#you know for a fact Gideon would be a fantastic father

[goosecastle41]

I have some fluffy girl dad Gideon headcanons I need to share with you

Firstly, just something sweet I’ve been thinking about; Gideon is the unofficial official ceo of playing make believe and tea parties. The second his daughter breaks out the tea set and the tiaras, Gideon no longer exists. Prince Gumdrop of the Sugar Valley is here and he WILL be having tea with the Princess of Cupcake Town thank you very much

Gideon is. Wildly protective of his daughter. BUT. He is a huge believer of “let your child do dangerous things in a safe environment”. His protectiveness manifests in the way of like. Trying to teach her how to protect her self. Teach her when a situation is dangerous and how she should avoid it. Letting her learn lessons like “You either stop climbing trees or you need to get better at it. Either way stop falling out of trees!”

Though on the same coin, Gideon would kill someone for looking at his daughter the wrong way. Easily. Gideon has no qualms about fighting a dude who’s made sideways comments about his baby girl. Gideon would go to hell and back for her any day of the week.

A mutual said this in a reblog on a previous post and they were just so right; Gideons love language is physical touch and spending time with his loved ones. He’s always wrapping his daughter up in his arms, lifting her off of the ground in bear hugs or planting big, noisy kisses on the top of her head or cheek. She pretends to hate it, bating at his chest or shoving his face away, but it’s almost always half hearted and she always gives in and hugs him back.

Again from my mutual; Gideon loves to take her out camping after they start up the carnival with Kremy and Frost and Gricko. The loud noises and lights and the people can easily get to her and make her anxious, so every so often Gideon would pack up their camping supplies and they’d head off into the woods where there’s nothing but the sound of the wind, bugs, birds and wildlife.

He teaches her how to fish, how to track small animals and hunt them. He lets her climb the trees seeing as she’s gotten so much better at doing so. She climbs like lightning and with steady hands and feet, but Gideon can always be found at the bottom, waiting to catch her if she needs

And lastly, I feel like Gideons daughter would call him Papa. Like I imagine Gideon adopts her when she’s fairly young. Something happened to her first set of parents, leaving her orphaned in this big scary world. Gideon and Kremy find her and for whatever reasons I decide later, decide to keep her and raise her. Gideon’s the main caretaker at first and she gets closer and closer to him until one day she calls him Papa out of the blue.

Gideon doesn’t make a huge deal of it. Kremy can see the smile trying to fight it’s way onto his face, can see the tears welling in his eyes. But Gideon just answers whatever question she had like his whole world isn’t being shattered and put back together piece by piece. He just pats her head gently and then watches as she runs off to go play, accepting that he’s a father. A Papa.

Idk. Just some things I’ve been thinking about

[liesmyth]

may i humbly request a director’s commentary for any part of as long as it is day

omg omg very happily!! Writing that fic was a fantastic experience I love chatting about it

as long as it is day (The Locked Tomb, Time Loop, Gideon-centric; Gideon & John; Gideon & Wake; Gideon/Harrow)

Nonagesimus, you owed me so big. You spat on my gift of a perfectly good soul, you trapped me in the back of your head like a bad dream to be forgotten and brought me back to fight disgusting bloody wasps, and then you got me stuck in a nightmare whirl of the worst fucking night of my life. Which, you know. That’s really saying something.

This fic was written for a fic exchange for @augustmourn who had THE most beautiful collection of prompts ever. It was a struggle to pick only one to fill. I landed on the time loop idea and picked the ending of HtN because it's such a WTF moment for Gideon, with everything happening at once, and discovering who John and Wake are to her literally seconds before disaster.

I decided from the start I wanted Gideon to fight Heralds a lot and die a lot. I spent probably days sliding into @nikkicafeina's DMs to figure out the best John & Gideon's dynamic and we landed on John would be absolutely delighted to have a secret daughter!! who's also Harrow's cav!! That man loves finding His People. Meanwhile, Gideon who just watched John do HtN Act 5 would be extremely wary and pissed off at him. She is NOT impressed with her newfound father. Half the John & Gideon scenes in the fic are John going like, "Wait are you MAD at me?" and Gideon who reluctantly goes from "I want nothing to do with you but unfortunately you're literally God and I need your help to find my girlfriend" to, like... remembering that she grew up as a foundling on the Ninth daydreaming of the day somebody would come for her. She never had anybody before (Harrow is complicated) and now John wants to play cards with her while they're stuck in a time loop. Is he a good person? No. Does it matter? No. Nobody ever even pretended to care about her before.

Gideon & Wake was my favourite part to write. It was hard because Wake as a character is so complicated to me — the strength of her convictions but meanwhile she's sleeping with her mortal enemy on the DL! She will do anything to free her people up to and including killing millions! She only ever saw Gideon as a bio weapon but she says "I'm sorry" the first time they meet face to face! Ultimately, the version of Wake that Gideon meets is a revenant who only wants one thing. Gideon, who grew up talking to her mother's bones, has to put an end to Wake's mission because she needs John to help her find Harrow. As I said in the tags: the universe's WORST family reunion. I'm actually pretty proud of how the final Wake & Gideon scene came out because I gave myself feelings.

Random thoughts:

I love naming TLT fics after Bible verses especially when they are sort of ironic. This one is from John 9:4. “As long as it is day, we must do the works of him who sent me.” <- this means. Gideon baby girl you're not getting ANY sleep

I'm really pretty proud of how the Gideon voice came out ngl

Gideon POV grasp of the Lyctors and their dynamics was a blast to write. She does NOT care about the Lyctors, they could die for all she cares (should die probably) but I think she's in a unique position to understand their fucked up codependency. Nobody else understands what is like to go through immortality other than another immortal. She witnessed Mercy and John and Augustine all trying to kill each other the first time around. But she understands fucked up codependency and why John would never let Wake kill any of HIS Lyctors. They're HIS.

Gideon confronting Wake with the fact that the Ninth House nuns named her after the guy who killed her. I'm always thinking about whatever the fuck must have gone through between Wake and G1deon; I loved writing this line: “There are worse names,” she conceded. “He killed me, but he made it quick. Others wouldn’t have.”

Gideon (a normal person) describing the Heralds (disgusting space wasps) and the Mithraeum (bone palace central). I feel strongly that she'd actually like the Mithraeum! She grew up with Crux telling her "and even after you're dead you'll serve the Ninth as a skeleton". I feel like, to her, the idea of bones being used as decoration in a beautiful place instead of as manual labour is quite soothing.

I'm gonna be honest and admit I only came up with section header names so I could call one "2Emperor 2Murder". I think it captures the spirit of the books.

I had SO much fun with pronouns. Gideon-in-Harrow's body sometimes refers to the body she's inhabiting as Harrow's (I bit your lip) and sometimes it's both of them (I looked at the woman behind those eyes. She looked at us.) <- all of these are intentional and were fun to write.

John is the person who designed the #aesthetic of the Nine Houses. It's very important to me that he has a cool wizard sword of his own and he's absolute shit at using it. He's never had to get his hands dirty at close range before. He made himself cool weapons for cool factor and that's it.

I feel like a hack because SO many people liked the last line and it wasn't even mine.

I thought: Harrow, I’m coming. Which, you know. That’s what she said.

^ credit for this goes to @theriverbeyond who's THE Gideon expert in my life <3

WOW TURNS OUT I HAD A LOT TO SAY ABOUT THIS FIC. THANK YOU FOR INDULGING ME <3333

[fanfic writers director’s cut meme!]

[tenpintsof-sundrop]

I just wanted you to know I saw an ad for the new CM and my first thought was you, which continued into “but she’s never gonna watch it because it’s new, and she doesn’t even watch later seasons that are already out.” The ladies look fantastic though, as always. -Rotten Anon

You are right!!!!

I haven't seen anything past like Season 8. Which came out in... 2012. That makes sense. I was 14 when it came out and I watched the Maeve arc live week to week, and by the end of it, I was done with their bullshit of every possibly happy moment ending with tragedy and dreariness - especially for Spencer.

(content warnings for me discussing CM topics and possibly come spoilers - including spoilers for character deaths)

like the fact that Gideon could have retired and could have continued to be a mentor outside of the BAU for Spencer; even if the actor couldn't be on the show anymore, he could have continued to exchange letters with Spencer as a pen pal and it could have been sweetly/happily mentioned that Gideon was writing Spencer every once and a while. he didn't have to fucking die.

and yes, I know I am one to talk - I like it when his character goes through conflict, but he is literally the only person on the show not to have a long time love interest (aside from Emily***?? if my knowledge of the reboot is correct?) - on top of taking care of his ailing mother, the implication that he had been molested by his father, being sent to prison for crimes he didn't commit, and many other things. I wanted to see him have just ONE happy storyline (even though, looking back with my not-14-year-old perspective, Maeve was a terrible love interest for him - Maeve's death was my fucking Roman Empire back then because I WAS ROOTING FOR THEM!!!!)

***Emily deserves happiness and a long term love interest too. but they're never gonna do it because they're cowards and she should be with a woman

I am fine when a case doesn't end well, but when you have to take the hammer to the character's personal lives over and over and over again - it just pulls me out of the show and makes me so done with it. (it's the same reason I stopped watching TWD. the idea that there is no happy ending, and the characters have to keep being miserable in order for the show to continue for seasons longer)

anyway - I stopped watching around Season 8 and I didn't watch the reboot when it came out.

but something that was funny to me - I saw an ad for the newest season, and I was like "damn... how OLD is Rossi." I googled it, and his actor is 76 years old. HE'S IN HIS 70s AND STILL CHASING UNSUBS. SOMEBODY LET THE MAN REST. HE SHOULD BE RETIRED

anyway - the ladies do look fantastic. the temptation to write more fanfiction about Milf!JJ... I will never write Spencer fanfiction again (if I do write it, I will never post it) ... but like damn, JJ does things to me. Milf!JJ - I need her in ways that would probably get me examined by the BAU like a bug

(and she is severely unpopular in the fandom so I am not at risk of having my fanfiction prodded and examined like a weird dead corpse in a medical school)

[saulweissberg]

when saul was younger, he had never intended to have three marriages by the time he was forty-five. it just happened that way. in fact, when he was first married to terry, he had the expectation that theirs would last forever—his parents had an indefatigable love for each other, and if it had not been for the car accident that prematurely took his father’s life, edna and gideon were surely still going to be married (he assumed). his parents, and his aunts and uncles, had been from a different generation, however. one where wives stayed with cheating husbands or parents stayed together for the kids. divorces for the new england set back then were only under the most dire circumstances, and his parents’ relationship was an anomaly, not the rule. he had a role model in marriage with his parents, a role model for fatherhood in his dad, but a snowy road and a red maple tree stole it all away, leaving him with only sixteen years of examples to pull from. saul could have hoped to be married only once and forever, but time proved otherwise. in the end, it had proved that he wasn’t good at being married. he could be a fantastic lawyer, a loving boyfriend, a generous friend, and even a halfway decent father, but husband was a role he could never comfortably fit himself into. not for long, anyway.

“she’s got me beat, then. i’ve only had three.” of course, they all turned into actual marriages, but they ended just the same. there might’ve been a universe where saul and lisa had married, or at least gotten close to it, if their paths had crossed somehow. shudder the fucking thought! but he could see it. whirlwind romances were sort of saul’s thing, and from the picture he had seen of lisa yates, she was a beautiful woman. much like her daughter who was so precious to him. saul figured he’d probably make a decent step-dad, too, if his avuncular relationship with phoebe was anything to go by. he had no qualms about dating people with children of their own. sometimes, it was preferable, but it mattered less the older that saul got. he tipped his head back as she stuck her tongue at him, chuckling. “you could follow him around, if you want to. with a trench coat and fedora, ducking around corners and shit. he’d see you and think you’re weird, but it would give you two something to talk about.” he shot her a quick wink and slight smile. “never doubted you for a second.” from the moment he met her years ago, saul knew phoebe was a capable, prudent young woman.

his mirthful demeanor was replaced by a solemn frown. an entire year without seeing her own daughter? not even saul was that bad about missing visits with micah. “i’m sorry, cookie.” saul had made many mistakes throughout his son’s life and the guilt ate him alive every moment of every day, but sometimes, he soothed his ego by comparing himself to parents that completely neglected their children. did lisa feel guilt for how she left phoebe all by herself, or how she raised her little girl? “i know some people that can help if you ever want to track her down.”  he realized he sounded a little suspicious, so he added a bit of clarification. “private investigators i hire for my firm sometimes, not the mob.” considering his space, his brow furrowed as she called it a film-setty. “okay… i don’t know if that’s an insult or a compliment.” he was leaning towards the former. “i was thinking about changing the cabinets or something—interior design was never my strong suit. i usually had a wife to decorate my place for me; i bought this place as is.” was it really so cold, so impersonal as a filming location?

Phoebe knew first-hand how people acted with kids that weren’t their own blood: hell, had witnessed how some people did treat their own. She recognized it must not have been easy; meeting someone and not only adapting for them, but for another person in their life, but still, it wasn’t hard to treat kids with basic decency. She had boyfriends of her mom flat-out ignore her, treat her like Cinderella, or make creepy statements about what a wonderful young woman college-aged Phoebe had grown into being. So she was glad that Micah didn’t have to deal with that, and he had a parent who managed to make the best choice in a step-parent for him, even if the actual marriage ended up falling through. 

“She was engaged four times. So, close enough.” She answered in between bites of her noodles, tone implying it was almost funny to be a child to a serial monogamist: constantly running from relationship to relationship, letting things escalate to a diamond ring that ended up being lobbed at the head of the man who gave her it amongst accusations of cheating and mistreatment. Phoebe was sure there were still two of the rings in the bundle of stuff under her bed she saved from the Weaver Ridge apartment, though wasn’t particularly concerned about fishing them out. Besides, of the four fiancé’s of the apocalypse, only one made any decent money and he asked for the ring back. She was sure the ones stowed away were just polished costume jewelry.  

From the mouths of babes. Phoebe wanted to point out that twenty-nine was old. When Saul was twenty-nine, he was married at least once. When her mom was twenty-nine she had a whole ass thirteen year old. But she supposed, well, as Saul got over, maybe being on this side of thirty was young, now he had the additional years on him. Besides, it was a nice reminder that just because her mom expected Phoebe to be sitting at the kitchen table doing taxes by the time she reached double-digits, didn’t mean she was in any rush to grow up. “Damn, and I had the perfect disguise kit ready to go.” She jested, sticking her tongue out at the lawyer. “Seriously, Micah is in good hands.”

The intern nodded along as Saul shared his opinion that Micah and Foster could get along — something she could absolutely see herself. Both quiet, keeping to themselves, though she wondered if Micah being Saul’s son would have a negative impact on them becoming friends, but she kept that to herself lest she somehow made her pseudo-uncle feel bad. Frowning when Saul asked after her mother, it dawned on her then that he really didn’t know, and she examined her takeout box closely, sighing heavily and deciding to just finally say what had been unsaid this entire time they knew each other, the rare times her own family dynamic was brought up. “I haven’t seen her in over a year, or talked to her during that time. I came home one day and all of her shit was gone.” There was the issue of the mysterious gift box that arrived in January, but January was a write-off month and therefore not worth talking about. “I don’t know how she is, but I do know she isn’t dead so…” She punctuated her apparent nonchalance with a shrug, directing the conversation back to the house. “Maybe you could rent it out as a filming location? It’s very…film-setty.” 

[whump-town]

Watching early seasons of Criminal Minds has made me put something together about "Profiler, Profiled". Hotch is irrationally angry when he finds Derek's record, expunged though it is, and it only escalated from there. Hotch has to repeat and summarize every conversation he was with Derek for the others, keep them in the loop of what he's figuring out. He's very vocal in this episode, far more than in any other, far more than normal. And yet he's silent when he meets Carl Buford, just stands there. He doesn't know who Carl Buford is.

Derek hasn't said a word, there's no reason for Hotch to have any sort of trepidations about this man. To the best of his knowledge, Carl Buford saved Derek.

But after that encounter Hotch changes. Through-out the entire episode he's been butting heads with Derek. Gideon even points out Hotch starts to talk like Derek is in some way more involved with the crime than previously thought. But Buford says that Derek is just someone who gets people wrapped up, he's very persuasive. He says Derek is a bad guy and it doesn't surprise him that even the BAU could be swept away in his charisma.

Gideon has just had his, "We all have secrets. Would you want us profiling you?" talk so secrets are on his mind.

The next time Hotch goes in, he's different. There is no confrontation, every fact that Hotch rattles off about Carl Buford he makes looking away from Derek. He's LOOKING AT THE GROUND, he's sad, he doesn't even want to say it as he asks, "why don't you visit the man who made your career possible?"

And then Hotch leaves the door open. He. Leaves. The. Door. Open. He lets Derek out of the holding cell.

Hotch knew damn well exactly who Carl Buford was the second he met him and I think he already was pretty sure when he saw Derek's expunged records.

Young kids acting out when they feel powerless and afraid. The same reasons little girls deface their dolls. The same way anyone who works with kids always hears over and over that the kids who push you the hardest are the ones who need your attention the most.

Easiest example, talking about the records: "Seven Seconds". Jeremy, the nephew, steals earrings for a girl he likes and when Hotch mentions it he makes it very clear he's turned over in his head exactly what he thinks is happening. There is no mention of Jeremy being sexually abused but he's acting out, he's still in that situation as the child neglected so his father can pay more attention to his cousin. Hotch says Jeremy has a record at the "ripe age of 13".

It's clear that in Hotch's mind young kids acting out like that almost always turns around and points to abuse (and to be fair, in the show, every time you see a teen being brought in with a record or who teachers say acts oddly they're being abused).

What I'm saying is that if the Criminal Minds writers had a single thought in their fucking heads Hotch and Morgan would have made fantastic story lines for one another in explaining the other's abuse. Parallels.

Why Hotch and Morgan argue like cats and dogs but also get along so well because they both have secrets that are far too similar in nature. They always look out for each other. They have more in common than either wants to admit.

Even why Hotch, of all fucking people, went with Morgan to see Buford (when Morgan would have found more comfort in nearly anyone else).

It would have been a killer plot line, given us so many details about both of them to have Hotch's abuse surface. To see Morgan's reaction the way we saw Hotch's. The team turning on Hotch out of fear but Morgan steady because he knows why Hotch did whatever misdeeds he did as a kid. Probably the same ones Morgan did.

I want to watch Morgan piece Hotch's abuse together

[silvinlewis]

Matthew’s depression: explained

I don’t know why I wanted to do this, maybe because many don’t understand that Matthew’s real problem is not his alcoholism, it’s his depression and this is what takes him to different ways of self destruction. It could have put him into any addiction: drugs, cigarret, etc.

I have also read some comments of people saying that Matthew shouldn’t even feel that way, because “he has it all”. They say the same thing that James says in nothing but shadows “You could have noticed that life is less than ideal for me in this moment. So, stop making everything a tragic show of yourself for nothing” minimizing Matthews problems because he just “has it all”.

So, here is where this begins. I will explain as the psychologist I am, the reasons of Matthew’s depression. Besides, I remind you that the mental diseases have no distention in genre, social class or race. And we don’t know what happens in closed doors of a home that even though seems to be okay, is not okay at all.

Matthew was born in a “gold cradle”. Charlotte had been consul for eight years already when she gave birth to Matthew. The consul, being some king of president or minister, has a salary higher than the one given to the rest of shadowhunters. Even Cordelia says it, that she always sees Matthew with fine and expensive clothing. Maybe it doesn’t seem so important to mention but believe me, it is. As I said before, it is a popular belief that a boy born in a gold cradle would not have anything to complain about, but many times that gold cradle comes with defects: The pressure of the parents of being perfect of even the abandonment because of being so involved in their jobs all the time.

Here we will take this into account.

We know that Henry is a man that is all the time concentrated in his work. We know that his nature es being clueless and we can’t judge him. We can’t judge Charlotte either for being involved in her work as consul, because by being the first women in that position it is possible that she has to work the double.

So, we have our first problem: absent parents

Matthew had to grow up quick. In Cast Long Shadows, we see a little Matthew, only six years old, crying in his mother’s skirts. She asks her little son to go take care of his father. Matthew, being as protective as he is, takes his role seriously.

In Nothing but Shadows, Matthew explains that he always had been looking after his father, and Christopher. He had to grow up quick because he had to be from one way to another looking after his father and being alert that his father could eat well or didn’t caught fire. He went few times to meet with the other kids because he was home taking care of his handicapped father. If it weren’t because the Lightwood lived in Idris, he wouldn’t have met them.

Matthew didn’t live a normal childhood.

Matthew has a very bad perspective of himself. In Cast long Shadows, there were two phrases of Matthew that left me sad. “A pretty face, but not smart like the rest of his family” “You are a waste of space in a vessel, but at least your vessel is fantastic”.

In first place, you can imagine Matthew has an enormous ego, because he apparently does, but we find out, entering in this mind, that is actually the contrary of that.

Let’s see, his mother is the first female consul; his older brother longs to take her place and is very useful for his mother, to the point in which she gives him the position of subdirector in an institute and intern consul in London in her absense. He (Matthew) has a father that is a genius, that invented portals and the radar, and has as a pupil on of Matthew’s best friends.

Matthew is happy but wouldn’t doubt in feeling frustrated for not having anything special like the rest of his family. He doesn’t feel enough to fill in the places that his brother and parents fill. He thinks he is just a kid that likes art, but is not able to do art. (Nothing but shadows).

And then, when everything that happened with Charlotte happens, he thinks that all the doubts about himself are completely true. He is nothing.

We arrive to the most important part: the sin.

Before getting to that, let’s talk about the rumour:

Alastair didn’t create the rumour, it’s true, and like every kid, he repeated it with the intention of hurting Matthew. Yes, Alastair is not guilty of what Matthew did but you have to admit that he was an idiot that did not understand how powerful his words can be.

Many say: Why didn’t Matthew talk with his parents about it or simply didn’t believe Alastair? But, let’s get in context.

1900, a time where the simple fact of a women being alone with a man, could ruin her completely. Do you really think that if Matthew was actually Gideon’s son, his parents would have told him? Matthew himself knows that they would have lied, that is why he buys that potion.

Besides, imagine a boy grow up believing he is a bastard.

Matthew had a lot to doubt: Just like Alastair says, his physical appearance was very different to his parents and very similar to Gideon. Besides, he says it in CLS, that his parents were behaving in a very strange way (Charlotte was distracted, Henry was alert, and Charles was questioning him). And last of all: Gideon was appearing in the mornings to accompany Charlotte.

Cassie said that Charlotte’s pregnancy had been difficult, I guess it was because of her age so they hadn’t told Matthew yet, for him not to be worried (Charlotte had a husband, and older son, and an advisor worried about her already). No one imagined something like this would happen.

At last: Depression many times requires a detonating

The feeling of not being enough, of being a mistake, and over all, of having killed somebody you were going to love, was without a doubt Matthew’s detonating. This was the thing that put him in the bottom, and told him that he was a mistake, that did not serve, that he was a fail.

We know that he was tricked by the fairy (The Land I lost), but he doesn’t know it. In his mind he thinks he was an idiot for not listening to Jem. The thinks that thanks to his insecurities about not being his father’s son, poisoned his mother and killed his sister.

He won’t let Lucie touch him, he himself says he is not enough. He won’t tell anything to James because he is afraid he will judge and abandon him.

He gets into self-destruction by drinking, because it is the only thing that calms him. In some moment he must have had suicide thoughts.

And he holds on on what we could’ve called “lights”. I Have discovered that Matthew has been very attached to James. It is as if he wants to keep him close but also is afraid of hurting him.

Matthew’s depression is totally valid. We see that it is taking form slowly. They are little things that just explote in a moment and put us into an abiss where it is difficult to come out.

Translation by: @manuaristythgtmi

Art by: Cassandra Jean

@cassandraclare

[popculturebuffet]

Scotrospective: Scott Pilgrim Vs the World (The Comic)

Hello, Hello, Hello scottaholics! And what a beautiful day it is: After decades lost in the lost woods, at least it had that catchy tune to keep it company, Scott Pilgrim Vs the World: The Game is FINALLY back and performing for you on all platforms!

Even Stadia, the platform most likely to disappear like this game did for a while! Cheap shots at the stadia aside as a huge fan of the franchise as a whole and of this game who played it back on the 360, and had since sold said 360 so I had no way to get it back or ever play the dlc packs. Seriously who didn’t want to play wallace but never got to? Everyone, everyone is the answer. But with those the entirety of what I consider to be the main cast is playable, it has online so you can beat up hipsters, guys in costumes and robots with your friends, it’s a good damn feeling.  And since i’m in a celebratory mood, naturally i’m also feeling like a review. And since it just so happens the next volume up in my look at the comics is Vs the World, seriously I planned this review for this month without thinking to have it come out on the same day as the game until a week or two in, I felt there was no better way to celebrate the biggest day for Scott Pilgrim fans in some time.. and for Brian Lee O Malley as he’ll stop getting twitter asks about it. So with all the exposition taken care of LAST TIME, and the link right there if your curious, we can jump right in. On with the show!

After our opening titles, and yes this comic has opening titles, with Ramona sitting solmely in the rain. 

And Scott caught in the title. The rain shot is real pretty by the way. But yeah once we get past those we’re taken back 7 years ago. Finn found out his father was an asshole, and voiced by Stephen Root so hey you take the good with the bad, Steven just learned the horrifying truth about Gem Monsters, Guardians of the Galaxy saved the MCU and I was trying to find work after college.. wait... sorry sorry that was 7 years ago from THIS year. The comic came out in 2005, though the comic takes place on a sliding timescale where only like 2 years pass so I dunno when this is. Let’s just say 98.  Okay so 1998: Bill Cllinton’s sex scandal breaks, and puts way too much of hte blame on the young intern whose life came to be defined by one stupid mistake she made with a man who was way older and should’ve known better, the tide of the Monday Night War turned in favor of the WWF as Stone Cold Steve Austin became a household name, and it was an utterly standup year for video game relaases with Ocarina of Time, Banjo-Kazooie, Crash Bandicoot: Warped, StarCraft, Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, WWF: War Zone, Pokemon Stadium, Spyro The Dragon, Pokemon Yellow, WarioLand 2, Oddworld: Abe’s Exodus, Star Wars: Rogue Squadron, Pokemon: Trading Card Game and Sonic Adventure. It’s like someone took a good chunk of my childhood and squeezed it into one year holy shit, I did not expect this when looking up what came out in 98. 

And while the movie pool wasn't’ quite this amazing, we still had The Wedding Singer, The Big Lebowski, the dude abides, Batman and Mr Freeze: SubZero, The Truman Show, Mulan, the good one not the one made near concetration camps that makes her into a demigod, Saving Private Ryan, Blade, Simon Birch, Scooby Doo on Zombie Island, Rushmore, Bride of Chucky, HalloweenTown, Plesantville, and the Prince of Egypt. And in music Weird Al changed from his first signature look to his second, getting Lasik and growing out his hair. Seirously had no idea that was this year. Good to know. Also Elton John got his knighthood. Super shooters. I could go on with 1998 triva for days but I cannot go on for 8 weeks so let’s get to the point here.. during alllla this  Scott Pilgrim, age 16, was starting St. John’s Catholic School and a couple of guys who were up to no good started making trouble. . by threatning to beat him up for no real reason. A fight insues and we cut to the principal’s office as Scott’s still a minor and not allowed to get into death fights just yet under the people’s freedom of choices and voices act. 

It’s here he meets Lisa Miler, a peppy and sarcastic blonde, who’s intrigued by the fact Scott somehow got beat up after being here just 15 minutes and wants to be friends. Naturally for scott next we see him he’s busy playing video games, and annoyed someone else is around and wondering who this person whose now in his basement is. God no wonder teenage me related to him. So for the next few pages we see their friendship in time lapse: Lisa joins him at lunch, then geninely wonders since Scott’s Untentionally a dick if he hates her.. it’s part of why I think Scott has some form of autisim. And not just because I tend to belivie a character is on the spectrum all the damn time, it’s because of the way he acts: while he is nice and charming at times.. he also clearly has trouble relating to people or realizing how his actions effect them and as seen here in a younger form can often be compeltely distanced from normal social queues, not getting how his actions might be seen until Lisa outright talks to him about it. I mean.. it’s not a huge stretch, and it dosen’t mean he’s nto responsible for his own actions, but it does EXPLAIN a lot of them better: why he just sorta forgets about Knives post-ramona but at the same time still cares enough he dosen’t want to hurt her despite you know, that ship sailing just by having moved on. 

But now the two are friends and his parents, who we meet for the first time and sister inquire about her being his girlfirned.. and by next jumpcut his parents apparently don’t want him hanging out with girls? What exactly the fuck? Also they mention Laurence, Scott’s brother whose missing for most of the books and has no real payoff for not being around. Next cut we get KIM!

Thank you Prissy. And she’s.. not all that different, assuming, correctly that their partner project, how she meets scott will just result in her doing all the work.. which not only is how these things usually went when I was in high school a decade later, but reminds me of the time me and my friends curtis and justin were put on a project and when asked who the alied powers were, guessed “Germany?”.... you can understand my fear. And also Curtis punching him for getting nothing done.. and not hard or brutally mind you just once quick in the gut and with full warning. Ah... the adaquate old days. 

So back to Lisa as, since Scott’s Mom has a guitar.. a fact I.. never honestly thought about. Seriously I never realized her children, since the Bass Scott has for most of the books is Laurence’s, getting into music was probably due to her. Also Lisa makes her case for WHY be a band: the school has a regular event called Lunchapalooza, where everyone goes to and since by teen logic, just being in a band is automiacally cool, she figures they can jump from not QUITE being in any cliques to being super cool. Which honestly yeah... while I didn’t know any bands in high school, the fact one of my friends, ironically named Scott, was a DJ automatically made him pretty damn cool once he got past his awkard phase. I never got past mine but somehow was loved by all except that one douchey kid in our group who mocked me for naming my Luxray kim, assuming it was based on Kim possible and not Kim Pine... though frankly how that’s an insult when Kim Possible was a fucking awesome show and character is beyond me but he was just 17 and also a douchebag, it didn’t have to make since it just had to piss off the easily pissed off kid with aspergers. So Scott poses how they can be a band with just their guitars and Lisa concedes drums WOULD help.. I mean it’s what MADE Shallow Gravy. 

So while Kim wonders if Scott is dating Lisa, because teenagers don’t really get girls and boys can be friends without wanting to be together, though not often as teenage boy brains can be rather stupid and horny... can confrim from personal experince. So it becomes clear Scott has a thing for Kim, and when Scott tries broaching it with Lisa she dosen’t take it well and he backpedals to asking her to be her drummer and plans to monday, proving Scott has somehow not gotten better at reading women, or anyone after 7 years. Can relate. 

So yeah he decides to ask Monday, same day as their presentation.. and thankfully missed the bus as he arrives to find the Benvy Tech boys came in, took everyone out and abducted Kim. Because yeah, just in case you were wondering Scott’s life was always like this.. or was it? Questions for later. So one Canadian Version of River City Ransom later, Scott’s made his way to simon... who, since most of you have probably seen the movie or art of the movie.. looks an AWFUL lot like Gideon. Hrmmm. Simon is naturally the final boss here and wonders if this is the best St. Joels can muster. Scott quips back as only Scott can. 

So cue an unsuprisingly awesome actoin sequence. IT’s part of why I love these color editions: While they already LOOKED thoroughly fantastic the added colors really help the series shonen manga meets old school video game vibe REALLY fucking pop. So Simon pleads mercy which like Scott delivering a good quip.. should’ve really been a red flag to younger me and is foreshadowing for later in case I was too subtle. He then does what any noble hero would do.. kicks simon into the sunset, tells Kim how he feels and asks her to play drums. They then make out. Awwww. 

Lisa suprisingly takes it well as the next montage shows.. granted we’ll learn in Feburary she wasn’t QUITE as over scott as it seemed, but the three, along with a friend of Lisa’s whose name I forgot and who DOSEN’T come back so I’m not going to bother learning, form their own friend group, Scott and Kim get an A, and Scott, Kim and Lisa’s band is dubbed sonic and knuckles, which is an objectively awesome band name. Something the series really does great: Video Game Based Band Names. Crash and the Boys, Sex Bomb-Omb, Clash at the Demonhead... we need more bands like this in the real world dammit. So then they play their big game, the two loose their vrigniity.. and then Kim asks scott “your moving to tornoto?” And.. for now.. that’s that. 

While the framing of that will be VERY important in the last volume, as notice how KIM’S the one who brings it up and it’s not explicitly stated scott actually told her, this flasback is great. While it does contribute to the volume’s drifty pacing, more  on that as we go, it brilliantly sets up a LOT of stuff for later, paticuarlly Lisa who I assumed wouldn’t be back and younger me’s jaw fucking DROPPED when she popped up in Volume 4. Granted i’m spoiling that suprise for you now but odds are most of you reading this have either alreaddy read these or were probably wondering if the girl from the animated short ever had any actual relevance in the books. So yes, yes she does. She’s also the pink haired girl you see pop up in the game in the background, as a nod to O’Malley’s comic strip style which had her and Kim as the leads.  Also yeah for fans of the game or movie or even the comics who were unaware.. this prologue got an animated adaption on adult swim to promote the movie. Naturally Micheal Cera and Allison Pill reprised their roles as Scott and Kim, with Mae Whitman voicing lisa.. and honestly being perfect for the roll, and Jason Schrwartzman voicing Simon naturally. While the animation is slightly limited, it still looks decent and expertly translates O’Malley’s art, while sliming things down slightly where needed to fit a short, and the anmation takes a huge bump for the fight scene which like the comic is short but awesome. While it has no real bearing on the film as Kim’s former relationship with Scott never really comes up or has any impact, as the Film while good was based primarily on volumes 1-3 with small pieces of 4 (paticuarlly the iconic “Lesbians gag”), with Wright working off outlines and drafts of 5 and 6, so the last half hour or so is mostly Wright’s invention. 

Not a bad thing as it’s still awesome and not o’malley’s fault but it means kim dosen’t get to do much, and is a big reason why I want an adaptation on netflix or hbo max. While i’d still want changes both because there’s no sense doing an adaptation if your not going to make some tweaks of your own and because it’d be intresting to update the series to modern day, both in societal conventions and so everyone stops saying the r word. Seirously the most telling sign of the series age is that word showing up quite a bit during the first half of the series. Point is there is merit in doing another remix of the story and doing a longer form one so we can get more of the characters, as well as flesh out ones like Steven, Neil (Who was done WAY better in the movie adaptation thanks to the wonderful Johnny Simmons), and Stacey who got the shaft in the books. Again, not slagging off the movie, it’s really great. Just saying there’s always room for more Scott Pilgrim content and we all know it. 

We’ll get back to the comic proper, and the present day of 2005, after the cut. 

So the story proper opens with Scott dreaming of playing video games... because of course he is with Ramona walking in. and finding it charmingly pathetic but wanting her boyfriend to you know, get out of bed. It’s 11:30.  So with Scott’s ass out of bed, we find Scott, Age 23 idiot with a heart of gold and Wallace, 25 king of all gays, on the bus as they talk it getting warmer and Lucas Lee, movie star and jason lee stand in coming to town to film a movie.. and Scott being Scott gets him confused for Luke WIlson. He’s also seen Bottle Rocket which.. good on him. Seriously while not wes anderson’s best film, those were made long afte this comic was published, it’s still a damn good one.. where was his career at this point... looking it up life aquatic was his most recent films and is still one of my favorites. So yeah he was in a good place career wise. 

Scott proudly talks about having Ramona over in a couple days so she can see his place and meet Wallace. But as explained by Wallace for those of us just tuning in, he already met her last volume. You know during that time Stacey thought she could magically make her date not be attracted to someone else.. and yes even almost a month later not letting that one go. Stacey should know better. Not saying i’ts right Wallace keeps poaching her boyfriends, but she still shoudlnt’ try and force a relationship with a guy or even finish a date with one who makes out with someone else, regardless of gender, mid date. She deserves better. In general not just in this one scenario but we’ll get to that. 

Point is while Scott, as usual, is a bit pissy about this Wallace.. has no time for that and issues an ultimatium

And he’s not bluffing, as he fully intends to tell Ramona the minute she walks in the door if he dosen’t break up with Knives. It really shows Wallace off at his best and why he’s Scott’s closest friend: Kim and Stephen do care about him but Kim both has a LOT of unresolved issues and sexual tension with him and keeps eveyrbody including Scott at arm’s length. And Stephen.. while he will OCASIONALLY call Scott out mostly just enables him, either ignoring his college buddy’s shittier behavior or playing along with it and backing him up when Kim rightfully calls him on being a dickhead. While both love their friend they just aren’t the best at dealing with his shit or getting why he does the things he does good and bad.  Wallace on the other hand geninely likes Scott. He’ll lock him out of the house and tell him to sleep elsewhere so he can bang one out, he’ll not wear pants if he dosen’t have to and he’ll certainly hit on Scott just to get a rise out of him, phrasing.. but he also genuinely cares for the guy’s well being. He lets him sleep in their house basically rent free since scott has no money, buys most of their stuff, and is, as we’ll see in this one, the ONLY one of his friends to take an active part in the fight against the exes, training Scott and researching his opponents when he can get info. He won’t baby Scott as seen here, but he will help him, and he will be the harsh voice of reason his friend needs.  And he did TRY doing a softer approach last time, simply telling scott to break up with his fake high school girlfriend. Scott had every chance to dump Knives during the last third of the first book.. it’s just a combination of both Knives and Ramona being in the same place and Scott getting panicky meant he balked. He NEEDS to be pushed into leaving Knives or he’s not gonna. And he also gets it’s not just Scott being a shifty coward: Scott DOES like Knives.. he just found someone who actually challenges him, intrests him and connects with him on his level, versus someone who worships and adores him like a puppy who just happens to be skilled with knives. The relationship with Knives. was an ego boost, an unequal paring that gave Scott the illusion of moving on from Envy. Ramona is him ACTUALLY moving on and given how badly Envy fucked him up, which comes into play in this book and the next, Wallace recognizes that Scott does need her... but this relationship can’t go anywhere if Scott is seeing someone else, and they both know it. Wallace is just the one who’s willing to do something about it to force scott to do something about it. He’s doing this for Knives too: it’s very clear he cares about the girl, was against this from the start, and knew this was going to end in pain and the faster Scott rips off the Band-Aid the faster she can move on to someone closer to her age and far more equal to her. Scott.. takes this about how you’d expect, even calling Double Standard, as Wallace does sleep around.. and while Wallace will be a homewrecker to Stacey.. otherwise it’s not remotley the same. Wallace does his sleeping around either casually or when he does get a partner, with their consent from what we can tell. He never cheats or anything, he just likes to bone. So yeah Scott doesn’t have a leg to stand on and acts accordingly. 

One of my faviorite gags in the series and one that’s etched in my head for keeps. So with a justified Ultimatium over his head Scott calls knives to hang out. Knives.. shows off that as adorable and trusting as she is.. she’s also kind of creepy and shows up just outside the phone booth he’s calling her from.  So the two go to a record store and Knives tries to get Scott into Clash at the Demonhead, her faviorite band. But since i’ts you know, headlined by Scott’s ex as we’ll find out, he’s not into it. But before that can get awkward.. it gets awkward in another way as Knives invites Scott to dinner at her parents place. Which is an objectively bad idea even before you get into the fact Scott wants a way out and as Volume 4 will show us her dad is both not happy with the idea of her dating a white guy and willing to use a katana to prevent it so he dodged a bullet there. Scott TRIES weasling out of it, but his “I’m too old for you” thing falsls on deaf ears.. and actually explains why she thinks this is normal: her parents are 9 years apart. of course obviously two consenting adults with a decade between them is a mite bit diffrent than 5 years between a teenager whose taking this way too seriously and a grown man whose taking this not seroiusly at all and dosen’t get how effed up this is. But Knives is too naive to get that, and papers over any possible concerns about her parents not wanting her to date a white guy with i’m in love.  Seeing that he has no EASY way out of this, as he shouldn’t, Scott just rips off the band aid and bluntly breaks up with her, saying it’s not going to work out. Knives.. is clealry devistatd. To her this was a serious relationship.. and Scott realized that too late.. and thankfully while he didn’t break up with her in the best way, at all, simply syaing i’ts not going to work out and confirming to her he means it, it’s clear from his face this hurts to do and he knows he’s REALLY hurting her and REALLY shoudlnt’ of dated her to begin with. IT’s why Scott dating a teenager dosen’t make him a morally rephrenisvie monster: because he was genuinely intrested, didn’t use her sexually, and there are tangible consequences for his actions. Knives just dosen’t disappear neatly into the sunset so he can be with ramona. The rest of the series covers her emotoinal recovery from being with Scott, and how she very horribly handles it and that’s why this plotline works at all: she’s not some act one contrivance to be thrown away, sh’es a human being, and more than that a young woman who got hurt REALLY bad and got way too in over her head with someone who just..wasn’t the one fo rher no matter how much she can’t admit that. 

We also get one of my faviorite sets of pages as Scott relfects on things and the sheer devistation on Knives face, which credit to a series that even at this early point loves it’s big bold facial expressions.. her’s being more subded just makes it sting MORE. 

This bit to me is vital to keeping Scott sympathetic and to his character. We see he really does regret what happened, dosen’t know how to process it and genuinely feels awful. As I said instead of some exgerated face that would still hurt him.. her face is quiet, clearly unable to process this and clealry lost and hurt.. and that hurts more than any fuck your or sobs he was probably expecting. Just her clearly not getting WHY he’s doing this or why he hurt her, and he KNOWS why he just knows telling her the truth would hurt her even more. But.. as he thinks.. his thoughts move to something else.. and the WHY of why he did this. 

He did it for Ramona. Wallace was as harsh as he was right: he needed a clean slate to actually give this relationship a shot and the smile comes off less as him being a calous dick whose just happy to move on, I mean he is a little, but more jus tsomeone READY to finally move on. He found the right person, he let the wrong one go if clumsily.. he has a future to look forward to and he can smile about that. 

Granted he’s still his usual unteitonally callous self and his way of telling his friends he and knives broke up is to casually say so and say “dont’ worry you’ll meet my new girlfriend soon.” Their reaction.. is my own. 

Look just because Scott is a nuanced douchebag dosne’t stop him from being a Douchebag. It just means he isn’t intolerable to watch and you actually care about him growing as a human being is all. 

So with that out of the way, it’s date night and Ramona is coming over.. also Scott is considering calling her Ramy which no. I'm genuinely in favor of a pet name that’s just a variant on someone’s name but a bit cute, as it’s just the right level of obnoxious, but no, just no Scott. No.  Ramona enters, meets Wallace again and sits down while Scott tries to shoo him out.. because turnabout is fair play bitch. They also see Ramona’s new hair as she dyes it something new for the first time, in this case a very lovely two tone, the purple from last volume but with a darker purple bellow it. I honestly wish she went for multiple colors in her hair again, but likely didn’t since the book was originally in black and white... which still dosent’ make sense as it would’ve been EASIER that way. Regardless Wallace makes himself scarce proving that he’s more than willing to be equal in terms of one of them spending the ngiht elsewhere. What a guy. 

Ramona finds out a few things about Scott: That his apartment is VERY small, just one room with a bed, a cabinet, a small kitchen and a bathroom, which despite what scott says I REALLY dont’ count as another room. Just common sense. She also learns that he can COOK. Yeah while you’d expect Scott to just get a wad of “I did the ultimatum thing okay now gimme” money and buy dinner but no.. he made the whole thing himself from his own recipe.  And once we cut to them eating on the floor.. turns out yeah he not only can cook but is REALLY good at it. She wishes there was a table which, small as the place is.. fair point. I mean at least get some tv trays. You have chairs. Or at least the easy chair. You can get nice padded folding chairs so you have a second chair guys. I know your poor but come on. Also Scott leanrs bread makes you fat. Good stuff. Also Scott freaks out when , while making out with Ramona in bed later, she mentions his hair’s getting kinda long and could use a cut... which turns out to be a thing for him. He isn’t an ass about it he just panics a bit because he’s partially convinced his last relationship’s nightmarish breakup was because of a bad haircut he got. As we’ll see next week, that’s a no but as someone whose a touch neroutic myself I get blaming a larger issue on something trivial. 

So we then get to the next chapter where it’s KIM’S turn to have a dream.. and the only time we see someone else's dreams. Honestly.. I really would’ve liked if it was a recurring device, even have Ramona pop into other people’s Not used ALL the time but I could easily see it being used with Knives to convey her obsession with Scott and her pain or kim again to help move her plots along or Wallace because I want to know what’s going on in his head. It must be a maze of male gentalia and fine liquor the likes of which has never been seen. It’s scotts funeral as Simon killed him and Scott’s corpse wonders if she dreams about this a lot. 

So we see her get ready and wake up her roomate Sarah whose a bitch. And as we’ll see in one of the backups, so’s the rest of her roommates. So drifting into work. Hollie is a character I really liked... the past tense will be explained later. And the first scene is probably why as her and Kim banter effortlessly, with Kim suggesting maybe she was a happy kid... only to admit quickly no she wasn’t, she was pretty withdrawn and then pretty angsty over someasshole who will be named Scott. “Your a holy terror kim, and i’m glad your on your side”> It’s a short scene but the kind this series excells at: just realistic, fun little exchanges bursting with character. I also GENUINELY wish we got more of this kind of thing, as only Knives really gets these kind of scenes to herself for the most part. There ARE scenes without Scott, but not enough like this that just give us as look into what his friends lives are like during the moments they aren’t putting up with his dumbassery or watching him engage in mortal combat. It’s why i’ve been hoping a spinoff will happen even though it likely won’t SOON. I’m sure O’Malley will return to this world some day, but between Snotgirl and Wicked World, which will come out when it’s ready but should be good.. he’s just really busy. But i’d love to see more of Kim.. or Wallace or Knives. The latter two are a no brainer: Knives is the tritagonist of the books, and it’d be intresting to see what she’d be like 5 years at the book, at the same age and stage in life as Scott. And with Wallace it’s because we really DON’T see his friend circle, life or what goes on with him. We hear him talk about a new boyfriend, who we don’t meet until near the end of the series, though you can see him in stage 3 of hte game if your curious, we see him with some random friends in volume 4, but we really don’t KNOW what hyjinks and lojinks wallace gets up to. He’s pretty isoalted from the rest of the main cast, something I hope an adaptation could fix as while realistic i’td be curious to see what his relationship with Kim or Steven would be like. Just food for thought. 

Point is this was a good scene. But as is typical for Kim’s life just when she has some serenity her ex crashes back in. In this case Scott needs to rent some movies, kim works at a rental store and god teenage me really wanted a clerks style spinoff.. but enough spinoff talk. Scott asks kim to bororw them, of course and explains he’s training for his fight with Lucas.. which Kim reacts to finding out her second best friend is in a series of death matches. 

She has understandable questions such as how the hell doe she know that and is he stalking Lucas and just hoping he’s an ex.. which let’s face it would be a very scott move. But nope Wallace told him, likely learning in an interview he dated Ramona or is coming for scott because he knows everything. We also get one of my faviorite exchanges when Kim wonders why Wallace and Scott are roomates.. a valid question he deflects by saying i’ts a long story. 

Also yeah, as much as casting Micheal Cera backfired for the movie.. that panel there proves there wasn’t another choice at the time. When you want a loveable, somewhat douchey, but also somewhat innocent and oblivious slacker.. who you gonna call. Also before we move on.. Kim.. how are you this suprised. You were there for the fight with Matthew. And Ramona giving out the exposition on why he’s there.. and you even did that whole weird space channel 5 thing no one ever did agian and to this day I will never understand what O’Malley was going for and only know the refrence by hearing that’s what it was. Point is you shouldn’t be this suprised.  Anyways we next cut to Ramona and Stacey, as Ramona enters her workplace, second cup, and they talk and Scott’s spider sense goes off... 

I mean it’s just a bad feeling but still.. weird. WE’ll get back to that later. Scott is in the middle of his training.. and I love the mentor side of Wallace and feel it didn’t get used enough as the series went on. As said before he cares about Scott, so he serves as his Shounen Mentor and a great one: he’s stern and makes Scott work, but he also gets his student and what Scott needs to work. I just wish he’d taught Scott some actual combat, but as we see Wallace’s combat skills boil down to yelling useless info from the sidelines.. I mean he can be useful, we’ll see that next week, it’s just he’s not an action guy. But spirtually he’s the guy scott needs to kick his ass into shape. That being said his “training” consists of watching Lucas’ movies, playing tony hawk and when Scott wants to play more Tony Hawk, having Scott do pushups while Wallace plays Tony Hawk.  Before we turn... there is an elephant in the room I just gotta shoo out: Lucas.. is easily the worst setup of the 6 exes. Patel SEEMINGLY comes out of nowhere but his letter and email hint SOMETHING is coming up, and his flashy dynamic entry intro is damn cool and is what turns the series on it’s head, from an indie comic about a guy getting it together.. to that but with huge shonen dustups with epic visuals. Todd is introduced masterfully here, and is a presence from the start of volume 3 as a result, Roxie gets a slight tease in the free comic book day issue, and her not attacking for two months not only sets up tension but allowed for a red herring.. im’ not only hiding that the fourth ex is a she because anyone whose seen the movie or played the game knows the fourth ex is a woman. The cat’s out of the bag, no sense hiding it. The Kentangis show up pretty early on and Gideon is hinted at and built up, as this towering, mysterious figure, his relationship with Ramona, who he is, why he set up the league, and just how fucking strong he is is all obscured, with his only four apperances simply teasing the big final showdown and giving him that much more mysitque. 

Lucas.. is just sorta intorduced like “Hey I gotta fight this guy”. There’s just.. nothing. Scott’s just gotta fight him because he’s next up and Wallace knows that because plot convience. It’s VERY lackluster given what comes before.. and frankly while I like Lucas, he’s the weakest plot and character wise. HE’s not even really EVIL, just a sellout and is more doing this because he has to I guess, and likely because of stuff we find out in Book 6 but sssssshhhhh. We’ll get more into that when the fight happens but it’s one of the books weakest points. The evil ex.. just feels like an afterthrought again despite there being no reason to. Thankfully this would never happen again as I said, but it dosen’t make this any less frustrating. 

So we cut to Sex Bomb-Omb practice, and after that we get more tease for Clash at Demonhead. And Stephen.. is cool with them and entirely happy one of them made it, while Scott is understandably pisssed off about it and not happy one of his best friends is you know, promoting the band of his ex who broke his heart and as we’ll get more into next time, said rising career is what tore them apart. So yeah Stephen’s a dickhead, and I was wrong last time that he got better. He really.. dosen’t. He gets less CREEPY.. but out of the main 6 characters he’s the weakest: he dosen’t have much of an arc, does some very questionable shit in the second half, and his being around means we have to suffer through Julie. I’ll tear into him more on a case by case basis but for once Scott’s not overreacting. While Kim does nothing she also has no idea just HOW bad things were and Scott won’t tell her. Stephen was there the whole fucking time. He just saw Scott’s rebound with a teenager. He knows he was kind of messed up after this. Dosen’t justfiy knives but still he looses the moral high ground he tries to have at times. 

So while Scott shops a song for Ramona to her, Knives calls Scott’s place clearly setting up another suprise apperance. Wallace.. figures out what sh’es doing quick and simply gives her a stern “You have to go” And to me it’s not him being a dick.. he’s both trying to save her from seeing Scott with Ramona and fucking her up worse... and is looking out for her. She needs to move on and moving up to stalking Scott’s not going to help that. Scott dosen’t WANT her anymore, and while he handled it bad, Wallace gets she needs to see that. Granted he could’ve you know explained it to her and tried talking, but as i’ve said he’s not a perfect person and he was also on a time table to get her out of there in case Scott you know, showed up with his new girlfriend and made things a billion times worse. And the two are indeed headed to his place to watch one of Lucas’ movies, and part of that weak setup is that Ramona.. just has no connection with him. It was high school. Scott also pretends he dosent’ remember his. You are a lying liar sir stop that.  So they watch the film together hanging out, and it’s.. really bad. The good one was rented out. I miss rental stores.. a magical time. I mean i’ts better now, streaming means 80% of movies are avaliable if you have a bunch of services and even if you just have netflix or hulu or hbo max, you still get a pretty decent selection each month. Plus digital rentals are super easy. Do miss redbox though. I mean it’s still there I’m just warry of something that relies so heavily on touching things in a state with a lot of trump morons. You CAN get Covid twice and I don’t wanna. Also we get some dated Dialouge as Scott commenting on Lucas being hot, he is good taste Scott, is given a “good job convincing me your not gay”. He and ramona end up having sex though so .. yay? I dunno. The series has a really weird thing about not getting bisexuals exist and as someone whose bi, and really against bi errasure it bothers me, it bothers me a lot. Though given O’Malley apparently has not only far more queer rep in snotgirl but a bisexual lead, he’s clearly learned so i’m not going to drag him too hard on this. It was the early 2000′s. People were pretty damn stupid about this. Creators have gottten MUCH more important issues much worse. 

So the next morning, Scott gets a call from his well meaning but ditzy mom, and reacts like you’d expect. His parents are in Europe to keep them out of the action and what not. Though apparently according to the last book his mom did read volume 3 at least. Or Wallace told her about the relevant bit. You make the call. 

So i’ts Ramona’s turn to meet Sex Bomb-Omb. The group hang out and discuss Gordon Downie. 

Look I don’t know indie bands. I have no idea who the tragically hip are I just know the name is really hipstery. We also get the recipe for Vegan Shepards Pie. None of them are vegan they just wanted to try it and I.. really want to make this some time. Just to see if it’s any good. But yeah it’s in general a fun casual scene, as Kim reveals she and Scott dated, just to break the tension, and Scott tries out Rammy but quickly backpedals. Just fun slice of life stuff. Oh and Knives is watching them from the window and takes Scott dating someone else as well as you’d expect. 

So she gets some hair bleach to do some highlights and calls her friend Tamara over. We met her last volume as she dragged her along to the show, but it’s here we really get to know what she’s like.. i.e. the sane one in the duo, rightfully pointing out Scott’s not that great. Also Knive’s points out ramona’s “fat”, which is thankfully portrayed as petty sniping as while Ramona does have some curves it’s you know.. not remotely a bad thing and the kind of thing a teenage girl would harp on. Still she’s just in STEPS from this happening. 

But yeah.. it’s clear here Knives has some underlying issues to address and really needs therapy  not to go after her ex’s current girlfriend with knives. I mean it’s in the name but still. Then again volume 4 has her dad going around with a katana or something like it wanting to murder her daughter’s older ex boyfriend he dosen’t realize is ex so it’s clear her whole FAMILY needs some therapy. But this does round her out and show there’s more to her.. a pretty violent and obessive side sure, but it shows she wasn’t just some one dimensional ego boost for scott but a person. One whose just as flawed as the rest of the cast.. but more sympatheic because they’ve all got about 6 or 7 years on her and at this age that’s a lifetime. And while Scott DID set this off by dating her which was objecitvely a bad idea... the rest of this isn’t remotely on him. He handled things BAD.... but all he wanted was for both of them to move on. Knives.. simply can’t admit Scott is not a nice person, was probably two timing her as Tamara points out, which as we know he 100% was, and is not some perfect guy she can’t replace: like Knives.. he’s just a person with faults and she’s too blind to see that. 

So before we can get to the crazy stalker ninja fight, let’s instead get to Scott and Ramona hanging out where we meet Gideon, Ramona’s Cat who i’ll call Cat Gideon, both because I love steven unvierse and because it’s less confusing. This is a pretty slight scene as Ramona admits not a lot happened with Lucas and Scott’s apartment is a hole.. which yeah, yeah it is. Also she DEFINTLY dind’t cheat on him with any cocky pretty boys. Which would come off worse if it wasn’t for the pact Ramona was clearly doing it out of regret and Scott just liked like 50 pages ago about rembering his exes when one of them is his second best friend.. which neither would admit but you know it’s true. Stephen is third where he belongs. 

So next morning it’s fight time, and Scott is glad wallace is going with him. It’s awkard going to fights alone. Which leaves me to wonder if before this comic Scott just.. fought random guys letterkenny style. Like they’d call up, schedule it and then he and one or more of his friends would go beat up a guy. It’s just.. hilarious knowing that this kind of thing is common in canda minus the ki attacks , flash effects, wizards, vegan psycics, ninjas, and roboticists. But damn I now want a scott pilgrimized letterkenny now more than ever. You know you do too don’t deny it. I”d love to see the hard right jay fight but iwth a loud “KO!” when he gets his ass knocked out. Also Casa Loma is a very real, very cool Toronto location, as I never realized as a kid, to the point that the lucas fight was filmed there for the movie. 

So Scott approaches Lucas a bit star struck and upon finding out scott is.. punches him out as seen in the header image and throws him into a tower. When Scott regains conciousness, Kim and Neil have arrived and Lucas calls a time out. And it’s here we get to, while being the weakest of the 7, why I like Lucas.. he’s actually a pretty nice guy. At WORST he sold out. But the two have a pretty nice conversation over ritz and baby carrots, with it turning out, unsuprisingly Ramona did cheat on him with a cocky pretty boy, and while like Ramona he’s clearly moved on, it still hurts a bit and understandably so. He also warns scott while she might seem nice i’ts an act. 

I mean it isn’t ALL an act, but she does have a tedency to put up walls and act pretty badly as we’re slowly finding out.. though given Scott does the exact same it only means.. she’s human. She’s not MUCH higher above him in terms of morality and this is where we get our first peaks into the fact the series isn’t just about Scott’s development but hers. But it’s understandably absent from volumes 1 and 2 since we need to know her first, and this volume is about getting to know her a bit and get a feel for who she is, something I ddin’t really get a grip on as a teen, but do now. We see more of who she is good and bad as the walls go down. She’s more SURFACE LEVEL functional than scott, but beneath it has a lot of the same exact issues.  Lucas and Scott continue to GENUINELY bond, as Scott genuinely thinks the guy is talented and Lucas want’s an Oscar this year.. maybe not for the current film which is a romantic comedy with a teen star but hey, stars have done far worse in their Oscar years. I mean at least he’s not making a comedy about himself in a fat suit domestically abusing himself in a wig while he also plays an asian sterotype. He explains he almost didn’t get into the league but felt too important to ramona’s past.. plus he looks cool. Plus they let Patel in despite barely being in a relationship with her and being kind of a tool so they kinda had to let the handsome affiable movie star in. Scott wonders “wait league” and Lucas is understandably frustrated to find out Patel just sent a letter Scott didn’t read.. and at Matthew let’s be clear. I mean.. Gideon has to have known Scott wouldn’t read that since he’s been in his head. We’ll get to that in part 6. Point is they formed a league, hence why their organized enough to come after him like this and Scott understandably glares at Wallace for you know, having him play tony hawk and watch movies yet missing the fucking obvious clue they were all working together and they were only coming at him one at a time by choice. 

Lucas offers to just.. take a bribe and SAY Scott beat him, Scott calls him a sellout jokingly and Lucas proves that while not AS bad as the rest of the League, he’s still a dick by telling him to kiss ramona’s sweet ass goodbye pilgrim. Okay either he’s seen her since high school or he’s fondly remembering a high schooler’s ass. Neither one is nice to think about. But Scott gets out of his ass beating by pointing out a ramp, real thing too used for the movie, and asking him to skate down it. Lucas says i’ts impossible, and Scott just whistles. So Lucas tries skating the impossible and dies via velocity. Yes really. Scott collects his change and gets a gift, a mytryil skateboard he.. can’t use because he dosen’t have a proficency for it and bemoans not picking it up in 5th grade. Also he didn’t get his autograph. He does get some coins though so neat.   Yeah I mentioend Lucas was the least of the exes and I stand by it: He’s an intresting character, not a GREAT person but clearly a charming and nice enough guy who likely offered the bribe not because he’sd a sell out but because he genuinely liked scott, and is easily the best adjusted of the exes. But obviously a near non existant setup and a really hilarious and unsastifying finish just.. don’t really feel sastsifying. I mean i’t slampshaded, but after all the build up of her having 7 evil exes, the next one is just..filler. Not BAD, but not really anything special and giving Scott a an early pokemon victory, but unlike ash having done nothing to really DESERVE it.  Thankfully both adaptations so far VASTLY improved on this. While Lucas is still affiable in the movie he’s also smarmy, if on better terms with Ramona, saying “he seems nice” after the tower throw and throwing in some stunt doubles. His fight goes from one of the least satisfying and weakst of the series, to easily one of the best of the movie. We’ll talk about that more there but obvious Chris Evans version is far superior, keeping the good traits while giving us an intresting fight.. and still keeping the skateboard death because it’s fucking hilarious and the movie improves on THAT too by having scott give flat wows as he slowly dies. The game likewise keeps teh skateboard death, if shortening it, and the skateboard, and while not changing his apperance does make him a hell of a tough boss. Took three tries and some online grinding to take him out. Still a hell of a fight. Point is while I genuinely like Lucas story wise.. this just dosen’t work for me and is pretty damn weak, even if it gives us some godo character insight we could’ve got that, and a fight and still had the finish we did. 

That being said.. we DO get a fight instead, likely why the Lucas fight was so truncated. Next chapter and that evening or the next day or whatever, we pan over the real life tornto refrence library. It is a VERY nice touch thatt the comic and it’s adpations use either real places in toronto or reasonable subsittues. While not canadian myself I love the place and hope to visit Tornoto some day when the world isn’t a living nightmare and it’s really nice that like New York for Marvel, Brian Lee O malley really makes the city feel integral to the comic, like it’s own character. But Knives is ominously perched above.  At second cup Scott is horrified to find Julie. Seconded. Julie takes the moment to give out to scott about him dating Ramona despite telling him no. Okay... 

Yeah as you can probably guess I don’t like Julie. She’s not a good character. The movie did her better, with the bleeping gag and aubrey plaza’s performance, but in the comic.. she’s just the worst. She sucks bad. If she were an ice cream flavor she’d be pralines and dick. While she’s fine on OCCASION, and actually works in the next volume, outside of that she just gets more unplesant, more unlikeable, more bitchy, more unfathomabbly assholish every. damn. volume. I”ll give out about that a bit then too but I have to put up with her for the entire damn comic. Now her being bitchy to Scott is fair to a point: Scott is a mess, and she’s loyal to Envy in the breakup, and Scott’s own friends drag him on a daily basis.  The problems are that she’s like that to EVERYONE, even Knives who isn’t about to stab her much as i’d like that. She’s unberable to Stephen whose tolerance for her is unfathomable, though the ending bits of volume 6 show maybe he just has terrble taste. She’s just a throughly unplesant, social climbing bitch who thinks she’s better than everyone. And it sticks out badly against the main cast; Scott is very bad with women and relating to people, but is also nice, charming and most of the damage he does is not intetional. Ramona puts up walls to keep others out but is also a responsible adult and often cuts through Scott, and at times others, internal bullshit. Wallace is an alcholic, but still a very responsible, very loveable guy who clearly cares about scott and supports him finacially and emotionally. Kim is VERY emotionally distant, very misntrhopic.. but also a good person who as we see as the series goes, has an inner light to her and often drags on Scott because she’s been putting up with his shit the longest and WANTS him to be better. Knives is an obessive and violent stalker.. who was also deeply hurt by an older man, dosen’t GET that her realtionship with scott was wrong and uneven, and is clearly not emtoinallyr eady for the deep feelings she’s having. And Stephen.. well he’s a talented guitarist but also enables scott and julie. Especially him enabling Julie. 

Point is their all pretty well rounded, llikeable characters with flaws. Julie.. is just an ass. And this scene demonstrates that with flying colors. While Scott does ignore her because he’s too worried about his sister and girlfriend becoming friends, understandably given Stacey knows all his dark secrets, Julie spends two pages giving out and treating scott like some bad guy for persuing Ramona against her orders. And i’m going to break down why.. this dosen’t work.. on any level for her.  1) Ramona is not Julie’s property. She’s a big girl with her own free will. They aren’t even remotely close: Julie met her only barely before Scott, and given the dream thing probably not even that. And you could say Julie is just looking out for her... she dosen’t know Ramona well enough to KNOW if Ramona is still smarting over Gideon. She probably was.. but she readily, once the awkwardness passed, went out with scott and dove right into the relationship. While there’s still some scars as we’ll see.. she CHOOSE to move on and that’s her choice. If she wasn’t ready, she woudl’ve turned him down or broke it off by now realizing it was a mistake.  2) Scott has no reason to listen to her. She hates his ass, somewhat justifably but still, she hates him and has been against him since fucking colllege. She took his exes side in the breakup despite Envy still being partly in the wrong but paints him as some abusive dickhead and not just an insesntive dickhead. To him he’s just some villian she needs to reign in for her cool friend who wants nothing to do with her and grows to justifably hate her over time. Scott and Julie TOLERATE each other. They are not friend,s they do not like each other and never will. They are around each other because of Stephen. That is it. If Kim , Wallace or Stephen had asked, or at least made him wait for kinves. he probablyw ould’ve or at least considered it since while they take the piss out of him, they genuinely care about him and actually have shown they care about something other than themselves! Speaking of which the cou de gras 3) She’s a selifsh bitch: She is NEVER not  in any volume seen as out for anyone but herself, and thus scott has no reason to trust her judgement. She berates Stephen, him and anyone who will listen, is only so loyal to envy because she’s famous, and as I said treats EVERYONE like dogshit.  And given Scott is still a very flawed guy.. it takes a LOT for him to be so right and he runs out screaming when Julie mentions her.

So back at the library, Ramona brought Stacey along because the place is a maze. Scott calls Stephen and calls julie evil.. which given the last two paragrahs. Yeah. She is. She really is. But that goes nowhere as he dosen’t have Stacey’s number. He also thinks Julie was responsible for this which while she’s very much not.. would it REALLY be that suprising that if Julie were there she would’ve introdcued the two and set up their little hangout just to piss scott off? God I’m  so sick of talking about her. 

So the two after dropping off Ramona’s package decide to hang out a bit.. not long as Ramona’s got shit to do, but hey I agree with her logic i’m curious about this palce too. But before they can go up an elevator Ramona spots incoming.. and thus we get the fight of the volume. Though given the next one has two climatctic fights and one or two before that, they easily could’ve had both.. this is still the highlight of the volume.  So Ramona snaps off a railing and before Stacey can give out about that she finds out WHY as Knives attacks with a pair of sais. And O’Malley did his homework as while you’d THINK it was just another dumb white person mistake.. O’Malley is asian, thoughw ether he’s candaian korean or canadian chineses, as his last name is korean but he has a large chinese cast in this very comic that might come from experince, I do not know and if you do know tell me. I’d like to refer to him properly as I don’t LIKE lumping all asian cultures into one basket. But not only that he did his home work, as Sai’s, while popularized in Okinawa Japan, were also used in other countries. I bring this up since I assumed it was just a simple mistake even knowing Brian was mixed-race, and was plesantly suprised to fine that know, I was the moron. And i’m fine with admitting that. 

So we get a damn good fight.. and Knives figures out Scott WAS cheating on her. Granted she assumes so due to seeing Ramona at the refrence Library, before he actually cheated and clearly blames Ramona for it, but still, it fucking hurts. Plus while her attacking Ramona, who initally assumes she’s gideon’s doing, which.. yeah sending a teenage assasian just to mess with her head does sound like him. So while Stacey does complain “ramona you can’t just tear out art objects” to which I say... yeah high, Stacey? NOT THE POINT RIGHT NOW SCOTT’S EX IS TRYING TO KILL HER. SHE’S DEFENDING HERSELF.  So we get one hell of a fight. It not only shows off that Ramona is one hell of a fighter herself, as is knives, but just how immature knives is, resorting to constnat fat jokes and taunts showing just how immature she is.. and unlike volume one where it was endearing and we just saw how sweet she was here it just comes off as mean, bitter, and uncomfortable. But again part of the series biggest charm is the main cast are all well fleshed out and throughly human. She’s doint this because she dosen’t know better and was raised in a house where, again as volume 4 will bear out, finding out her dad is going after scott with a samurai sword just warrants a “dad’s are so weird aren’t they” my point is her frame of refrence is a mite skewed. Plus this is a world where everyone but Stacey just calmly accepts big shonen fights break out, so it’s not that unsuaul to want to settle things with a fight and while i’ve joked about her killing Ramona we genuinely don’t know that was the goal> Could’ve been, easily given murder is peachy in this setting and just leads to a respawn according to O’Malley and would’ve just sent ramona back to her apartment. But I genuinely don’t think she has it in her to do it and while she could’ve planend to, she never would’ve. Plus Ramona easily leads the fight as while Knives uses hit and run tactics and tries make her follow.. Ramona is more annoyed than anything as she has shit to do. Knives only gets one hit in and while i’ts a pretty nasty scratch on the cheek, if thankfully not scarring.. Ramona shrugs it off when she brags about it and easily takes knives down with a potted tree. Knives runs and while she tells herself it’s to fight another day.. its really because her opponent was WAY stronger and way more ready for something like this than she probably planned on. She did defintely want a fight, she just wasn’t prepared to be outmatched so handily. It’s also a nice  parallel to last book’s fight: Like with Scott and Matthew,  while the fight SEEMS pretty even, in reality our hero/heroine was alwasy teh one in control and easily took care of the less experinced and less ready upstart, who likely wasn’t expecting a fair fight much less to loose. 

So Ramona and Stacey wisely get out while Stacey explains Knives is indeed Scott’s ex, though is unaware of the cheating thing. Speaking of Scott he’s playing sonic and knuckles, and in fact kept wallace on the line before just to get advice because of course he did hence why stacey didn’t get through to him, but gets a call... from Envy. 

This is easily the second best sequence in the boook, which was lovingly and wonderfully adapted to film and as a result I cannot read it without hearing Brie Larson’s voice for Envy , a nice mixture of seduction and condescension. It’s CLEARLY painful fo rhim, and we do get some things established as Envy toys with him, that it’s been about a year and that she left him for a cocky pretty boy, familiar.. and while Scott claims to not know what he looks like.. given Todd is clearly on her band cover... it’s not exactly hard to put two and two together. So after some awkard catchup and Scott telling her about ramona against his will, we get to the reason she’s here with Scott understanndbly being supscious and calling her a user.. which while Envy denys.. she ends up admitting to. She’s coming to town as estalbished and her opening act backed out, and since Scott has a band, and one that 2/3 of which she knows, she wants them to open for her.  Scott naturally isn’t too intrested and thinks it’s just pity. The sequence. is masterful, using a watchmen style 9 by 9 panel layout and intercutting scott’s pained reactions and clear lack of comfort with flashes of envy on her side.. never showing her proper, but showing his memories or what he’s seen in magazines. It’s really striking and really sells the sheer discomfort Scott’s going through.  So soon after Wallace gets home.. and finds Scott, drained and miserable on the floor, not even responsive. And this really is the scene that shows me that Wallace cares for the guy and cements that asshole he may be, he loves his buddy. He goes through possible scenarios that fit scott: Food poisoning, finding out Wallace saved over his final fantasy save (though he rules it out as last time that happened he was crying), that ramona dumped him.. before Scott let’s out a pathetic and miserable “Ennnnnvvv”. Wallace , who was at ground zero for that relationship as we’ll find out, realizes this and lets out a little shit, unsure how to help and pissed off at that bitch for once again hurting him like this. As I said it shows how Wallace knows scott in and out and loves him dearly.. and how he knwos about this paticuarly heartbreak better than anyone but Scott and Envy themselves. IT’s just a really tearjerking scene, as we get a sense of WHY scott spiraled into an ego boost of a relationship: His last one REALLY tore him in half, and he’s still not completely healed from the emtional bisection. 

So Scott gets more bad news next chapter as Stacey tells him about the fight and he’s worried he’s going to loose ramona on top of this. I mean he desrves it.. .but it’s clear she’s the best thing to happen to him after a really rough year of denial and poor decisionss and loosing her will likely only make him WORSE. He also breaks the bad news, to him at least to the band about the gig. Stephen, being kind of a dick who while understandbly excited about a big gig fails to see his friend REALLY isn’t happy about this nor remembers you know, that the person offering this tore his heart out indiana jones style and while they should take the gig despite the risks, it’s too big an opportunity not to, he should be fucking senstive about this. Kim however... has a suprising and heartbreaking reactoin to this. Which is spread over a few panels but i’m gonna string into one image for convince sake. 

Just.. DAMN. I honeslty missed this both as a teenager and as an adult when I read through the books last time but holy shit is this a heartbreaking little moment, even more with the development she gets in later books. Keep in mind, over two books so far, Kim.. really hasn’t shown a lot of emtion. The most upset she’s gotten was getting a bit pissed about another a girl drummer. The only other time we’ve seen her sad was at 17 when Scott left. Her only emotions that we could see were angry and surly. But here? She’s genuinely upset and we see her walls break down for the very first time.. and it’s with the clear indication she NEVER really got over Scott. She never got proper closure and while she hasn’t let it so.. it’s been VERY clear she's been grossly uncomfortable with how he just likes to brush off their history, something that very clearly still bothers her and understandably so: 6 years , while a lot of time, still really isn’t long enough to just .. FORGET your first boyfriend , how he made you feel or the fact he took your virginity and you took his. Stuff like that sticks with you.. I’m ony assuming on the virginity thing but my point remains: To Scott it’s SEEMINGLY nothing, when really he’s probably just trying to brush it off because he dosen’t like dealing with things and given how Kim is wrongly assumed she can’t feel pain. I mean to anyone else i’d be a fair assumption and even i’m not convinced if she touched a hot stove she’d burn, but that’s phsysical this is emotional. DIffrent playing fields. Point is Scott’s kind of a dick and not having ANY closure for anything, Kim is still smarting from him leaving as much as Scott is smarting from Envy dumping him.  And it somehow gets MORE painful.... which should’ve been the tagline for Bojack Horseman now I think about it but yeah: her line is what cuts me up the most “I saw her on the cover of Now. She’s pretty”. It’s a little line, it’s easy to see why I missed it .. but the subtext really stings. It’s that despite being VERY pretty, I had a crush on her as a kid and I still do now.. Kim just can’t help but compare herself to someone whose now a glamrous rock star.  Their equally attractive but all Kim can see is ANOTHER person who Scott cared about more than her. Which seems petty but again he just.. abnadoned her. His moving wasn’t his choice but his not telling her as was framed earlier sure as hell was. And then just.. look at the next people he dates: A glamorous rock star (She wasn’t at the time but that’s for next week), a much younger girl who can’t possible challenge him, and an ultra cool american. To her.. it must feel like he just looks right through her to every other person intersted in him and never even consdered her as a person anymore. I mean.. jesus christ that hurts.. and makes me hate Stephen more since you know he dosen’t notice any of this.. though at least unlike with Scott it’s a bit more understandable because Kim’s so unflappable and he’s already ignoring very obvious and transparent emotional pain why shouldn’t this be any diffrent.  So yeah no one’s happy about this, and that ends up including Stephen as he’s so insecure about his band’s talent he’s pretty sure they suck when their probably at least adaquate. 

So while Scott dosen’t say anything, it’s clear he’s at least consdiering the offer as when we next see him he and ramona are heading to Envy’s show. And honestly it’s just a really sweet scene as Ramona asks about envy and the two banter and hold hands. A really nice palletee clensar since hte last few pages were like I was the one lucas socked in the gut. Also she assures him she dosen’t hate him, and asks about how the breakup happened, turning down any offers to hear the good times.  It was new years eve one year ago, and he mentions it was over her leaving to meet some guy named Todd.. and Ramona finds the story familiar but brushes off Scott wondering if her todd and Envy’s todd wer ethe same guy as a douchey joke. When prying about what happened otherwise, Scott admits it was all a blur.. Ramona isn’t ahppy with the answer.. but it’s nto like it’s that unresonable: he was in deep with Envy, and the breakup was damn bad to the point it took a year for him to recover and end up in the relationship he is now and the one before this was clearly a cry for help. It also helps reinfroce just how much Wallace was there for him and probably WHY Wallace hates Envy so much. They probably live together simply because Scott needed a place after college, was in zero condition to get a job or do anything given his zombie like state.. and Wallace just had him move into his bed, platonically and into his place. It’s probably why while Wallace will complain ocasoinally he isn’t that on scott to find a job. He dosen’t need a paying roomate, they do fine just on his sallary and he has a steady, secure job in some sort of calling office, probably working in medical stuff like my mom. He needs his friend to be safe and happy, then he can get on his ass about being functional, as he is in present day. If nothing else this volume made me realize just how good a person Wallace is.  The one thing he CAN remember, to Ramona’s disbelif is a restraunt opening up, the job story he hinted at last volume: basically it was a fancy tex mex place called, and this is one of the best restraunt naems in the history of fiction brace yourself: The Gilded Palace of Flying Burritos. Naturally, as would I as I love tex mex and that name, Scott loved the place, ate there most of the week and like me with some places I liked waited impatietly to get a job. He did and they were even super generous as the food was FREE.  Which is a euphoric feeling I relate to, though I also liked any discounts I got. seriously when I worked at Bagel and Bagel a good chunk of my paycheck was eating there for dirt cheap every shift. I miss that place so much. Like even after I left there I still like a good bagel sandwitch. And it wasn’t covid or anything it was just low staffed and slowly coming apart due to a lack of a solid manager after Crystal, the manager who hired me, transfered to a store closer to her home, which I do not blame her for. 

Point is I get it even if Ramona thinks this is all made up. Anyways at Lee’s Place, based on the real life Leo’s place, everyone’s gussied up: Steven got an awful haircut and Kim... 

But no time to dwell on how great kim’s..everything is.. who DID  Neil bring to the concert? 

While Kim is VERY much enjoying this, everyone else is a bit freaked with Ramona getting assurance her and Scott dated breifly, with Kim quipping her and neil will probably date even breiflyer, and Stephen.. freaking out, wondering if she seduced him, and asking if they should take him out back and kick his ass.. 

Just..... that’s a lot of douche to unpack and this review has been VERY long and suprisingly hard already.. but fuck it, we don’t have much left to go let’s do this. Okay one did she seduce him.. I mean I GUESS, but really let’s be clear here: Neil is a horny, lonely, monosolobic 19 year old who lives with his sister’s college friend and whose life revovles around said guys band. Knives is adorable. She likely barely had to flirt with him to get him to say yes .As someone who was a lonely 19 year old doofus, I guarantee no matter the red flags I probably woudl’ve said yes provided she was 18 instead of 17, despite the abudant red flags such as neil vaugely looking like scott, neil being the one single man within scott’s circle to get her way back in, as Knives hasn’t realized she’s bi yet or given how much she looked up to Kim, she probably WOULD’VE gone for it. As would any sane person, which neither knives nor I entirley are. So she didnt’ so much seduce him as offer him a girlfriend he didn’t have and him being too intrested in having a sweet, caring girl on his arm to see the giant army of adrestian soldiers needed to carry all the red flags this presents. 

And as for “do we need to kick his ass. “ Stephen.. did you kick SCOTT’S ass? No, you fucking abetted him and only stepped in for the good girl thing. You did NOTHING to stop his relationship with knives or tell him he was screwing up or look out for that girl’s well being. This will bite him in the ass even harder in volume 5, but even now it just makes him look REALLY fucking bad that, even if he probably dosen’t mean it, that’s at all on the table. Also.. Neil, unlike scott is doing slightly less wrong. While he is 20 to her 17, three years.. it’s HALF of what Scott and her’s age diffrence is, and far more equal in power structure. It’s still not.. GREAT, but my point is you did NOTHING when Scott did this, for far flimiser and less forgiavble reasons.. but when NEIL, whose been nothing but weirdly loyal to you dates her, you want to kick someone’s ass. I mean yes he’s being stupid: in a clear role reversal of the Scott and Knives situation, it’s obvious just from her expression that KNVIES is the one in control here, and the one using someone to ease her own pain. Granted it’s wrong, if not as wrong as Scott should techincally know better and Knives very clearly dosen’t, as well as get into a show of her faviorite band. Is what she’s doing wrong.. yeah... while she can’t see it again it’s what Scott did just not QUITE as fucked up due to not being AS embalanced. Should neil probably be dating her after scott did ? No. But should you be threatning him and not scott for you know, setting all this in motion? No. Jesus christ you suck Steven. 

Thankfully while Scott presumibly calms Stephen down, Kim spots Hollie and her roomate Joseph, who will be suprisingly important. He’s very gay, very quite, very bearded and is only hear because the bass player is hot and when prodded on it....

Well said. Also I read that with John Heder’s voice fo rsome reason.. don’t know why, his career ended as quickly as it began because he REALLY did not pick his films well. He saw that he was going to be in a film with David Spade and Rob Schinder and didn’t fire his agent for suggesting it. Meanwhile Scott and Ramona run into Sandra and Monique, Scott’s old classmates who just sorta.. show up every so oftne, often backing up Julie because every Alpha Bitch needs a posse. As Boscha has proven once you loose your posse you loose your bitchy powers. They also ask if Scott and Ramona are an item which leads to a fantagious visual gag. 

Also Stephen awkardly talks to the new couple, about how much Knives loves the band, and because why start reading the room now just sorta.. CASUALLY slips in the fact he knows her is because she and scott dated. 

Granted Knives action this book really EARNED her that curveball.. but still, it’s transparently clear she’s both not over Scott and Neil’s a placebo, and that she loves the band... how the fuck did you get through college, much less get two loyalish friends Steve. 

Kim tries to hide when she runs into Sarah whose with.. someon O Malley does not know, literally captioning it “I don’t know htis girl”. Fucking love that gag even if SOMEHOW kim is the roomate they all hate. Despite hte fact as the side story will bare out, her roommates are all pretty obnoxious, so i’ts probably because she’s the only sane person in that group and their VERY lucky kim just dind’t set the place on fire on her way out and let god do what he should’ve a long time ago. Also we meet Lynette, the band’s drummer who smokes “She must be evil” “Still hot though”... both accurate. Also Luke wilson is there.. no really. Just holy shit that’s awesome.  Okay so with all of that out of the way, it’s time for the show. So after a full volume’s build up , and a really cool build up in the page before we finally properly meet clash at the demonhead, and miss envy adams. 

Heck of  a reveal and not the only one as ramona realized what the audience probably already guessed....

Dun dun dun! And since I don’t like leaving a cliffhanger dangling lest I have to... we’ll be getting to this next week.. what you thought i’d say right now or tommorow? This was a lot. But no i’m not leaving you too long. Next week, Evil Ex Crossover! Ramona and Wallace become BFF’s! We learn what the deal with Scott and Envy is! Scott faces the Ken to his Ryu! And Wallace gets a boyfriend. All this and more next week. for now...

Final Thoughts: This one.. was a VERY rough one to review and it ties back to this volume’s biggest problem: it is not paced very well. Like the series as a whole it has a pretty easy going, slice of life pace. The only ones without this kind of easy pacing are 3 and 6, and even 3 has some slice of life bits, their just both more focused due to the events going on. This one... well....

Pretty much. While this one has very important stuff going on, Scott and ramona getting closer, ramona getting more fleshed out, Wallace showing how deep his character is, Kim also getting fleshed out quite a bit, Knives showing off her crazy side, setting up the next volume, the second ex fight.. it’s all just kinda.. jumbled together. It’s not really until the knives fight onward the book takes on some really solid pacing and really gets going.It’s not a BAD book: ther’es some REALLY good character stuff as I dug into.. but the pacing is just really loose and without the Evil Ex fight as an anchor and with ramona and scott just sorta.. getting to know one another, in both biblical and non biblical senses, it dosen’t have either of the series main narrative thrusts. Even the knvies subplot really amoutns to nothing for now, as Ramona dosen’t find out Scott’s a cheater, and only distrusts knives now. That’s about it. It does improve on book one in characterization, with eveyrone being MUCH cleearer in terms of who they are and settling into their iconic selves nicely. Wallace’s more selfless and protective side pops up, Ramona starts to show mroe of her personality good and bad, Scott’s better traits are mixed a bit mor eeven with the douche ones,  Knive’s far more unstable and violet stalker side emerges, and Stephen.. well fuck him, point is things are coming together.. but O’Malley still isn’t quite at peak power yet. Not bad and still worth a read like last time, just a bit uneeven is all. That being said... if you want O’Malley at his peak.. well then come back next week. Until then i’ll be doing my usual buisness of reviewing birds, refrencing simpsons and letterkenny, and putting my eyes back in after kim’s look up there. For now the sun’s setting and i’m out of here. 

[xtinyslip]

“IT’S CORY! if there is anyone who knows how to twist a good story? it’s him. that’s why i was taking this plan to him in this first place. i wasn’t fucking paul, i’m not fucking paul and i have no desire to fuck paul!” cecilia didn’t know how else to say it and what she was saying was the TRUTH. paul was fantastic but he was just a friend and she was good with that. that was what she wanted and that was what she needed. why did everything boil down to who was screwing who? “gideon is with me. it worked… he believes it was father who did this and i have no intention of making him believe otherwise.” was she sad for cory? perhaps, but that was as far as her sympathy went. she wasn’t about to be caught crying over what parker had done or anything. “you’re either not hearing me or are you refusing to? either way it’s not going to help resolve this matter. is it?” cee had tried to explain to him why he hadn’t been informed of the plan from the beginning. she had told him that she wasn’t sleeping with paul. what else did he want from her? “i made a mistake by not discussing this plan with you first. i’m well aware with how you chose not to let me forget it. i saw everything that was being pushed out by the media about will. it was an EMOTIONAL response. i —“ the truth was that cecilia still wasn’t particularly used to those ; emotional responses. in fact, during all the scams nothing was emotional about any of it. she couldn’t allow herself to be. “imagine being the one on the other side? the one who had these lies told about them? i’m very AWARE i am the one who gave you reason to doubt me. i fucked it up. surprise, surprise. hm?” it felt like she was on a roll of being a disappointment lately. “but you have my word… i didn’t do this. paul and i have never been like that, nor would we want to be.” @fcdcdmcmories

"IF YOU DID? YOU WOULDN'T HAVE BEEN LYING TO ME. AGAIN. YOU WOULDN'T HAVE BEEN.. god. you know, this is worse than kramer. i could let that go and.. i did. but the shiny mayor? as your dear uncle said, you clearly upgraded. shiny, rich, handsome, popular, powerful... he's what you should want. he's everything that i'm not." looking down at the ground, because.. this was the truth, wasn't it? this was what it all came down to - the fact that he didn't believe that he was WORTHY of her and never had been. what was he? what had he been when they met? a nameless bartender that played guitar on parks and bars and everywhere to be able to afford rent. compared to her? he knew that was NOTHING. "i know what i've always wanted. that's never changed. everything that i've done - everything that i do - it's for you. killing that asshole was FOR YOU. now, that stupid plan won't have to happen. he won't screw you over again. I MADE SURE OF IT." did he regret anything? yes, but it wasn't doing what he had to cory. no, fuck him. "I WANTED YOU TO BE HONEST WITH ME! TOGETHER, YOU SAID! WE'LL DO THIS TOGETHER AND AT THE FIRST CHANGE YOU GOT? YOU LIED TO ME. YOU KEPT ME IN THE DARK. YOU PLAYED ME FOR A FOOL. AGAIN. i could let that go. once. hell, i could let go of what happened back at home. but this? having to learn that from cory, out of all people? that you were.." shaking his head. "imagine you're me. imagine hearing that from someone you despise. being mocked for it. reminded you were never enough or worthy or anything like that. imagine hearing from someone you hate that i'd been lying to you after swearing i'd not do that and keeping secrets and seeing someone else behind your back. IMAGINE HEARING THAT FROM HIM. how would you feel? pissed, right? angry? fucking heartbroken? yeah." because he knew just how HE felt.

@xtinyslip

[livia-dovehallow]

Hi! I just saw your reblog about how you like people noticing how Christopher resembles Gabriel and wanted to ask you if you could elaborate? I actually find him very similar but people tend to say he is an outcast

Hi! Thank you for asking and I’m sure you’re about to get more than you bargained for...

Christopher reminds me a lot of Gabriel. Not only does Christopher look the most like Gabriel out of the three Lightwood-Herondale children in appearance, but I also think that in personality he is more like his father than people will give him credit for. For one, he is canonically protective of his family.

“’Be very careful what you say about Anna,’ said Christopher. Lucie thought she ought to have found it funny: Christopher, who was never angry, speaking in those icy tones to Alastair. But somehow, it was not funny at all.”

--Chain of Gold, p. 241

Now, being protective is definitely a trait developed more in nuture rather than nature, but given that Christopher is related to both the Lightwood and Herondale families, it is easy to see that he would develop a protective nature for his family as everyone in this family is protective of each other. Particularly I think his type of defensive attitude regarding his family is more like Gabriel’s than it is Cecily’s. As we glimpse from ChoG, Gabriel has greatly mellowed out in the years since TID. 

Of course he is still firecly protective of his family, but his overall attitude is much more levelheaded in everyday life than it was when he was 18. Christopher’s temper and attitude reflect this version of Gabriel very well.

Additionally, just a little fun parallel I love to discuss, is the Lightwood-pairs that happen in every set of books. In TID it was Gabriel and Gideon. In TLH, it’s Thomas and Christopher. Thomas is very much like his father--the older brother, cautious, looking out for the other--While Christopher is very much like his father--scattered, unsure, a bit reckless. 

“’I say,’ said Christopher, mopping wet hair out of his eyes. ‘I do think that worked, Tom. The acid has been neutralized.’

Thomas was shaking his head. ‘Someone you neutralize you, you mopstick-’”

--Chain of Gold, p. 23

They’re cousins, but even Thomas says Christopher is the “brother of his heart.” I think the parallel was put there to emphasize that Christopher is more like Gabriel than meets the eye.

Also, as the OP from the reblog you mentioned said, Gabriel is a situational-awareness type of character. He is big on knowing what is happening, how it is happening, and where it is proceeding in order to make a decision. Christopher is also very much a situational-awareness character, needing context and information to make decisions and solve problems. While his mother, the queen herself Cecily Lightwood, is more of an act first-think later type of person, Gabriel (and therefore Kit) are more of the opposite in TLH era. Anna, in turn, developed more of Cecily’s approach. Time will tell who Alex takes after.

Now, granted, we also haven’t truly seen a lot of Christopher or his inner workings yet. We only have that one extra bonus scene from his POV and other character’s perceptions of him from Chain of Gold, so it’s hard to tell what his true personality is, though he does seem like a genuine person who is kind and wants to help. 

"Christopher was shocked, less by his father’s tears than by the fact that they’d had a cousin who they’d never been allowed to meet, and now could never meet. Thoughts kept running around in Christopher’s mind. This is all wrong. If we had met him, we might have been able to help him. To save him.”

“’There is so much wrong with the world,’ said Christopher. ‘I want it to make sense. I want to put it right. I want to find the solutions that are overlooked by others.’”

--Days Past: Christopher (ChOG Extra)

And as Cassie mentioned, he is the only character not harboring a secret. I think that will be more important as TLH moves on than we think it will.

As Chain of Iron approaches, I hope for more Christopher content and insight into who he is and what life was like for him, specifically, growing up in his family and having Gabriel and Cecily as parents. We see that they are fantastic parents through Anna’s story and POV, but I’d love to see more of Christopher’s relationship with his parents. We know he loves them and they love him, but give us more!

Lastly, we know that Christopher will have some unexpected behavior in Chain of Iron (re: Cassie). My prediction, which is shared with a lot of people in the fandom, is that he will have some kind of outburst or manipulative moment in the Shadow Market that will mirror Gabriel’s behavior at the market in Clockwork Princess, when he threw a satyr out of the window and chased him down and into the Thames when he showed Cecily a pornographic catalog his father had ordered. 

“’You know,’ Cecily said, ‘you really didn’t have to throw that man through the window.’

‘He wasn’t a man,’ Gabriel said, scowling down at the heap of objects in his arms.

[...]

‘Is that why you chased him down the street?’

‘He had no business showing images like that to a lady,’ Gabriel muttered...” ---Clockwork Princess, p. 279

I really hope this is the case because I want there to be some kind of Like Father Like Son moment when his parents find out and Gabriel can’t even be mad about it because he did the same thing while Cecily is greatly amused by it all. 

TL;DR: Despite not having a whole lof of Christopher Lightwood content or POV so far in TLH, there are pieces and hints that Christopher is more like his father than is given credit for and that he is more aware than he is given credit for--that he simply chooses to stay out of complicated situations unless needs absolutely must. Signs point to getting more clues toward Christopher’s similarities with his father as TLH moves forward and particularly in anticipation of Chain of Iron in a couple of weeks.

Thank you for coming to my Ted Talk.

[leechobsessed]

Ellanora Sagen

Full name: Ellanora Sagen 

Ellanora - “shining light, bright one”

Sagen - “wise and knowing”

Pronouns: She/her

Birthday: July 5th

Age (at the start of story): 27

Orientation: bisexual

Magic: healing, water

Familiar: Bato the bat-eared fox

Love interest: Julian

Cannon route: Julian’s upright ending

Shippable?: shippable!

Theme song: Golden Dandelions - Barns Courtney

ALIGNMENTS & ABILITIES

Zodiac sign: Cancer

MBTI: ESFJ

Element: water

Patron Arcana: Strength

Upright: Strength, courage, persuasion, influence, compassion

Reversed:  Inner strength, self-doubt, low energy, raw emotion

Minor Arcana: Nine of Wands

Upright:  Resilience, courage, persistence, test of faith, boundaries

Reversed:  Inner resources, struggle, overwhelm, defensive, paranoia

Magic:

Healing: Ella specializes in healing magic, especially in the elimination of pain. She can completely heal minor wounds without scars and alleviate all symptoms of minor illnesses. She has only ever been able to use her magic to save a life a handful of times, but such a feat leaves her completely drained for days afterward. She attempted to use her abilities during the height of the plague, but was unsuccessful. She mainly used her magic to calm the patients and remove their pain, allowing their last few day of life to be more bearable. 

Water: Ella’s other specialty lies with the manipulation of water. She has always felt in tune with the element. She often incorporated water manipulation into her healing, as it seems to amplify the effects of her magic. 

PERSONALITY & PREFERENCES

Personality: Curious, Caring, Dedicated, Determined. Ella is one of the best friends you will ever have. She cares so deeply for those close to her, that at times her desire to help and ensure everyone is okay can be overwhelming. She is very level-headed and works through problems carefully before making a decision. She loves learning new things and going on new adventures, and is always looking to make new friends. 

Likes: fall weather, cold beer, warm blankets, whales, forehead kisses

Dislikes: insects with more than eight legs, celery, rude people

Fears: losing her memories, being left by the people she loves

Quirks: When nervous, Ella picks at the skin around her thumbnails. She is constantly tucking a stray strand of hair back behind her ear because it will never, ever, stay out of her face. She thinks out loud, so it often seems she’s having conversations with herself, or with inanimate objects. She hums to herself when she’s happy.

Favorite food: apple pie

Favorite drink: beer

Favorite flower: carnations

Most likely to: burn dinner because she got distracted

APPERANCE

Height: 5′ 9″

Eyes: left - blue, right - green

Although her eyes are two different colors, they are very subtle, and not many people notice. Her siblings used to make fun of her for it, so even as an adult she embarrassed and self conscious when people point it out.

Hair: Very wavy, unmanageable, long, chestnut brown hair. It’s always falling in front of her face and getting in the way, despite her best efforts to tame it.

Color theme: dark, earthy tones, especially navy, dark green and dark reds

Fashion sense: functional and comfortable. Ella pretty much exclusively wears  long dresses

FAMILY & FACTS

Family: Ella has a huge family, and is the youngest of 12 children. Many of her older siblings moved out when she was very young, so she never really knew them. She was closest to her sister Fiona and her brother Miles growing up. Her family owned a tailor shop, where the children would work and help their parents. 

Father - Matthias

Mother - Vera

Aunt - Vivian, Vera’s younger sister

Siblings - 7 brothers, 4 sisters

Damian (brother, +16 years older)

Sara (sister, +14 years older)

Ronan (brother, +12 years older)

Amara (sister, +11 years older)

Beau (brother, Luka’s twin, +10 years older)

Luka (brother, Beau’s twin, +10 years older)

Gideon (brother, + 8 years older)

Fiona (sister, +7 years older)

Nina (sister, +5 years older)

Wells (brother, +4 years older)

Miles (brother, +3 year older)

[Ella]

Hometown: Ella was born and raised in Paraka. She was homeschooled her whole life and worked in her parent’s tailor shop during her childhood. When she was 16, she left home to live with her aunt in Vesuvia to learn magic.

Five facts:

Ella has always kept journals. She still has a few from before she died, which is the only thing that can give her a glimpse into her past

She wears a ring on her right middle finger, given to her by her mother before she left for Vesuvia. It’s a thin silver ring with small chips of blue and green stones, and Ella never takes it off

Even though she can’t remember working in her parent’s shop in her youth, Ella is still a very proficient seamstress, and makes all of her own clothes

Ella cannot cook to save her life, but she’s a decent baker

Whales are her favorite animal of all time, even though she has never seen one. She hopes to, one day, but for now the dozens of books she has about them will suffice

Amazing Art By Fantastic People!

@vissenta-senadz​

@peach-pink​

@verysoftthings​

[themosleyreview]

The Mosley Review: Star Wars: The Mandalorian (Season 2)

It is rare for a first season to find its tone and vision of what it wants to be so quickly. Many fail in the first go and the rest of the series is left to pick up the slack. It is very rare for a second season to equal the same care taken in establishing the tone and expanding the vision and world it has created. This series will go down in history as one of the best examples of such rarity existing in perfect harmony. This season brilliantly expands on what made the first season so great and delivers jaw dropping surprises and revelations that I never could've possibly conceived of. It also hits on so many emotional cores in its perfectly woven storyline. The fact that it ties directly into the prequels, The Clone Wars and Rebels animated series and the Original Trilogy was truly special. This series has saved the franchise and purified the air of the toxic fumes left behind by the last film trilogy. It comes to a emotional and complete season finale that satisfies and shows a version of something that we all wanted to see.

The cast once again delivers outstanding performances across the galaxy. Pedro Pascal returns as The Mandalorian/Din Djarin and he is as electric and powerful than before. The western iconography of his character stays intact and I loved that now he is more father like with The Child. Just like in the first season, Din's paternal instinct takes over and their bond is something so powerful, magnetic and it is the emotional core of the show. Carl Weathers returns as Greef Karga and he is just as fun and charming like before. Even with his revised position as leader of the planet Navarro, he still is a business man at heart. Gina Carano returns as Cara Dune and she is even more badass than before. She has more responsibility this time around and she gets some of the best Star Wars curse words. Ming-Na Wen returns as the fantastic bounty hunter Fennec Shand and she is just as badass if not more. Bill Burr returns as Migs Mayfeld and he once again gives an excellent performance in a very tense and well written episode of the season. Timothy Olyphant joins the series as Cobb Vanth. He's always good at playing the southern sheriff type and as the marshal of a small town on Tatooine, he was perfect. Temuera Morrison returns to the franchise as the one and only Boba Fett and he was even more amazing than before. He nailed the characters' confidence, determination and brutality. He has an episode that truly is satisfying and reminds you why he is the most dangerous bounty hunter in the galaxy.

Katee Sackoff brings her animated character Bo-Katan Kryze to live action for the first time and she was perfection. Knowing the history of the character, it was interesting to see where Katee takes Bo-Katan and the inner turmoil that plagues her. There is so much to unpack with her character and I can't wait to see where we go with her. Like all of you, I have waited for the day that this character would make their live action debut and I was not disappointed. Ahsoka Tano is one of the greatest characters to be introduced from The Clone Wars animated series and her arc has become legendary. Ashley Eckstein expertly crafted the character in her outstanding vocal performance and now Rosario Dawson physically brings her to life perfectly in every way. You feel the history, elegance and power behind her presence. I won't say much more, but her debut was one of my favorite moments of the season. Giancarlo Esposito returns as Moff Gideon and he is even more cunning and smart. What makes him an outstanding antagonist is that he is very knowledgeable and hard to surprise. You assume he knows things, but you never know what his endgame could be and that makes him unpredictable. He never minces words and I love that. Such a great performance from an amazing performer.

Ludwig Goransson does it again with his astounding score. He brings back the musical themes of the first season, but gives them all such new life. The new compositions he creates are just as wondrous, regal and warm. In Chapter 9, 13 and especially 16, you hear his electronic experimentation and classic Japanese samurai overtones glaze smoothly over a sweet and delicious musical donut. He also incorporates a few themes from other films and series for certain characters is such a subtle and slick way. The cinematography this season was truly breathtaking as they draw from old westerns and classic Japanese film techniques of framing certain shots and fights. This series is truly a work of art. Jon Favreau and Dave Filoni have delivered once again the promise of making Star Wars and not showing Star Wars. It has been so long since I have actually felt this amount of excitement and joy towards this wonderful universe. This season was truly an epic, brilliant and emotionally charged masterpiece of a season with an ending that will leave you in tears. Also, don’t forget to stay for the end credits of the finale for a glimpse into the exciting future. If you agree or liked this review, let me know in the comments below. Thanks for reading!

[singledarkshade]

Accidental Hostages

Part Four

(Part One, Part Two and Part Three.)

Rip rubbed his eyes as he leaned back in his chair. It had been a long night researching and he hoped Sara had better luck than he did.

Checking the time, Rip decided to make himself some tea and phone his son afterwards. He hoped Gideon and Nora managed to get some rest because he would need their help.

Heading to the kitchen, he found Sara sitting cross-legged on the table eating a bowl of cereal.

“Morning,” she said.

“Good morning,” Rip replied as he filled the kettle, “Dare I ask what you have?”

Sara grimaced, “Damien Darhk is nowhere to be found.”

“Nowhere?” Rip demanded, automatically finding the tea things, “You have no trace of him?”

“We have CCTV of him leaving his office,” Sara listed, punctuating everything with her spoon, “He got in his car, I followed it to the airport then nothing.”

Rip frowned, “Nothing? You mean he got on a plane to somewhere we can’t follow?”

“Nope,” Sara replied, “I mean, his car goes into the airport and he’s not seen again. I checked every angle, and his car is still sitting there. A team are bringing it in.”

Rip mused as the kettle boiled and he made himself his tea.

“What about you?” Sara asked, “Any luck?”

“Yes,” Rip grimaced, “Thawne is a smug self-congratulating bastard, but he is also not as imaginative as he thinks he is.”

“Really?” Sara focussed all her attention on him.

“I found the proof he’s alive and faked the murder,” Rip replied, “And I sent it to the Police, ensuring a copy was also sent to Lyla Morgan.”

“Fantastic,” Sara said, before frowning, “So why do you still look like someone kicked your puppy?”

“Because Gideon and Nora are not safe from him,” Rip replied, “He can find a way to wiggle out of this. And he will come after Gideon, we both know that. I saw it happen with Tess, and I don’t want to see it again.”

Sara winced, “I read the report, I understand.”

“The fact Damien Darhk is missing is the thing that really worries me,” Rip told her, “Thawne and Darhk have worked together for so many years. And it’s no coincidence this happened at the same time.”

“Something big must have happened between them,” Sara mused, “Because it’s doubtful anyone other than Thawne could take out Darhk. Do you think, and I don’t mean anything against her, but would Gideon be a big enough reason for the split?”

Taking a long drink, Rip frowned, “If Gideon, as per Nora, was seen by Darhk as another daughter then it’s possible.”

“You’re sure?”

“Both Darhk and Thawne are the kind of men who mark their territory,” Rip explained, “They have specific lines that the other knew crossing would end their relationship. When Thawne initially showed interest in Gideon, Darhk likely shut it down telling Thawne that Gideon was in the same category as Nora.”

“And Thawne crossed the line?” Sara asked.

Rip nodded, “Put something in her drink which Darhk caught him doing.”

“Ohh,” Sara stared at him, “That will do it.”

“Which means we need to locate Darhk,” Rip told her, “I doubt Thawne will have the guts to have killed him, not until after Nora was convicted of murder.”

“Because otherwise all Darhk’s business interests would go to her,” Sara mused, “So, I take it we’re keeping the fact they’ve been exonerated quiet for now?”

Rip nodded, “Except we can only keep it quiet for so long. I’ve been given three days.”

Finishing the last of her cereal, Sara dropped the bowl into the sink, “Then I’d better get to work. Are you telling them the charges have been dropped?”

Rip nodded, “Yes, we’ll need their help and I don’t want them to worry about that at least.”

“I’ll get to work then,” Sara told him, “I’ll let you know what I find.”

 Sitting with his tea, Rip made his call to Jonas, smiling as his son chattered away to him. It was the best way to start his day.

“I should be home in a few days,” Rip told Jonas, “And we will do something lots of fun, I promise.”

“Okay, Daddy,” Jonas’ grin came through the line, “I miss you.”

Rip felt guilt spike through him, this was why he’d left this life, “I miss you too, little man. And I love you.”

“I love you,” Jonas told him, “Come home soon.”

“I will,” Rip whispered, “I promise.”

Hanging up Rip hated that he was away from his son at all, never mind for so many days. Which meant he had to solve this.

Checking the time, Rip hoped the girls and Ray were awake because he needed to talk to them.

 Gideon had been awake for some time but there was nothing she could do so just lay hugging her pillow. A knock on the door made her look up and she sighed, practically falling off the bed to answer it.

“Rip?” she asked, seeing the man standing on the other side.

“I need to talk to you all,” he said, “Be in the break room in twenty minutes?”

Gideon nodded, “That gives me enough time for a shower.”

Rip gave her a small smile before he disappeared presumably to wake up Nora and Ray. Gideon had a quick shower before tying up her still damp hair and dressing in a pair of jeans and sweatshirt she found in the chest of drawers. Leaving the room, she gave a quick amused smile to Nora when she and Ray walked out the door.

“Did you get any sleep?” Nora asked her.

“A little,” Gideon assured her, wanting to tease her friend about the gorgeous guy she had been snuggled up to all night but knew now wasn’t the time.

Reaching the small kitchen, she saw Rip waiting for them, leaning against the counter looking scruffy and rumpled which she found annoyingly attractive.

“There’s coffee in the pot, and a selection of cereals or other breakfast foods,” Rip told them, “Grab something to eat then I will catch you up.”

“Did you sleep?” Nora asked.

Rip shrugged, “I got an hour or so,” he chuckled at their concerned looks, “I have a four-year-old and was an agent for several years before he came along. I’m used to lack of sleep.”

They all grabbed something to eat, Nora and Ray took the couch in the corner while Gideon sat in the chair.

“Okay,” Rip appeared, a mug in his hand, “I have some good news for you.”

“Which is?” Nora asked.

He smiled, “I found the evidence to prove not only your innocence, but that Thawne is alive.”

Nora gasped as Gideon stared at him.

“You’re serious?” Gideon demanded, “It’s over?”

Rip sighed, “I’m serious that the charges have been dropped and Argus have fixed it so your escape won’t be an issue,” he held up his hand before they could celebrate, “But it won’t happen for a few days.”

“What?” Nora and Gideon cried in unison.

“Why not?” Ray asked for them.

Rip took a quick drink, “For you to be exonerated, we have to expose the fact Thawne is alive. Which will put your father in danger, Nora.”

“My father?” Nora breathed worriedly.

Rip nodded, “Nora, I am sorry to have to tell you that we believe he’s been abducted. We manage to follow him to the airport but from there we have no trace. His car is being brought in for us to check.”

“What does this mean?” Ray asked, “When can they go home?”

“Well, Ray you can go home now if you want,” Rip told him, “A story has been leaked that you have been on a retreat for the past few days, and your abduction by two escaped felons was a joke someone picked up wrong. One of the team will drive you to the train station.”

Ray stared at him for a few minutes before he turned to Nora, “I’m staying.”

“What?” she breathed.

“I’m staying until Nora and Gideon can return home as well,” he said to Rip, “Any problems with that?”

Rip shook his head, “None. In fact, I may require your expertise at some point.”

“So, what do we do now?” Gideon asked.

“For the moment,” Rip told her, “There’s nothing you can do but we will need Nora’s help when we bring her father’s car in.”

Gideon sighed, “I need to do something?”

Rip grimaced before nodding, “I’ll see what I can find.”

 Gideon left Nora and Ray finishing their breakfast so she could talk to Rip alone for a few minutes. There was something off about what he’d told them, like he was hiding something from them, and she needed to know what.

Making her way through the corridors, she found the office he was using, surprised no one had stopped her from making her way there. With a quick breath she reached out and rapped on the door sharply.

“Come in,” Rip called.

Stepping inside Gideon saw Rip hunched over his computer with a mug in his hand looking exhausted.

“I thought you said you were used to the lack of sleep,” Gideon said, smiling slightly at how his head jerked up in surprise.

Rip stared at her for a moment before shaking himself, “I usually manage a little more sleep these days.”

Gideon grabbed a chair and pulled it across to sit across from Rip.

“What aren’t you telling us, Rip?” Gideon demanded, “I know you’re trying to protect me, but you don’t have to. I’m a big girl and after everything that we’ve been through these past few weeks, I can handle whatever you’re hiding.”

Rip stared at her for a few moments before he sighed, “Once the information is released that you and Nora have been exonerated, that Thawne is alive then he will come after you.”

Fear filled Gideon and she swallowed hard.

“Look,” Rip reached out and took her hand, “I didn’t want to scare you because I am never going to let him near you.”

Sadly she whispered, “Can you actually promise me that?”

“I was not just a technician,” Rip told her seriously, “I can hack better than anyone here, true but I spent a lot of time in the field as well. I was very good at what I did, and it may have been about four years ago, but I’m not that rusty.”

Gideon smiled sweetly at him, “I trust you, Rip,” she breathed looking down at the joined hands, “I do. I am very scared, but I need you to tell me the truth no matter what it is.”

Rip nodded and squeezed her hand, “I promise.”

“Thank you,” Gideon said softly.

He smiled at her for a moment before releasing her hand, ready to turn back to work.

“I know I might not be the ruthless hacker you are,” Gideon told him, “But I’m good and if you want some help, I need something to do.”

Rip mused for a moment before he nodded, “It’s not hacking but scanning video footage.”

“Whatever you need,” Gideon said.

 Eve frowned as Rip leaned against the wall.

“Are you insane?” she demanded, “Miss Ryder may be a very intelligent woman, but she is not a trained analyst. She’s also the prime target of Thawne. She shouldn’t be near anything to do with this case.”

“Technically it’s not her case I’m assigning her to review,” Rip noted, “Instead I was hoping she would look into the Damian Darhk case.”

Eve stared at him before crying, “That’s even worse. She is practically his adopted daughter.”

“No,” Rip argued, “He looks on her as family, there has never been any indication Gideon sees Darhk as anything other than her best friend’s father.”

“You know that technically you’re not a real agent anymore,” Eve reminded him, “And everything you’re doing here is a courtesy considering your former service to this agency.”

Rip frowned at her, “We need Nora and Gideon to work with us, in order for that to happen they need to trust us as well as keep them calm. I will go over your head if I have to.”

“Oh, you are so aggravating,” Eve cried, before sighing in defeat, “Fine but,” she held up her hand before he could say anything else, “This is on your head.”

Rip shrugged, “Nothing has changed.”

[theadrogna]

Part 2: The 80s

(Part 1)

Waverider

This briefing is from file A56-7W. Classified Top Secret. Subject is, Waverider. A Mach 1+ attack helicopter with the most advanced weapons system in the air today. It's been hidden somewhere in the Western United States by its test pilot Rip Hunter. Hunter has promised to return Waverider only if we can find his wife, Miranda Coburn, an MIA in Vietnam. We suspect that Atom, director of the agency that built Waverider is secretly helping Hunter in return for Hunter flying Waverider on missions of national concern.

Rip Hunter is 34, a brilliant combat pilot. His only friend is Gideon Allen, whose air service is the cover for their government work.

With Hunter and Gideon working as a team and flying at speeds rivalling the fastest jets, backed by unmatched firepower, Waverider is too dangerous to be left in unenlightened hands. Finding it is your first priority.

>>>

Eagle lake was remote and beautiful. The sun rose over the mountains and it promised to be a clear and beautiful day. The morning light hit the lake, turning it into molten gold. Rip had risen early and was standing out on the porch of his cabin, considering an early morning run, then fishing trip. The sound of helicopter blades in the air alerted him to the fact that he would not be having the peaceful morning he had been looking forwards to.

He watched a white helicopter come into view. With a long sigh, he went back inside and went to the kitchen area to put on a fresh pot of coffee. He would be having guests soon, it seemed. He saw the helicopter land on the lakeside landing pad, and two figures emerged as the rotating blades slowed, striding towards the house.

Dr Ray Palmer, codename Atom, knew that the door was always unlocked, so he knocked and entered without waiting to be invited. His pilot, Kendra Saunders, following behind him. Ray was dressed in a crisp white suit, and wore a pair of glasses with one lens blackened. He walked with a confident step and it was only the cane that he carried with him which belied the fact that his leg was injured. Kendra wore a white flight suit and was not only Ray’s pilot but was also his aide and an agent in her own right.

“You’re too late for breakfast, Dr Palmer,” said Rip, barely looking up.

“I didn’t come all the way up here for breakfast with you, Rip,” replied Ray, with a slight tone of annoyance in his voice.

“Why did you come up here, Ray? It’s got to be important if you want my help, so spit it out.”

Rip, poured black, treacle coloured coffee into three mugs and brought them over to the coffee table.

He waited while Ray sat in an armchair before taking his own seat. Kendra hovered by her boss’s left side. Rip got the impression that he wasn’t going to like whatever it was that Ray had come to say, but then he very rarely did.

Kendra spoke. “Three hours ago, we received a dispatch from an agent in East Germany that Dr Eobard Thawne had escaped from prison within the Soviet Bloc. Dr Thawne was responsible for the development of some of the most deadly biological weapons that the Soviets have ever created. He was arrested some months ago after “testing” a new biological agent on a fellow scientist. The East Germans called it murder.”

“Even the East Germans will only go so far,” said Ray.

“He has been put on the KGB wanted list and…” began Kendra, but Rip interrupted.

“Yes, I get the picture. The Russians have a mad scientist on the loose. What has that got to do with me?”

Kendra sighed, gave Ray a sideways look and sat down on the sofa.

“Dr Thawne was a friend of Zaman Druce,” said Ray.

“Druce?” said Rip, coldness settling in his chest. “How did an East German scientist meet Druce?”

“They both studied at Cambridge for a period. At that point Thawne hadn’t made his allegiances clear, he’d been living in West Germany with his mother, his father lived in East Germany. We’re not sure when he crossed over, but he corresponded with Druce for years after they left Cambridge. I would assume that they saw something in each other that they recognised. Eobard Thawne is also a first class pilot.”

Rip looked down at his coffee and scowled. He was unwilling to confront the thoughts and emotions that hearing the name Druce brought back, and especially not in front of Ray and Kendra. There was a reason why he had chosen to live some distance from civilization. Druce had betrayed them all to gain control of the top secret helicopter that Ray’s team had been working on and Rip had been a test pilot for.

Ray continued.

“They may even have met again in later years.” He leaned towards Rip slightly with his hands clasped over the handle of his walking stick. “There is a very good chance that Thawne knows about the Waverider.”

Rip looked up at Ray. The Waverider was probably the most hi-tech helicopter in the western world and currently it was in Rip’s care, much to the annoyance of Ray and the Firm. She was a black painted, stealth equipped, flying gunship, and Rip’s main complication in his life. The only other person that he had entrusted with the secret was his best friend, Gideon. Rip would not let the Waverider be taken from him, and certainly not by Eobard Thawne.

“The last information that we have on his whereabouts suggests that he was heading for the United States,” added Kendra, “we have to assume that he is coming for the Waverider.”

“I want your guarantee, Rip, that you won’t take the Waverider out, from wherever you have it hidden, until we have Thawne safely on his way back to East Germany,” said Ray, looking Rip straight in the eye.

Rip held Ray’s stare.

“The Firm has had its reasons for keeping Waverider on the ground before now and they have nothing to do with any East German scientist. Why should I believe you?”

“Damn it, Rip!” said Ray, exasperated. He rose from the chair pushing his walking stick into the floor as if it was his source of his disapproval. “I don’t need to remind you that Druce has caused us trouble from beyond the grave before. I don’t want the Waverider to fall into the hands of anyone like Thawne. I’m concerned for its safety and yours!”

“Are you, Ray? The Waverider is a powerful piece of military hardware. Excuse me if I find it hard to believe your altruism, especially when you’ve yet to bring me any leads on Miranda despite your vast resources,” replied Rip, his voice raising in volume. He was not satisfied by Ray’s explanation. “Now, if you don’t mind, I’m going fishing.”

He rose from his seat and grabbed his fishing rod from beside the door.

“Ray’s telling the truth,” added Kendra, more calmly then her boss.

“He’d better be,” said Rip, opening the door and stepping out onto the porch. “He’d better be,” he said more quietly to himself as he strode towards the boat moored on the end of the jetty.

Twenty minutes later the white helicopter started its engines and lifted off, heading towards Ray’s next rendezvous, whatever that was.

Determined not to let his day’s fishing be ruined by Ray’s visit, Rip stayed on the lake longer than he would have normally. It was only when the air began to turn cold that he realised he had spent the whole day sitting in the boat, brooding. He had caught some fish early in the day but later his mind had wandered away from the task at hand and to the past, to Miranda. The helicopter, no matter how special it was, could not replace Miranda. She had been a fantastic pilot too, which was why she’d been flying for the Firm in Vietnam.

He’d always known that she had a dangerous job and wasn’t the kind of woman Rip could leave at home and expect to be happy. That was why he had liked her when they had first met, but he desperately wished she hadn’t gone on that last mission. He felt the great sadness of losing her rise within him and he pushed it back down. He’d done his grieving.

He tied up the boat on the wooden jetty and went in to cook his fish for supper. It was only when he sat down later that evening that he noticed the file on the table.

He found the spy games very tiresome at time. He knew Ray would never leave it there by mistake, but if Ray wanted him to know something and couldn’t officially tell him then this gave him some plausible deniability. Rip picked up the file, poured himself a second glass of red wine and settled down to read.

When he had finished, he knew why Ray was so worried about this man, Thawne. He also knew why Ray had left the file for him to read and it chilled him to the bone. It was a lead on Miranda, one that even the Firm couldn’t follow up, if he was reading this right.

[officiallallorona]

AOS thoughts 3x08-3x18

the latest in opinions no one asked for

Hunter’s hacker persona when they break into the ATCU is fantastic. Love Daisy feeding him hacker jargon as Mack pretends to be the FBI hotline. Lincoln looks impressed af and honestly me too. The team just doing classic spy hijinks is my fave.

Oof. I KNEW Rosalind and Coulosn wouldn’t end well. I was hoping they’d just have a “sorry it didn’t work out” sitch that ended with her put on a bus. But of course they fridged her. *eyeroll* It’s not as if Team Coulson doesn’t already have 1000 valid reasons to kill Ward.

A taste of DIRECTOR MACK this early? In season 3? Be still my beating heart.

God, these Malick’s stay annoying, don’t they? Although I think Nathaniel will still prove to be the most annoying.

Fitz is so SOFT for Jemma, and it’s really cute. Homeboy’s heart is breaking trying to help her with Will but he’ll just do whatever. Fitzsimmons is still far from being “the draw” for me like they are with most of the fandom, but I do enjoy them.

Kinda sad they killed Will off. He had the makings of being a good character. Now it just seems like he was contrived Fitzsimmons angst that they neutralized immediately.

Omg OF COURSE Hunter tried an Inhuman fish oil pill. That’s one of those little character things just thrown in that I love.

I’ve seen the Spy’s Goodbye in GIF form but I didn’t expect it to hit so hard? I nearly cried! I already miss Bobbi and Hunter so much.

Oooh! Surpise Bethany Joy Lenz! Is Haley James Scott here to fuck shit up?

I have a lot of thoughts about 3x15 in particular because I love this damn episode.

I love Coulson having trouble not calling Daisy “Skye.” The fact that he slipped up for the first time in awhile in this ep when telling her to come home really emphasizes their father/daughter relationship. Skye is the girl he found out in a van and “adopted.” So that’s who he thinks of when she’s going off into a more dangerous than usual situation.

Great job, effects people. Those fleshy skeletons Hive leaves behind genuinely squick me out.

Fitz explains the concept of space-time SO MUCH BETTER than anyone in Endgame did.

May and Andrew have such a beautiful, tragic story. Ming-Na Wen and Blair Underwood’s acting is just top notch.

Oh, Lincoln has indeed grown on me. I no longer find him boring. I still don’t think that he’s Daisy’s soulmate or anything (I think they’re both too similar in letting their emotions get the best of them that they wouldn’t have worked long-term even if he hadn’t died), but I do enjoy them. And they are sweet/helping each other grow even among the chaos.

Fitzsimmons in the “snowy” ashes saying “I think we’re supposed to hold hands now...maybe some things are inevitable” is lovely.

This stuff with Daisy and Charles Hinton is really sweet too, if devastating. He’s just so HAPPY he finally made a difference. And she’s promising to protect his daughter (not unlike the agent who protected baby Daisy). I’m EMOTIONAL.

Damn it. So much for Bethany Lenz fucking shit up. Fridged for Malick. I swear, when they introduced her in the stinger, they were implying that she would be just as formidable as her dad. But nope. Disappointing.

Oh that’s nice that they got the same dude to be young Gideon in S7 as they did in S3.

Eww Malick dying was gross. This show goes pretty hard with gore for a basic cable show.

YoYo and Mack learning each other’s languages. She was practicing “nice to see you again. You’re looking well” specifically for him? GIRL I LOVE?!!!!

Also God, I love Daisy as the leader of the Secret Warriors. The show is NOT going to give me enough of this. I already feel robbed.

Bruh, 3x17 was fantastically suspenseful. Who’s the mole? The Inhumans feeling hunted by SHIELD and trying to regroup. And Dark, Brainwashed Daisy is one of the things I knew was coming, but my jaw still dropped. 

Wow, the team really doesn’t like Lincoln, do they? They’re doing everything to save infected Daisy but Coulson is willing to nuke Lincoln the second he gets infected? I’m glad May calls Coulson out on it. Also, Lincoln saying that he bets they’d like if he died so “you three can go back to being a small, messed up, family.” While I like the emphasis on them being a family (and doing the classic “I don’t like our daughter’s bf”), it seems a little unwarranted. Lincoln’s volatile, but I don’t think he’s any more chaotic than Daisy. And sure, he’s there for his girl and not the cause, but such was the case with Hunter and the only one who gave him shit for that was May. In this case it seems like so many--Coulson, May, Mack--are kinda just dealing with Lincoln for Daisy’s sake and I don’t know that strong of a dislike/distrust is earned.

However, it does make me smile thinking of the future in which everyone is on-board with Daisy/Sousa.

Mack saying “If [Dr. Radcliffe] is the only way to cure Tremors, you know where I stand” when it comes to Fitzsimmons performing unethical surgery. Listen, I know it’s protagonist-guided morality with how the team would flame anyone else for staking so much on one person vs the greater good, but honestly Daisy deserves people who love her that much. Who say “fuck it. You do what it takes to get her back.”

NEEDLE IN THE EYE. I DID NOT NEED THIS. Also omg, it’s Jonathan from The Mummy!

[killian-whump]

I know you weren't a big fan of s6, so if you could rewrite it, what would you change?

Everything.

No, I’m kidding. I mean, there were some things I liked about S6 and would definitely keep around. I thought the S5 finale set everything up for S6 really well. I was excited for the Land of Untold Stories, and all the tales that were hinted at in the scenes that took place there, and I love Regina, especially when she’s the Evil Queen in flashbacks, so I was all amped up for the dual Reginas storyline. S6 looked great from that point.

Then it all went to shit.

The Evil Queen thing was SO over-the-top, and Lana was playing her in a campy and ridiculous way that didn’t appeal to me at all. In hindsight, I can see that they were trying to keep her “redeemable” and play up the whole “still Regina, even as the Evil Queen” thing for the storyline resolution, so they needed her to only be quasi-evil instead of evil-evil. Okay, fair enough, but it was still super disappointing and even downright cringey, and I will never forgive them for turning one of my favorite parts of the show into a circus act. Honestly, if they weren’t going to do the Evil Queen justice, I would’ve rather they hadn’t gone anywhere near her. So that would be change #1: Drop the camp or drop that storyline entirely.

And they could’ve dropped it entirely. That exciting land of Untold Stories they teased us with in the S5 finale was... a let-down. Yes, we got Jekyll and Hyde and Captain Nemo... but the Aladdin stuff they gave us was more fairytale than literary classic, and wtf was up with the ridiculous one-off shit like the Count of Monte Cristo? There were SO many classics they could’ve visited, and greater detail they could’ve gone into with the ones they DID visit... and the Land of Untold Stories was so COOL looking, with its wild mix of architecture and dirigibles and steampunk style. WHY would you create such a fantastical and fun-looking world, and then take everyone from that world and put them in OUR boring ass world? S6 should’ve taken place IN the Land of Untold Stories and brought us a lot more fresh takes and characters from that land than the pittance we got. AND MORE STEAMPUNK, FOR FUCK’S SAKE.

I’m also still angry that they teased me with an asylum plot in the press before the S5 finale, then gave me a taste of it IN that finale... and then ripped it from my greedy, hot little hands. They didn’t even put Killian Jones in a straitjacket while they were there. What the fuck, guys? Who does that? That man was born to be put into a straitjacket for my enjoyment and you had him RIGHT THERE and even put someone in a straitjacket, but it was the wrong fucking someone. Had S6 stayed in the Land of Untold Stories, we could’ve had untold opportunities for more asylum whump, and they could’ve put Killian in a straitjacket and made all of my dreams come true.

And why the SHIT did they actually kill off Hyde when Sam Witwer was the best thing to happen to that show since Colin, himself?! I mean, yeah, the Jekyll and Hyde storyline was probably planned from the get-go to end in their deaths, but when you see what a complete GEM Hyde is, what with his penchant for the Evil Queen’s cooking and his ridiculously awesome facial expressions and his dashing dapper-do and Sam Fucking Witwer’s everything... change whatever the fuck you need to change to somehow keep this man on your show. And then they even went and full-on made this man redeemable and gave him a heartbreaking backstory right before they killed him. Like, fuck you? Seriously. Fuck everyone for that one. I will never forgive them for killing Hyde.

Okay. Moving on from my general complaints, we come to my Killian-specific complaints. And there’s a lot of them. S6 did that character SO wrong SO many times... I really just want to take it out back and beat the shit out of it.

For starters, his relationships were ALL thrown in the shitcan. It was like S3-S5 just never happened and he was right back to Square One with everyone, being that dastardly pirate that can’t be trusted and that no one could ever care about. People who clearly cared enough about him to go to the fucking Underworld for him in S5 were suddenly calling him a pirate like it’s a foul word, and blatantly telling him he’s not good enough to be part of the family. Yeah, I get it, they wanted some dramatic negativity before showing these characters fully accepting and embracing him as part of their clan... but you know what makes for really awesome storytelling? Realistic relationships that grow and evolve over the course of several seasons - which was what they fucking HAD before they threw them all in the shitter for fake “developments” that had already happened. And FYI, Henry was actually nastier to Killian in the beginning of 6x06 than he was during the Spell of Shattered Sight. Like, did no one at the writers table even pause in their pursuit of drama long enough to realize that if Henry really ever had that much animosity towards Killian, it would’ve come out THEN? Or, you know, at any point in the course of the last four seasons?!

And it goes without saying: I would never, ever, ever have had Killian be the murderer of David’s father. Or, at the very least, I would’ve never had the murder go down the way they showed it in the flashback. Have it be an accidental death. Have it be a pirate duel. Have it be anything but cold-blooded murder. First of all, it’s just not believable that David could forgive him so easily and so quickly for depriving him of a loving father for no fucking reason. Secondly, they spend four whole seasons showing us flashbacks of a pirate with a deeply-buried heart of gold, who kept wanting to make the right decisions... but ended up making the wrong ones time and time again. They never showed us, before this ridiculously cheap dramatic ploy, a man who willfully murdered people just for shits and giggles. Finally, Killian Jones is a motherfucking pirate. Stealing from the King is par for the course, but the whole “Dead men tell no tales” thing makes ZERO sense. Pirates thrive by striking FEAR into the hearts of their enemies, and you don’t get a solid reputation for being a cut-throat villain to be feared by literally killing off all the witnesses to your evil deeds. Pirates are like, one step short of going “BEHOLD! It is I, Captain PirateGuy, here to steal your gold and seduce your ladies! Be sure to tell all your friends and neighbors about this when we’re through.” So... yeah. Way to throw a completely nonsensical spanner in the works that makes literally NO sense and flies in the face of everything else you’ve said and shown about this character in the past. It’s shit, and I refuse to accept it, and they should be sorry for its very existence.

And then there’s Captain Swan. *sigh* This relationship fell prey to the same shit that ALL of Killian’s relationships were destroyed by throughout S6. Only it was much, much worse here - because this is supposed to be (and has been!) his closest, most important relationship. And yet... We see Emma blow him off and then lie right to his face in the very first episode. Then she lies some more in each of the next few episodes, and when her lies are finally revealed, she doesn’t even seem to give a shit about the trust she’s betrayed or the hurt she’s caused. And the fact that they even filmed that deleted scene with Emma giving Killian a flippant “I said I was sorry...” just shows how fucking tone-deaf those writers were. If someone lies to your face, repeatedly, over something of life-or-death importance and for a lengthy period of time, then basically gives you a “I said I was sorry, what more do you want from me?” twenty minutes after their lies are revealed, because you’re still sore about it... get the FUCK out of that relationship immediately, because that person does not give two shits about you.

Things only got worse when she snooped through his belongings, pushed him to propose on her terms and when she wanted him to (despite the fact that he was clearly drunk and troubled by something at the time), called off their engagement when he dared to keep something from her (despite the fact that she’d just recently spent weeks lying right to his face), believed that he would just abandon her completely despite everything they’d been through, lied to him again right before their wedding in the course of once again shutting him out and not letting him help her with something (even though that’s literally the EXACT reason she ended their engagement when HE was the one doing it)... I mean, come on. That is NOT the CS I signed up for, and I refuse to accept it as the CS that is my OTP.

Hence, the Dark Emma explanation was born in my head. And when it comes to changes to S6... I’d either completely re-write about 90% of S6′s CS storylines... or make my Dark Emma theory a reality. The theory is as such: Since Emma did not die in 5x11, but merely had her Darkness sucked into Killian/Excaliber before HE died... some residual darkness remained in her. Nothing much was seen/noticed in 5b (though Killian DID make a comment about her not sleeping...) because she was too focused on saving Killian. However, once she was back home, safe and sound with her man, the Darkness started showing itself. She lied to those she loved. She made uncharacteristically selfish decisions. She hurt people. She eschewed all she’d learned about letting others in and getting help from the people who love her. And it wasn’t until her literal and figurative death at Gideon’s hands that the Darkness was truly eradicated from her - and only THEN could she truly find her Happy Beginning.

Oh, and by the way, I also hate the writers for even HAVING Killian walk to the docks with a packed bag and even consider boarding the Nautilus and leaving town. No. Just... no. Having him even CONSIDER doing that is even worse than having Emma believe he WOULD do such a thing to her. It’s like they got the S6 writers out of a Cracker Jack box and not a single one had ever watched an episode of the show or seen this couple before in their lives. Their whole fucking SCHTICK is that he would NEVER abandon her, that he would follow her to the end of the world or time itself... and that, despite a lifetime of fears and abandonment issues, Emma Swan has come to TRUST that he would never leave her. YOU CAN’T JUST GO “LOL, THAT’S NOT TRUE NOW” AND EXPECT ME TO ACCEPT THAT SHIT. No. Fuck you. Fuck your entire season AND the boat it rode in on. Just... fuck, man. FUCK.

The wedding was nice, though. I loved the musical aspect. Everyone did great in it. It was a truly lovely episode in almost every way, although I didn’t care for Emma’s dress and especially not her hairdo. It was too stark, too severe, but somehow too fancy at the same time... and it seemed more Jen Morrison than Emma Swan to me. Other than that, though, it was lovely. Everyone looked lovely. The singing was lovely. The vows were lovely. Shame about the whirling black vortex of doom, though.

Speaking of things that suck, I would also like to set that fucking doily shirt that Emma wore in 6x17 on fucking fire. And she actually DARED to rescue my man in that atrocity. Did she not realize I would need to SEE that shitty article of clothing every time I admired that dashing rescue? Did no one think of the KWs of the world who would suffer from this fashion faux pas?!?!

Oh, and I hate that they literally had Emma burn Killian’s image in the curse and not have any kind of recollection. I mean, I get that they wanted Henry to make her believe, and the way they got him to do that was cute, but did they HAVE to show Emma looking at Killian’s picture burning in the fire and being like, “Eh, he might ring a bell, but not enough to bother thinking about for more than a second or anything.” I could’ve done without that scene, honestly, because it just comes off like, “This love isn’t strong enough to break through this curse!” and EXCUSE ME, but where’s the fucking fun in that? Haven’t any of those bitches ever read a goddamn fanfic?! LOVE BREAKING THROUGH A CURSE IS ALL THE RAGE, GUYS. That’s the kind of shit we like to read and see in our OTPs. What’s with this “Eh, let that handsome fucker on page 172 burn” shit??

Oh, but that scene where Fiona serves the charred remains of the book to Henry on a platter would need to stay. That shit was stone cold savage. That bitch came to play, and that scene straight up told you that she was NOT going to be sitting at anyone’s Thanksgiving table next year, asking someone to pass the potatoes like she was just named People Magazine’s Redeemed Villain of the Year or something. She meant business.

Finally, I think I would’ve ended the show with the S6 finale. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed S7 and I loved KnightRook and Wish Hook and all the excellent Colin content we got that year... but in hindsight, the Hail Mary play of rebooting the series really just didn’t work, and S7 ended up as the “extra chapter” the series itself didn’t need. It’s not that I would want to give up the awesomeness of what we had... It’s just that I feel like if we hadn’t had it, we’d be unaware of what we were missing out on anyway, but the series as a whole would’ve maintained more of its impact and dignity.

But then, we were blessed with Wish Hook and the wonders of S7 Hooked Queen, so... :D I mean, coulda shoulda woulda, I’ve got ‘em now and you can’t take that away from meeee...

[howtotrainyouragents]

Agent H’s AOS Rewatch

Season 3 Pro’s and Con’s 

We’re done with the season 4 rewatch, and I’m over here still trying to process season 3. First time watching, it was my least favorite season and I nearly stopped watching the show because of it. Second time watching…it’s still probably my least favorite just by comparison, but I have infinite more respect for it. Anyway, I needed to sort out my thoughts on this, so it’s all under “keep reading” and don’t get mad at me.

Cons (because let’s get the bad stuff out of the way)

-I really dislike revenge stories, so all the revenge stuff with Hunter and Coulson and Ward and all did not sit well with me and felt even OOC. 

-Speaking of, from the S2 finale through most of this season, there’s this theme of the men protecting and revenging their wounded or fridged girlfriends. It’s not super fun because this is a show where the women are clearly just as, if not more, competent than the men, but they’re not given the same opportunity to protect/revenge the men, much less given the same importance even in their own stories. I’m blanking on what MCU movies were going on around the time of this season, but I remember seeing this even in the movies. If I remember correctly there was a head of MCU who was later removed, but was apparently responsible. 

-The use of Ward is muddled. I’m cool with his takeover of HYDRA, that seemed natural. But you expect it to lead to a huge standoff with SHIELD because he, their worst enemy, is now head of their worst enemy organization. Instead, he gets converted to the HYDRA religion and literally becomes a vessel. Which is fine, but the transition was really hurriedly and poorly done. This is a man who has complex views of loyalty (Garrett not HYDRA. Skye and Coulson but not SHIELD), so I’m gonna need a lot more convincing that he’d believe Gideon’s HYDRA.

-This will be on both lists: I’m disappointed about how after three seasons HYDRA is taken out so quietly and quickly.

-I don’t know where to put this, but: I didn’t actually hate the space boyfriend arc as much the second time around, but the potential overall got squandered and I dislike that. 

-Rosalind’s death and possibly her whole arc was pointless. She was literally created and killed to serve Coulson’s character. Gross. And it’s a shame because it would have been really cool to use her as an actual foe-turned-friend for SHIELD throughout the season; she could have easily taken Mace’s place in S4 and that way at least would have been important for two seasons

-Okay, this is ABC’s fault not AOS’s. But like I remember how hard they advertised for Secret Warriors. Like that was the name of the arc. And. Then. They were a team FOR AN EPISODE.  Imagine my disappointment. Also, there really weren’t enough Inhumans this season to suit me.

-Bobbi and Hunter leave for a failed spinoff and I will never forgive Marvel for doing that.

-I mean…I appreciate that they give Andrew a noble death, but like…was it really necessary to have him turn and later die? Really? It gives Ming Na Wen and Blair Underwood opportunities to do extraordinary acting and they nail it, but like maybe don’t kill a guy to solve your inevitable ship? Don’t kill off your second black actor?

-The time jump in the season finale is too sudden. Like we barely get to grieve over Lincoln and they hit us with a time jump and Daisy on the run and new director in charge. Uncool. 

-This was the season I started to dislike Fitzsimmons. Don’t hate me. To me there’s an undercurrent in the writing that seems to favor Fitz over Simmons. FS’s subject to the same sexism that I mentioned in the first bullet. Like the story post-Simmons’ return focuses a lot more on Fitz’s feelings than on hers. He’s the one who has to stop her from getting tortured. He’s the one who saves Will, when it makes way more sense for her to go. He’s the one they all turn to for answers, when it should be both of them combined. And Simmons just gets a little pushed aside in her own story arc, but she just goes along with it anyway. 

-I had to write this last because this is the thing that hurts the season the most for me: Lincoln’s treatment. Okay, first, he’s a great character who got a major personality change between seasons. I don’t like the personality change, but I’d be okay with it if they didn’t do worse. For starters, we barely know him. His life and backstory are so vague, the guy he visits in 3x03 is just “a friend”, and like we get zero information on how they know each other. They spend the entire season having everyone in SHIELD (except Daisy) be against him, dislike him, belittle him, and mistrust him WHEN HE DESERVED NONE OF IT. Like they make it really obvious that Coulson dislikes him father-style because of his relationship with Daisy. They make him petulant and act out to prove that Mack and May are right to mistrust him when really given the fact that he was an Inhuman guide and a medical doctor and a recovered addict, he’d be a lot more under control. They make Fitzsimmons talk down to him just because no one can be smart except Fitzsimmons, when clearly he would know more about Inhuman biology and medicine in general THAN THE BIOCHEM PHD (sorry that one will always bug me). Like they make some work on him with Coulson and May, and that’s good, but overall he is not allowed to have a solid relationship with anyone but Daisy. I think the writers 1) knew he was gonna die and decided not to invest in him or his relationships. 2) were trying to get a moody bad boy in the cast, and decided to cast him as it when it didn’t really make sense. Also, while talking about Lincoln, I really wish they did some more interesting things with his powers than lightning blasts. He has electric powers!! There’s so much you can do!!

-Okay, this one is just real personal. LINCOLN IS A MEDICAL DOCTOR. Or at least a medical student or resident or fellow (I mean, he’s in the hospital doing rounds). TREAT HIM AS SUCH. HE WANTED TO HELP PEOPLE, LET HIM HELP PEOPLE. LET HIM DO THE SURGERIES AND KNOW THE STUFF ABOUT BIOLOGY AND MEDICINE. LET HIM RETURN TO HIS OLD LIFE AS A DOCTOR. You had such a good character who turned himself around from addiction, dedicated his life to saving lives, got thrown multiple curve balls, and now has to decide how will he continue to serve others. Yes, he’s a hero in the end. But all that in between time, he could have been saving lives too.

Pros (because there is good stuff, I promise) 

-Someone mentioned that this is the first season to have a unified storyline throughout, and that’s so true and it’s so well done! 

-There’s a good natural continuation of the HYDRA and Inhuman storylines from S1 and S2. I think we can look at AOS as two large arcs: S1-S3 is about powered people and HYDRA. S4-S7 is about bending the limits of reality with Ghost Rider, LMDs, Framework, Space, and Time Travel,. S1 was about introducing us to powered people and HYDRA, S2 was about developing the history and politics of them respectively and how they relate to SHIELD. S3 is when Inhumans get involved with SHIELD and with the world directly and the fallout from that. For HYDRA it’s when we get the history and reasoning of the group, and even if it’s a retcon, I appreciate that it introduces the background of HYDRA as a way to end this arc

-Overall, I really do appreciate how this season fills out a lot of worldbuilding. We get a complete history on HYDRA, and we get way more info on Inhumans, but we also get to see how the human world is reacting to and divided on Inhumans, which carries over into the net season

-On both lists: It’s good that they take HYDRA out so quickly and quietly. That plotline had run its course, and it was so bittersweet because they finally had defeated their biggest enemy, but now they had even bigger problems to deal with it. That scene of Coulson and May watching HYDRA fall is one of my favorites because it mirrors that S1 scene of watching HYDRA takeover, but it’s so quiet and not celebratory like it should be.

-Like I said, I hate revenge arcs, but I do appreciate how it came full circle at the end with Coulson admitting his mistake and regret in seeking revenge. That’s much more on brand with Coulson and MCU even I had to sit through a painful arc just to get to that point. 

-Episode 1, Daisy’s entrance and, for that matter, Fitz’s entrance. HOT DAMN.

-One of my favorite things about AOS is the way that they mix up pairings and everyone feels like friends and family. This season did a fantastic job on that with like Fitz/Bobbi, Mack/Daisy, Hunter/May, and way more.

-I complain that there wasn’t enough Inhumans to suit me, but also I really enjoyed the ones we got. I expected them to do Inhumans with basic powers like water, fire, plants, shrinking. But AoS writers were like nah, how about a guy who melts metal?? How about Medusa eyes?? How about a guy who can predict deaths? Like they just went straight to the extremes and I respect that. And yes, we have our typical speedster and fire guy, but the sheer joy that comes from those characters makes up for the predictability of their powers.

-We get Joey and Yoyo who are the effin’ best and deserve the world. And with Lincoln and Daisy we got SECRET WARRIORS!!!!

-First time, we get introduced to Charles and Robin and manipulating time, which obviously becomes important later, so I like that they introduce it so early in the show.

-I also love the way things come full circle with Lash. I wish he didn’t die, but the reveal of his true purpose was amazing 

-THE FITZSIMMONS KISS. THE FITZSIMMONS SEX SCENE. Do I really need to say more?

-THAT FITZ vs MONOLITH SCENE. That is top like five moments of the show for me, and I’m gonna need the Emmys to give Iain de Castecker his belated Best Actor award any day now.

-4722 Hours was a work of art, and Elizabeth Henstridge, I will be getting you that Best Actress Emmy one way or another. 

-Brett Dalton’s acting. This rewatch served to highlight how brilliantly he developed Ward’s evilness over the course of the three seasons and then the way he flipped the switch and played a completely different character as Hydra. You can feel it in his voice and mannerisms, it’s a totally different person even if it’s still technically Ward’s body. And to top it off, that finale where he pulls of a brilliant two-minute psychotic breakdown and a kickass fight scene. Standing ovation, good sir. I miss you.

-After S2 fridged three women of color, I do appreciate how this season chooses to take out four of its white characters even if I’m sad that they had to go.

-The Star Wars references were so effin’ funny

-Spy’s Goodbye. I will never be okay about this.