i just rewatched “the piggyback” and oh. OH. !!!!!!!

i kept getting hung up on why, if mint chocolate chip isn’t endgame, they would have mike saying i love you to el before the most crucial battle of the episode?

but it just clicked for me.

they show us his monologue to show that it doesn’t help.

look at that image. does it look like mike’s confession saved the world?

the final half of the ep: it’s bleak. we’ve never seen stranger things this dark. there aren’t monsters hidden behind walls or in labs anymore. hawkins is cracking open. this battle is a true loss for eleven, in every sense of the word.

mike says i love you to el at the climax of the episode. and then? they lose. they don’t “almost” lose—they lose. max dies. eddie dies. people in hawkins die. eleven loses.

the way the episode is set up, mike’s monologue marks the start of the episode’s climax.

if this climactic monologue was meant to be a positive turning point, the “falling action” that comes next would be something hopeful—a good example of this is the falling action of cinderella, when the prince is testing glass slippers on all the ladies around the kingdom. hopeful + a resolution is promised soon.

so if mike’s confession were setting up a win and a happy ending, we would’ve seen a victorious battle after that.

but this was no happy ending.

mike “confesses”, the battle takes place, and then the most heartbreaking sequence takes place in the falling action.

may i present to you the outcome of the battle that started with mike saying i love you: max dies. lucas and el are grieving her. hawkins splits wide open.

mike says “i love you”, and then they show us how his inauthentic confession was not enough. his love was not what the heroes needed in that moment, bc it isn’t true love.

they even give us an example immediately after of how love is enough to win, when it’s real. eleven gains strength through her love for max to bring her back to life. eleven’s love for max is why the gang has any hope at all right now. so yes, the show has proven that love can do it.

but mike’s monologue—pointedly—did not allow our heroes this victory.

tldr; the “you’re my superhero” monologue serves the same narrative purpose as the dead mario lopez flowers, and you can’t tell me otherwise.

Henry: Yeah so we had a bacchanal in the woods, killed a man, and literally saw Dionysus himself.

Richard: Mhm. Cool. Wait, omg, did you have sex?!?

janine teagues core

1960’s Donovan and 1990’s Michael Sheen look wildly similar.

Headcanon time: Thomas’s love language is touch

okay I know the “do you bleed?” line in Batman V Superman was universally mocked, but imagine if you’ve spent your whole life invulnerable and some crazy motherfucker dressed in a bat suit who brands people for fun and has no problem crashing millions of dollars worth of military grade tech stares at you with a crazy gleam in his eye and asks if you bleed like he’s personally and scientifically invested in seeing you do so. I would’ve shit my pants, super powers be damned.

Do you ever think about how when BMO plays pretend, they favor nomadic/loner roles like a cowboy, a hard-boiled detective, a traveling salesperson, etc., which is pretty in line with their directive from Mo. But when they really are on their own (eg in BMO Lost) they immediately, desperately establish a family from their surroundings.

And how one of those universal struggles of people, especially in the context of growing up (including but not limited to childhood) is dependence vs. independence. Wanting a hand to hold and wanting to be able to drop it at will. And how some people need to hold that hand less often than others, and how some people really don’t want to even when they really need to.

Finn and Jake get frustrated with each other and try to solve a dungeon separately, only to be met at every turn with a challenge that they can’t face without the other. Marceline travels for a thousand years and settles down here and there and picks back up because the people around her aren’t constant so she doesn’t want to be either. PB and IK each create an entire kingdom because they’re lonely, and neither of them feel whole because, just like the quarters of Ooo in Elements, living in those kingdoms is too much like living inside their own heads.

Every episode of Distant Lands is about characters who both resent and long for the versions of themselves they used to be— the versions who needed other people, the versions who could still insist they didn’t — and have to reconcile with the fact that they never really stopped being those people, but also that they can never really be those people again.

Every major character in the series is building connections and love and safety using whatever tools they have, and distancing themselves with equal effort. So they’re all kind of just alternating between playing cowboy and playing house, figuring out how to balance both and where they fit in between.

They’re out of time (cancelled)

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Dc x dp idea 78

The infinite realm had gone livid. Sending ghost after ghost into the mortal realm. Seemingly in a search of something.

John and the league opt to summon the ghost king in hopes of figuring out why? Obviously having plans to seal him off if the need is there.

When they summon him they weren’t expecting what appeared to be a human teenager coming through the summoning circle.

Especially not one with glowing green cuffs. Torso with a freshly bleeding y. Nor the man in a white suit with a scalpel and suspicious green stains on the white outfit.

sometimes i think about how absolutely TERRIFIED Cody must’ve been during the Zygerria arc.

not only was he left alone in charge of the entire 3rd systems army (so 501st and 212th, obviously) but when they finally hear back from Anakin and Ahsoka, it’s without Rex and Obi-Wan.

and it’s not good news. they literally got shipped out to a slave conditioning camp thats ran by people who HATE them.

the two people hes closest to. and BOTH of them are in a slave camp that WILL kill them if they don’t do everything perfectly.

one wrong move, and the people who mean the most to him would be gone in an instant.

and then, to not even get them back first? to have to wait to see them even longer?

and to see matching scars on his little brother and his closest companion from the brutal torture they went through together. to know they survived something awful and he couldn’t do anything to help. to be constantly reminded of it when he looks at them.

Star Wars needs a ‘what-if’ series like marvel did. Or they need to like do the original endings they had for the shows and movies before they switched it. I just need an alternative reality where everything’s okay and nothing hurts.

i would quite literally sell my soul to get an audiobook of six of crows/crooked kingdom voiced by the shadow and bone show cast of the crows

yall ever think about how preserum steve was probably extremely cold natured and felt cold all the time and bucky would wrap his arms around him to help warm him up and Steve would bury himself deeply in bucky’s embrace to chase the warmth that is Bucky 😭

Thinking about by this post by @celluloidbroomcloset about Stede, physical touch, and consent (which is a really good meta), and especially thinking about the final line: “[Ed] too is rarely touched without violence.” And thinking about it in context of this scene in 1.06.

This is the scene which, if you’re watching the episodes back-to-back, immediately follows the first “you wear fine things well” scene, which feels like very purposeful placement. I fully think that this is Ed trying to get Stede to touch him again the only way he knows how (or, perhaps, the only way he’s been conditioned to believe is acceptable within the toxic-masculinity ridden world of piracy): through violence.

And when Stede does stab him, Ed practically melts into his arms, and begins giggling like a kid with a crush.

It says a lot about the world that Ed grew up in that he pulls a gun on Stede and threatens to shoot if he doesn’t stab Ed, all just to get Stede to hold him.

in my opinion, qphil isolating and exiling himself is only going to make things worse or delay the inevitable: as shown yesterday the enderking wants qphil to isolate, to not tell anyone, and luckily for our evil demigod that is exactly how qphil operates. he holds secrets in hopes of not hurting others, not getting them involved. and we just saw what happens when he has a support network helping him, he broke free from enderking’s grasp even for a moment. but that bit is not the only reason why his isolation is playing straight into enderking’s hands: it’s his insecurities as well. ”i’m a shit dad” ”i need to prove myself worthy of protecting” ”i need to provide better for the family” ”i need to be stronger” - all insecurities that are qphil’s downfall. enderking has already played into his need to provide for the kids as well as the want to be stronger (the buffs in the dungeon), what’s stopping him from digging his claws further to qphil’s core, his insecurities and weaknesses now that he has no one to break him out of his self-deprecating loop? when all he has are his thoughts, the caws of a crow and the voice of him? if no one finds him in exile, i think he will lose himself again, betrayed by his own mind

disregarding the fact that mccoy actually lived to be over 130 in the canon, tos establishes that the life expectancy of humans in that period was 80-90 years. mccoy is 39 when the show starts, meaning he has lived to about literal middle age, half of his expected lifespan.

when we are first introduced to spock’s parents, sarek (born 2165) is roughly 100 years old. the life expectancy of vulcans is about 200 years, meaning sarek has also lived to his literal middle age.

this means that subjectively, spock is fucking a man his father’s age.

and i think that’s just delightful.