#tl;dr: you are so right

[sludgekludge]

It honestly kind of frustrates me they tried to do the whole childhood friends aspect with Stolas and Blitz when 1. Blitz was BOUGHT for Stolas for a day, and 2, Blitz already HAD a childhood best friend— Fizzarolli. Why not use The Circus episode to expand on what happened with Fizz and Blitz, instead? That would have been perfect for it since it already shows young Blitz and Fizz!

But no, we get a childhood friends to lovers yaoi slop episode that makes no sense and basically sands down the toxic relationship we thought they would have.

I was half expecting something to come up with that— a dramatic revelation where Blitz reveals he and Stolas were never friends, shattering Stolas’ delusion of them being in love. Hell, using the conversion from Ozzie’s could have helped this, too— with Blitz only going along with it to get the book.

They had SO many ideas they could use, paths they could take yet they make sure to swan dive into the ones that don’t make sense or try to actively retcon things we saw in the first season. It’s why after the Circus I completely lost interest in Helluva, only watching the rest of the season to see if it’d get better. I’m only watching the next episode, Sinsmas, and then plan on dropping the show entirely. Still so gobsmacked what a shitshow it’s become.

it is completely and utterly insane that they retconned in the 'childhood friends' thing so hard, it still baffles me. i recall watching the circus for the first time while binging the whole series and just being so convinced it was gonna end up being a dream or fantasy at the end because it was such a hard pivot from what ep 1 conceived the stolitz relationship to be. it's such a nonsense decision that i'm still baffled, honestly. that, and they want us to view it as like, cute and wholesome? stolas' first friend? girl blitz's dad sold him to you and then you never spoke again? the fact viv apparently claims this was the plan all along is so funny. it's so obviously the most forced fanfiction-trope retcon of all time. i can't fathom it. it's nonsense.

that aside, i agree, though - if fizz was going to be in the show as much as he is, then i have no idea why they didn't use him to fill the childhood friend hole, especially given that it comes before all the abrupt fizz development. why not set that up now? establish the childhood friend with the same lived experiences that blitz actually chose (and continued to) hang out with? but no welcome to our episode titled 'the circus', it's largely about stolas and not about our main character who grew up in the fucking circus-

i'm probably on stuck on this gravy train till it tumbles over a cliff and explodes, finally freeing me from these fuckass shows, (says this even though i still haven't watched ghostfuckers lmfao oops) but i've seen a lot of people drop it now that s2 is almost over and i'm not at all shocked. i do wonder how much the show in its current state alienates fans who were drawn in by the initial premise or the original setup of the stolas dynamic. episode 1 feels like a completely different piece of media at this point. it's going to be fascinating to compare the first few eps to the last when this thing is finally done and dusted.

[vaguely-concerned]

thinking about not only the specific people lucanis pulls in to represent the 'locks' in his psyche, but the storytelling that happens in the structure/order of them. the underlying ideas are presented something like:

the lucanis who went into the ossuary never came back out again; he died down there (the boy caterina raised is gone forever) -> you're putting yourself in danger doing this (by being close to me), you should leave because I can't bear it if you get hurt because of me -> it doesn't matter even if we do try this, it won't work anyway (again because of me) ('you know what he's like, you can open the door but he won't walk through it' :'( oofie doofie) -> what if the real secret is that there was never anything but the monster in here from the beginning. you should leave, there was never anything here worth saving in the first place. (implicitly: what if I deserved what happened, all along.)

it runs pretty cleanly from outward-oriented attachment anxiety ('caterina won't even want me back like this, she won't recognize me (the same way I no longer recognize myself)) and gradually deeper inwards until we reach self-image and self worth. or you know, the harrowing basic lack of it lol.

"careful -- they'll know we're not right," spite says in one of their first scenes... but clearly, some very deep part of lucanis has feared or suspected for much longer than that that there's something inherently not right at the core of him, way before any demon entered the picture. and the voice he gives those lines to is the person who should know him better than anyone in the world, who he has loved more than anyone in the world -- and who deliberately chose to hurt him so horrifically anyway. 'It's better if I'm just a monster and deserved what happened than it is to allow for the idea that the brother I love doesn't really exist and maybe never did'. it's better if he's fundamentally flawed in some way that needed fixing to help him survive, and that's why caterina chose to hurt him again and again -- out of love. (this one I think he might have a very sad wakeup call on one day if he ever ends up with the responsibility and care of a child of his own in some way and realizes just how alien the idea of ever intentionally hurting them for any reason is to him. oh buddy. also interesting that he keeps caterina as the outermost lock -- there IS a distance he keeps there that he hasn't with illario. he doesn't resent her 'anymore' he says, but he also keeps her carefully further away from his deepest self.)

as far as I could tell the only note in the mind prison that's fully hidden and needs to be uncovered is the sad painful helpless stupid little truth that even after all this, even knowing what happened... he still loves his brother. is there anything illario could ever do that would make lucanis completely stop loving him, do you think? sometimes the trouble with unconditional love is that it is, well. unconditional, even when some terms and conditions probably would have been in order haha.

that's the pattern you see there again and again; he would rather destroy and abandon and imprison himself at every turn than let go of love, even when it's just scraps, even when there's only ever enough of it to hurt him. it's only when rook shows up and as it were takes his hand and walks along with him that he can entertain the idea of changing the story of what walking out the door might mean in the end.

[egophiliac]

Hi it's just to let you know that the official romanization of Revaan's name is Raverne ! Also they have romanized Baul's name to Baur !

Twst coming back at us again with the least expected romanization! thank you everybody (oh god my inbox) (no it's great, I literally asked for this and the reactions have been INCREDIBLE, thank you all!)

I do like Raverne though, I think it's got a nice fancy sound to it! (I had kinda suspected it was going to be an R instead of an L, so the fact that it's SO close to Laverne except for that is hilarious to me personally.) and Dragoneye Duke is honestly probably the best translation for his title, I wasn't envying the localizers that one. :') Baur instead of Baul I was NOT expecting, but in retrospect I think his name's supposed to be a reference to the Bauru crocodile, so that actually makes way more sense!

someone else also said Meleanor has become Maleanor, which is the REALLY weird one to me, because I was so surprised it was written as Mel instead of Mal in the first place?! oh god no I can't decide which one I like better. 😭 (I wonder if they might change it to Mal...they have made romanization changes before) (like I remember House of Distraction being corrected to House of Destruction in Playful Land) (I did check and she's still Mel for now, but I dunno, they might Mal her up and some point and save me from having to make a decision about which one to use) (HECK I CAN'T DECIDE)

uhhhh thank you for letting me ramble about anime names, let's just say MONOGRAMMED SWEATERS FOR EVERYONE

[lauronk]

REVIEW🧟 REVIEW🧟‍♀️ REVIEW🧟‍♂️

(pretty please)

hi friendo, glad to see you! buckle up for this one, it's...a lot lmao like literally a wall of text, i tried to break it up so that it's a more manageable read but i was so wordy i do not think i succeeded.

lemme just get the elephant out of the way, the bit that's had so many tumblr girlies (gn) up in arms all day: joel's experimenting comment and his talk to me when you're more yourself bit. 🚨🚨if you don't care to read that part, skip down to the next star banner for thoughts on the rest of the episode🚨🚨

and let me say right off, i do not think that joel's reaction was right but i think it was understandable. i think some people have been living with soft fic dad joel too long and have idealized the fuck out of him (which, tbf, i do too) and some of the less favorable aspects of his character have been forgotten because, believe it or not, he is not the perfect man/dad we all like to pretend he is. that being said:

for one, i need people to stop saying "he's from austin! he would be liberal!" my sweet precious little summer children. i have lived in and around central texas, including austin, travis county, and various parts of the hill country, for 25 of my 33 years on this planet. austin is liberal, yes, especially compared to surrounding cities and counties, but travis county voted for bush in 2000. and homophobia (and conservatism and hate crimes and all of it) still exists in and around the whole area, there is not some magical anti-homophobe bubble over the city that automatically makes everyone who lives there an ally. joel and tommy are also canonically from arlington (game versions at least), and tarrant county is significantly more conservative than travis county. stop treating austin like a liberal monolith because it is not that any more than texas as a whole is a conservative monolith.

show!tlou outbreak was in 2003. pre-obergefell, in the midst of DADT, when straight was seen as the default and anything remotely outside that was other, weird, unacceptable. i am not gonna say that just because joel lives in texas he is a bigot. but i am also not gonna say that living in austin automatically makes him liberal either, which is the conclusion so many people seem to be jumping to. especially because liberal in 2003 was farrrrr different than liberal today. lgbtq+ rights were nowhere in al gore's presidential campaign. john kerry (the democratic nom in 2004) was flatout opposed to same-sex marriage and thought it should be decided by the states. you cannot look at joel miller with a 2025 understanding of queerness because we never get past 2003 and society was too busy trying to fight fungus monsters to work on their societal and cultural mindsets.

yes, joel is friends with bill and frank and yes, he seems to not care one way or the other that they're gay. but (unfortunately) for some people it is a vastly different thing when it is your friends (and when it comes to bill and joel i use the word very loosely) vs when it is your kid. my best friend came out to his conservative parents and while they reiterated that they loved him no matter what, they still had to "work through" accepting that it meant not getting the exact future they had envisioned for him, and they still went through a period of denial even though he was in his mid-20s and had known this about himself for some time before working up the nerve to tell them.

joel walks in on his teenage kid not just fooling around with a partner of the same sex, he walks in on her fooling around with, in his eyes, an adult. cat & ellie may not see 17 and 19 as all that different, because they are in a time where the rather arbitrary 18yo = adult line has been erased, but that line is likely very much still there in joel's head. he sees an adult woman in his teenaged daughter's room, tattooing her, giving her drugs, and fooling around with her. any parent would have flipped their lid, MY parents who were lesbians would have flipped their lid. to quote judy gellar on friends: "that's a lot of information to get in thirty seconds."

should he have said experimenting? no. should he have implied that the 17yo didn't know herself well enough to know what she's saying about herself? no. but to joel - she is high, she is a kid, she is mad at him now for interrupting and embarrassing her in front of cat. and let's be so for real, joel miller does NOT have a good record of thinking before he speaks, nor has he really been shown to acknowledge and share his emotions more than a handful of times.

this has all been a very long-winded way of saying i think slapping a blanket homophobe label on joel is utterly lacking in nuance, context, and literally any critical thought. i think saying his behavior is OOC is lacking those things as well because at the end of the day he is an emotionally damaged/emotionally constipated old man from Texas who probably internalized some of those ideals whether he meant to or not.

and i think it is very clear that despite that misstep, he loves and accepts ellie for who she is. he shoves a man who calls her a slur, he asks about dina with the same awkwardness that my dad has ever asked me about a significant other with, he says dina would be lucky to have her, and he still sees her as his daughter at the end of it all.

for the rest of the episode:

honestly, top to bottom, fucking loved it. joel making her guitar rather than finding it? carving the moth in himself? infodumping about the tools? sheer perfection.

ellie being a little gremlin and digging her hand straight into a cake, joel/pedro singing (even if pedro wasn't actually playing lol), the SPACE CAPSULE AND THE TAPE, we got a baby girl and a forehead kiss, we got a joel and ellie who are as domestic as it gets, it was all incredible.

i loved the changes made as well (for the most part): eugene being the trigger for ellie's realization; the delayed timeline on her moving to the garage and their estrangement; seeing some things unwind from joel's pov as opposed to ellie's; the little joel and maria convo (GIVE ME MORE) and uncle grumpyyyyyyyyy; also i would happily watch joel shove seth a thousand times over. i loved ellie trying to work through her logical list of questions and then immediately panicking and shoving them in a drawer when joel knocks.

PORCH SCENE PORCH SCENE PORCH SCENEEEEEEEE i'll be so honest at first i was like why the fuck are they giving this to us now? but i loved the scene so much i don't care lol and i do think, in the end, it was good placement for it. i think it gave us everything we needed to see to make ellie's behavior thus far make sense (her reaction to the pregnancy, her wanting to do daddy-daughter patrol). AND JOEL SAID I LOVE YOUUUUUUUU i cannot believe we got that.

honestly one of my favorite things about this season has been how just upfront about what exactly joel & ellie's relationship is in a way the game (to my admittedly limited knowledge) never was.

also at the end of it all, just absolutely top notch performances by pedro and bella, as always. all of it was just fucking incredible, i cannot believe we are so blessed to live in a timeline where they are our joel and ellie, and they love each other so deeply offscreen too.

issues? needs more tommy and maria. needs more minutes per episode. needs more episodes in the season. and also the museum needed to be longer really. that's such a big chunk of the game and i know they gave us fresh new stuff but also...dinosaurs with hats 😭

[happywitchesofnewdi]

"Happy Pride Month, gender is fake!"

-Sora & Izumi apparently

[transingthoseformers]

I understand this isn't what happened but wouldn't it be interesting if the Quintessons shadowplayed/reprogrammed Sentinel into being their puppet more pro-Quintesson?

Extra points if he still undeniably benefits from their deal, just... With some "extra encouragement" :)

[milolovesbmc]

Falsettos productions where Trina is on stage sleeping during March of the Falsettos I love you

[alongtidesoflight]

i swear my stepdad is so illogical AND stubborn it hurts

[godisasimp]

Honestly I think Coralie should come back, and before the pitch forks pop up, i would like to say that it would be HILARIOUS if Helia went through all of that shit just for Coralie to log back in and just go "i was playing Oblivion, phone was on mute sorry bro"

[revenantghost]

Man! I feel bad about being not as present for bookclub as I was last year, and also about how behind on messaging/responding to peeps between migraines and health stuff I am, but the community here and support and kindness has been amazing even as I feel like I'm letting everyone down, and I've just gotta say:

Thank you <3

[agnesandhilda]

once you realize the extent to which the subjugation of children is normalized in our society you'll never stop seeing it

[mechahero]

//I think about this off and on sometimes but the idea of Lambda referring to himself as a something sometimes and not a someone and not quite catching himself before it can slip out.

[homoeroticgrappling]

Not wrestling related, but a brief update for the mutuals and anyone who has private messaged me

I am stuck on so many different waitlists for medical treatment of different kinds and the shortest one should hopefully get me somewhere by the end of 2025, but a combination of issues have been getting progressively harder to deal with and when I get overwhelmed or am struggling the first thing that becomes hard is responding to direct messages because I feel like I need to have the ability to put in the effort people deserve in a reply and when I can't do that I end up feeling like I've waited too long to respond and people will yell at me for it, which makes me wait even longer which obviously makes the issue worse and makes it more likely people will think it's deliberate. I hate thinking anyone thinks I'm deliberately ignoring them or that they might've done something to make me not reply so I felt I needed to say something! I am a mess of different physical and mental health conditions wrapped in neurodivergency and currently am stuck waiting for any kind of treatment at all to hopefully help me get a handle on it all so I can get back to enjoying conversations with all the wonderful people I've met on here. I am going to make a serious effort to respond to people this coming week, but I felt an explanation was probably needed! I appreciate anyone who takes the time to read this 💖

[thepromisedbride]

i don’t talk about bridgerton on here but just to clarify. i will not be having ANY eloise hate on this account. i will bite.

[the--highlanders]

I hope you don't mind me asking but what are your favourite Jamie EU stories?

oh my god not at all, I never mind being asked about my favourite little guy <33

I'm gonna break this down by media type, but there's some parts of the eu like comics that I'm not super familiar with, so if anyone wants to add some of those on (or any other eu stories) then go ahead!!

putting this under a cut because it got LONG rip

big finish

the jigsaw war

jamie is trapped inside a puzzle, experiencing events out of order, and has to figure out how to escape. this is THE audio for me in terms of like. recognising that jamie isn't stupid just because he comes from the eighteenth century. he really gets to shine on his own rather than being relegated to 'dumb exposition prompter' (which I feel like some audios can be kinda guilty of.....) also the fact that two and jamie canonically have a strong enough connection to form a psychic link over long distances makes me chew through glass. this audio GETS it in a way some others just don't.

the glorious revolution

two, jamie, and zoe travel back to the time of the glorious revolution, the event that set the jacobite cause in motion, and jamie grapples with not being able to change the past. if you saw that audio snippet going around a couple days ago you'll have an idea of why I'm reccing this one. it has been a while since I've listened to it & I do really want to relisten and check it out for historical accuracy. but regardless it's another one that gives jamie some of the depth he deserves, this time in terms of emotional depth and his feelings about his backstory.

the selachian gambit

two, jamie, ben, and polly get caught in the middle of an alien bank heist. this one is pretty focused on ben, polly, and jamie as a trio - they're largely taking on the action while two keeps the detective work of the plot chugging along. jamie doesn't hugely stand out here in terms of the audio really adding something to his character, but it does show his dynamic with ben and polly pretty well. in particular there's some great scenes with him and ben working together, and I love their friendship a lot so that's always a good time.

honourable mentions: helicon prime (I do feel this one underutilises jamie a bit and undersells him in some weird ways, but if you're looking for two/jamie content you can't get much gayer than this. plus it's the origin of the whole 'jamie and kirsty get married' thing which I hate on principle & am obsessed with in practice), the phantom piper (it's got so much more potential than it gives imo but the tidbits that we get are so good. jamie's relationship with his grandparents.... his best friend taking a bullet for him and dying in his arms...... I just wish I could explain to the author that there's no such thing as a bedroom door in a blackhouse)

novels

the roundheads

two, jamie, ben, and polly travel back to the 1600s, and get largely split up by events unfolding around them. this is a pure historical and it delights in that. if you're after ben and polly content, the roundheads delivers on that too - but it really is some great early twojamie content. (whatever way you choose to read them - it's definitely a shippable book if you're into that). they spend the majority of the book together, both for plot reasons and just hanging out (they go to a frost fair!! two buys jamie treats and then makes himself a flower crown!!) and you get a great sense of jamie figuring two out early into his travels, and how he's far more interested in the doctor as a person than some other companions - he's the only one to show interest in susan when the doctor namedrops her, for instance. this is the best two-era book to me.

the wheel of ice

two, jamie, and zoe visit a space station built a little before zoe's time, and find that not everything is as it seems. again, this is a great one for zoe content as well as anything else, and for some very sweet moments with zoe and two. I don't necessarily feel this one always nails two and jamie's dynamic, but they don't spend a massive amount of time together here, so it's not too jarring. really I'm reccing this because of the scenes where jamie falls in with a bunch of teenagers from the space station, and finds himself kind of responsible for them. it's just nicely done and gives a good sense of jamie as a caretaker character and someone who feels a drive to be responsible for other people.

honourable mention: the episode novelisations (these are a lot of fun, especially if you have particular episodes you enjoy. they often add in extra details, background for side characters, or just little things from the episodes that were cut from the script. I really like them for adding a bit more depth and life to existing stories, and just little things that make you go 'yeah I'll add that to my belief system').

short stories

the time eater/across silent seas

two and jamie give a massive time-eating creature a funeral, and save a space whale from being turned into a weapon. both from the compilation destination prague. literally nobody gets me like the destination prague stories get me I'm not even kidding. these are THE eu two stories to me. both of these are arguably 6b, and they really work in that position - both in showing two and jamie with a very settled, devoted dynamic and in their themes and subject matter. the time eater is a story with no villain, and even the incidental threat of the dying creature causing havoc in time is secondary to the emotional keystone of jamie helping two accept death rather than running away. across silent seas has jamie nearly being aged to death and two absolutely losing it. they're both really about age and death and loss, which hits hard for 6b, with jamie's determination to stay with two forever and two's growing realisation that even if jamie doesn't choose to leave or survives their adventures, his lifespan is still going to be far shorter.

the age of ambition

two, jamie, and victoria land at the house of one of victoria's father's friends, only to find he has been trying to reanimate the dead. from the compilation life sciences. this is really a victoria story, probably the defining victoria story for me. it's got backstory, it's got gothic horror/victorian scientific ambition vibes in a similar way to evil of the daleks, it's got victoria character moments. but it's also a really crucial story for jamie, to me. as a character, I don't think jamie never quite forms into the brawny action man stereotype he was originally drafted as - and that's one of the things I love most about him. again he's too much of a caretaker, he's a piper rather than a soldier. he's rarely truly angry, even when he fights he never seems out to cause much actual harm, and you get the sense his protectiveness over his friends wars with this almost inability to do harm. the age of ambition GETS that and pushes it to the extreme, with jamie being unable to fire a killing shot to save his friends, to the point where victoria has to do it herself. it's such a compelling character moment for both of them and their dynamic.

on a pedestal

two, jamie, and victoria travel back to meet william wallace, who jamie idolises. from the compilation the quality of leadership. this is another one that really gets and hones in on a particular nuance of jamie's character - in this case, the strength and rigidity of his morals and sense of responsibility, and his dislike of people who fall short of that. he's faced with the fact that someone he admires was once careless, lax about taking responsibility for their actions even when other people are at risk, and just a bit childish. it shakes him, and he spends much of the story grappling with that. it's such a good look into the qualities that jamie admires versus the ones that he can't stand. but that's balanced out with some very sweet moments (the whole scene with two, jamie, and william wallace going fishing is very fun and again gives a nice little snapshot of two and jamie having this very settled, secure dynamic). AND jamie gets recognised as a basically supernaturally gifted piper which. love to see jamie actually getting to be a musician, love to see him piping without it being the butt of a 'bagpipes suck and everyone hates them' joke.

honourable mentions: that which went away (this is the 'jamie turns into a bear' story I'm always talking about. I do think it has some major issues in terms of weird primitivism, both in terms of the side characters and how it treats jamie, but also. jamie turns into a bear. and two begging him to come back to him is just *chefs kiss*), undercurrents (two vanishes from the tardis and another man mysteriously appears. jamie believes this newcomer has done something to harm two, and very nearly kills him for it. this is one of the few moments where jamie gets really, properly angry and is willing to actually cause harm and I LOVE to see him pushed past the breaking point of his usual moral code), the slave war (two, jamie, ben, and polly in the roman empire. also really good for ben and polly content, but there's some interesting stuff with jamie grappling with the idea of becoming involved in another rebellion, but ending up getting involved anyway)

[revasserium]

my favorite thing about stories, be it books or manga, tv shows or movies, or even epic poems and recited songs, is that they never really end -- the part we tell might end: there will always be a last page, or a last episode, a list minute, or a last line, but not really -- because even if it ends here, the story itself keeps on going -- in your heart, in your mind, in the hearts and minds of everyone who's read it or watched it, listened to it or sang it.

and the best part of all that is, even if it does "end", you can go right back to the beginning and start again.

because yes, stories end. the ending will always be there.

but then, so will the beginning.