i decided to make a list of 15 of my favorite plot devices

i think they're mostly in order but all things are subject to change. time to explain my passions

1. asexuals - self-explanatory. the best number one joy of all time is when there is an asexual person, canonically, and not just in my mind palace. so far no show has managed to do this except fucking shadowhunters (and bojack horseman ig but it's not my thing). i know there are people out there who can write way better than the shadowhunters writing room but i don't know why they aren't getting on this. tick tock. example: raphael shadowhunters

2. amnesia - notably different from dementia, which is depressing and bad (thinking about you, dean winchester). amnesia is only good because eventually they get it back. the best thing about amnesia is that it shows you who your Little Guy (gender neutral) is with everything stripped away from them including their sense of self. do they still go for the same kind of coffee? do they still click with the same people they used to love? can they still fight? what do they stand for? it's very rewarding when your little guy acts the same way without knowing why. it's also especially cool for action heroes bc they'll still be able to win a fight and it's like wow <3 fight scenes with emotional stakes!! also i love that it gives us a mystery to solve. sometimes a partially amnesiac character is amnesiac because they did a terrible crime. and they've got to solve it while accidentally working against their past self. fun! examples: fang from ff13. wolverine. why, who did you think i was going to use

3. brainwashing - for the same reasons as amnesia. it's the same concept: take away everything and who is your little guy? the real little guy is in there and they are working so hard to get out. also they will be sooo sad about all the crimes they did later. example: fenris dragon age. d'avin killjoys. and okay fine one other guy we're not talking about

4. enemies to lovers - what's better than two people wanting to murder each other until they don't......always a good side of bickering with this as well. main draw tho is the process of simply two people getting to know one another in the way that you can tell strangers things you can't tell your friends. it's more work to love someone when you hate them and with more work comes a better reward. also, sexual tension. example: so many. fenris/hawke. fenris/anders. botw link/zelda. john/aeryn. bonnie and damon if the cw weren't cowards and i don't even like damon i think he's unforgivably horrible (derogatory)

5. monster under the bed character - i don't know if this has a real name. it's like the One Guy (again, gender neutral) who has shaped the protagonist's whole life who is threat number one in any given situation. Primal Fear of this guy and all they represent is similar to how little kids are scared of the monster under the bed hence the name. it's not JUST an arch enemy or an antagonist it's like. the only enemy that matters. not a bad guy but THE bad guy. if you can boil someone's issues down and stuff them all into a single person and then also make that person scary. and then also they can fight!! fuck yeah fight scenes!!! if you're really lucky this will overlap with either somebody's parent or somebody's ex. examples: AUGH SO MANY. for dean winchester it's yellow eyes. for sam winchester it's lucifer. for fenris it's danarius. for jace wayland it's valentine. for dutch killjoys it's khlyen. for anakin skywalker it's palpatine. for derek hale it's kate argent. going nuts just thinking about it

6. reluctant assassins - crucially if they don't care about being assassins it doesn't work for me (sorry kassandra asscreed). i went into this in more detail here but your assassin simply Must be compromised in some way so they can regret all their little crimes later. otherwise what's the point?? this overlaps so thoroughly with brainwashed iedk if it should count as its own entry but whatever. examples: fenris dragon age. dutch killjoys. d'avin killjoys. elliot leverage. and the other one

7. two-person love triangle - this is a very specific sub-example of secret identities in general which ARE good except they're usually in superhero media and i am really just so totally fucking over the entire CONCEPT of superheroes. anyway it's when one person has a secret identity and the other person forms a relationship with their "real" identity and their "secret" one. and then they feel conflicted about loving two people at once and having to choose but SURPRISE it's the same person! i like this because it has anti love triangle energy. lots of romantic tension and none of the dumb fucking YA bullshit. (apologies to YA.) example: arthur and merlin (who is also "emrys" at least in fanfic)

8. 4th wall shit - when the piece of media is in your house with you. i don't feel i need to clarify further than this because dr gaster is probably spying on me as we speak. examples: everything toby fox has ever made. s*pernatural, sometimes. i also had a deeply haunted experience with final fantasy x.

9. last guy (gender neutral) standing - part of a team or group that got tragically mcmurder prior to the start of the story and this person is so terribly sad about it. crucially this has to be a side character whose relationships with dead people are more important than or equally important to their relationships with the current living cast members. character deaths you almost agree with because then at least they can be with their fallen buds. examples: auron from ffx, noel from ffxiii

10. immortal characters - for the same reasons as above but also they CAN'T DIE EVER so they don't even have that to look forward to. also sometimes they wind up being science experiments. examples: jesse turner from @cambionverse (sorry jesse)

11. evil doppelganger - usually this is in video games where they just take the sprite or the polygons and recolor them to be black but also you have some mirrorverse/au shit going on sometimes and then there's evil twins, and shapeshifters, and clones...i love when everybody gets tricked into thinking somebody is doing crimes but actually theyre just out here and it's their evil double causing problems on purpose and not even being the one to go to jail forever because of it. also, when the evil double has mind-reading powers or whatever b/s to 1. make them a better trickster 2. to make them better at precision-point roasting of whomstever they look like. also acceptable: when you little guy just suddenly turns fucking evil and/or gets possessed and you have to cure them to get them back. idk maybe that should go under brainwashing. examples: dutch and aneela. link and dark link. zelda and the puppet. soulless sam. demon dean. hullen johnny.

12. fire powers - WHO doesn't love a little arson...i feel like this is the same concept behind werewolves which boils down to "fear of anger" bc with anger comes the loss of control and the devastating fallout... your fire guy (gender neutral but idk any fire girls) has to have a lot of self control or they'll fuck everybody up. they're very dangerous! not unlike assassins. also, fire is pretty. bonus if they have done crimes before either on purpose or on accident. examples: jesse turner again, roy mustang aka the OG fireguy, prince zuko

13. big damn reunion - when two people are split up with little to no chance of ever seeing each other again and then they do anyway. this is why i'm never mad when they bring characters back from the dead. examples: i'm actually totally blanking on these, i feel like it tends to happen in fic so much more often. also i've been writing this list awhile

14. time travel - i love! time travel! i love when people see an apocalyptic future and go back and fix it (chrono trigger, ff13). i love when there's a stable loop (tears of the kingdom) or a paradox (song of storms in ocarina of time). i love visits to the ancient past (skyward sword). i love when there's just an actual fucking timeloop (s*pernatural). it's really good!!! examples: oops i just listed them all

15. body swap - last but not least i think it is so fun when two people wind up living each other's lives. it's more fun in tv when people get to switch which character theyre playing but it's good in any form because what a way to get to know someone and also the endless potential for shenanigans. examples: dreamless (webcomic), your name, various episodes of tv shows many of which are bad (s*pernatural's was extremely bad).

ok, that's the list. originally it was 10, then 13, then 15, so i think i'd better stop here.

Jess Watches // Wed 27 Sept Synopses & Favourite Scenes

Orphan Black (rewatching with mum) 4x06 The Scandal of Altruism

Sarah and Cosima set up an agreement with Susan Duncan. Meanwhile, Krystal is in the police precinct to report what she believes is going on with the illegal use of stem cells in cosmetics production.

The final scene of montages as we finally learn of Beth's final movements and what led her "To Train". All happening while Cosima breaks down outside the burning van. Still as devastating and gut wrenching watching again years later.

Killjoys (with friend) 1x09 Enemy Khlyen

Dutch realizes Khlyen is on level 71 of the RAC. Johnny and Dutch devise a plan to get to him and ask D'avin for help.

Johnny see the plasma and being like "Ooh, I'm gonna touch it." And Dutch briefly outsmarting Khlyen was very satisfying too.

Supernatural Academy (with friend) 1x11 Supernaturals of New York Part A

In the human world the twins feel sick because of the silver wall paint that hides their presence. Jae and Jessa to go out to buy some plants to cover the walls with to weaken the effect of the paint. They are spotted by Hali and are forced to clue her in.

Hali being super respectful of Jae's pronouns, then painting a rainbow on their face and gifting them her heart pride pin. <3

Avatar: The Last Airbender 3x16 The Southern Raiders

Azula ambushes the group, forcing them to split up again. In order to earn her forgiveness, Zuko helps Katara find the group of soldiers responsible for her mother's death.

When going too see Sokka for advice, Zuko bumps into Suki, who just happens to be out for a late night stroll. It then cuts to Sokka in his tent clearly ready for a romantic rendezvous, but pivoting the mood to help Zuko.

Van Helsing 1x06 Nothing Matters

Tensions at the hospital escalate when one of Brendan's followers is nearly killed by one of the booby-traps. Vanessa and Susan plot with Doc to help Axel take back control of the hospital.

I still do not trust Susan but I did love her skeleton hand jewellery.

Laura Dern as Amilyn Holdo in Star Wars: The Last Jedi (2017) / Camille Stopps as Najik in Killjoys (2015 - '19), "Enemy Khlyen"

Mystery Monday

Hallway in Killjoys

Khlyen walks down a hallway on the RAC in “Enemy Khlyen”.

Anyone know where in Toronto this was filmed?

KILLJOYS | 1.09

Killjoys - Series Finale - Opening summary

every alvis akari episode ↳ 1x09 - enemy khlyen

Killjoys Burn Notice AU

One of the main things that came out of my rewatch of Killjoys S01E02 was that a Burn Notice AU for the Killjoys characters basically writes itself. The backstories for a lot of the characters don't change much. D'avin is our Michael Westen. He and Johnny grew up with a shit dad in Miami. D'avin joined the military while Johnny stayed behind, learning to run grifts and steal cars. Eventually, D'avin goes from just military to black ops, and then gets burned, leading to his return to Miami. In the meantime, Johnny at some point tried to steal Dutch's car, when she was on the run after assassinating a local gang boss. They then joined Turin's agency, which both does bounty hunting and fixing, an agency with a reputation for providing fixer services with integrity, unlike the rampant corruption everywhere else in Miami. The Kin Rits are a powerful family based in Washington DC. Yalena and Aneela are fixers with much less ethical compunctions than Turin. Khlyen is up to Shady Government Rogue Black Ops Shit. Dutch was kidnapped from the Kin Rits as a baby and raised as a gang hitman. After finding her fairly recently, Khlyen was blackmailed into not letting Dutch know her true background, or bringing her back to DC. Hullen is an international crime syndicate, while The Lady is a step up from that, a shadowy conglomerate with a good amount of compromised "legitimate" power. Khlyen's Level 6 black ops agency was completely coopted by Hullen (hah, a shout-out to Rob Stewart's role in Nikita!). Aneela was great at STEM, and was originally going to go into biomed research, until The Lady recruited her, at which point she became a fixer like her mom, instead. Eventually, Aneela finds out about Khlyen running around with her long-lost twin in Miami, from some less-than-legal contacts. The whole Jaq situation is a hilarious morass of slow burn storylines converging. Delle Seyah is a corporate executive based in Miami, but a fair amount of time in DC for lobbying/influencing purposes. She had Jaq via anonymous-donor IVF (said donor being D'avin, of course). Delle Seyah contracted with a fixer (Aneela) to prevent her enemies from exploiting her pregnancy. The two of them never met face to face at the time, and Delle Seyah never heard Aneela's real voice. This is why Delle Seyah doesn't realize that Dutch is a twin, as she begins to interact with Team Awesome Force. However, this contact with Aneela back in the day got Delle Seyah on Khlyen's radar, so sometimes the two get up to shady shit together in Miami for mutually beneficial reasons. Jaq is a teenager in the present, and has an ear to the ground for more bizarre Florida Man shenanigans, which Team Awesome Force has a tendency of getting into. He becomes a fan of the team, tracking them down and starts hanging out with them, to their chagrin. Eventually, these seemingly unrelated happenings crash together. Delle Seyah finds out that her son has been hanging out with the fixer team she's sometimes hired and sometimes gone up against. She is not very happy about this. Aneela learns about Dutch, and Shit Happens, including Aneela and Delle Seyah finally meeting in person and hitting it off. Aneela finds out for Delle Seyah that D'avin is Jaq's sperm donor, and there are Shenanigans. The team learn that Jaq is Delle Seyah's son, and have very mixed feelings about this, especially as things with Aneela are getting murkier and murkier. And, finally, Jaq hacks the donor database himself to find out that D'avin is his biological dad. They all unite to protect Jaq from The Lady, who would hold him hostage against everyone. Family dinners get gloriously strange. In other news, Zeph left her Amish family, tried to finish her degree at a Miami for-profit scam college, and has to start working for Turin to pay the bills. It was supposed to be just a side-job until she got hired as a real scientist elsewhere, but then she joined Team Awesome Force and decided to stay. The rest of the characters are basically unchanged. Alvis is a religious activist, trying to bring about revolution. Pawter is the daughter of the Simms CEO, first a doctor and then eventually succeeding her mother as CEO. Fancy is a bounty hunter under Turin. Pree is a bartender with a very shady past. Pip is a fast-talking trust fund baby who makes deals happen under the table. (For funsies, we're going to just straight up transplant Westen-mama to be Jaqobis-mama.)

Killjoys Returns for its Fifth and Final Season Friday!

Killjoys Returns for its Fifth and Final Season Friday!

Killjoys returns for it’s fifth and final season this Friday (07/19) on Syfy, but before the season you should definitely try to rewatch at least your favorite episodes!  Season five’s first episode “Run, Yala, Run” (5×01)  looks to bring us exactly where the finale of season four “Sporemageddon” (4×10) left off with Team Awesome…

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There is one thing in that episode that has really really pissed me off.

Since when has Dutch flipped so much on what Khlyen did to her? The show started out with her knowing that he was a bad person and what he did to her was wrong and abusive but now she’s justifying how it made her who she had to be to survive?

And I am extra mad that it’s D’avin who has to tell her that yes he was abusive and you can’t justify it. When back in season two D’avin was the one trying to tell her that maybe Khlyen wasn’t her enemy and that he’d just done what he had to to do to protect her and I hated him for that.

Ahh Killjoys is going to break my heart ughh big spoilers for episode 6 and 7 below the cut

Baby Face, Killer 4x06

Dutch trains Jaq to fight an unstoppable enemy as Pree and Fancy look for the missing Gared.

O Mother, Where Art Thou 4x07

With D'av and Jaq on the run, Dutch and John hunt the answer to Khlyen's memory clue.

You don't need to forgive someone to miss them, and you don't need anyone's permission to love someone that you hate.

Johnny Jaqobis, Killjoys S02E10 ‘How to Kill Friends and Influence People’ 

This to me is such a profound statement which sums up John's character and one of the major themes of the show. It goes far beyond the purpose of comforting Dutch in a moment of bereavement. In fact, it goes back to the moment of her conception.

Spoilers.

Up until the age of around 8 years old Aneela and Yalena II (Aneela clone) were one and the same, then they split apart on divergent paths. Aneela bringing Yalena II out of the green was a quantum probability event and started a chain reaction which will hopefully end in the Lady’s destruction. 

However, there were then two versions of the same person in existence. Aneela was not capable of defeating the Lady by herself. Two of her combined would be no more successful than the first. The experiences that resulted in her being herself also resulted in certain weaknesses. This necessitated young Yalena/Yala’s reconstruction as person of greater integrity and strength.

Even if Khlyen used a memory mod machine to change Yala’s perception of her past, the emotions she felt toward her father would remain. This is why Dutch is so hung up on the man she thinks is her tutor. She has no record of him bringing her up, but she does have all those father-daughter feelings. When she sees the replay of Khlyen and little Neely together on Qresh, and then her young self in the harem, she realises she’s been robbed of the actual memories of a childhood she cherished. The memories of possible brothers and sisters on the Yardeeni moon didn't hold any emotion for her because the machine couldn't replicate that part. This is the Lady’s greatest mistake. The green can only hold memories and emotion is something else; she doesn't understand it and she can’t control it.

This is how they are going to win. 

This is how John comes in.

There’s a reason he’s emotional. When you're fighting an enemy whose main tactic is to strip the humanity from it's victims, someone with the level of compassion it takes to say something like the above quote is going to be their only defence. He keeps the otherwise unstable Dutch on an even keel, keeps her moral, keeps her right. He has a way of communicating that the Lady can’t understand, and most importantly, the way he loves is unpredictable and undeserved.

Love will win the war against an unfeeling enemy.

If they’re creating a a complex mess of relationship between Dutch and Aneela, I am absolutely here for it.

Now that we finally know why Dutch looks like Aneela (even though the logistics of it are still scrambling my brains a bit) I’m like a 100% more interested in this.

The questions of identity this brings about for Dutch are fascinating. Them being actual mirrors of each other. Being the good wolf and the bad wolf at war with each other, but with the beginnings of the implication that the only way the war can be won is if the wolves band together.

Because that’s the thing isn’t it? Dutch doesn’t know it yet, but Aneela isn’t the enemy, Aneela has never left her prison, she only exchanged one jailer for another.

And Aneela doesn’t remember it, but she loved Dutch (admittedly in a... kind of narcissistic manner, but still). Of course there’s envy from her side as well, she gave Khlyen a better version of herself to raise and now she wants to burn that version down for having the relationship with her father that she wanted back (not that it’s anything to actually be jealous of, Klyen wasn’t any kind of father of the year).

Kind of heartbreaking too, to think about how damn lonely Aneela must have been to come to this.

So anyway, I can’t wait to start seeing how Dutch and Aneela will actually interact when the story finally brings them together.

Hostile takeover

Remember, way back when Kendry was heading a farm of surrogates because actually carrying their own babies was below the Nine? Now she is the one used to carry someone else’s baby.

But Aneela’s quest to save her revealed much about how Hullen are actually run. Aneela is not really in charge of Hullen as we know but she isn’t even the one controlling the Green. The Lady is. She is the one trapped inside the plasma - it sentience and mind. She can order the ships and drone Hullen to do what she pleases even against Aneela’s wishes.

Thanks to Gander Lady has bonded all the plasma first and can see the memories of every Hullen through it. Aneela can only take over when Lady is not watching or when she directly plugs her own plasma into the system. Was the Lady original human who bonded with plasma first? Or is she something else? Original Hullen maybe? Khlyen and Aneela’s batch is 200 years old but that immortal non-Hullen dude was changed 400 years ago.

Whatever it was she wants out now. She wants to have a body. And she is looking for ways to get one suspecting Aneela has the answers.

And she did. Now that the Dutch knows she is Aneela’s creation brought out of the Green - Aneela’s Green - she also know Aneela’s death is her death. They are connected. But she still thinks Aneela should be killed for the greater good. Otherwise Hullen outnumber them so much and have so much better tech and near immortality that this rebellion stands no chance. She believes killing Aneela will kill all Hullen and save everyone.

Bur she doesn’t know Aneela isn’t really the one controlling the Green and ruling Hullen. Oh, she would like to be and she did manage to get her own ship back but if they kill her (and Dutch) then who will stop the Lady?

Of course, there is another way. They can let Aneela remember. She let Khlyen take her memories of Yala away so the Lady wouldn’t know that Aneela can do for her what she wants - bring her in physical form from the memories in Green.

Dutch and Aneela have common enemy.

Also, aren’t Aneela and Kendry just the best, cutest, psychopathic couple in the whole J? All saving each other and then bonding over torturing Gander (a lot) and eating ice-cream (cravings). They might be both evil but I didn’t even mind them turning all those free-will Hullen into drones. They all deserved it.

Mystery Monday

Atrium in Killjoys

Dutch and the boys shut down power to create a distraction so they can sneak into the secured sections of the RAC in “Enemy Khlyen”.

Anyone know where around Toronto this was filmed?

KILLJOYS | 1.09