#if you think that will is somehow innocent in their dynamic. you should watch seasons 2 and 3 again. then go back and rewatch season 1
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Hannibal and Control
Alright so out of all the Hannibal interpretations out there, I don't think there are any that irritate me more than the idea of an unequal balance between him and Will. There's this opinion floating around - that he is so much of a control freak that he can never let Will make his own decisions; I've seen it in fic, in Tiktok videos, an occasional textpost, and it is just so grossly incorrect that I have to say something on the subject.
As early as season 2, we get this:
This is perhaps one of the most famous scenes in the series - in which Hannibal states, out loud, canonically, that the reason he is so fascinated by Will is because, unlike most other people, he can never truly predict him. No matter how much he may "whisper through the chrysalis," Will Graham will find a way to surprise him; he expressly doesn't follow the lines Hannibal has written for him, and that is a key element of their relationship throughout the show.
Now, I am not denying that control is a prominent element of Hannibal's life - it is indubitably important; but it is not everything - especially in this particular context. As much as he maintains that iron grip on himself, it does not reach nearly the same extent with Will; and it falls apart entirely by season 3, in which Hannibal explicitly gives up his control of the story, risking his life and freedom - both things he valued above all else earlier in Mizumono.
The message here is clear; as much as his control, his liberty, his own continued existence matter, Will Graham is infinitely more precious to him; and to suggest otherwise - that he would attempt to fully subjugate the man he views as his only equal, as the only deity he recognizes - frankly, he'd call it blasphemy.
Moreover, this interpretation of their relationship stems not only from a mischaracterization of Hannibal himself, but also from a rampant infantilization of Will. There is a tendency in some areas of the fandom to entirely absolve Will Graham of his guilt; and, with the culpability handed over to Hannibal in its entirety, he assumes the role of an innocent, redeemable, good person in the eyes of such viewers - which could not be further from the truth. Will Graham's agency is integral to the story; though he wrestles with some moral dilemmas throughout the series, he is ultimately responsible for his own choices, especially post-season 1. There is a clear distinction between circumstance and desire - for instance, Randall Tier did invade his home, which did force him into violence; however, it did not force him to throw aside his gun, or relish the brutality, or bring the body to Hannibal, or eat of it, or display parts of it, or store the rest in his freezer.
He did all that himself.
He knows that.
Will Graham's infantilization (no, he was manipulated, he was tricked, Hannibal tempted him into something he didn't want, he didn't want to be a murderer, he is a sweet darling boy) is rooted not only in homophobia, but also in the same sort of ableism real-world autistic adults face every day. His own desires and agency get overwritten by that ever-present bigotry; the same way that some people believe that autistics cannot give consent to sexual activity, or participate in nuanced discussions, or understand the harm or violence they do, the other characters assume that he is fundamentally an innocent right until the very end. Jack, Alana, Molly, even Chilton make that mistake; and Will does play on their ignorance within the world of the story - but it is truly discouraging to see the success of his act extend to the viewers, who should have the necessary context to understand it for the lie it is.
He has agency, and it is paramount to the themes of a series that explores queer desire, internalized homophobia, and the guilt that often surrounds this sort of experience.
As such, the story, from Hannibal's perspective, is about learning to let go of his otherwise unwavering control; it's about finding a common ground with someone that understands him, and allowing himself the final trust fall. From Will's perspective, it is a coming out story, with everything that entails - which also culminates in him taking a leap of faith into the arms of the man he loves. The reason why Hannigram is so enduring as a ship is because it is founded on that balance; to deny this equality, therefore, is to fundamentally undermine the theme of these characters' narrative, and twist them into caricatures of themselves.
In short, it does them a disservice.
#hannibal#nbc hannibal#hannigram#hannibal lecter#will graham#if you think that will is somehow innocent in their dynamic. you should watch seasons 2 and 3 again. then go back and rewatch season 1#that man has been a freak from the beginning#hannibal nbc
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Dear queen👸,
It took me forever to find you again, ever since that ask from “gabi” anon, who asked you for recommendations. I remember thinking, “I should save this ask somehow,” but I obviously forgot. 🤦♀️ Anyhow, here I am finally, with a BL recommendation question of my own. Like, “gabi”, I am pretty new to this. But OMG, did my dumb ass just understand correctly that there are also GL dramas? 🥺 (Thinking about it, it makes a lot of sense…I just never realised that was also a subgenre, bc well, so far I haven’t seen any. 😶) So as a disaster-bi, can I please ask for some BL recs for my wlw-side? 👼
Thanks in advance!
~ lemanon 🍋
Dearest Lemanon,
Hell yeah, there’s such a thing as GL! My friend, you were missing out! Now… I won’t get too into the reasons behind it - because really, what do I know? - but the GL genre has much less content than the BL genre and they’re often quite short. Mostly due to the primary BL viewing demographic (straight women who don’t particularly care about good queer rep or lesbians) and the assumption that not as many people would watch GL content, which just doesn’t make it financially profitable for production studios. Doesn’t mean that won’t change in the future, I’m an optimist at heart, but alas, we cannot nab shows from the future and watch them now so we gotta work with what we got!
Before I toss out my recs, I just want to note three things.
1. I’m actually a lot less picky with my GL than with my BL. Part of the reason is that I can’t afford to be because there’s a lot less content available. But it’s also just because the tropes and relationship dynamics aren’t quite the same. GL tends to be a lot more innocent. And while I really wish they would stop this notion of “kEeP ThE LaDiES aNd tHe LeSBiANs PUrE nO sEx ALlOweD fOr THeM aBsTinENcE oNLy”, it does tend to make for healthier romances and dynamics. There are much fewer examples of non-con or dubious consent in GL than in BL (at least from what I can tell).
2. Having said that, I’m less picky about the relationships in GL but I desperately wish I could be more picky about the plots. Because we all drag BL plots for recycling the same old University Engineering Student Plot™ but… while GLs don’t follow that format, their plots are typically quite. Well. Plotless. As someone who lives for crime shows and murder mysteries, I desperately wish we had some kickass, crime-fighting (or crime-causing, I ain’t picky) lesbians. Where’s my Lesbian Battle Couple, huh? Where’s my Lesbian Manner of Death? My point in saying this is that my favourite shows in the BL genre are the ones with the more unique plot elements (ATOATS, Cherry Magic) or the ones that involve crime/action (Manner of Death being by FAR my favourite BL, The Devil Judge being my favourite Kdrama - not a BL/GL but strongly hinted at - and I’m preemptively assuming Not Me and Kinnporsche will also become favourites) and that I’m disappointed that I haven’t really found any of that in the GL genre. But if cute fluff is your jam, we’ve gotchu covered!
3. Same as you and I think a lot of people, I got into GL a lot later than BL so my to-watch list is a loooooot longer than my watched list. (And isn’t that embarrassing? Whoops!) So I’ll put that at the end for you to do your own perusing!
Less Than Or Equal To 75 Degrees Celsius
Origin: South Korea
My Thoughts: This is super short (about 30 min total), which is devastating because I would’ve watched two full seasons of these two women falling in love. The love interest is swoon-worthy and smitten, and this mini-series is just really wholesome and feel-good. Watch if you want calm vibes.
Vague Synopsis: Plot? What plot? We don’t know her, only ✨fluff✨. (It’s really short, okay? I don’t want to spoil anything!) All you need to know is that our protagonist works in a tea shop and her love interest has the softest heart eyes.
Fragrance of the First Flower
Origin: Taiwan
My Thoughts: I haven’t actually decided if this is a rec or not yet, because the show just aired its last episode and I’m not up to date. I was going to binge it before posting this but I didn’t want to keep making you wait, so I’m just gonna suggest giving it a try. It’s certainly well-acted and well-directed, I’m guessing the plot won’t really be for me personally, but it’s definitely a solid show.
Vague Synopsis: Two women who used to know each other back in high school reunite after years apart and there’s very strong unresolved sexual/romantic tension.
Friendzone 2 Dangerous Area (ONLY the ChrisAmm cut)
Origin: Thai
My Thoughts: In case it wasn’t clear from the title of this, I would really not recommend watching all of Friendzone, especially not the whole two seasons (it has a ton of couples, only one of which is GL and the rest of which are kind of awful). Tried it, really wasn’t a fan. I know it’s a drama but like… it’s a Drama™, you get me? I cannot stand needless drama. However! The shining light of this show! Chris and Amm! You can find a ChrisAmm cut pretty easily on YouTube. Not gonna lie, I find Amm to be kinda meh. But Chris! I LOVE Chris! So so so much! Truly a goddess amongst mortals! So yeah, it’s worth the watch for her, trust me.
Vague Synopsis: Fresh off a breakup, Amm strolls into a bar one day where she meets cute (and openly lesbian) barista Chris. They’re immediate friends and… well, I think you can see where this is going.
GLs I Watched And Didn’t Personally Vibe With But Know Are Generally Well-Liked By Other People:
Lily Fever (South Korea, found it too instantaneous)
Condo/Barista/Architect (Thai, veeeeery hard to find, incredible protagonist and love interest, but the love triangle made me sad)
Dear Uranus (Taiwan, doesn’t have an ending yet, a bit of a story structure mess, but cute as hell sooooo?)
GL Shows That Are On My To-Watch List:
Betcin (Philippines, I have been looking for an English sub of this show forever because it looks so good and I was planning on watching it alongside Bad Buddy but I. Cannot. Find. It. Blegh! If you find it, drop a link? 👉🏻👈🏻)
Diary of Tootsies (Thai, I lied, whoops, this show right here has w|w and m|m characters and presumably pairings, it’s next on my watchlist after Betcin and Not Me)
Transit Girls (Japanese)
Out of Breath (South Korea)
Pearl Next Door (Philippines, and I’m digging the vibes of the poster so I’ll probably be watching this one soon too)
Hormones 1 & 2 (Thai, not a GL but there’s a GL couple, I’m expecting another Friendzone 2 situation)
Handsome Stewardess (Taiwan)
Spider Lilies (Taiwan, a movie, not a show)
We are Gamily (Taiwan, again a movie, not a show)
My Dear Friend (Korean)
[Edit: Oh my god, the AUDACITY! I completely forgot to mention Couple of Mirrors!!! It’s not a canon GL but the subtext is heavily implied (à la Untamed or Word of Honor). I haven’t watched it myself yet but looks really good and has an assassin leading lady!]
Feel free to let me know if you want more BL or GL recs in the future. I’ll be binging a lot of these soon so my rec list will presumably (hopefully) grow. And my to-watch list is… very extensive. So I’d always be happy to share more from that!
(Also, this isn’t an Asian drama but if you like animation and want good w|w content, I could not recommend The Owl House enough. The main character is canonically bi, her love interest is a girl, and they’re probably my all-time favourite canon w|w pairing ever. And if you want strong female characters paired with heavily implied gay and lesbian subtext with a crime show backdrop, The Devil Judge (Kdrama) is a must-watch. Just throwing that out there.)
Sincerely,
Your Rec Gremlin Queen
#sorry this ask took me forever#I saw your other asks and no I wasn’t neglecting you#I had to sort through my disaster of a to-watch list to figure out which ones were the GLs#and then I rebinged four shows to make this#so yeah this ask took me a little longer than others#but not from lack of love and attention#do you want a tag too lemanon?#🍋🍋🍋#lemons? too on the nose?#gl recs#gl dramas#fragrance of the first flower#less than or equal to 75 degrees celsius#friendzone 2 dangerous area#asks
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Mirror Images: Billy And El Are Reflections Of Each Other
As you read this post, hold the following concepts in your mind: yin and yang in Chinese philosophy. The Light Side and Dark Side in Star Wars. The real world and the Upside Down in Stranger Things.
That, my friends, is the level of thematic significance the Duffers are giving Billy and El. And it’s my top reason for believing Billy will come back.
Why?
El is arguably the main character of the show. Any character who’s linked to her so profoundly will be a Big Fuckin’ Deal.
You cannot, CANNOT, create such a consistent dynamic by accident, which tells me that...
...the Duffers have huge intentions for Billy. He will become more significant to the show, not less! If you think he’ll return just for flashbacks or memories, you’re not thinking big enough.
Buuuut I’m getting ahead of myself. First let me show you what I mean when I say Billy and El are mirror images. It’s pretty mind-blowing...
1) The broad strokes of Billy and El’s lives echo each other: their family backgrounds, their traumas, and their journeys in the show.
>>They’ve suffered under abusive fathers. In fact, in S2 they have encounters with their fathers in back-to-back episodes - El with Brenner in episode 7, Billy with Neil in episode 8.
Both fathers are likened to the Mind Flayer in the power they wield over their children. In episode 7, El’s hallucination of Brenner tells her she has a “wound... growing and festering” (my paraphrase), a clear reference to the tunnels of the Upside Down. Kali, as the creator of the hallucination, is trying to tell El that he is the source of the wound, and El won’t heal until she’s confronted him.
In episode 8, the title card “The Mind Flayer” opens on Neil driving back to the Hargrove house, implying he’s the real Mind Flayer in Billy’s life. As I’ve argued elsewhere, Billy won’t heal either until he’s confronted Neil.
>>Billy and El lost their mothers because of their fathers. Brenner fried Terry's brain with electricity for daring to defy him. Billy's mother left for an unknown reason, but we’re led to believe she couldn’t take Neil’s abuse anymore. The way she's presented in Billy's memories leads me to believe she has since passed away.
Billy and El are both devastated by their losses. When El tells Billy at Starcourt, “[Your mother] was pretty,” she’s trying to tell him she understands.
>>Billy and El have “adopted” sisters, Max and Kali. Max represents Billy's better nature; Kali represents El's darker nature. In the same season where Billy constantly insists Max isn't his sister - thereby rejecting her - El finds Kali and embraces her. This symbolizes Billy and El’s complementary journeys: Billy is learning to accept his light while El is learning to accept her darkness.
>>Billy and El are wounded and angry because of what’s happened to them. In S1 El worries she's a monster, and in S2 she nearly kills a man in her anger, only to stop herself at the last second (against the wishes of Kali, her darker nature). Billy lets his rage define him. He's turned into a bully over his teen years, and in S2 he nearly kills Steve. Max (his better nature) stops him.
>>Billy and El are viscerally connected to the Upside Down.
The Upside Down is pursuing El. We’re not sure why yet, but their predator/prey dynamic is the main source of conflict in the show. Brenner says to her in S1, “It [the Upside Down] is reaching out to you ‘cause it wants you. It’s calling you. So don’t turn away from it this time.” His words form the backbone of the narrative:
In S1, El opens the first Gate, introducing the Upside Down to our world and setting the events of the show in motion. At the climax, she defeats the Demogorgon, the Mind Flayer's first servant.
S2 deals with the evolving consequences of El opening the first Gate. At the climax, El closes the Gate (symbolically “turning away" from the Upside Down) and catches the Mind Flayer's attention in the process.
In S3, the Mind Flayer comes after El to kill her. She runs from him, and her friends intervene to save her.
In future seasons, the Mind Flayer will regroup and try again but to corrupt her this time, not kill her. The climax of the entire show will hinge on the resolution of their conflict. El will be forced to stop running and face the Mind Flayer head-on.
In S3, Billy is caught by the Mind Flayer and turned into his instrument to hunt El down. This creates a yin/yang situation where Billy and El are revolving around each other, with the Mind Flayer in the center pulling on them both. At Starcourt, El saves Billy's soul by bypassing the Mind Flayer completely - building “the rainbow bridge.”
If you remember that Brenner and Neil, their abusive fathers, are likened to the Mind Flayer, their interaction becomes the story of Billy re-enacting his trauma, and El helping him heal it.
2) Runaway Max gives us a special case of Billy and El mirroring each other.
In S1, one of El's biggest moments happens in episode 6. Mike and Dustin have been cornered by the bullies Troy and James. Right when all hope is lost, El shows up and breaks Troy’s arm. After that, she confesses tearfully, “The gate. I opened it. I'm the monster.” This brings forward her inner struggle - am I a monster for the things I do? - which she will no doubt revisit in future seasons.
Keep in mind that Troy is around 12 years old, and El breaks his right arm.
Jump forward to S2. At one point, Billy complains, “Yeah, we're stuck here [in Hawkins]. And whose fault is that?” - implying it's somehow Max's. She disagrees. “Yours,” she mutters under her breath.
In the show, we never get an explanation. Runaway Max tells us everything.
Back in California, Billy is spiraling deeper and deeper into a pit of rage. One fateful afternoon, he takes it out on Max and her best friend Nate, a 12-year-old boy. When Max resists him, he seizes Nate's right arm and twists it behind his back. He holds it there, watching Max.
“What are you going to do?” he asks, a crazed look in his eyes.
When she does nothing, he breaks Nate's arm.
The fallout is catastrophic. Within weeks, Neil decides they should all move away from California for the good of the family.
Now think about this. El breaks a 12-year-old boy's right arm to save her friends from bullies. Billy breaks a 12-year-old boy's right arm... because he is the bully.
It’s part of the wider pattern: El is light, Billy is darkness.
3) The Duffers use physical markers to underscore Billy and El’s similarities.
>>When the MF wrecks Billy's car, Billy's forehead smashes into the windshield, leaving a gash. At Starcourt, he slams El into the wall, giving her a wound in the same spot. Thematically, their wounds tell the story of Billy suffering abuse, then turning around and inflicting it on El. He’s perpetuating a cycle, and it’s up to him to stop it.
>>Both Billy and El are limping by the time they reach Starcourt. El's leg is injured from the Mind Flayer, while Billy injures his in the car crash. These wounds tell the story of El, the “innocent,” suffering pain through no fault of her own while Billy, the “guilty” one, is being punished for his crimes. (I put those words in quotes because I believe the show will challenge our assumptions.)
A sad footnote: El has Max and Mike to help her walk. Billy has no one.
>>In S2, Billy gets a nosebleed out of the same nostril as El. This says a LOT, marking him as a future “superhero” and putting him in the same class as El, Kali, and El's mom Terry.
Off the top of my head, only two other characters get nosebleeds, Mayor Kline and Steve. But the blood never comes cleanly out of one nostril the way it does with El. I believe that was a purposeful design choice to avoid muddying the symbolic waters.
...
Y’all, I’ve already hit my picture limit for a single post, and I’m not even done yet :p So I’ll stop there for now. Eventually I’ll show you how El is connected to the Demogorgon in the same strange way as Billy.
You see what I mean though? There is no fuckin’ way Billy is dead for good. Why would the Duffers give him this much resonance with El, then drop him?
It makes no sense.
If you ask me, they’ve got plans for our boy. World-altering plans. He’s not just coming back; by the end of the show, he’s gonna be a Big Goddamn Hero.
»»————- ✼ ————-««
Billy Is Alive - A Meta Series
#billy hargrove#el hopper#billy hargrove is alive#stranger things theory#stranger things analysis#neil hargrove#martin brenner#terry ives#billy hargrove's mother#kali prasad#max mayfield#nothin' but parallels all the way down
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On an Immensely Popular Post
Disclaimer: What I’m writing here may not be completely accurate -- like most works of art, literature, and even STEM tend to be -- and as a new fan of ATLA, a few of the metas I publish may be obsolete or unintentionally insensitive. That being said, I like to believe that I can contribute something valuable to this fandom. In all my (real) metas, I wish to be as objective as possible and not rely on my biases, fanon, or common “knowledge” that may just be misconceptions. If anyone reading this finds something to be false or contrived, I am always welcome to constructive criticism. What I am not welcome to is senseless hate or bashing.
My first experiences with the ATLA fandom begun a long, long time ago, but the most recent and powerful revival of my love for ATLA started with me actually watching the show and soon after, with me falling into the endless abyss of ATLA metas on Tumblr. Sifting through the well-written analyses and the emotion-based rants had taught me a lot about critical thinking and the power of influence, so now I’d like to present a meta that critiques an extremely popular post with over 60,000 notes. And since it’s so popular, this is the part where I must make yet another disclaimer.
Disclaimer: I hold nothing against lesbians4sokka (whose name has now been changed to comradekatara). They have the right to share what they want, but since this particular post has become so influential that it’s still being reblogged regularly to this day, I believe it is within my right to criticize it - emphasis on “criticize,” which is different from “hate.”
Now that that’s out of the way, let us begin:
Lesbians4sokka/comradekatara covers 3 main subjects in their post, which I will quote/summarize below:
(1) Ma/iko: “...the entire foundation of mai and zuko’s relationship was built on how miserable they were together, and how they would just sit there and hate the world together— letting their misery fester as they enabled each other’s depression— and I think that’s really unfortunate because they would work so well as friends if they weren’t trying to make their dumpster fire of a relationship work.”
(2) Zutara: “similarly, what makes zuko and katara’s dynamic so compelling is that they share the same flaws, only as opposed to mai’s apathy and misery, it’s katara’s rage and guilt that zuko identifies with. they both share trauma over having lost their mothers, and both in a similar way (sacrificing themselves for them) and they both cope with their grief through rage, often misplaced… katara and zuko have a deep & profound friendship, but if they were to be in a relationship, they would only bring out the absolute worst in each other thru enabling each other’s rage and emotion-driven decision making.”
(3) Z/uk/ka: this pairing makes for a healthy and wholesome relationship because throughout the boiling rock, we see that “sokka and zuko make an excellent team, as they balance each other perfectly. sokka thinks big picture, and plans ahead, but zuko will charge into situations.” They inspire each other, they trust each other unconditionally, they become more open and supportive of each other, they share a lot of common interests and narrative parallels, and in general, just make each other happy (which could work both platonically and romantically).
As for my response: I’m sure many of you are expecting me to start to save the “best for last.” That assumption would be incorrect because I actually have the least to say about point 3.
I agree that Z/uk/ka can be a good relationship. Their dynamic is funny, playful, supportive, etc. etc. (there are so many positive adjectives I could use to describe their dynamic, the list could go on forever). And they could make a great couple.
…
What, did you expect more from me? That’s it, I’m done.
I’m not here to attack Z/uk/ka as a ship, because while I can never actively ship it (I’m a sad, narrow-minded exclusive shipper, always had been and always will be) I can objectively appreciate them as one. It’s points 1 and 2 I’m more concerned about.
Now, since we’ve already begun working backward, I’ll begin my critiques on point 2: I could write extensively about the parallels between Zuko and Katara, including but not limited to shared pain and a few shared flaws - and just a few, because their weaknesses diverge in many important places. However, since I’m trying to write as objectively as possible and since Zuko-Katara parallels have already been discussed to death, my analysis will focus elsewhere.
However, something from comradekatara’s post that I would first like to address is this-
[Zuko and Katara] both cope with their grief through rage, often misplaced. in the southern raiders, they both act deeply insensitively towards sokka by acting as if his grief over his mother’s death is somehow less valid simply because he is a lot quieter in his coping mechanisms and doesn’t project his rage & guilt onto everyone else.
- or rather, the idea that Zuko and Katara’s shared pain causes them to act insensitively towards Sokka (and though the post does not mention it, Aang as well).
(Note: these points have already been covered by countless metas before mine, so you can skip/skim this section to read a newer argument in the next section.)
Even ignoring the fact that the Southern Raiders had many out of character moments, Katara’s insensitivity towards Sokka is first and foremost a reaction against his insensitivity towards her.
_____
Dialogue from Season 3, Episode 16 “The Southern Raiders”:
Aang: Um ... and what exactly do you think this will accomplish?
Katara: [Shakes her head in dismay.] Ugh, I knew you wouldn't understand. [Begins to walk away.]
Aang: Wait! Stop! I do understand. You're feeling unbelievable pain and rage. How do you think I felt about the sandbenders when they stole Appa? How do you think I felt about the Fire Nation when I found out what happened to my people?
Zuko: She needs this, Aang. This is about getting closure and justice.
Aang: I don't think so. I think it's about getting revenge.
Katara: [Angrily.] Fine, maybe it is! Maybe that's what I need! Maybe that's what he deserves!
Aang: Katara, you sound like Jet.
Katara: It's not the same! Jet attacked the innocent. This man, he's a monster.
Sokka: Katara, she was my mother, too, but I think Aang might be right.
Katara: Then you didn't love her the way I did!
Sokka: [Hurt] Katara!
_____
While I believe that Aang’s principles of forgiveness are morally sound, the way he pushes his beliefs onto Katara undermines much of her grief. At first, Aang tries to relate to Katara’s experiences by comparing them to his own, but there is a forceful connotation to his dialogue that suggests that Aang considers himself to be the moral authority compared to Katara. Hence, Aang judges Katara (“I think it’s about getting revenge”) without trying to reach out and understand her, forgoing the empathetic common ground in favor of taking on the moral high ground.
Thus, when Sokka tells Katara, “she was my mother, too, but I think Aang might be right,” Sokka is not only saying that Katara should choose forgiveness, he is implying that Aang is the ultimate moral authority on this matter and that Katara should accept that. Moreover, similarly to Aang, Sokka’s opening line, “she was my mother, too,” had the potential to establish common ground between himself and Katara, but the added “but…” places Sokka on the moral high ground against her instead. Of course, when we remember that just two lines ago Aang equates Katara to Jet, Sokka agreeing with Aang seems even more thoughtless and unsympathetic.
So when Katara lashes out against Sokka, ostensibly “acting as if his grief over his mother’s death is somehow less valid simply because he is a lot quieter in his coping mechanisms and doesn’t project his rage & guilt onto everyone else,” it is important to note that Sokka undermines Katara’s louder, more visible way of grieving as well (though that discounts that for most of the show, Katara only uses her grief over her mother’s death to sympathize with others).
Moreover, Katara’s line, “then you didn't love her the way I did!” is hurtful, yes, but it is not necessarily equivalent to “you didn’t love her as much as I did.” Katara’s love for her mother is different from Sokka’s because her pain over her death is different -- after Kya’s passing, Katara had to carry the emotional burden of becoming a pseudo-mother to Sokka (see Sokka and Toph’s conversation in “The Runaway”), a burden that did not cease after she joined the GAang (see the entirety of “The Desert”). To Katara, Kya was not only her mother, but the representation of the childhood she lost and the sacrifice made to protect her life. Sokka simply does not have that same relationship with Kya.
I do not mean to say that Sokka and Aang unfairly taking on the moral authority in this situation means that this authority instead belongs to Katara (and Zuko) - “The Southern Raiders” is filled with questionable moments from all parties involved. However, TSR is an episode that delves into Katara (and Zuko)’s relationship with a mother’s sacrifice, so how Zuko and Katara respond to this specific trauma from their past does not dictate how they respond to painful circumstances in the present/future. Let’s see how this is true.
Sozin’s Comet, Part 1: The Phoenix King
No doubt Zuko and Katara felt some form of frustration upon Aang’s disappearance, so let’s see how they “[enabled] each other’s rage and emotion-driven decision making”:
Here, Katara and Zuko make a decision together that turns out to be calm, rational, and not at all emotionally-driven despite their mutual frustration and worry towards Aang.
Sozin’s Comet, Part 2: The Old Masters
Zuko holds immense pain and self-loathing over betraying Iroh, yet Zuko and Katara’s conversation does not enable/exacerbate negativity from any party involved (since Zuko often translates his grief into anger, and Katara was evidently angry at Zuko’s betrayal). Instead, their conversation is open, encouraging, and constructive.
(Note: this is where the review of points made by previous metas ends.)
Hence, to say that “[Zuko and Katara] would only bring out the absolute worst in each other [through] enabling each other’s rage and emotion-driven decision making” - when we are given in-canon examples of the opposite being true - would be a sweeping and inaccurate generalization.
But for the sake of argument let’s say that, hypothetically, Zuko and Katara’s relationship would fail because they only bring out the worst in each other. And here’s where the argument falls apart for me - Is the argument here that Zuko and Katara have an incredibly meaningful friendship yet somehow this “friendship” causes them to enable each other, thus encouraging each other’s worst flaws and regressing each other’s growth? Is a healthy friendship - much less a “deep and profound” one - not one where two individuals can learn from each other in positive ways and balance each other’s shortcomings?
Or is it something different we’re saying here? Are we saying that two individuals can have a “deep and profound” friendship and yet the moment their relationship shifts from platonic to romantic, they are terrible for each other?
While many significant platonic bonds are stunted when they become romantic, I still believe it to be common sense that some of the best romantic relationships stem from a platonic foundation. But since much of “common sense” on the internet sees that “sense” is nonsensical and “common” is a nicer way to refer to mob mentality, I have done my research to show how Zuko and Katara could have been an excellent case of a friends-to-lovers relationship.
An excerpt from my meta, “Research Shows that Zutara Would Have Been the Ideal Friends to Lovers Dynamic.” (give it a read if you want to see references to relationship-research and an overanalysis on diction/tone)
The reason why Zutara is framed as a “toxic and unhealthy” relationship is that their romance would be a classic example of the enemies-to-lovers trope, a trope which modern media has not been particularly kind to. However, when executed correctly, enemies-to-lovers can produce a healthy and loving relationship, frequently relying on friendship as an intermediate between the “enemy” and “lover” stages in the most well-executed versions of this trope. Meanwhile, the trope of friends-to-lovers is just as popular as enemies-to-lovers, though the specific dynamic required between two individuals to achieve this transition is not well-known. Recognizing this, Laura K. Guerrero and Paul A. Mongeau, both of whom are involved in relationship-related research as professors at Arizona State University, wrote a research paper on how friendships may transition into romantic relationships…
According to Guerrero and Mongeau, “...scholars have argued that intimacy is located in different types of interactions, ranging from sexual activity and physical contact to warm, cozy interactions that can occur between friends, family members, and lovers…” Guerrero and Mongeau then reference a relationship model where the initial stages (i.e. perceiving similarities, achieving rapport, and inducing self-disclosure) reflect platonic/romantic intimacy through communication while the latter stages (i.e. role-taking, achieving interpersonal role fit, and achieving dyadic crystallization) often see both individuals as achieving a higher level of intimacy that involves more self-awareness.
In the rest of my research-based meta I demonstrate how Zuko and Katara’s platonic interactions in the show fit into the stages of communicative intimacy (i.e. perceiving similarities, achieving rapport, and inducing self-disclosure) that Guerrero and Mongeau describe as being mutual between friendships and romances. As such, crossing the line between friends and more-than-friends most likely would not cause a dramatic shift in the Zutara dynamic since much of Zuko and Katara’s platonic intimacy easily translates into romantic intimacy. I’ll end off with another excerpt from my meta.
Excerpt from “Research Shows that Zutara Would Have Been the Ideal Friends to Lovers Dynamic.”
“...it would be remiss to simply dismiss the Zutara dynamic as one that would instantly become toxic should they pursue a romantic relationship.”
With that little thought in mind, let’s move onto point 3: an exploration of friendship, romance, and why toxicity is not exclusive to the latter.
Let’s start with what I agree with:
“The entire foundation of mai and zuko’s relationship was built on how miserable they were together, and how they would just sit there and hate the world together— letting their misery fester as they enabled each other’s depression...”
I’m not sure how necessary it is for me to elaborate on this point given that it’s already been accepted by comradekatara and perhaps 60,000+ other users on Tumblr (a gross exaggeration but this remains unimportant), but in her essay, “Zuko, Mai, and the Nature of True Intimacy,” Araeph contributes more nuance to the concept of Ma/iko and mutual misery, stating that,
Unfortunately for [Zuko and Mai’s] relationship, Mai is and will always be a pessimist—a character trait, not a character flaw, in her. The key difference lies in how Mai and Zuko use their negative feelings. When Zuko sinks into negativity, he gives up on any actions that will materially change his world for the better; Mai, on the other hand, can remain negative even at the height of her character development, and it does not impede her ability to act.
So while Mai enables Zuko’s depression, Zuko does not necessarily do the same for Mai. Nonetheless, throughout their relationship for the first half of season 3, neither of them communicate constructively or push each other to grow as people.
This may be the third disclaimer I’m making, but I first want to say I have nothing against Mai. However, I do have something against the idea that “[Mai and Zuko] would work so well as friends if they weren’t trying to make their dumpster fire of a relationship work.”
Their relationship is a dumpster fire, yes, but will the flames cease simply if the amount of intimacy in the relationship changes?
comradekatara state themselves that their entire romantic relationship is quite depressing - they are only able to connect through empty physical intimacy and mutual hatred of the world. Without that, there is little left for them to bond over. Once Zuko overcomes his conflicting morality and inaction from the first half of season 3, he becomes someone who is strongly guided by his principles and beliefs. However, for the entirety of the series, Mai is characterized by her moral apathy. To cite from Araeph again,
It is moral intimacy that is the last and worst omission for Mai and Zuko… Zuko’s struggle to find and follow his principles is the most central aspect of his character, yet it is a struggle Mai neither understands nor respects…
Lack of moral intimacy (not sharing the same core beliefs) is something that applies to both platonic and romantic bonds. Thus, just as transitioning from a meaningful friendship to a romance does not inherently create toxicity in a relationship, switching from a romance that exacerbates one (or both, depending on how you interpret it) party’s misery does not necessarily erase the preexisting negativity in a relationship - perhaps some of it may subside, sure, but as long both parties continue to fail at communicating and understanding each other, even their friendship seems bleak at best. In this case, Mai and Zuko may work well as conditional friends, or in other words, friends who are only friends when they have something to mutually be miserable over. And this tiptoes the line of speculation, but they could be a formidable political team. But unless the Ma/iko dynamic shifts drastically in the lovers-to-friends transition, I’m not sure if there’s much potential in a friendship between them.
In conclusion, there is a lot I don’t agree with from comradekatara’s post, but if there’s one takeaway I want to impart onto everyone who’s read this far, it’s this: crossing and uncrossing the line between platonic and romantic bonds is not always a transformative experience for the relationship, and the nature of human relationships is a complex spectrum -- not a light switch that can only be set between healthy and unhealthy.
Thank you all for reading!
#atla#atla meta#my bated breath analyzes#this is more pro-zukka than anti-zukka#but I will include neither in my tags#zutara#anti maiko#once again this is a critique#not a post meant to tear anyone or their views down#my bated breath's posts
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Hanna, episode 7
1. It’s really interesting what they’re doing with Amira this whole season. It’s setting up to a whole lot of the stuff that happens in the later seasons really well. She suffers so many microaggressions all the time, and even here - she makes a joke about costumes parties and they all just swallow it. It’s a really vivid recognition all the way through of exactly how much Amira deals with on a daily basis. Considering we all know where this is leading, it’s difficult to watch, but also it’s good that they do this.
2. But oh yikes, this whole bunch of rumours swirling about Sam ‘making out’ with someone at the party is really well done. It’s pretty obvious that no-one genuinely knows - the only people who know what happened are Hanna and Sam (and ‘making out’ isn’t exactly how I’d describe it) so the rumours are all based on a love of gossip. Who knows how they started, but it’s obvious just how guilty Hanna feels. How awkward for her to be hearing this! Then her very very obvious ‘I have a boyfriend so it wasn't me!!’ move (very similar to Matteo’s in s3 in the discussion about homosexuality with Amira, which is illuminating - they both want to try to ‘prove’ something with these moves). Also, Kiki and her thing about Alex - it’s terrible how invested she is when it’s obvious that he’s being an asshole. The excuses she makes for him unfortunately ring true - this is exactly how people try to convince themselves of this sort of stuff. In reality it’s a shame the girls aren’t more forceful - they clearly want to say Kiki is being an idiot, but after Amira got shut down last time, it seems none of them is keen to be more explicit.
3. Ohhh poor Hanna. This thing has been eating at her and she had to tell someone about it. But choosing Matteo was NOT a good idea. I mean, we all know this is going badly (Snakesak is such an iconic take on the season that even if you forgot everything else, you’d remember that), but even without that, Matteo feels a bit more... I don’t know. Shifty? Somehow? There’s something really calculating in the way he examines her. Like, even without knowing what’s coming, there’s clearly something goin on in his head. With Isak it came out of the blue; he was set up much more supportive/innocent because they wanted the shock value when the reveal happened. But with Matteo there’s something different. I guess at least partly because most people watching would already know what’s coming so hiding it is less imperative. Hanna sees him as a friend and the only one she can tell, but it’s such a weird choice anyway (as it was in the original). He’s Jonas’s best friend. Like he says, why tell him? Even if he wasn’t a little snake, this is putting him in a really difficult place. Effectively this makes him choose between his best friend (who he’s kind of in love with even if she doesn’t know that) and his friend. Him choosing to let Jonas know wouldn’t be all that strange and it’s a big risk to take before she knows he sits in the ‘don’t tell’ camp. I am also baffled that they did this with other people in earshot. It could totally get out, even if this girl agrees she should keep quiet.
4. I really like this adaptation of the ‘claim’ Alex makes into ‘he told me I have a cute stomach’ instead of the hoodie thing in the original (though that works very well too). This way it’s much less overt and also it really plays into Kiki’s fears about her looks. We’ve seen small hints of her eating issues already, so this just adds to the weight of that. Specifically targeting a body part that girls can be sensitive about is clever - at first it can seem sweet, like he’s being so nice about something vulnerable, but then you can see he’s being very deliberate with that impression and it really hammers home the insecurities Kiki is already harbouring.
5. It’s a fascinating dynamic between all the girls in the argument about how Kiki should deal with Alex. I’m with Sam and Amira - stay above it and move on (tbh, Kiki should never have gone there in the first place, but she did so this is her current best option). But the fact that Mia is so strongly in favour of telling him he’s a dick is swaying Kiki. Of course, Mia is a strong person and from her it probably would feel empowered. But Kiki is, and always has been, far more innocent and vulnerable and sensitive. It doesn’t feel like (even without knowing where this goes) that this will go well for Kiki, and the fact that Mia doesn’t get that says a lot about her. I like this; it’s nice to see her not being quite right here - it sets her up for some growth as we move on. And super yikes when he tells Kiki to take a breath and she does. This, the importance she places on him, is exactly why this was a terrible idea, and why Mia’s encouragement was wrong. It’s easy for her - she’s not invested, and her failure to recognise the difference between her and Kiki is really important. And Alex is SUCH an asshole that this scene is so hard to watch. Kiki’s acting is superb in all these scenes and it’s so damn hard to watch her take in ‘you’re not worth it’ but as with the original, Mia’s ‘take down’ doesn’t land for me, probably because while Alex’s acting is far superior to William’s, there’s still a fundamental lack of caring about what she’s said. It doesn’t feel like saving face, but more a genuine lack of care. And this is why I really dislike this ‘William’ character; he doesn’t seem to care. I have said before that I’ve never watched Mia’s season because I cannot stand William in the original. So if I do watch I’ll be interested to see if they can make me like him better. So far, they’re not succeeding.
6. And just like that, we’re back to the soft, dreamy colours and shots of the start of the season. But there’s a harsher light coming in to some of the shots. particularly with Jonas and so it’s not comfortable. This is something on a precipice. The kissing is back and they’re reconnecting on that level, and it’s working again. The darkness is gone, but things are hovering still - that Sam stuff on her phone with Jonas in the background, slightly blurred but very overlit, adds to the sense of unease. You can feel something coming, even if it’s not obvious what that is.
7. Man this fight is so funny. I know I shouldn’t say that, and it’s a very serious moment for Hanna, but the slo-mo and the faces they make! And Amira’s moves! Kiki, full-on legs wrapped around this girl as they both collapse to the ground! Priceless. I do like the way the sound gradually fades out as Hanna’s realisation of what’s happening sets in. That’s really well done.
8. What a change from the earlier moment when Hanna woke with Jonas and they had their sweet little moment. Now we’re fairly tight in on her face as she keeps trying to get hold of him. It sucks a lot, and you can sense the anxiety and worry she’s feeling. Also, I do understand why she feels the way she does about all this, and why she leans on Matteo. Unlike earlier, here it makes sense for her to rely on Jonas’s best friend. He’s the one who has the best line in to Jonas when he’s staying so distant from Hanna. But wow his advice is truly shitty. On the surface it seems sensible, both times. Nah don’t tell him; it’ll only hurt him. Nah leave him be; he needs time and space. But in both instances it’s the complete opposite of how she should be acting. And in both cases, Matteo knows Jonas, he knows what he’s like and how he’ll act. This is so calculated. And he’s still in a space where he has little to lose. He feels like he can still ride the ‘hey I had their best interests at heart’ line and get out of it. I always felt like Isak was more opportunistic in his lying; saying and doing things in the moment. Whereas this really does feel like Matteo has thought it through more - that’s some difference in the way the two characters are presented and acted. But I like that it’s different, and his little hint of a smaile when she collapses on him - Isak seemed a lot more genuinely wrapped up in Eva and his face seemed more overwhelmed. But Matteo really seems to know what he’s doing. Also - sound mixing in this scene: top notch. I love that you can hear every swallow, every breath, every step, movement etc. It really heightens the tension right up til she gets Jonas’s ‘don’t call me’ text.
9. I said it before and I’ll say it again, Leonie’s savage pleasure in Hanna’s troubles is a real reflection on her - and not a good one. I really do get that she’s hurt, but this is vicious and she’s being awful! And Kiki - ugh, just be quiet child. Calling other girls sluts is pretty shitty.
10. I really like that Eva’s mother morphs into Hanna’s father. There’s a difference in this dynamic that builds on that difference. Eva and her mother seem closer, even while her mother isn’t around much. Hanna’s father just feels more absent emotionally, so these moments where he tries to be a dad fail because of that. It’s obvious that he cares for her and that he’s trying, but equally obvious that he just doesn’t know what she needs or how to approach her. Not that Eva’s mother was much better, but it was still a different sort of distance.
anyway, this is suuuuper long because so much happened in this episode. It’s packed with a lot of stuff and while some stuff is starting to resolve, there’s so much that’s hanging over their heads still. I like this one a lot, but I think it could have done with a little bit of breathing room. Maybe that one episode where it felt like things were waiting to happen could have picked up some of this heavy lifting. But either way, this one has a lot going for it and really does set us up for what’s coming in the next few.
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I really am surprised that when I went into ATLA I knew absolutely nothing about Zuko as a character other than that everyone on tumblr kept saying he had the greatest redemption arc ever. I didn’t even know if it was like, a villain to hero redemption arc or a jerk to less of a jerk redemption arc or a redemption equals death arc or whatever (and I’m not going to get into how one of the problems with how tumblr discusses redemption arc Requirements is that there is never an acknowledgement that there are so MANY different ways to write a redemption arc), but I did know that there was a redemption arc, so I did pick up on a lot of the early groundwork that the show lays to make Zuko sympathetic even as a villain, but even so there were some things that I didn’t expect that ATLA does in interesting ways, and one of them is the reveal of how Zuko got his scar.
The scar is brought into the narrative early on, first by virtue of the fact that it’s hard to not notice, although it’s kinda easy to dismiss at first as just something that makes him look scary and like a villain, but by the third episode we’re given some context for what the scar means to Zuko through his confrontation with Zhao.
Zhao: You can't compete with me. I have hundreds of war ships under my command and you? You're just a banished prince. No home, no allies. Your own father doesn't even want you.
Zuko: You're wrong! Once I deliver the Avatar to my father, he will welcome me home with honor, and restore my rightful place on the throne!
Zhao: If your father really wanted you home, he would have let you return by now, Avatar or no Avatar. But in his eyes you are a failure and a disgrace to the Fire Nation.
Zuko: That's not true.
Zhao: You have the scar to prove it.
Zuko: Maybe you'd like one to match!
Zhao: Is that a challenge?
Zuko: An Agni Kai. At sunset.
Zhao: Very well. It's a shame your father won't be here to watch me humiliate you. I guess your uncle will do.
Zhao walks away. Front view of Zuko, with Iroh in the background.
Iroh: Prince Zuko, have you forgotten what happened last time you dueled a master?
Zuko: I will never forget.
At this point, I don’t know what an agni kai is but it sounds like some macho BS, and given how much of Zuko’s interaction with Zhao is a dick-swinging contest, it’s easy to assume that this is more of Zuko just being an Angry Villain. There are some interesting things that are revealed in this conversation, though.
Zhao is competing with Zuko for Angriest Villain, which is usually a good set up for Villain Redemption. So far, so good.
Zuko’s a prince but he’s been banished. His father doesn’t want him. Zuko disagrees. Loudly and Angrily. Zuko is most definitely wrong. We get a feel for why Zuko is doing what he’s doing.
Wow Zhao way to rub salt into the wound. The show has already told us that Zuko is a teenager, but this is another scene that emphasizes just how young Zuko actually is. We see Zuko disrespect Zhao in typical spoiled royal teenager fashion but then we get this adult being unnecessarily cruel to a kid, including expressing joy at the idea of humiliating him in front of his parent/parental figure. This also emphasizes how little respect Zuko gets within even his own nation as royalty.
Zuko’s whole persona of “I’m the prince and also a scary villain and I definitely do not need to calm down, uncle!” is not really working out too well for him.
We learn the scar is somehow connected to his status as disgraced royalty.
Okay, so an agni kai is a duel, and that’s definitely how he got the scar.
The story behind the scar is vaguely alluded to here. What I assumed going into this based on this conversation was something like, Zuko challenged a master to a duel and lost (gaining the injury which resulted in the scar) and was thus disgraced and banished.
What’s kind of interesting about this is that upon my watch I assumed that this was something Zuko had done wrong. Since so much of Zuko’s early personality is I Am Ready To Fight, it’s easy to assume from this conversation that what happened was that Zuko challenged the wrong person to prove he was big and bad, faced someone who was more big and bad, and lost. Macho BS. I also assumed it had something to do with succession because Zuko really cares about "his throne" and was politically disgraced as a result of what happened, so I imagined that Zuko tried to go for a petty power grab or something. Probably the kind of thing that happens all the time in Evil Fire Land.
This is standard character building, especially for a sympathetic villain, or an antihero, or just a jaded character. Sometimes this literary device is referred to as “the wound,” or the thing in a character’s backstory that drives their psychology and inner conflict. It’s usually done in either one of two ways.
Character was a Terrible Person and made a Terrible Mistake and is Paying for It
Character was once a Bright and Sunny Innocent Child but then Everything Turned to Shit
What’s interesting about how ATLA reveals this with Zuko is that they do a kind of bait and switch, where it appears to be the first one but is actually revealed to be the second one. For other examples of this trope in the show, Iroh is pretty clearly the first one, and Aang is pretty clearly the second one.
Remember how I thought that Zuko had challenged the wrong person and lost because he’s a macho idiot teenager?
Gather ‘round and I shall tell you the tale of how Macho Idiot Teenager was once an Adorable Ponytail Unicorn
Here it comes, the Macho BS. You are a Baby step down.
“You know I don’t really think that we should be using new recruits as human meat shields. That’s kinda evil.”
Well, that's reasonable, actually. Apparently that was the wrong thing to say, though!
In Evil Fire Land we solve all of our conflicts with a Duel to the Death, of course! Fight a military general? Yeah, I got this! Ohmygod, calm down, Prince Fight Everyone
What’s happening now, Oh my lord
You know, I don’t really think -
Sir, this is a child.
That’s...really intense.
So yeah. I thought Zuko got banished for fighting but he actually got banished because he didn’t fight. I thought he got into a fight because he was being an idiot but he actually was being a Good Person. Obviously I didn’t think the Fire Lord was going to be a nice person but you gotta be a huge dick to burn the face of a crying, surrendering thirteen year old just for having morals. Also it’s your son and heir and you do it in front of a huge crowd. This is before we find out about all the Bad Shit going on in the First Fire Nation Family which Kinda Explains It.
This is one of, if not the most intensely disturbing scene in the show and it manages to be that in a show that’s entirely bloodless (take note, Game of Thrones) and doesn’t even show you the actual scarring scene. It helps make Zuko sympathetic but not just in a This Character Has Suffered way or a This Character Was Once a Nice Person way (because the indications that Zuko has more to him than just macho badness are peppered throughout the first season), it also helps explain Zuko’s personality and motivations and you can actually see that the thirteen year old boy and the bald ponytail jerk are the same character, whereas lesser characterization would increase the contrast between the two characters for dramatic effect. The effect here is actually more dramatic. One of the things that makes Zuko redeemable is that we aren't just privy to how he became the way he is, we get to see that he is actually still the same character in a lot of ways as the child who spoke up in defense of his nation's soldiers, and that his bad actions are motivated not just by that deep emotional wound but by extreme psychological conditioning. I've talked a lot about Zuko and cognitive dissonance because it's strongly tied to what makes him a believable and interesting character.
Also Zuko didn’t just not fight because it wouldn’t be honorable to fight dear old dad, his father actually manufactures the whole situation so that there was really no way Zuko was going to be able to fight back. I’ve written about how Ozai is manipulative before because I don’t see a lot of discussion of that and the show gets it across in some subtle ways, and this action by Ozai is as manipulative as it is brutally violent. That’s something that hits you as you learn more about the dynamics in Zuko’s family. Zuko isn’t just sympathetic because he is a Sad Woobie who Once was Innocent and Good, his family really did a number on him, oh my god.
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Hi there! I hope you’re well. I just wanted to send a message to thank you for the elyan content 😍 he is my favourite knight but for some reason I never see much of him on tumblr! So it’s awesome to see him on your blog. I hope I didn’t bother you with this ask 🙈
I AM doing well, actually! And you didn’t bother me, asks will probably never bother me <3
I could go on for a million years about why no one makes content about Elyan - and sometimes forget he exists altogether - but I don’t wanna start drama so we’ll just. Not touch that topic with a 10-foot pole
BUT! Elyan IS a fantastic knight, and the fact that he is your favourite knight too is very iconic and sexy of you. Elyan fans/stans are the sexiest members of this fandom. That’s not even opinion, that’s just science
So! Here’s a list of Elyan headcanons, because he’s worth it:
Elyan is ace. Them’s the facts
He’s also gay but in that stage where he’s questioning if he might be bi. Unfortunately, he died before reaching an answer
I hate to talk about Hogwarts Houses in 2020, but he is one hell of a Hufflepuff. Elyan is his name and protecting his loved ones with life and limb is his game. It is very easy to earn his loyalty, and once you have he will ride straight through Hell for you
Elyan likes hoods. He wears hoods whenever he can (i mean c’mon, that outfit in season 3 was serving some killer looks)
He’s just a protective older brother to literally everyone in Camelot. Yes, even Gaius
Gwen, Elyan, Leon, and Merlin have family game night once every month. They all gather in their old house in the lower town to get drunk, play some dice games, and spend the whole night goofing off
Only a few people know about game night. Even fewer people have seen it with their own eyes. Arthur and Gwaine frequently try to sneak in to see game night for themselves, but somehow never succeed
Elyan loves swimming. They don’t get many chances for it, but whenever they do, Elyan is the best swimmer out of all the knights
He’s also like. Really good at sneaking up on people. Consistently rolls high on stealth checks
Out of everyone in the Round Table, Elyan is the most easily spooked. He hates it when they gather around the fire to tell ghost stories, bc he will NOT be able to sleep the rest of the night after that
Why do people think there’s no dynamic or chemistry between Elyan and Gwaine??? Those two had a SOLID friendship and I will not stand for this disrespect (also, Perelyan is good but Elyaine is godtier imo)
Elyan is bad at blacksmithing. Like really bad. No one even understands how that works, considering he spent his whole childhood training under his father. All the blacksmithing talent apparently went to Gwen somehow
He likes bugs. When he was a kid he would go out in the woods and collect beetles and stuff to stick in little terrarium jars. He’d even give them names and backstories and personalities. Sometimes he would sit under a tree and tell Gwen stories about all these adventures his bugs would go on when no one was looking
Leon HATED bugs, and got creeped out by them, which meant Elyan was legally obligated to harass him about it
Elyan doesn’t get much chance to catch bugs anymore, but he’s also the only member of the Round Table who can put up with spiders
Spider in the armory? Everyone is freaking out while Elyan just calmly picks it up and lets it outside - but not without lots of snark and eye-rolling, of course
The reason Elyan ran away from home was because his mother had died and he saw it as a personal failing. He felt that it was his fault she was dead, because he couldn’t protect her, and left Camelot because he couldn’t bear the shame of guilt
In the last few years of his time away from Camelot, Elyan fell in love and lived out an mlm cottagecore fantasy where he and his lover raised wyverns together. But when Morgause came to capture him, she killed his lover and burnt their wyvern farm to the ground
Elyan tries not to let his grief be known, though. Not just because he doesn’t want to burden Gwen with his pain, but also because his lover had magic and he could get arrested for having fallen in love with a sorcerer
Morgause had Elyan captive for a while before Gwen showed up. She even used the nathair on him in small increments; not long enough to kill him or damage him irreparably, but enough to make him suffer. It’s for this reason that Elyan was able to bounce back from being tortured by Morgana whereas Gwaine didn’t survive it, because Morgause had already microdosed him with that kind of pain two years ealier
Still traumatizing, though. Like. This boy is EXTREMELY traumatized, can someone please get him some therapy???
Moving back to Camelot with Gwen was simultaneously healing and harming. Healing, because he visited his dad’s grave, rebuilt his relationship with Gwen, and his companionship with her, Merlin, and Leon helped him move on from the pain of his loss. But harming because of all the anti-magic prejudice that surrounded him, and every time someone said magic was evil it was like another dagger in his heart. That was his dead lover they were talking about and calling a monster. Someone who was kind and compassionate and funny, who didn’t have a lick of evil in them, who would have burned at the stake by Camelot’s laws
Elyan didn’t think about what it meant to be a knight of Camelot when he agreed to be knighted. But he was just so determined to fight and kill Morgause, the woman who had killed his lover and his wyverns and abducted him from his home, that he didn’t even think about it. He just wanted Morgause dead. It wasn’t until a few days later when he realized that being a knight of Camelot meant enforcing Camelot’s anti-magic laws, and this realization naturally caused him distress
Instead of abandoning his knighthood, Elyan found a compromise. He would support Arthur in everything, until magic got involved. If Arthur ever captured druids or put sorcerers to death, Elyan decided he would smuggle them out of the city. He would never actively kill or capture those with magic, and would sometimes even try to sabotage efforts in capturing harmless magic-users
Elyan knew full well what Dragoon was doing. He knew that Gwen and Arthur’s love was true and required no enchantment, meaning Dragoon had simply framed himself to get Gwen out of a jam. He appreciates Dragoon, and even though he supposedly killed Uther, Elyan can’t even fault him for that. Elyan wanted to kill Uther too
Merlin is the little brother Elyan always wanted, and Elyan is the older brother Merlin never had. They act so much like siblings it’s not even funny, and some people question if they were actually raised together
He and Merlin like to team up and tease Gwen. They’ll walk behind her and chant stuff like “Gwen and Arthur sitting in a tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G”. They’re like children, and it’s both very funny and very annoying
Gwen gets her revenge, of course. She always gets her revenge
They also team up to be like. Super protective of Gwen. The vetting process Arthur had to go through - between Elyan, Leon, AND Merlin - in order to date Gwen was ridiculous
Arthur: Merlin I’m literally your boss. Your friend. You've been my personal manservant for like six years now
Merlin: Yeah, which means I know exactly how much of a dick you are
After being possessed by the druid ghost, Elyan is a lot more in tune with the supernatural
Am I suggesting that Elyan can now see, talk to, and interact with ghosts, and even starts a little agency where he goes around helping them complete their unfinished business? Why yes, yes I am
When Gwen was banished, Elyan wanted to go with her. But she asked him to stay behind and keep an eye on Agravaine, as she suspected him of treachery, and to stop him from taking over Camelot should Agravaine make a move. And, well, Elyan has never been able to say no to his sister
Elyan and Merlin decided to try and find a way to prove Gwen’s innocence. There’s no way she was acting of her own accord, after all. There was some kind of enchantment at play, there had to be. Merlin doesn’t tell him about Shade!Lancelot directly, but does propose it as a theory regarding how Lancelot had come back from the dead. Elyan supports the theory 100%
About two months after the wedding, Merlin and Elyan locate the enchanted bracelet, and Gwen and Lancelot’s names are finally cleared
In Avalon, Elyan, Freya, and Lancelot spend the whole time watching/narrating the events of season 5 like sports commentators. They are all mutually exasperated at Merlin’s antics
When Arthur shows up in Avalon, the only reason Elyan doesn’t punch him in the face is because he’s too busy restraining Lance from doing the same
He does, however, give him a strong talking-to about how “all your magic and you still can’t save my life” is a horrible thing to say actually
Lancelot, however, is more upset about the “I guess I was wrong” speech
Gwaine shows up in Avalon like. SUPER traumatized. He died while being tortured by a nathair, died in a way that he perceived to be failure, and he’s kinda messed up because of that. Elyan, who has already had a few years to cope with nathair torture, is the one who helps Gwaine heal from his trauma
In the 21st century, Elyan gets reincarnated along with everyone else. His childhood is plagued with weird dreams, dreams that terrify him. Snakes and pain, wyverns and fire, all of it. He meets an old man who calls himself Merlin, who helps Elyan through the pain of remembering his past life. For once, Elyan gets to be taken care of instead of the other way around. For once, he is allowed to be vulnerable and weak and struggling. He doesn’t hide his tears. He gets the help he needs and works through his trauma
And one day, many years later, he is walking down the street when he sees someone who looks oddly familiar. The face of an old lover, perhaps
Thanks for the ask! <3
#Merlin Fandom Stop Forgetting About Elyan Challenge#bbc merlin#merlin bbc#merlin#bbcm#ask#fish post
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Let’s Talk- Finn and Russell;
From the very beginning, we get the hint, notion, presence of a deeper connection between Julie Finlay and DB Russell. In Seeing Red, when she hears him, not even having to look and know he’s there during the crime scene reconstruction, just his voice alone makes her roll her eyes, gets her fired up with some sort of passion, anger, emotional reaction. As evidenced from their conversation about the blood spatter case, her resistance to proceed further with him again shows she is not quite over what has happened to them in the past and it makes viewers want to know, what the heck happened? What could this seemingly unbothered hippie like guy have ever done to cross this already sullen yet spirited woman? Despite her futile attempts to deflect him, she cannot help but be drawn to the case, he sought her out after all, he must be desperate. When she retrieves the file he leaves behind and it piques her interest, she gives in, with probably a lot of hemming and hawing off screen, before venturing to CSI for the first time.
That single solitary scene cemented in my brain their dynamic from that day forward. There was no going back for me. Whatever they had in the past, whether that be something romantic, friendly or just work related, my soul ached to know more and even better, my heart yearned to watch them more, to listen, to observe the bantar, the sarcasm, the snark, the sheer and utter pure honesty that comes from their conversations. DB Russell is not trying to trick Finn, he’s not trying to make her figure out some silly puzzle or game, he just wants her expertise and guidance. Once she accepts his offer, her personality begins to shine via her work (Should I wrap it up and take it back to the lab? Took the words right out of my mouth smart ass” “You know me so well” “And you know blood, better than anyone I know”) her bonding with her colleagues, and even better, the little hints at what was between her and Russell back in Seattle.
When we finally do get to see that past revealed, ripped open like a fresh wound, via CSI on Fire, we see the headstrong and overheated Finn on a mission, prove that Tom Cooley is a killer and bring justice to the families of his victims. Of course that journey is not without complications and wild accusations, of course Finn would never kill anyone, that I firmly believe, unless of course it’s to save a friend or colleague (saving Greg from that supposed innocent victim of the Gig Harbor Killer in The Twin Paradox) but Cooley rattles her, gets under her skin in a way different from Russell. In fact it’s Russell warning her to be careful, to go with caution, but her typical rebellious nature of “I’m not listening” pushes her further to the truth and to danger at every turn.
Her tone when speaking to Russell about the discovery of Cooley’s body in his hotel shifts our thinking that maybe she isn’t the same person she was two years ago. If what we are observing right now is the casual cool collected Finn, just how reckless was she in Seattle? She feels the disappointment from Russell in his tone, the way he looks at her, and she hates that, she doesn’t want to disappoint anyone, especially him. His presence in her life since the Seattle days has created this combination of not wanting to let him down or disappoint him mixed with her fierce loyalty to the truth, to the victims and their families, clashing with her exuberant personality.
With CSI on Fire resolved, Finn melts back into a rhythm with her ex-husband, also a component of her former life in Seattle, all seems right between Russell and her, a trademark of their friendship, forgiveness and acceptance.
Looking at their dynamic from the perspective of the actors who portray them, Ted Danson has referred to them as the bickersons, like oil and water, but at the same time, Finn/Elisabeth and her characters intrusiveness helps him do his job better and see things clearly when it comes to cases as well as other aspects of his characters life. Elisabeth meanwhile seemed to enjoy the back and forth dialogue and the testiness of their relationship, she seemed invested in their past in Seattle and wondered where the writers would take that.
In Homecoming, the season 12 finale, we see corruption and problems arise amongst the police force and Russell apologies for seeming to drag Finn into this mess and bringing her there to work but she states that she makes her own decisions and doesn’t seem bothered by the issues until she is thrown into the chaos of it all when she trails Crenshaw and stumbles into the violence they have created around them with the assistance of McKeen and Kimball.
The Finn and Russell dynamic gets tested here when Katie, Russell’s grand daughter is kidnapped and Finn attempts to save her. In the chaos, she sends Katie out into the unknown alone while she does battle with Crenshaw (a violent but epic struggle, major kudos to the stunt work they did here, it felt so real and made me love Finn even more, seeing how far Elisabeth was willing to take this character) Russell is devastated to learn Finn let Katie escape alone but is also distraught knowing both were hurt and in danger. His anger at Finn boils over when she insists she’s fine, how he refers to her as “Finn” on the phone instead of the sweeter Jules we are used to hearing, and when she discusses the case with him in the bedroom where Katie was taken from and he punched the wall, leading to a missed clue. Despite the resentment towards her, they figure out Katie’s whereabouts and stop McKeen from carrying out his plans. We can see and feel Finn’s guilt deep down for her mistakes, even if everything works out, the way she stands holding the phone, the way she looks at Moreno who tries to assure her it will be okay.
At the end of Karma To Burn, Finn and Russell reconcile again, not so much with words but in the way she snaps him out of his fantasy of ever having to use his gun in a real life situation, of how far he was almost pushed to the brink when it comes to saving his work family, not just Katie. His use of the nickname Jules on several occasions, something she claims to hate but also doesn’t, comes back when Barbara inquires if she will stay for dinner. All is well again.
The final blow and perhaps the deepest cut of their relationship occurs with the reopening of the Gig Harbor Killer case. From the get go, we start off with a bang, literally and figuratively. It is Russell who is at the mercy of Winthrop who demands he admit they did not capture the correct killer in order to relinquish Finn from the confines of her bomb invested car. With much reluctance, he admits their mistake and Finn is spared. The hug they share in the parking lot after she is freed breaks me every time and just further adds to the complicated but always present nature of their relationship. The next go around, Maya, Russell’s daughter is targeted, but this time, she is used as bait to try and lure the copycat out to play and be captured. When that fails, Finn unwillingly becomes the next target and once again Russell is thrown for a loop. This time however, there is no mercy, no chance at redemption, Finn is ripped from him violently and with no regard. Worse still, we get to see a tiny bit of his life afterwards, via CSI Cyber, when he observes another coma patient in Hack ER. Avery Ryan takes notice of his demeanor and quietly brings up Finn. Russell’s memories play out in quick flashbacks and we see where his heart belonged the entire time. He speaks of reading to her, hoping she’d wake up, then darkness, never to see her eyes pierce him again, no more bantar, no more snark, no more intrusiveness. The fact that almost a whole year later we get a resolution for Finn and get to see Russell pine for her one last time gives us closure and really showcases how strong this bond was for three and a half years.
I will always wish for a better outcome for Finn, as originally scripted, but somewhere in the chaos of writing and producing, we lost her. I will always be sad we didn’t get to see more of Russell at her bedside waiting for her to wake up. That emotion would have been so raw and real coming from Ted. These characters deserved a proper ending and reunification because it just wasn’t justified to wreck their metaphorical ship that was so strong and sailing along fine before colliding with the iceberg of violence. Nevertheless, this dynamic holds strong in my heart to this day. There are plenty more examples to pull from the show, every time they chatted about cases and made progress just by talking it out, every time they fought about their thought processes and reckless behavior, every soft sweet utterance of “Jules” will forever gut me, weaken me, bring me to my knees, but somehow give me strength. That’s how powerful their relationship was and appeared to me on screen, they were a paradox, love, hate, push, pull, oil and water as Ted stated before, give and take, and boy did they give me so much more than any naysayer could ever attempt to take from me. No matter where anyone stands on the fandom line, so much heart and soul went into Russell and Finn, and when you really sit down and watch and listen with perspective and acceptance, you can see it and feel it. I think that type of power transcends just your typical acting alone, it truly feels real. Give me that dynamic everyday, sign me up. I don’t think I’ll ever be as lucky as I was to witness such greatness on the screen between these two. Good things don’t happen twice, as I have unfortunately learned the hard way over the years, once it’s gone, it’s gone.
But in the heart and soul of Russell and Finn is an incredible ability to keep a stronghold on viewers like me, or maybe not, maybe I’m just crazy, but here were are, years after things have ended and the screen has faded to black.
#julie finlay#db russell#ted danson#elisabeth shue#thank you for coming to this ted talk#literally#csi crime scene investigation#that novel I’ve been working on#here you go#let’s talk
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Heater || Juza/Reader
wrote this in a rush before pulling in buzama banner,, was super busy so it slipped off my mind:---) if i still don't get him, at least he actually comes home in this fic,, but in a completely different sense so i don't think it counts ;-((((
edit: game is still on itaru banner but hey,, gotta do it early 😌✌
word count: 2.5k
"I'm home." Juza muttered under his breath, softly closing the door behind him as to not make any noise. He greeted to no one, being completely aware that he would not receive any sort of response in return, knowing to himself that he got home hours late compared to the time he usually arrives.
Slipping off his shoes that you got him for his promotion half a year ago, he gingerly placed them next to your own pair of heels that you used nearly everyday for work, subconsciously remembering that it was the same pair he bought you for your birthday. In the back of his mind, he wondered when was the last time he stayed silent as he entered his own home, waiting for somebody else to welcome him back before he finally decides to announce his own appearance.
During the first weeks of moving in together, it was hard for you to tell whenever Juza got home—almost every action of his barely made noise whatsoever, right from his numerous attempts on unlocking the door with his own set of keys down to his footsteps as he walks to the living room. It wasn't wrong to say that it kind of felt like an innocent child trying to sneak in somebody else's house, but in reality that wasn't the case at all. That time, your only basis of knowing when he arrives is the time he leaves work and how long it took for him to drive home.
"You better say you're home when you get back from work next time! That way I don't get a heart attack when I see you out of nowhere!" You lightly scolded him once, the panic still completely evident in your features. It was when you were preparing both of your lunches for the next day—you were too deep in thought while keeping yourself busy that turning around and bumping your head directly to his chest nearly made you scream. It didn't exactly help when you learned a few questions later that he has been standing behind you for a few minutes already.
"...Sorry." He quietly apologized, not knowing what else to say right after you reprimanded him. It wasn't his intention to make you feel that way—the reason why he never tried to make anyone acknowledge his presence in the first place is because he didn't want to be a bother. That was why when he realized that you were getting concerned over an issue that he was unconsciously avoiding for the longest time, he already started to weigh the consequences of his own actions.
Juza is so used to putting himself down, degrading his own existence—it was to the point that the notion of other people aside from his family openly welcoming his presence was such a foreign concept to him. If he was being completely honest, he does not have the slightest idea on how he is supposed to feel when that happens, and he doesn't like it one bit. Juza wants to be able to at least show that he is more than capable of feeling appreciation, gratitude like normal people do, however his mindset built from constant self-humiliation holds him back from doing so.
While Juza does not exactly find the thought of his presence being acknowledged as something he is comfortable with, it's an idea he would gladly take pleasure in—as much as possible, he prefers to get used to it, especially if it meant being able to indulge himself into the simple joys of life with you by his side.
From that moment forward, there wasn't a day when he doesn't utter the words "I'm home".
For the first few times, the words were undeniably stiff and iffy coming from his own lips. He sounded incredibly awkward, as if he was forced into saying those particular words. After a week or two, you told him that he doesn't have to say it every time if he really is uncomfortable—you were starting to feel guilty that you had a momentary outburst over something that truly didn't matter in the end. It wasn't even a problem to begin with; there was nothing to fix, so why were you making a big deal out of it?
"No, it's fine." Juza simply shakes his hand in response, rubbing circles to the small of your back to reassure you that he totally meant what he said. His expression gradually steeled into determination as he answered, a huge contrast to his hesitant features from earlier. It was as if he is completely resolved to improve himself even in the smallest ways possible, a way of paying you back for your consideration and patience towards him despite his reputation. Juza believes he still doesn't deserve that kind of treatment from you no matter how many times you comforted him, saying that wasn't the case at all.
Soon enough, Juza was able to say those words comfortably—they roll out from his tongue much more easily than before, as if he has been saying it his whole life. Those words were always spoken out the moment he steps in the house, admittedly expectant of the usual "Welcome back!" from you.
That small exchange became the norm whenever the both of you were back from work. It may appear trivial to other people due to how common those pleasantries are between people who live together, but it held an important meaning to the both of you. It somehow signified the moment you opened up to each other, which was beyond the act of sharing secrets and making memories together—it was far from that. The change of the dynamic between the two of you after that was almost indistinguishable, but it's definitely there. And you're absolutely sure he noticed it, too.
He said those words so much and so often that he soon made a habit out of it. After some time, it didn't really matter to him if you responded or not—the latter solely implies that you were already fast asleep, which normally happens when he comes home late like today.
Juza took off his coat and slowly hung it on the rack, carefully tiptoeing his way to the dark as to not make any unnecessary noise. He prepared himself for the moment he is going to shiver from the room temperature—it is often cold downstairs in the middle of the night, Juza is painfully aware of this because of his occasional snacking on sweets whenever he wakes up during the ungodly hours. That happens more often than he would like to admit, and although he tries to keep quiet about his midnight kitchen raids, you will find out the next morning anyways.
Really... how would it not be awfully obvious, when you swore that you brought home a dozen of cupcakes from work without eating a single piece, only for half of them to suddenly disappear the moment you wake up?
Juza didn't fail to notice how the floor was unusually warm in the middle of the night, the current room temperature more comfortable than he anticipated. The heater isn't supposed to be turned on around this time—that rule is applicable to all of the rooms in the house except the master bedroom, that is.
Did you forget to turn it off before going to sleep?
He let out a curious hum as he approached the dining room. This was one of the rare days when he was too tired to even think of getting some sweets from the fridge—he should turn off the heater first before he retires for the night by your side. That was his only plan, at least not until he picked up soft, muffled voices from the living room. He doesn't recall you texting him earlier about having any visitors, and even if you did, it still doesn't make sense when all the lights were turned off.
Puzzled, he took a peek at the living room in order to figure out what was going on, his confusion getting the best of him.
To Juza's surprise, the voices he heard were coming from the television. It was running the old season of a variety show that he recalled got you way too invested, you eventually felt the need to record all of its episodes during the weekdays. It was the same series you binge watch every Friday night when you're off work with nothing to worry about for the next day.
Most of the time, if not all, Juza joins in your marathon just for the sake of it, and as time passes he unwittingly gets as engrossed as you. It was to the extent that his normal sleeping schedule that he has miraculously maintained for years started to get messed up during weekends. Gradually losing track of time, he always stayed up with you to watch all the recent episodes non-stop, at least that was the case until the last recording finishes playing. Almost every marathon ends with the both of you being panicky despite the sleepiness invading your systems, dawning into the unfortunate realization that the sun is about to rise in a few hours.
You were asleep on the sofa, your body using up majority of the space as you faced the dimly-lit screen. The soft breathings were barely audible, your chest rising and falling rhythmically with the low-volumed beats of the advertisement running on the television. You wore your pair of oversized purple polka-dotted pajamas, the ones you claimed that were definitely not your favorite—pretty doubtful however, considering that you always wore that specific pair of pajamas first and foremost whenever you finish doing the laundry.
The locks of your hair splayed messily on the throw pillows behind you, your figure tightly hugging a certain bolster pillow that Juza swore you brought downstairs from the master bedroom. You didn't fall asleep on purpose, which was apparent from one of your arms awkwardly stretching over your head, your hand dangling on the side of the sofa.
Juza shook his head in resignation. You're going to complain about your shoulder being stiff tomorrow if you stay that way, idiot.
He silently went his way towards your side, fully intent on fixing your position so he would be able to properly carry you to your side of the bed, all while doing his best not to disturb you on your peaceful slumber. Before he could do any of that however, he stopped right in front of your resting figure, kneeling eye-level to your face as he closely observed your relaxed expression.
The soft glow of the television highlighted every contour on your features. The wrinkles between your eyebrows were growing more prominent from the emotional strain you were experiencing at times. Just a few nights ago, Juza recalled you ranting to him about the things that happened to you at work, the frustration in your voice clearly building up as you spoke. The same wrinkles on your forehead creased, your eyebrows digging deeper in every single word you uttered. It wasn't like you to blow up, so Juza figured it was something serious—he will still listen to you either way, regardless if what you'll say is of great importance, or just pure nonsense that came out of nowhere.
You need a good rest, the stress was clearly taking a toll on you—you deserve to take a break more than he does. That was why the last thing he expected to see today is you waiting for him.
Juza sighed. It wasn't necessary for you to do this.
He already texted you that he was most likely going home late due to mishaps in his workplace, which was indirectly a gentle reminder that you did not have to wait for him to come home. Juza always got home in a particular hour so whenever he had to work overtime, the unavoidable guilt always weighed heavily in his chest. He appreciates the fact that you always understood his actions, no matter what the reason was behind it.
"You didn't have to wait." Juza immediately told you as soon as he saw you still downstairs—it was when he got home late for the first time. That time, you also fell asleep in the living room while waiting for him to come back with your phone on your chest—you left the screen turned on by accident, displaying the text messages you and Juza shared. There was a recent message of him telling you to go to sleep, though it remained unread as you were out like a light before you even had the chance to see it.
"I know." You replied drowsily, your tone impulsively confident as if it is the most obvious thing in the world. Juza sent you an inquisitive gaze as you yawned on the sofa, stretching your arms to relieve the soreness of your body from falling asleep in another odd position. Your sleep-addled brain refused to let you think of a good response despite all that, so with all of your remaining energy that night, you gave him a lazy smile as you peeked at him through your drooping eyelids. "But I wanted to."
Your sincere but somehow dopy response told him that this wouldn't be the last time you'll be doing this—he is positive you'll attempt to stay awake if he is once again unable to leave work on time. If he was being completely honest, he felt bad whenever you did that—it wasn't his intention to trouble you by sacrificing hours of sleep for him, which he was sure you definitely needed.
That simple act that you did so often didn't make him less grateful of your patience towards him. If anything, it just gave him more reasons to love you, even though the list is already longer than necessary, ranging from your tiniest, adorable habits to the considerate, thoughtful personality of yours—it was frankly a complete difference to how you managed to draw him in by brute force.
Juza knew right from the start how stubborn you were when it comes to things that mattered to you, so whenever he has to go home late, he is subconsciously aware that you'll pay no heed on what he said about not having to wait for him. Even though that's the case, every time he arrives really late at night, your sleeping figure always manages to catch him off-guard.
"You didn't have to wait." Juza whispered, a soft smile crawling its way onto his lips. His hand instinctively reached out to your cheek, something he typically did before he goes to sleep every night. A part of him was unwilling to pull away, his touch lingering much longer than usual—he stayed like that for a few more moments, barely noticing your free hand extending to his.
"Juza?"
Your eyed opened, clearly in a daze as you stared at him absentmindedly. He only hummed in acknowledgement, observing your eyes shining from the brightness of the television screen. Despite waking up moments ago, you still find it in yourself to lace your fingers together with his, your expression crinkling from the beam forming on your lips. "Welcome back."
He gives your hand a light squeeze. "I'm home."
#a3!#a3! act! addict! actors!#act! addict! actors!#a3! actor training game#a3! juza#juza hyodo#hyodo juza#a3! x reader#ok y'all in all honesty#THIS WAS SO EMBARRASSING TO WRTIE#ngl idk why either...#i had to stop writing for no one knows how many...#plaes send help..pleas e
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Previously On Supernatural Season 3, we had a really rock solid trio of episodes to kick us off right, so what does SPN do next? It’s gonna lay the groundwork for some spicy character development that may or may not pay off by the end of the season. Let's find out!
To be honest, I felt the next three episodes just sort of plateau? There’s enough nuggets in these three eps - “Sin City”, “Bedtime Stories”, and “Red Sky at Morning” - that it does feel like they’re setting up for something big but it’s taking too much time. If the season had been longer, I don’t know that I’d be complaining, because there’s SO much potential introduced with these character developments, but I know it’s gonna get cut off at the knees in the very near future. 2021 Me has been trained on what to expect from a short season, so half of my brain wants to give the show slack for Unexpected Circumstances, but the other half of my brain is shouting YOUR NOT DRIVING THE BUS FAST ENOUGH, YOU’LL NEVER MAKE IT TO THE END OF THE LINE IN TIME!!!
And that’s maybe unfair because there really are some great nuggets in here. We’ve got “Sin City”, which is Dean’s episode. I mean, they’re ALL Dean’s episode, but this one more so than the other two in this post. Dean gets trapped with a demon who turns out to be...kinda...nice? In kind of a Stockholm Syndromey way I guess? She let’s Dean in on the fate that awaits him when his year long contract is up and it is NOT great. This isn’t the first time we see that there’s more to the demons than SPN has shown us in the past (hello, Ruby), but it is the first time Dean chills out enough to actually have a conversation with one. Dean doesn’t really get it, like he’s still not interested in getting out of his deal, but the fear gets planted, it just needs some time to grow. Oh, also, the Colt Ex Machina is back in action, so that's important.
This dumb bitch thinks he can fool us with that devil-may-care side glance but he caaaan't
But then we get “Bedtime Stories”, the Sam episode, where Sam learns...to let go? That’s the point of this episode right? It’s about letting go of someone before that person becomes too toxic and dangerous? At least, that’s the lesson that Dean wants Sam to take away from this case. But Sam will NOT learn this lesson, so instead he tries to cancel Dean’s deal by killing the crossroads demon who wrote it. Spoiler Alert: it doesn't work.
And then we get “Red Sky At Morning”, which opens and closes with some heavy emotional baggage, but then is stuffed full of fun. Like, this episode ricochets wildly in terms of Feelings, but then that’s probably what we should expect from SPN. I mean, what show have I been watching for 3 seasons now?
Fun Facts guys: I’m a tired Millenial, and swapping DVD discs was too much work so I switched over to watching this season on Netflix and GUESS WHAT???? THESE EPISODES COME WITH A SUICIDE WARNING!?!?!
They're not wrong.
And like, if that doesn’t tell you everything you need to know about this season I don’t know WHAT will. Cuz Dean is absolutely suicidal and I am surprised (??) I guess (???) by how much the show acknowledges that. Or I guess, surprised by how much Netflix acknowledges that. It’s something that I did not...pick up on the first go around on season 3, possibly because I was 19 and I was an idiot and found this sort of emotional vulnerability to be endearing. Listen, I know there’s a lot to be said about the producers of the show making...umm…poor decisions in regards to character developments? But if the target demographic of this show was anything like me - and I suspect they were - then the viewers were also...probably...responding inappropriately to some of those character developments. And here’s the thing - I’m looking at this from 12 years in the future, with 12 years worth of real life drama that makes the heavy handed melodrama of television feel...well, heavy handed. Maybe irresponsible? Certainly a little uncomfortable. Big Me is having A Time confronting Little Me’s taste in TV Characters. It’s one thing to have a kink, Little Me, it’s another thing to romanticize suicidal depression.
And hey, I can’t deny that the character development for Dean makes sense. I actually appreciate that the show is thinking through the world and the relationship dynamics that they’ve built and the toll that these misadventures are having on their main characters. These episodes all get bookended by Impala Fights where Sam keeps pushing Dean to give a shit about his own life and Dean responds with an inability to care. That’s just where he is right now, and I get that. We’re early in the season still. But how will the rest of the season handle this? I honestly can’t remember but I also don’t want this to be a throw-away issue that they use to remind us that Dean’s supposed to die at the end of the season. I’m prob gonna come back to this throughout the season because I ~just~want~this~show~to be~repsonsiblllllleeeeeeeeeeee.
Lol, I know, that’s a lot to ask from the CW.
ON TO MORE FUN THINGS!!
Sam is gettin’ reeeeeallll bitchy in these episodes and #1, I love it, Bitchy Sam 5Ever, but also #2, was this supposed to be the sign that Sam was going darkside? Like, he’s snarky, he’s angry, he’s not pulling any punches and that could just be him reacting to his brother’s situation but it could also be….you know...him...becoming slightly...evil? For instance in “Sin City”, he kills the two demons who kidnapped Dean without even thinking. On the one hand, this is the Winchester MO, they kill demons, that’s their job, but on the other hand, Dean is actively telling Sam to stop. Same deal in “Bed Time Stories” - Sam kills the crossroads demon in cold blood (or maybe viscera). Again, we could blame this on instinct - the Winchesters were brought up to do exactly this - but 1) Dean keeps telling Sam not to and 2) that’s not Sam. This show spent 2 seasons telling us that Sam is the Good Brother, the White Hat, the Touchy-Feely One. This is not the Touchy Feely Sam who reasons with ghosts and falls in love with werewolves. Like, everyone else sees it too, right? Also, he is usually very nice to everyone but he is a REAL BITCH to Gertrude in “Red Sky at Morning.” Like, come on, Sam, she just wants to have a nice time. She is OLD. You really think she’s got what it takes to climb that tree?
Honestly, how tall are this lady's heels?
I know that there was a plan for Sam to start Turning in this season before the show’s episode order got slashed due to the Writer’s Strike. And man, I really would have liked to have seen this play out. Like, first season Sam is the Innocent, right? He’s our stand in for the viewer in those first few episodes and then he’s revealed to be kind of the only thing that went right in the lives of both John and Dean, so Baby Must Be Protected at All Costs. The fact that John ultimately lets Sam go off to college and doesn’t contact him for the next four years says to me that on some level, John felt the need to preserve that innocence, that kind of untouched quality Sam has. Dean is very similar - whenever Sam gets too into the job, Dean calls him out on it. So in the second season when we find out that Sam might be evil, it’s a real punch in the gut, for Dean most of all. But then the show admittedly got bored with that storyline and it didn’t really go anywhere. So whereas Dean has personality in SPADES that fluctuates and changes and develops/maybe just gets more intense as the show goes on, Sam remains that kind of blank slate that the viewer can put their face on. Except now we’re in season three, and if you’ve bought into this show, then you’ve bought into it, so the audience doesn’t need a Blank Slate Sam anymore. And if you start with Sam the Innocent and then introduce the idea of Dark!Sam and then just leave that concept hanging, then isn’t this sort of like Checkov’s Evil Sam? If you introduce Evil Sam in the first act you really ought to deliver on Evil Sam by act three, right? Wouldn’t that have been A+ and Wild? Wouldn’t that have made Sam’s arc and emotional struggles over the previous seasons have more weight?
Will this be resolved in later seasons? Maybe. I’m gonna be honest, this is the last season I watched all the way through and seasons 4 through...like, 8 were real touch and go for me. I know that Sam ultimately is revealed to be a vessel for??? The devil??? And Dean is ultimately revealed to be a vessel for??? Michael??? And then the two of them???? Fight to the death???? Point is, season 5 got weird guys and I’m not there yet.
Back to more fun things! You know what guys?? I think I ship Dean and Bela. I’m...almost ashamed to admit it? Like, I remember Little Me watching this season and just dumping on Bela, I HATED her, but this time? I am 1,000% On Board This Ship. Like, there is an alternate universe somewhere where these two got a spinoff show that ran for 6 seasons and I watched EVERY episode. And then, like, 5 years after it ended, they rebooted it with Dean and Bela’s grown up daughter as the lead and the whole OG cast makes cameos over the three seasons it stays on the air and it’s amazing. I’d own both shows on DVD.
What I like about Bela this time around (and again, I am WILDLY surprised about this development), is that she can dish it just as hard as the Winchesters can. Like, every line Dean throws at her she holds up a mirror to say, “Oh yes, I know the Kettle is black, but what color are you, Pot?” and I’m just continually thrilled. She is also just as damaged as Dean is but somehow channeling it into a healthier way? Like, she’s true Chaotic Neutral, which is not necessarily healthy, it’s just healthier than Dean. Or maybe it’s just that she’s better at managing it. In either case, they are HOT MESSES and I love it. I just love it. I know I complained about shoehorned romances but Ackles and Lauren Cohan just totally crush it in every scene and when Dean walks down the stairs all She’s All That in “Red Sky at Morning”, I yelled at the screen OMG just BONE already!!!!! And then like, 5 seconds later, Bela literally says “We should really have angry sex,” and it was probably the most vindicating moment I’ve had on this ride so far.
I just think they're neat!
WHY did we cancel her? WHY?? I don’t want to believe it was the Wincest again, so I’m gonna pretend that it wasn’t, but it was definitely fans. According to Kripke, Bela gets the axe at the end of this season because of the fan hatred of her. Now, I’ve already admitted that I personally held a grudge, but good Lord, what was wrong with us, as a Fandom? To be fair to me (and all of us), would we have felt differently if we had not been introduced to Jo a mere season earlier?? I'm gonna say yes. Although I had misgivings about Jo the first episode we meet her, by the end of season 2 I was certainly on her side. Working through season 3, I am remembering that, when we were introduced to Bela, I was immediately FURIOUS because WTF, WHERE’S JO? SPN just introduced to her. They just settled on a love interest for Dean and the writer’s just got me on board with that. Now they’ve completely done away with both that character AND that dynamic and you want me to get on board this NEW thing? And be excited about it??? So I'm gonna blame the love-interest-whiplash, combined with the fact that Little Me related my own personal self more to Jo than to Bela, that made me hate Bela in the first place. When you look at how quickly the show abandoned one character to introduce another character, it makes sense why fans got mad, but I’m also mad that we continued to hate Bela when she turned out to be such an A+ Frenemy. It makes me want to shout at the writers through the time void COMMIT TO A FEMALE CHARACTER YOU JAGWEEDS.
What’s wild watching this show now is just how Male it was, especially considering its audience was already skewed heavily female by this point in the series. If you made this show today, I don’t know that you could do that. Today, there’s a real push for balanced, diverse casts in programming, especially in sci-fi/fantasy and young adult. I think if SPN had started in 2021, they would have introduced the Harvell’s or Bela up in season 1, and that introduction would have been much more intentional. The benefit of having a shorter episode count as the standard is that there’s less of the “throw stuff at the wall and see what sticks” approach. Looking at it from 2021, reading snippets of interviews from Kripke, that’s definitely what they’re doing with the side characters in these seasons and you can feel that in Jo and Bela. A shorter season means that the storytelling has to be tighter, it can’t wander, so every decision has to be a load-bearing decision. On the other hand, one of the down sides of having a shorter episode count is the exact same thing - less room to throw stuff, less room to experiment. Heck, Bobby was technically a character they threw at the wall and he didn’t just stick, he became a tentpole character of the series. The only side character that actually made it into the series finale even!
So how much room should we be giving our television programs? I think it depends on the show, honestly. I think you have to decide up front if you want space to experiment, or if you have one, tight, compact story line that’s gonna drive viewers from episode 1 right through the finale without giving them the chance to catch their breath. You have to make the decision, but that doesn’t mean we have to stop making one style of show in favor of the other. Just because we’re in the Age of Streaming doesn’t mean there isn’t room enough for both.
#Supernatural#Supernatural season 3#Supernatural rewatch#Sin City#Bedtime Stories#Red Sky at Morning#Sam Winchester#Dean Winchester#Bobby Singer#Bela Talbot#TV#TV history#TV format
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tysm for all ur FE updates!!! i'm really excited for elijah's introduction in this dynamic. i feel like he's just as acquainted with elena's morally complex nature as klaus's since, after all, he was the first one she ever lured in and daggered (call-back to that scene was GREAT btw). i'm just curious how you view elena/elijah's dynamic vs. klaus/elena's, even outside the scope of the fic, esp since they've had more canon interactios
This is an ask after my own heart, nonny!
This is such an interesting question-- it’s true that Elijah and Elena have a lot more canon interactions to work with, although the Klaus and Elena interactions we DO have in canon are so ripe and explosive that it lends itself to a lot of speculation.
So, here are my thoughts:
Elena/Elijah: Elena and Elijah both operate under the false assumption that they’re both honorable people. In fact, all of the trust they build together in season 2 is based on this idea, with both of them going to great lengths to negotiate and prove themselves to the other. They both think they’re being extremely honest with the other-- the deal they make in 2x11 utterly fascinates me, because Elijah honestly asks Elena to die as her part of the deal, and she agrees??? It doesn’t sound like he tried to hide that from her at all. Now, Elena DOES dagger him, but she also proves herself to him later and is able to account for her actions. All of that combined with the insane levels of attraction between them (WHEN HE SMELLS HER AND THEN GIVES HER THAT LITTLE WAVE IN 2x08????) make for really captivating television. There’s also a lot of interesting framing going on with the camera angles-- if you look back at it, notice how often Elena is shown in mirror reflections during her early scenes with Elijah-- all the time. What a great call back to how he sees her not just as herself, but as her role as the doppelganger. I do think he BEGINS to see her as herself as he gets to know her, especially by 2x19, but that takes time.
Well. The crux of it all is that Elena goes through with her side of the deal-- the deal on which their entire relationship is based-- going to her death, losing her aunt whom Elijah fails to protect-- even though doing so was HIS part of the bargain-- and then Elijah is the one who breaks his word when he decides not to kill Klaus. This is the first sign we have that actually Elijah isn’t honorable at all; he thinks that he is, but really, he’s as selfish as his siblings. I don’t really think Elena ever forgives him for this. We see in season 3 that she still really is attracted to Elijah, and that she can’t quite help but be drawn in by him, but she never allows herself to really put herself in his hands again. She might feel bad about conspiring to kill him with the rest of his family in 3x14 and 3x15... but she also doesn’t hesitate. And she doesn’t exactly confess what she’s done, either. She just gets caught. I also don’t think that Elijah’s letter to her did anything to smooth over the wreck they’d made of their relationship/unspoken attraction to each other. The way Elena recites it back to him in season 4 says it all about how much she dwelled on his words, but it also implies that she’s still hurt and angry about it all all of that time later. I think she had this really powerful, idealized image of Elijah, and her disillusionment with him is profound.
Meanwhile, Elena is also on a path throughout seasons 2 & 3 of discovering that she’s not who she thought she’d grow up to be. She is definitely more honorable than Elijah when they meet, and she means to keep her word. But Elena’s story is that she’s an orphan with no parental/mentor guidance influencing her in a positive and moral way; instead, she has a 26 year old aunt who means well but is totally in the dark about what’s really going on and pretty much in over her head, and maybe Alaric, who shouldn’t count as a good influence because, well, look at his life, look at his choices. And she has the Salvatores. The greatest influences upon her. Damon has the greatest part in tipping her away from the straight and narrow path, to getting her sense of right and wrong to slowly unravel until she gets to a place such as 2x05, when she watches Damon eat the deputies and she doesn’t bat an eyelash (how far she’s come from 1x07 when she slapped Damon and called him out!). I MORE than suspect that the infamous Elijah-daggering at the lake house was a Damon/Elena collaboration. But even Stefan, who the show frames as so stalwart and honorable, is still a terrifying vampire with ultimately little concern for human life. He still hurts people off and on throughout seasons 1 & 2, or doesn’t particularly have a problem with it when Damon does. I mean, do you see Stefan crying over what Damon did to Caroline in season 1? It’s inconceivable from a human view point. But that’s the point. They’re not human, and they’re the greatest influences in Elena’s life. No small part of Bonnie’s horror with the Salvatores is because she watches Elena slowly turn down this dark path with those two leading Elena by the hand-- human Elena, who should never cross through the veil into the shadow.
She’s still in the process of straying from that path-- from her honorable self-- when Elijah meets her. By the time they encounter each other in season 3, she’s already left all of that behind. She stabs people in the back when they trust her. She negotiates and gives her word only to double cross as soon as the moment is right, and she doesn’t seem to lose very much sleep over it. Elijah’s issue is that he cannot see that in Elena-- he wants to see her as who she was when he met her-- who Katerina and probably who Tatia was-- as a miracle that he desires but doesn’t quite dare to touch-- but he is incapable of seeing that his betrayal of her at the sacrifice was probably the last straw that killed whatever innocence was left in Elena.
I think the attraction and the yearning is always going to be there between them, but it’s so embittered, especially from Elena’s point of view, that it’s hard to say whether they would be able to work past that unless Elijah suddenly learned some actual introspection skills.
Elena/Klaus: I’ve had to think a while about this dynamic to answer the question of how this relationship is as directly compared to Elena/Elijah. Obviously they both have the history and repetition element, of the dead lover whose face keeps reiterating through time-- what a dreadful and terrifying idea, honestly. Except where Elijah is almost afraid to even touch Elena (he SO desires her, but never ever acts on it), Klaus touches Elena all. the. time. There’s a real possessiveness to his relationship with her-- notice how he holds her as he devours her; how during the Reckoning he’s always physically close to her, leaning into her space, touching her-- whereas Elijah really physically backs off from Elena when he confirms her identity, Klaus comes closer.
This is interesting because I’ve realized in thinking about this relationship, and what Klaus and Elena potentially have in common, that what they really share is their isolation-- their loneliness. Klaus explicitly states that this is why he desires Elena-- to make hybrids, so he won’t be alone anymore (Rebekah mocks him for it, but there it is). Elena, meanwhile, is at her most alone in season 3-- everyone walks away from her there, for reasons she has no control over. This is never really used as a point to bring them together as characters, but I find it really interesting as a possibility for connection.
Another thing that really interests me is that Elena often tries to negotiate with Klaus the way she would with Elijah-- and mostly, it fails spectacularly. Klaus recognizes in Elena that she is a schemer and a liar-- because he is too. What’s fascinating though is that, just like Elijah, he tends to treat her as an equal in these conversations-- even if he doesn’t want to play. He doesn’t tend to treat with the other characters in this way, and that gives Elena an intriguingly special status there.
In canon we really don’t have a ton to work with to talk about the Klaus/Elena dynamic-- it’s all potential. The idea of fate being so strong and impossible to avoid-- that in that sense, they’re almost warped soul mates?; the powerful fire imagery surrounding them (the only time Elena’s elemental coding switches from water to fire is with Klaus); the chemistry and attraction that bubbled over in all of their scenes, especially in the early days; the fact that she is just so constantly challenging him and wrecking him at every turn? Klaus’s big problem is that no one is his equal, and yet... here is Elena. Human Elena, whose reasoning is as warped as Klaus’s by season 3, who somehow keeps scrambling up to play against Original vampires and witches and all sorts of creatures who should be able to crush her and yet, she keeps besting them. That’s some potent stuff to work with. I tend to think that at the end of the day, Klaus actually understands Elena much better than Elijah did, because his view of her isn’t really muddied by idealism and instead really takes into account her more tarnished nature. My only regret is that the showrunners obviously feared ever really exploring Klaus x Elena x Elijah (EVEN THOUGH THEY COMPLETELY SET IT UP) because they felt that Stefan x Elena x Damon was already as much as the show could handle (it wasn’t-- we should have done both, obviously).
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A quick list of animes I watched and don’t want to forget:
Mushishi - pure, haunting beauty, 10/10 recommend especially when you want some clarity and calmness in your life. You’ll cry tho
K - the amount of tears I shed TwT I literally miss the characters. Weird af world and story, but somehow I got attached. There should be K: seven stories somewhere but I can’t find it... Also: this whole we’re a bunch of problematic people who become a family is a trope I’ll never get tired of
Tokyo Ghoul - S1 and S2 feel like one huge story and it’s just the beginning so buckle up... There are 2 OVAs (Jack and Pinto) that help with understanding Re: (S3) and then there is S4 which is apparently only the most important parts of the manga... I understand why so many people think that s4 is ridiculous, but the first 3 seasons are great. The manga is a must for the anime tho, bc the last season is a joke, so if you can, read the manga first. With that said, the censorship is terrible so if you can, watch it without the weird black and white patches that take up half the screen, because the animation, the fights, the colours are all extremely vibrant and alive, just like the characters. What being human means, why the police feel like they are doing god’s work when they kill innocents along with the psychos, what a family is, can we be selfish for others, and many more questions are discussed here, all while somebody gets gutted. S2 was much more like a filler than a normal season, but still, I cried, and the whole anime is awesome so watch it if you can.
(If you get upset when humans are able to endure more than supernatural beings then it’s not your show, bc even though humans are supposed to be, you know, humans, they are still able to kill tens of ghouls with a fucking hole inside of them.)
Attack on Titan - got tired of waiting after s2... No mystery is worth more than a year of waiting lol
Black butler - I need to get around and watch the book of atlantis. Great story, Sebastian is everything and more, and the aesthetic is something I’ll never forget. The music fits perfectly, and the foods make me drool. It has the “big picture”, as well as small journeys where you can get to know your favourite characters which I appreciate. S2 was not something I enjoyed, but the book of circus was worth it as well as most ova’s.
Darker than black - THEY MUST CONTINUE IT BRING HEI BACK PLEASE PLEASE I CAN’T I JUST CAN’T - also s2′s opening makes me cry. Dolls and Contractors work together as a team, then alone, then again as a team... it was a wild ride. Awesome character development, great plot and world building. Sadly they cut their story and future at s2 for some reason... If I ever watch it again I watch Gaiden before Gemini tho - a lot less confusion and disappointment this way.
Bungou Stray Dogs - loving it with my whole heart can’t wait to watch it again because there is literally NO character I don’t love. It has pretty boys, crime, mystery, magical abilities and comedy alongside the surprisingly deep issues. The art style is otherworldly, everything is so PRETTY and CAPTURING ugh *-*. It also made me read lots of books again (especially Japanese literature which was new for me) ^^
(Who doesn’t ship Dazai and Chuuya... And Poe is a baby too)
Noragami - cute, very cute, I love it when the main character is powerful af yet has a silly, loving side. Also: you can learn a bit about gods and religion
Assassination Classroom - tears. all of them. tears. It’s not what I expected but still, the little assassins and the teacher’s relationship was perfect.
Another - i watched it for the dolls and the umbrella meme. Liked it? yes. Do I remember anything else tho? Not really
Parasyte - one of the first animes I’ve ever watched. Loved it. ^^ Migi was great, all the issues it brings up were thought provoking, and it has gore.
Hellsing - idk it had too many monologues and ideologies, didn’t finish it
Psycho-Pass - In short: cyberpunk future, systematic oppression, immigrants, killing with permission and other moral or societal issues, plus charismatic characters and gore. The watching order: S1, S2, Sinners of the system, S3, First inspector. Wonderful buildup, dynamic storytelling, great mystery elements, and of course the found family/teamwork will always be a favourite of mine. The writing is extra detailed, every character is 3D, their responses, beliefs and cultures are tied together perfectly, the chemistry between characters is relatable and although everybody seems to live by one goal only, it’s not as dull as one would think. It also has some great book recommendations, literature and philosophers play a big role, which is always a bonus. 10/10. I really hope we will get extra contents and S4 in the future.
Steins Gate - I can’t bring myself to watch the last 2 episodes of S1 lol. It starts slowly but it’s much better paced than I remembered. The anime heavily relies on the characters which are sadly very 2D: the haughty but loving, the cute but tragic, the clever weeb, the loving tsundere... and for some fucking reason every single girl loves the mad scientist who... doesn’t really show love or sometimes not even respect towards the others until the last half of the show, so I don’t particularly care about their fate, but I watch it bc I don’t want to leave it unfinished. Because people are so into it I thought maybe the story will be... flabbergasting, shocking or just a masterwork, but the whole time travelling thingy, all the rules, all the paralel worlds work very conveniently. There were some great twists that I loved, some that I saw coming and some that I didn’t, but the story itself isn’t the best and even the plottwists won’t help that.
Full metal alchemist - i watched many, many episodes. I liked it. But it lost me. Anyways, I looked up the story and it sounds interesting, lots of plot twists, great conspiracy theories etc. The main character was a bit... annoying. My main problem is that they were children cuz I can only get immersed in the adult characters’ stories...
Durarara!! - s1 was great I love gang and mystery stuff, BUT I stopped watching it bc I was only immersed in the adult characters’ stories...
The Ancient Magus' Bride - it’s a gory fairy tale, with two toxic but loveable characters who learn a lot, evolve a lot and become real companions. There is lots of touching, head pats and affection. <3 Seasond 2 is very much needed, I want to see more episodic journey elements like the cat kingdom episodes were, and perhaps cry just a little less. Pro tip: when you watched the first 12 eps you should watch the 3 episode ova and then the next 12 eps ;) Oh, and expect tears mostly from happiness
Devilman Crybaby - I was the crybaby. The ending is beautiful, the art style was great, it literally pulsed through my eyes sometimes. Awesome characters, weird storyline, sad ending.
Death Parade - another anime that made me cry :) Beautiful art style, immersive story, interesting take on the afterlife, moral issues. It had everything I needed,
Juni Taisen - It wasn’t the craziest or most cunning anime of all times, but I cared about the characters and I really wanted to know how it ends, so it was good i guess
Kekkai Sensen - i watched s1 and I didn’t care anymore...
BEASTARS - it was one hell of a ride. Interesting world, great conflict, highschoolers and gore... also I think there was a sudden rise in the numbers of furries while it aired. It’s art style however was too cgi-y, too smooth for me :/
Re: Zero - the main character is a little bitch i hated him but i stayed for the plot. I don’t really like love interests when one party is only loved because they look perfect... i really wish we got more seasons and explanations s2 is on the horizon, but I doubt I’ll ever watch it
I’ll update it when I watch something else or I remember something I’ve watched.
Also in conclusion, what do i need in an anime? 1) adults 2) superpowers 3) found family 4) a brooding, powerful af main character 5) action and mystery (plus gore) 6) chemistry between characters 7) side characters that matter 8) tissues
Any recs?
#anime#mushishi#K#tokyo ghoul#attack on titan#black butler#darker than black#should i write a fanfic for darker than black where hei comes back and stuff...?#bungou stray dogs#noragami#assassination classroom#another#parasyte#hellsing#psycho pass#steins gate#full metal alchemist#durarara#the ancient magus' bride#devilman crybaby#death parade#juni taisen#kekkai sensen#beastars#re:zero#anime rec list#happy pride month everyone#corpse party#yuri on ice#im rambling
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Clone Wars Saved...ish
What the hell did I just watch ?
Let’s start by saying that 1) spoilers alert, not necessarily coherent but definitely there, I’ll put on a read more, but unspoiled mobile users, just in case it fails, scroll by and 2) @norcumii had warned me. And yet I didn’t quite expect that because, how could more clones ever be bad !
Oh boy.
Thanks to @shadow-spires for being my emotional support watchbuddy. I needed it more than I thought I would and we’re only three episodes in.
Some context : I’ve watched... only a few episodes of the show before, despite probably being able to give you the plot of all 6 seasons and quote lines and scenes, thanks tumblr and my own love for clones. And I hadn’t really looked at the bad batch half-rendered episodes because I still had trouble with the graphics of the actually finished show, so...
But I was ready for this, for feels, for finding Echo again and, finally, get 66 and murdered by Dave Filoni.
Set up a meeting time to watch some eps with shadowspires, fun when there is a twelve hours diff between us and here we go.
Let me tell you, there was a lot of yelling in all caps in the chat side bar...
Trying to keep mostly in order of the episodes :
- WHAT THE HELL HAPPENED TO KIX’S HAIR ? Why ? Why hair and no more tattoo ??? Is this supposed to be red corsair continuity ? But then WHY IS HE HERE AND NOT ALREADY ABDUCTED ? Is this merch reasons ?
- Two seconds in and WOW I hate the Bad Batch. And this does NOT get better. I’m really tired of the Muscle is Dumb trope, Tech is like a human C3PO which urgh but fine but then KEEP CONSTANT (this is going to be a major point of my yelling), if Hunter says you chatter all the time THEN DO but no, we won’t here a single random fact ever again for three episodes, and Crosshairs chats and snarks a LOT for someone ‘not talkative’.
- Regs. FUCKING REGS, urgh, I hated that word the INSTANT it was said. Canon isn’t as heavily into the Vode An fanon loves, but WOW fuck that. Strike team or not, you’re not supermen, you have to rely on intel, be supplied, you’re not a bunch of mercenaries, you’re a MILITARY STRIKE TEAM, you must interact with regs a lot so it means you’re a bunch of condescending assholes ALL THE TIME.
-Also fuck 1) that team’s dynamics and 2) the “two teams do not get along” trope, fuck it with a SHOVEL.
1) You’re a Commando Team. In an army three years deep into war. You’re comrades and probably have save each other asses hundred of times. So why can’t you behave ? And I know people do not always get along, or even best friends sometimes irk each other, but, look, consistency, if you think you’re with lesser people because regs (can you tell I’m not over that either), you present a united front and you don’t bitch at your teammates in front of them.
2) YOU ARE MILITARY. Trained for 10+ years, there’s DISCIPLINE there, even a maverick strike team, when Cody is down, you OBEY THE SECOND IN COMMAND. I don’t care if you have a better plan, you TELL the officer, you don’t just tell him to shut up and watch. AND YOU DON’T GET AT EACH OTHER’S THROATS.
-Did I mention I hate everything about Dumb Violent Muscles unable to control himself or follow a plan ?
-Of course the one time we could see Cody in charge, he’s hurt and useless.
-WHY. IS. THE MEDIC. GOSSIPING. INSTEAD OF KEEPING WATCH OVER THE WOUNDED BROTHER ???
AND WHY DOES HE HAVE HAIR DAMMIT
-The tactics Mess out of order : Why is nobody blowing stuff up, a group able to single handedly take on 100+ droids is getting pushed back by thirty later on, why not trap the outpost to blow up the incoming droids, the analytical droid cannot comprehend why the clones would leave the outpost while in full view of the cyber center and it has to be pointed out to him, WHY DID NOBODY TRAP THE FUCKING OUTPOST TO BLOW, why does the tech guy LITERALLY NAMED TECH doesn’t hide/erase what they did to the computer, why if he didn’t have time DIDN’T HE BLOW UP THE COMPUTER.
-And for a plot point being “droids analyzes our tactics so we always have to change them”, it means that no one ever attacked a front door and drew all the droids there for a second team to sneak by the back door. Somehow.
Ep2 & 3 :
- Why is “this may or may not be Echo” matters on a tactical PoV ? I get the emotional one, of course, but having the Bad Batch question it at the beginning and later on starting a fight over it has no other reason than to go for another round of We Do Not Get Along Trope. The Seps have either a PoW or an Algorhythm allowing them to win battle, no matter what it is, you have to go and rescue/take it. WHY ARE YOU ARGUING.
- I know this is the funny part of ‘Anakin and Padmé are the less subtle ever’ and it was funny (I didn’t hate ALL of the episodes, see ?), but why is she explaining to Anakin why he fights three years into the war other than reminding the public, this is the LEAST EFFECTIVE PLAN ever to hide from Obi-Wan with Rex obviously standing guard.
-Not a critic, just fucking amused : if someone isn’t aware that Padmé and Anakin are a thing, there is a lot of subtext to thing Anakin and Rex have a hidden fling. I don’t even ship it and I could see it x)
- Tell Padmé I say hello. TELL PADME I SAY HELLO. Obi-Wan fucking KNOWS, maybe not the whole “married and pregnant” but hellooooo that was blantant cue that he’s aware they’re together, at the very least so very close friends that they sneak private calls during a siege if Anakin is really dense, we have ONSCREEN PROOF that Obi-Wan SAID OUT LOUD something about it and it makes Anakin thinking Obi-Wan doesn’t know and couldn’t understand in RotS even STUPIDER. Good job Anakin.
- This Galaxy has the most efficient Google Translate ever. Either it’s a known language of the planet you’re going to, and then by doing research amidst the prep to go to the planet everyone or at least Rex as Captain would put the translator to the spoken languages there on his helmet, or it’s an unknown one and yet with two sentences, Tech’s tech (urgh) is able to translate and analyses it well enough to speak it back to them. Wow.
- WHY. IS. THE. JEDI. NOT. USING. THE. FORCE. You’ve worked with Echo before but there’s no mention or even trying to feel him, fine, better have another fight of whether or not he’s truly here, two droids manage to get the drop on you, two droids manage to get the drop on you AND SOMEHOW AREN’T IMMEDIATELY BISECTED, Two droids manage to get the drop on you, survive, AND GIVE YOU ENOUGH TROUBLE YOU NEED SOMEONE TO SHOOT ONE TO GET OUT OF IT.
- Echo, my poor baby TnT I knew this was going to hurt, and it does, it does so much.
-And we’re RIGHT BACK to full on rage rather fast. We go from “he’s so weak he can’t walk, he doesn’t remember anything after the Citadel, he’s so out of it he doesn’t know where he is and ‘notices’ Rex being here two or three times” to “He can walk, he can be yeeted into a vent, he can tightpole walk, he can shoot while standing, he knows the whole base’s blueprints and also all the Separatist’s database.” in like. Five minutes. CONSITENCY FOR FUCK’S SAKE. Why is no one carrying him, why don’t we even get a fucking HUG ?
-Why was everyone yeeted by Dumb Muscles WHEN WE HAVE A JEDI HERE. WHY STILL NO FORCE ??? Clone-yeeting is like Anakin’s favorite pastime, he should have thought of it FIRST, My Moment Has Come.
- Oh FUCK NO. WHY did you even GO BACK TO THE NATIVES’ VILLAGE ? You got dragons, you fly back to your ship that wasn’t damaged in anyway, you evac fast and clean, DONE ! Why go back ? Anakin even says that the Techno Union will strike for helping them BUT UNTIL YOU WENT BACK THEY DIDN’T KNOW THE NATIVES HELPED YOU ! They had no problems until now ! DON’T INVOLVE CIVILIANS ! If they had gone with the plot point of having the natives pick a side and be the ones to save them from that pole by flying to get them, then yes, totally, stay and help and defend them against the retaliation massacre ! But since they didin’t, do NOT go there and draw to them a retaliation massacre.
-FUCK that speech. Sorry Rex, but FUCK THAT. Again, civilians. You are supposed to be the GOOD GUYS trying to STOP THE WAR, not draw innocents into it when it could be avoided. AND THEN LEAVE WHEN YOU JUST TOOK DOWN ONE ATTACK AND THE TECHNO UNION WILL SURELY COME WIPE OUT THAT VILLAGE FOR HELPING YOU AND THERE’LL BE NO JEDI TO SAVE THE DAY.
-Why is everyone suddenly dumb.
-Fuck that “good old days” bullshit. I’m sure there were good times, but your good old days are three years of war and losses. Gimme “now everything will be alright”, because for once someone survived, for once the future is looking hopeful, give me them hoping that it’ll be okay and then gut me with the sheer irony of it all because I know 66 is looming. AND FUCKING HUG HIM DAMMIT, he was almost catatonic thirty minutes ago, at least HELP HIM into the ship rather than leave him standing here alone.
-And no mention of Fives, of course. Idk it may be in episode 4, it BETTER be in Episode 4, otherwise this is “it be like the good old days, yay, btw Fives’ dead”.
I am SO ready for the damn Bad Batch arc to be over and hoping the actual original content is way better. I wished they had scrapped that disaster of an idea full of bad clichés. You want a strike team to go with Rex ? I’ve got a strike team for you : Jesse is an ARC, Kix is both a medic and seen many times with a rifle (AND THE COOLEST HAIRCUT, get us Bly there and give him a tracking speciality with the many ‘primitive’ planets he was on, and we have Aayla for the muscle. That would be badass.
#Star Wars#Spoilers#The Clone Wars#The Clone Wars Saved#TCW : spoilers#Season 7 spoilers#Star Wars spoilers#THERE IS SPOILERS HERE#And a lot of rage and yelling#GiveKixAShave2020#GiveEveryoneElseABrain
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I finally finished The Last of Us part II and here are my thoughts/review.
WARNING SPOILERS AHEAD.
I'll talk about the good before getting to the bad.
Graphics and Sound
The graphics and sound design were brilliant. No matter what you think about this game, you can't deny that the game looks and sounds great. The team did an amazing job creating these environments. One of my favorite segments was the TV Station. That area had me tense and on my toes while I was walking around. This was the first segment of the game that had me really tense. I always felt like I was being watched. This is where Naughty Dog excels at. Every place or area feels alive making you stop to take in the beauty or horror.
Gameplay
Gameplay was mostly the same but elevated in some areas. Crawling around in prone or swinging from ropes are a welcome addition. Wished we could've gotten the rope wall run mechanic that we got in Uncharted 4 though. I don't think that the jumping mechanic shouldn't be so hyped up because these days, it's the most basic thing now.
Acting
The acting was wonderful as always. The actors worked hard and put in their best work and it showed.
Story and Characters
Now here we go. The story is where the flaws are shown in this game. I'll try organize my thoughts for this because boy we had some structure and pacing issues.
The Beginning
I wasn't really feeling the recap that we got in the beginning. I get why it's there but if we're playing, we already know the story. I kinda wished that we had a better or even a longer moment with Joel and Ellie. Seeing how the first game was about them, then at least the game should have started with just the two of them. Or even start with Abby's flashback in the Firefly hospital and then cut to Joel and Ellie.
Joel's Death
I always knew that Joel was going to die. Ever since that first trailer they showed us, I knew. I don't mind Joel dying but I have issues with the way he died. He deserved to go down fighting. At least taking one of Addy's people out or something before getting tortured and hit in the head with a golf club. I get it, with the past five years, Joel could have gained more compassion but I still don't think that would override his survival instincts. He should at least got a bad feeling being surrounded by Abby and her friends. He still goes out on patrols and I'm sure that they also ran into raiders at some point. My point is, that something inside him should have told him that something is up. His death was just used to shock the audience and nothing more. The fact that they basically breezed through it to get to the main plot says so. He's killed and then we're rushed out to Seattle. Oh my god, really? His death should have settled more and not just done cut and dry. Hell, they have concept art showing them wrapping Joel up with Ellie standing over him. They should have showed that in game. He's a beloved character, at least give him a proper death. I know he wasn't a good person in the past and I'm glad to see that there were consequences to his actions but I felt like this should have been executed better.
I think that his death would had more of an impact if his death didn't happen so soon in game and that we had some more Ellie and Joel interaction before hand or at least a better build up. His death as a beloved character was lack luster and disrespectful.
The First Half
The first half was really great in my opinion. It was good to see Ellie slowly unravel as she follows this obsession for vengeance. I know people are pointing out that how can she suddenly feel guilt now after killing so many soldiers as the player. My view on this is that killing for survival and beating/torturing someone is completely different. That makes it personal. You are actively prolonging that person's suffering. That kind of killing will always be different. Her killing Mel and then suddenly realizing that she was pregnant and freaking out about it makes sense. She killed an unborn baby, that was innocent. Of course that could mess someone up. It's good to see that she's starting to have regrets with her actions.
I didn't like the whole Dina is pregnant storyline. I felt like this is were the dynamic falls apart. A strength of the first game were the relationships and having Ellie alone most of the time weakens the narrative. In the first game, you always had a constant pair. First it was Joel and Tess and then Joel and Ellie. The main protagonist was never alone. It would have been great to have that constant with Ellie and Dina. The first parts with them working together and getting along were great, I wished we got more of that. The two bond slowly growing stronger and maybe Dina slowly convince Ellie that this isn't worth it. I just wished that we got more of those moments. Instead, it got a backseat to the whole revenge is bad plot.
The Ellie and Joel flashbacks were lovely and probably the best moments in the game. I really wished that we had more moments with the present Ellie and Joel.
Abby/Second Half
I'm going to say this now and I will get hate for it, but I honestly didn't give a shit about Abby and the writing and pacing are to blame.
I respect and understand why Abby killed Joel. It's the consequences of Joel's actions. But if you really wanted anyone to sympathize with her, then you had to work pretty hard but they didn't.
What really hurt Abby's narrative is the sudden switch to her POV right before what we thought was the big fight or climax we were working towards. I like the POV switch but it was done at the wrong time and dragged on too long. They basically sling shot you back to the beginning of the game and now you have to upgrade your character and weapons all over again. It turned me off from her and her story. Her segment was too long. I don't know who thought putting all of Abby's scenes in the back half was a good move, but they clearly don't understand structure or has completely lost their minds. It makes the story feel unorganized and takes the player out of the story. It made me not care about her or her friends. I was focused on getting to the stupid cliffhanger they left me on. Reminds me of this stupid move in Once Upon a Time in season 5. We finally find out that Emma made Hook into another Dark One and he's about to do something to her. Suddenly the next episode is about Merida from Brave and it pissed me off. Bad structure and horrible organization.
I did not sympathize with her at all. If anyone, I sympathized with Owen more because he showed regret and a little depth. That was another issue with Abby. She wasn't showing any conflicting feelings or emotion for what she did. It made her feel inhuman. Girl was so chill. Even Ellie showed some emotion for what she did during her killing spree but Abby just didn't care.
As much as I love Lev and Yara, I feel like they take away from the story and was used to manipulate the audience to feel something for Abby. It felt like a different game. It should have been a DLC where you follow Lev and Yara. I also notice that they tried doing the Joel and Ellie dynamic with Abby and Lev and that just put a bad taste in my mouth. You can see some parallels, especially in the end with Abby carrying Lev in her arms. It's like they're trying to show us that this is the new Ellie and Joel. Uhhh no.
It also felt like Abby got the better treatment than Ellie. Yes Abby had her friends killed but she got Lev in the end where Ellie got no one. It felt like they beat us over the head that Abby is such a good person. We get it, you don't have to shove it down our throats. It comes off as forced or manipulative. Perfect example, you have us kill dogs as Ellie while you play with them as Abby. Hell, they force you to play with Alice near the end. Then you have Abby going on this long quest to help these random kids. All of this added with the 10+ hour run with her didn't help.
What could have helped me care was if they somehow intermingle her storyline with Ellie's a bit. For example in the hospital section let Abby discover Nora's body after Ellie left. Another could one could be when Ellie sees the Scars for the first time, let Abby's event be seen from a far. My point is, let their stories relate to each other. Abby's 10 hour adventure felt so disjointed from the game that it felt like it's own game. Don't let us wait so long to see Abby. Have their moments almost run along each other. Cut to Abby when we need a lull from Ellie and so on. And my god, give these two some dialogue. Two big protagonists but they don't speak to each other.
I love pov switching and it was a brave choice but it wasn't executed properly which in turn, messed up the pacing.
Before I get to the ending, I need to talk about characters and death. You introduced us to this big cast of characters and did nothing with them. You treated them like cannon fodder. The only characters on Abby's side that we got in depth with was Owen and the others were meh. I need to talk about Mel and how stupid and unrealistic her character is. You have the clearly far along pregnant woman sent out in the dangerous combat field. It's ridiculous. No military organization like that would send her out. Also we see her running and slamming her stomach on things. Really Naughty Dog? They should have switched Mel and Nora's roles. That would have made more sense.
Now the deaths were handled so poorly. In the first game, everyone's death had a moment. Tess, Sam, Henry, Marlene and even David. This game, the character deaths happened only for a second and they were never mentioned again. In the first game, you have characters bring up the dead characters more than once. The deaths were handled with care and meant something to the characters and plot but in this game they were treated like trash.
Ending
I honestly think that the game in its last hour or so, wasn't necessarily and dragged on for too long. In my opinion the game should have ended in Seattle and the last fight or the climax should have been in the theater. The point of revenge being a horrible cycle and it brings harm to your loved ones were already pointed out. We didn't need anymore. Abby broke the cycle by not killing Dina and leaving Ellie alive. Ellie clearly learned the lesson there too in almost losing the woman she loves because of her actions. They could have done a nice little wrap up with Ellie and Addy going their separate ways, each not fully getting what they wanted and each losing someone/something close to them.
The Farm
As much as I loved the farm, it felt too dream like and happy endingish. It wasn't needed. It felt added on to just give us another thing for Ellie to lose. Tommy coming back to show where Abby is was just used as a plot device to move an already dead plot forward. In my opinion Tommy should have been dead. No way, he could survive that wound plus the trip back. That was too unrealistic. Felt like the pussed out on his death.
Santa Barbara
Jesus Christ this was really not needed. Just like the farm, this was just used to padded the run time and give us another and unnecessary fight between Abby and Ellie. The rattlers were another fraction that I could not care for. I loved how brutal the final fight between Abby and Ellie was but sadly way beyond this point, I just didn't care. Just like the last hour of this game, the ending of the fight was lack luster and anticlimactic. You put us, the player, through all of this and you couldn't let us kill Abby or even give us a choice to kill or not. Killing Abby isn't the point, I get it but you dragged me on for another unnecessary hour or two just for nothing. No satisfaction for the player. Which showed us how pointless this was and the story should have ended in Seattle or in that theater.
Ellie going back to the farm and seeing Dina gone and her losing her fingers were a bit too excessive. It's like the writers think that the audience is stupid and never seen a revenge plot before. We fucking get it that nothing good comes from revenge. We get it. It was too over the top that it almost felt too unrealistic. When the game ended and I felt relieved in the wrongest way because this game was supposed to end long time ago.
Over all the game had wonderful graphics and sound design and was fun to play with great acting but it falls short on its structure, pacing and characters as it beats you over the head with an overused story of revenge. If structured differently and cut some things then maybe this game would have been better.
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Howcumzit?: Dracula
How come the show never followed up on the idea that Jonathan Harker had fucked Dracula?
They pretty much opened the show by bringing up the idea, after all, which lent an unpleasantly '80s frisson to Jonathan's emaciated appearance - one thinks of Garth Marenghi's Darkplace, and that immortal line "the cosmic spores, of course, represented AIDS". But then Jonathan's interactions with the Count end up playing out, if not exactly like the novel, then more or less played straight - you'll pardon the pun, I'm sure.
Dracula does of course go on to gin up sexual tension with pretty much everyone else he meets, no matter their gender or religious leaning, but what makes it particularly surprising here is that in the first episode he's actively becoming sexier in every scene. Yet even when Jonathan is completely in his power, it all seems quite innocent and chaste. Perhaps those aren't quite the right words for being held captive, but nonetheless it doesn't seem to have any particular undercurrent of sauciness.
Stephen Moffatt has been quoted as saying that rather than bisexual, this incarnation of Dracula is "bi-homicidal...he's killing people, not dating them". Which would seem to put a pin in the thrust of my complaint here, until you recall - as Moffatt really should have - that the show ended with Dracula banging Van Helsing.
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How come Gatiss and Moffat couldn't resist slipping in that painfully clunky reference to Sherlock Holmes? And by Sherlock Holmes, what they really mean is their BAFTA-award winning series Sherlock®.
What makes it so obviously shoehorned in is the much better reference to 'Inside No. 9' in the following episode. Inside No. 9 is of course the comedy-horror anthology series made by the non-Mark Gatiss parts of the League of Gentlemen, which has, so far, not needed nearly as many frantic, flailing fan interpretations to make its plots make sense.
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How come Dracula's meant to pick up traits from the people he feeds on, but doesn't start speaking in Sister Agatha's silly Dutch accent?
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How come in episode two, the little mute girl didn't immediately tell her dad that Dracula was the killer?
This is more a straightforward plot hole than a wider point of pondering, but it's one that will probably occur to even the most casual viewer. The show's clearly hoping there's enough other stuff going on that nobody will notice, which is obviously a misstep when what's going on all revolves around there being a killer at large.
Now, there's an obvious fan interpretation to be made here that the little girl - angry with the world - simply wanted to see them all die horribly. I'd watch that, and so, I suspect, would most right-thinking people. It would certainly have made for a better episode three than the one we got.
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How come the snobby twink's boyfriend spends most of the time resenting the guy's sham marriage, then doesn't seem to care when Dracula feels him up in front of everyone? Come to think of it, why doesn't anybody else care about that?
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How come Gatiss and Moffat couldn't resist leaping into a contemporary setting?
And why, if they wanted to do it so much, did they have to do it so poorly? Thanks to some confusing editing and omissions, it came off looking like Dracula had been struggling along the sea bed for 123 years.
This is a recurring feature of their work - Sherlock, too, was taking a classic bit of Victoriana and transplanting it into the modern day. The Sherlock Christmas special, though, did put it in its natural setting, which if nothing else worked as a fun, campy thing - and that, despite what Gatfat might think their work is, is the tone that runs right through it like a stick of Brighton rock.
Episode two took a part of Stoker's book, stitched it onto a familiar Murder On The Orient Express-style setup, and then turned Claes Bang's Dracula loose to bounce around in that framework - and it worked beautifully. This could have been a winning formula for any number more episodes, but instead they pissed it all away in favour of a tired Hollyoaks-style relationship drama and a secret institute which definitely isn't Torchwood.
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How come modern-day Van Helsing didn't have the same silly Dutch accent?
Just to harp on a point, this makes the problem with the time jump quite clear. Van Helsing is pretty much the same character even before they literally inject the original Van Helsing into her - which makes it seem oddly like the sexual tension between her and the Count was somehow heritable. And having already demanded that willing suspension of disbelief, why not go the whole hog, and have Jonathan and Mina's identical great-great-great-descendants turn up too?
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How come they thought putting a bit of off-coloured prosthetic on the incredibly attractive Lydia West would put anyone off?
The TV and film industry in general has an issue with this, fumbling to present unattractive people while staunchly refusing to even think about casting anyone less than conventionally beautiful. Dracula, however, had already presented some suitably ghastly ghouls, and here went through an overlong sequence of coyly refusing to show us what the post-cremation Lucy Westenra looked like - then the shocking reveal was that, uh-oh, she's got a bit of latex on her face. I'm a man of the world and let me tell you, it would take more than that to change my mind.
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How come Mark Gatiss didn't stay behind the camera where he belongs?
This isn't to say he's a bad actor, but if he wanted to do Renfield, he should have done it properly. A show that's already had Dracula dressing up in another guy's face before tearing it off (for my money, one of the funniest things on TV in some time) doesn't need wacky comic relief.
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How come everything about the conclusion?
Okay, that may be a little vague. Let me rephrase it to at least be making a point, rather than inarticulately shaking my fist in the general direction of the TV screen - why'd they even need to have a conclusion?
Gatiss and Moffat are not good at overarching storylines, yet they will keep using them, and I simply don't understand why. The appeal of Sherlock Holmes is to see the guy solving mysteries - so Sherlock had the mysteries take a back seat in favour of examining the ever-more-complicated relationships of the Holmes family.
The last five minutes or so of Dracula's third episode crumble when exposed to the light, which is ironic, because this Dracula doesn't. Given any thought at all, it's clear that the inspiration here was that Gatiss/Moffat thought 'oh shit, we need to wrap this up'. It tries gamely to tie everything together, which is somewhat undermined by at least one dangling plot thread - which the writers have openly admitted was left there in the hopes of getting a second season.
Bram Stoker's novel, spoiler alert, ends with the Count getting staked - but this adaptation went off those rails long ago. The central charm of it is the battle of wits between Dracula and Van Helsing, seeing them try and one-up each other while trading sexually charged barbs in much the same way as Sherlock and Moriarty (or at least the Sherlock and Moriarty that Gatfat gave us). This is a dynamic which could carry on indefinitely, and would have done better if it had, rather than been sidetracked into an unnatural-seeming ending.
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mmmmmmmmmmmkay... gotta say Words about the episode, I guess
things I liked:
the show looks good, I’ll give them that - visually/aesthetically very pleasing, the music is amazing (I still miss Gold but I am starting to like this new guy a lot), everything seems modern, expensive, high quality
the theme music is wonderful and the title sequence slaps; love that shit! feels classic and brand new at the same time, and very Doctor Who; probably my favorite title sequence combo of the entire new run
the TARDIS design is gorgeous, like I cannot stress enough how much I love it; again, probably my favorite of the entire new run, and definitely top three of all that were ever made; it feels like a hybrid between Tenth’s TARDIS and Eighth’s TARDIS - bold, creative, beautiful design; on a related note, loved that “fixing the TARDIS” bit; I hope the fam will spend more time inside the TARDIS this season
the actors are giving their best; I feel like C was a huge waste of Stephen Fry, but perhaps it was a deliberate decision (because maybe Mr Fry wanted a cameo but did not have time for more scenes);
Whittaker is good - idk if that was a move on her part or the writers/directors decision, but her Doctor feels calmer, more natural now; she is still quirky and mysterious and herself, but she feels more like a person, you know, and not a bunch of facial expressions and voice inflections thrown together
the companions are good too - Yaz is finally getting attention, and God, Graham and Ryan are like my favorite thing now! their dynamic is just a pleasure to watch; you can make a ‘comedic duo’ compilation just out of this episode alone
the new monsters are definitely my cup of tea; strange, spooky, not full on horror movie scary but still threatening... *chef’s kiss* I loved the twist of them getting through the TARDIS door - that has never happened before, I like that; I like how the Doctor quietly freaks out about it as well, cause she hates not knowing something and hates not being in charge; that scene where she keeps asking the creature and when it finally replies it is just mocking her? good shit right there; wanna see more of these guys for sure
and after some reflection, if you take it in isolation, I do love the final airplane scene; like if I just look at it as a piece of TV/storytelling, I think it is a really good scene; it’s loud, it’s chaotic, yes it is kind of all over the place but it is engaging, and the reveal was out of nowhere and predictable at the same time but I still enjoyed it; and yes it is a stupid cliffhanger but like... it’s Doctor Who! it has always had stupid cliffhangers and I for one respect that decision
things I didn’t like:
oh God... the writing; like I am sorry, okay, but that writing is bad; and it is so confusing to me cause the story overall was good in my opinion - the pace was okay, the events made sense, it has an actual plot, etc - but the writing is still bad? I think the dialogue is the worst by far, but the way the scenes were stitched together is really awkward as well; it feels like it has been written by a talented but severely inexperienced writer who understands more or less how a story is supposed to work but has no idea how to edit
specifically what annoys me is that the dialogue and, to a lesser degree, the sequence of events feels very superficial and forced; it’s not elegant, and it’s not surprising, and it doesn’t feel natural at all; the actors are giving their best but how the hell can you have a good delivery of those lines???
I wanna rewatch it already to give particular examples but the two things that come to mind are C explaining the whole deal with the aliens (telling instead of showing anyone? especially after you’ve already shown it???) and the interview with Lenny Henry’s character (again, telling instead of showing much?); and idk, the dialogue in general is just... eh, it annoys me that I can’t quite put my finger on why it is so bad - but it is so bad, that initially that thing alone made me dislike the episode
and this is double annoying because I know that Chibnall is a good writer and can write excellent dialogue and put scenes together with no problem, and also because, traditionally, Doctor Who has always had great script editors that should have fixed this; like how do you give a dedication to Terrance Dicks and not fix these awkward fucking lines?? I am confusion
things I am unsure about:
the whole spy thing; initially was very excited about it, because I thought we would get a very Third Doctor era thing, but no, that was just a straight up James Bond knock-off; like, don’t get me wrong, Thirteen in a suit gives me life too - but they could, idk, Doctor-fy the whole thing a little bit? throw in some gaffs and alien words and the Doctor going “oh I was a spy so many times”; instead it felt kinda, idk, not integrated enough; like it made sense for the story, but not for the show overall
also I think that the episode had too much action; that car malfunction at the beginning? entirely unnecessary, could have replaced it with a conversation (Thirteen trying to get info out of the driver for example) and get better results; the motorbike chase? looks very cool, also unnecessary and could have been cut to twenty seconds easily; like, come on, this is Doctor Who! I want good dialogue, not Marvel-level action scenes
and now the most controversial thing... the Master; ufff, I have very complex thoughts about this
I’m not gonna lie, I do like that they are back; I think it was too early to bring them back, and it feels like a solely “for the views” decision with little to no creative thought put into it, but damn I love the character; the actor is great too - that being in disguise with no physical disguise bit? love it! like, in retrospect I can see how much he (the Master) must have enjoyed playing the sweet innocent bloke; and that switch in the final scene... that’s some good acting right there
I am kinda conflicted about his style in general, like I would have preferred for him to lean more on the Delgado side of things - more gravitas, calmness, but still with strong chaotic dumbass energy - but I do understand that the Master has to mirror and contrast the Doctor simultaneously, and this sort of more Simm-like delivery (more in the direction of bananas) works better for Thirteen, especially now that she is less awkward and more calm and collected; I like the homage to classics as well, like that tissue compressor thing, that was really good; and yeah the Master is hot again... nice
also the whole “the Doctor is still being secretive about her past” thing is really working for me - I’d love to see the Master slowly destroying whatever image she has built for herself and thus creating enough conflict between her and the fam to go on for the entire season
but having said all that, if we come back to the decision to bring them back... is Chibnall sure about that? because from what we have seen so far, it feels like we have cancelled out everything that Moffat has done with Missy; we’ve had such an amazing character arc with her in Capaldi’s era and now it’s all gone? now we’re back to blowing up planes and killing the Doctor? why?
I am still holding on to hope that this is an earlier, pre-War incarnation of the Master that somehow slipped in to this timestream, but that seems unlikely; another way I could digest that was if the Master has lost their memory and doesn’t remember being Missy, which would make for a nice eventual reveal of the memories coming back to them and him being like “oh shit” - but if Missy’s entire character arc has been retconned, I am definitely not a fan
also, overall, I feel like Chibnall retconned one thing about the Capaldi era that I really loved - he brought Doctor Who from a proper serious drama (as one part of the show, obviously) to all cheesy, goofy, silly sci-fi nonsense; and like, has Doctor Who been cheesy in the past? definitely, and for most of its history, and I won’t complain about that; but this? this feels too cheesy, especially in contrast with Capaldi’s era; like please, Chibbers, can we please see some drama? if you’re going for the whole quality TV show feel, can we also get proper good dialogue and heightened emotion and higher stakes? cause I think you can overdose on ridiculous in Doctor Who
summary:
honestly if the writing - especially the dialogue - was actually good, this would have been a very good episode, an 9 out of 10 at least; but as it stands, those lines are spoiling it a bit too much for me, so I’ll give it a solid 6 out of 10
I know it is a part one of a two-parter so I won’t make any solid and final judgments yet, especially about the Master and the feel of the series overall; all I can say is that, again, if you ignore the dialogue (which I hope is a random fluke and will go away), this sets a benchmark for series 12 higher than series 11; so I am cautiously optimistic about it, and actually excited to see the next episode, but God do I have high standards now, having consumed a lot of Doctor Who media...
and now that I’ve said approximately 563 highly controversial things, feel free to rip me to shreds I guess - or agree with me, who knows
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anyisa
KLETIKAN
mito41
Sem título
mrd0ll
Husogi_
elettraauge
my little twisted fantasy