#what if i rewatch s1 again

[sandushengshou]

[camellcat]

"cordelia could you please drive me home?" "of course" OF COURSE she replies to buffy, softly, without hesitation. even if she goes right back to harping on about the world ending, of course she'll help buffy. head in my fucking hands

[saltpepperbeard]

man. just.

watching ed and stede’s first kiss and seeing all the casual intimacy. the way they’re so close together. the way they’re whispering in tones reserved just for each other. the way ed keeps his hand(s) on stede and always maintains that physical, affectionate touch.

…and thinking about how much more we could have gotten, how much more we would have seen with the both of them on the same page together, as an official couple.

man.

[andthesunwillalwaysshine]

the i believe in you spike speech i am not crying you are but also the you are a better man you may not see it but i do... i do (the voice as she repeated i do my heart can't do this) i love s7 spuffy

[angelsdean]

ohhhhh my god i just noticed sam's crib mobile is sports themed. devastating addition in need to make to my post abt how sports = metaphor for normalcy in the winchester boys' childhoods (yes this includes adam)

[that-ineffable-devil]

I've always thought it was equally adorable and confusing that when rain starts falling over Eden, Crowley seems to instinctively duck close to Aziraphale, who immediately places his wing over him.

Confusing because it seems like they don't know each other, but adorable because...well obviously.

In the light of us seeing Crowley doesn't seem to have all (if any) of his memories from his time as an angel (although I'm questioning that too), it gives me more pause.

Did Aziraphale cover Crowley because he remembered when they met?

Did he not know Crowley's name (then Crawly) because he'd never received Crowley's angelic name? Or did he pretend not to know because Crowley isn't supposed to know?

Did Crowley lean in instinctively out of muscle memory because they had a much longer relationship in heaven before The Fall and his body remembers the action?

Had they actually interacted before this event as angel and demon?

I have so many questions.

[brittlebutch]

Desperately trying to make sense of Alex's motivations in Season Two and you know, I do eventually have to wonder if maybe Alex wasn't actually lying in the majority of those tapes.

Like, we tend to assume that Alex's motivations have been a consistent throughline since the college years, but do we actually know that that's the case? Do we know for sure that Alex was acting in deliberate, calculated ways in 2006; or could it be that he's telling the Truth on those olds tapes when he says he's blacking out and can't remember what's happening to anyone? After all, if we're assuming that Season 2 Alex's motivations are the exact same as his motives in Season 3, then it doesn't make any sense at all that he spend months working with Jay to try to find Amy; Season 3 Alex would have attempted to kill Jay like, on sight just to get things over with as quickly as possible and contain the spread of contamination as best as he could.

But, maybe, if Alex really had been separated from Amy after the events of the 04-04-10 tape, and if he really doesn't know where she is, then maybe that could make things start to make more sense. Maybe he really had been watching Jay's channel, and seeing Jay start going through the same things he went through in college without things devolving into violence and disappearances, and wondered if things maybe could play out differently this time. Maybe he really did send that tape to Jay to ask him for help, maybe he really was just trying to find Amy.

But then, instead of actually being helpful, Jay makes it extremely clear that he's a lot more interested in stalking Alex than he is in finding Amy. Alex asked for help, and instead there's a bunch of masked dudes on Jay's heels that keep attacking him, Jay is breaking into his house, stealing his things, leading the Operator right to him all over again, keeps trying to get other people (namely: Jessica -- if Alex is being honest when he says that his call reassuring her that Amy had been found was an effort to make Sure she stayed away from everything that was happening) involved; and instead of anything getting better, instead of anyone finding Amy, things are just getting worse all over again.

It's not until after the incident at the tunnel that things seem to start rapidly devolving. Rather than a calculated attempt to finally follow through with his need to curb the spread of contamination, this is very clearly an outburst of rage and terror. Alex's "I told you not to follow me" line in conjunction with Jay speculating that Alex didn't know who that guy was, to me, pretty firmly seems to speak to Alex having mistaken that stranger for Jay. From his point of view, Alex knows that Jay and totheark know where he live, have broken in before, he suspects that Jay stole a key to make it easier to get into his house, and he's been followed on the daily for months -- Alex is sitting at the tunnel because he doesn't know where else he can go without being constantly surveilled, hunted, and assaulted. And instead of getting a moment by himself to breathe, Jay followed him out there all over again (it feels like Alex looks directly at the camera in Jay's footage of him from this day; he knew for a fact that Jay was there), and then to make matters worse now 'Jay' won't even keep his distance anymore.

So Alex lashes out. And it's not until afterwards that he looks down and finally recognizes that this wasn't Jay -- it was someone completely innocent. Things have finally reached the low point he was at in college all over again; maybe even worse this time. If Alex doesn't remember attacking anyone in college, but he was at least partially conscious of it this time, then things have reached an entirely new rock bottom, they've reached an absolute point of no return.

He has no idea what happened to Amy, and he's spent months trying to find her with no hint of where she could be; he doesn't know where Jay actually is or what additional trouble he could be causing at this point; he does know that now innocent people are getting caught in the crossfire (in regards to the stranger in the tunnel, and also Jessica now that Jay has her phone number, and the untold number of people Jay got involved when he started posting videos to the Marble Hornets channel); things are spiraling out of control and there's no one left to ask for help. The situation isn't getting better, it's getting worse; things aren't getting easier to handle, they're just getting more out of hand; the negative impact is spreading and who knows how much further it can still go?

So, Alex decides to go scorched earth. He disfigures the body with the rock either to hide evidence or to make sure the guy would actually stay dead and not just get back up to start his own cycle of contamination in a few years. He tries to give Jay one last chance to back off, and Jay instead admits he's been talking to Jessica, acts obstinate and lies about not having Alex's spare key, and then breaks into Alex's house a second time (minimum). If Alex doesn't stop him now, who will? Alex met with Jay planning to kill the others, and then himself, so he could put a stop to this once and for all and keep things from getting any worse than they already were.

Maybe it makes a lot more sense if, rather than being a strangely incomprehensible detour on what should have been a straight path, the events of Season Two were the breaking point that put Alex on that path to begin with.

[dizzybevvie]

Thinking about every single time Gorgug rolls an insight check he NEVER gets above a 5 for the "are you my dad?" bit, but the LAST time he does it, he rolls a NAT 20, AND IT IS

[soapbubbles511]

Nathan trolling us with posting a script page reminded me how much I want to read the scripts from S1 (outside of that pilot draft). We know there was a fair amount of improv going on, especially when Rhys and Taika were together. I want to know how different the scenes were written.

Like we know the whole Blackbeard's Bar and Grill conversation was improvised. What was actually scripted for that scene? Was it even remotely related to what the scene ended up being? What other moments that we've been obsessed with for the last six months weren't actually scripted (looking at you Taika and the foot touch)?

Give them to me! So I can do another rewatch with the scripts open and compare every line

[phantom-of-the-501st]

Slightly Bitter

It's been over 24 hours now and I seem to have transitioned from denial into anger. 😅 Not incredibly pissed off or anything, but a little bit jaded.

I said early on in the season that I didn't want them to give Tech all of this character development only to kill him off straight away; it's cheap storytelling. And that's part of why I don't think that he's dead. It would be a bad narrative decision if he was. And me not believing that he was dead helped me accept this part of the story.

HOWEVER, having a few hours to sit on it, actually getting some sleep, and then crying about it again this morning seems to have cleared my head enough to take this all in and... I'm not totally happy with it. Okay, we don't think that Tech is dead, but him being dead is what the writers want us to think. And that's why I think that it all still feels a little cheap.

Even if he isn't gone, it still feels like they gave Tech so much focus this season just for the purpose of getting a stronger reaction out of us. They wanted us to get more attached to this character so that they could make us even more sad over a supposed death that doesn't even make sense narratively.

It's a level of emotional manipulation with the audience that doesn't sit right with me.

I don't hate this moment and I do think that a lot of it is because I don't truly believe that he's dead, and that Tech sacrificing himself is something that I can see him doing, but the fact that they want us to believe that him dying is what happened is why it's rubbing me the wrong way. Had he had more character development in S1, then I don't think it would bother me as much, but because it's so heavily focused in season 2, it feels too manipulative.

Characters shouldn't be given development purely for the reason of getting a stronger reaction over their death.

[kuromi-hoemie]

GWITCH IS SO!GOOD!!!

[six-seasons-andamovie]

Do people actually like Micheal Scott?

[rearranging-deck-chairs]

hang on are cougars like panthers

[skrunksthatwunk]

not my dad not liking moral orel season 3 🤭🤭🤭that's so embarrassing for him (<- he's not wrong for feeling that way but i think it's like 60% because he doesn't like it when art gets weird and that's so so tragic for him)

[angorwhosebabyisthis]

[cws: non-detailed discussion of both fictional and irl SA/CSA/abuse dynamics, apologia for the previous, homophobia, fetishization of wlw, and anti rhetoric.]

-

having a lot of thoughts about the wider fandom's treatment of the various abuse dynamics present in sdmi--supposedly in the name of being anti-abuse--and how instead it's propagated deeply anti-survivor/abuse apologist sentiment and behavior through where they choose to apply that rhetoric, and where they choose to look the other way.

(first off, if you're someone who does not and has not done this, thank you from the bottom of my heart. second, this is not at all exhaustive of my feelings on the subject and there will probably be more posts about these dynamics and people's behavior toward them in future. as you can imagine by the length of this post that is saying something lmao)

one of the reasons i feel as strongly as i do about the way both canon and fandom have historically been about pericles, pericky, and shitting on anyone who likes them because it Normalizes Abuse(tm), is that their fans are pretty open and emphatic about the fact that it's Fucked Up. it's why we find it compelling. it is vanishingly rare that we don't.

meanwhile, velma is the UwU Cute Sassy Lesbian Icon whose relationship with shaggy was Cringy and Immature (and mutually so 🙃) at worst, when it directly mirrored such visceral aspects of my experience with CSA that i almost threw up rewatching the second episode.

and that's not even getting into how normalized it is for women to abuse men in a relationship, in broad fucking daylight in front of other people, and how men are supposed to Always Want It and it's an insult if they don't, and how the vast majority of CSA--which it overtly is in shaggy's case, he is implied not to be an adult yet--is perpetrated by other kids.

and it's also not getting into the fact that the ~cute lesbian relationship~ is almost certainly going to end up with the other queer girl in the show also being abused, because abusers are not Magically Cured by True Queer Love's Kiss. how it is incredibly difficult for survivors of abuse in a wlw relationship to be acknowledged or get support because then they'd be a Traitor, or people would rather maintain the feel-good fuzzy feelings wlw exist to give them, or they're closeted and it's not safe to let people know they're in a relationship with a woman. how queer relationships, especially between women, are fetishized as cute pure healthy fairytale romances and not dynamics involving real people who might harm each other or be harmed and need help.

and that's not even getting into the fact that mlm are seen as inherently predatory to an extent that the majority of other queer identities are not. how older queer men grooming boys is a classic homophobic stereotype used to justify violence toward them, up to and including lynchings, and how that is the abuse dynamic everyone in the show and fandom latched onto to revile as the Disgusting Evil Predatory One while giving everything else a pass. how mlm have a long history of forced institutionalization and psychiatric torture and abuse, and the Predatory Gay Man is subjected to decades of--you guessed it!--forced institutionalization and psychiatric torture and abuse, which is framed as what he deserved and where he belonged. how he's supposed to be unattractive (and the majority of the people who do this shit lean hard on that), while people are way more likely to give Charming Attractive Aesthetically Pleasing abusers a pass.

this is just..... normal, to the fandom. it's treated as completely normal. and i think that's a whole lot more fucking harmful than finding emotional catharsis in exploring an abusive dynamic that would not fly in broad daylight irl in a million years.

[flythesail]

Additional random thought: Nancy's shirt in 1x12 reminds me of her shirt in 4x08