had a lot of action scenes in this episode. At the same time, DB had twitted to have a lot of scenes with her in that episode. According to what DB revealed the two characters are working together. I would predict that this has to do with whatever Amenadiel is searching for since 5x05.

^In general D.B. has been thrilled with the final season and that pleases me a lot! 

The Rosedale cemetery has several wonderful tombs and crypts which some of them could be used to a similar theme that was used early in the season. Confusing I know but let’s say that in P1 it seems like they are trying to find something, an object perhaps and I wouldn't be surprised if it was either hidden in a cemetery or simply that the object that they are looking for is connected to the serial killer somehow… I mean remember Azrael’s blade… I doubt they will use the same scenario but the divine influence on mortals never ends well.

Now the second location which I mentioned before is the Los Angeles Theater. I do not know if Ellis and German were also in the cemetery but they will be at the Theater along with the opera? singer. There is also some stunts involved so I would keep an eye on someone escaping or at least putting a fight. For all we know this case might also be a bit similar to 3x17 one with Axara.

^The stand-ins taking notes for the scene

^We expect some to happen to that grand staircase oh and there were again a lot of stunts there so :D 

As you can tell the majority of 5x07 as an episode eludes us and there are bts we cannot really explain but we can only speculate about.

For example why Lucifer wears a budge and has a gun? Why now? Is he threatened or Chloe has decided that enough is enough. Perhaps even in order to not endanger her Lucifer might have taken her badge and gun. The possibilities are so many yet a definite answer cannot be given. If we take into account that the title is Our Mojo it can be a million different things. Like the opera? singer has the same captivating effect as Lucifer’s mojo for some reason but not a divine gift. It might have to do something with Charlie or it can be taken completely out of context. All we know is that Lucifer has to be armed so I would speculate this.

I admit I was not the one to notice that but my dear Amy was :P I just did the visuals a bit clearer. 

Let’s assume that Lucifer’s connection to Dan is weakened him and it goes both ways hence why we do not see Dan as much in 5x07 and a permanent solution becomes more urgent. His strength, mojo and overall his capacity to protect himself. Or perhaps he has to pose as Dan but that wouldn’t explain the protection of authority and a gun full of bullets. So we know things are dangerous when Chloe? caves in and hands Lucifer a gun to protect himself or if Lucifer has decided that in order to keep himself safe he has to play with human toys.

What we also cannot totally explain is the green screen *around* the penthouse. After discussing this with some friends we have agreed that it should be a large scale event or something. We do not know when or if Lucifer and Chloe get intimate, if that’s why that green screen is there or if there is a divine consequence that has to be shown through VFX. All we know is that there is something big coming. The last time they had used such a big screen well it was smaller actually was for the Fall nightmare scene of 3x15.

Additional Info

The stunts were rehearsing a fight at the stages but that’s normal for when they have to perform on location. 

Something seems to happen at the precinct and mainly in episode 5x08. Something like a fight 

^Naughty Woman? Perhaps I’m wrong...

The director posted this as a lucifer bts but here is the thing little Charlie as far as the babies used go cannot operate that but with CGI everything is possible. Also, the babies used were shooting for a different show at that time.