.

Longwinded anon again. It's very easy to see where Aziraphale needs to get his act together/get therapy in regards to his belief in Heaven's essential goodness (and it was always very odd to see fans believing that four years would have been sufficient, narrative-wise, for that to happen--four years is nothing to characters who are immortal). Crowley, though, is still doing one of the most toxic things on his side of the relationship: he's being over-protective. In S1, the "damsel in distress" bits, which I know some fans like to romanticize, are harmful to both characters, because they make Crowley feel like he's doing something heroic when he isn't (every rescue in S1 is unnecessary) and encourage Aziraphale to abandon his agency. In the narrative arc, Aziraphale's discorporation, which Crowley fails to stop, is liberating. He does his conscientious objector bit, chucks himself out of Heaven, kicks Crowley out of his depression in the bar, vanishes the soldier, and then has to forcibly remind Crowley at the airfield that /now/, in fact, Crowley needs to do something or there will be irreversible consequences. And then they rescue each other through the body swap.

S2 doesn't have the big swoopy rescue scenes, aside from the 1941 replay, but what it does have is Crowley withholding key information that might well have altered Aziraphale's behavior. He clearly hasn't been forthright about what Gabriel really said at the execution, and he never gets around to mentioning that Aziraphale has put himself in danger of being zapped out of existence by Heaven. (This is very PRIDE & PREJUDICE: Lydia elopes with Wickham in part because her older sisters don't publicize his bad behavior.) Again, he thinks of himself as Aziraphale's protector, and while Aziraphale knows that Crowley likes to protect him--he even says so--in S2 he doesn't fully understand what Crowley is protecting him from. Nina asks Aziraphale why he doesn't stick up for himself, and he shows once again that he can, but in S2 Crowley thinks it's his job to keep Aziraphale safe from any real Heaven-sent nastiness that might puncture his innocence. Which prevents Aziraphale from evaluating his choices once the Metatron shows up.

(As for S3: Gaiman does appear committed to getting them together in their cottage, so I don't think a permanent breakup is on the horizons. I do think something drastic has to happen, whether becoming mortal, becoming a "new" sort of immortal being tied to Earth rather than Heaven and Hell, Aziraphale delivering a full-bore public rejection of Heaven with attendant consequences, etc.)

Longwinded Anon✨, light of my life, you are officially driving me insane with these asks (screenshots of others under the cut); there is so much fascinating insight to talk about. first of all, though, welcome back and i hope you are also Surviving following s2!✨

these two characters are two of the most fun to dissect and examine. they are hugely multifaceted, and every time i watch s2 and ruminate on them, there is more and more to find. the below is the result of those ruminations, and i feel the obligation to warn anyone reading that it is going to be a very, very long one, so ✨buckle tf up✨

further messages from Longwinded Anon✨, my beloved:

aziraphale: insecurity

to me, one of the key tenets of aziraphale's character is a deep-seated and complete sense of insecurity and lack of self-esteem. and it's not unfathomable to think that he's had a lack of self-worth for some time, carrying all the way through to the Feral Domestic™ (FD). bear in mind that all of the below is without reference to the pre-fall scene, which ill cover separately later on.

there is however the fairly obvious element that heaven and the archangels completely disregard aziraphale, and are condescending and reductive in how they perceive and interact with him. aziraphale, i think, adopted this mindset pretty heavily in s1 - one such example being the "I'm soft" line - and it is further explored in s2, but specifically at the later end.

aziraphale in s2 seems much more self-possessed and 'together', and a key element of that shift is not only his liberation from heaven, but also that he somewhat starts to see himself through crowley's eyes as possibly being worthy of being loved. i think that he starts to think of himself as, in fact, having intrinsic value.

this is shown, in particular, in s2 by the contrast between ep2's rock scene (where he starts to question the depth of his angelic allegiance, and that he might have actually done the right thing by following his own personal conviction and helping save job's children), and the majority of ep5 (ie. his absolutely astounding - by aziraphale standards - amount of confidence in himself to get him and the ball attendees out of demonic danger).

this is brought to a head though by shax's comments in ep5, where she really drives a stake into the core of aziraphale's insecurity. she remarks on his propensity for indulgence (sushi/meals), his tendency to be overtrusting and naive ("softest touch"), his lack of traditional angelic quality ("went native"), and the question of what exactly crowley feels for him ("emotional support angel").

setting aside Michael's acting - which was truly mesmerising in this one little scene, probably one of his set-pieces in the show, honestly - that tells us that this really got to him, we know from everything we have seen of aziraphale in GO that these are likely thoughts that he has repressed, or pretends are not conceivable when they absolutely are.

my final interpretation of aziraphale's insecurity, however, is not necessarily that he thinks he is without value or merit whatsoever, but that he is not enough.

he's good enough to guard the eastern gate, but not good enough to keep adam and eve from temptation. he's good enough to guard and monitor the antichrist, but not enough to be truly accepted as part of the heaven hive (his physical sentry post on earth notwithstanding). he's good enough for crowley to run away with to alpha centauri, but not enough to convince crowley to choose to stay and fight with him to prevent the apocalypse.

this starts to wane in s2, and he's noticeably more happy and confident... right up until ep6 when he's good enough to be loved by crowley enough to spend eternity with, but not enough for crowley to sacrifice his hang-ups with heaven and help him rebuild it as a team so noone else ever has to suffer what they both did.

the lines however in ep6 that particularly broke my heart, because aziraphale literally conveys this whole painful, bleeding part of his psyche to crowley, are the following:

a: "if im in charge, i can make a difference."

a: "i don't think you understand what im offering you."

whatever the motive behind metatron's offer to aziraphale (and therefore calling into question the sincerity of his compliments to aziraphale), aziraphale has literally just been told that not only does someone who - whichever way you slice it - is the highest being in heaven that he has the ability to run it, but he has the ability to completely gut and rebuild it for the better.

harking back to ep1 with crowley's statement that aziraphale only calls him for three reasons, one of which is telling crowley something clever ie. his own achievements, it does make me wonder how often this scenario truly happens. maybe it does happen often, but what does aziraphale actually consider to be an achievement? something to be proud of himself for, that is purely reflective of his ability and - by extension - worth?

when aziraphale tells crowley that he might be misunderstanding what aziraphale is offering him, i don't interpret it as anything to do with restoring crowley; instead, i just see aziraphale telling crowley that he is offering up absolutely everything that he is, every single atom and aspect of him, and all crowley has to do is trust him enough to take it. he is saying that he will love crowley, and crowley can be free to love him, but only, in aziraphale's eyes, if crowley can accept aziraphale as he is; that he is enough.

during this whole part of the scene, crowley won't even look at him. won't even face him, sunglasses or not, and acknowledge what aziraphale is saying, right up until this line. you can visibly see that aziraphale starts to get angry that the one person who made him feel any self-worth might in fact have never seen him as good enough in the first place, that crowley didn't in fact love every part of him, and was choosing to cherrypick the aspects of aziraphale that suited crowley, rather than the whole.

this snippet of the scene is compounded by being sandwiched by these two crowley lines which, in my eyes, really highlighted that crowley is in fact only choosing to accept aziraphale in small measures, and that other elements of him are not enough:

c: "...you're better than that, angel!"

c: "you idiot, we could have been us."

aziraphale is enough exactly as he is; he's not perfect and certainly not wholly complete, but for crowley to dig at aziraphale by intimating that he is not reaching the bar that crowley has set for him - potentially subconsciously - is likely be the true end for how much stock aziraphale put in crowley's perception of him, and by extension the worth that he thought he had in crowley's mind. instead, aziraphale is now left to find a way of building his sense of self-worth all by himself - and does so by stepping into that lift.

crowley: salvation

im not going to necessarily talk about all the times that crowley demonstrates an almost pathological need to be aziraphale's saviour, because frankly Longwinded Anon✨ has that covered. but as with all things GO-related, i think it's important to try to understand why.

i truly think that a cornerstone of crowley's romanticism is deeply rooted in the concept of salvation. now, we know that he doesn't appear to give a flying fuck about salvation from heaven, but he certainly seems to put a great deal of import on being aziraphale's hero, and later he seems to question a great deal when aziraphale essentially finds a hero elsewhere.

as LW Anon✨ said, aziraphale is very cognizant that crowley likes to play hero where he's concerned, and seems simultaneously resigned and excited by the matter; resigned because actually, sometimes, aziraphale is smart or powerful enough to keep himself safe, but excited because this is possibly the epitome of how crowley expresses his love for him.

aziraphale shows that he is fully aware of this characteristic of crowley's, and whilst he does play into it (which we saw throughout all of s1e3) to 'make crowley happy' (and, dare i say, also because at this point it is the supernatural, sex-less interpretation of centuries-long foreplay) in s2 it almost starts to become neglectful, overbearing, and dismissive of - as LWA✨ says - any true agency that aziraphale has built since breaking from heaven. this, incidentally, is highlighted in the following exchange:

c: "im gonna get the humans out of here and then im coming back, i won't leave you on your own."

a: "i know, but i have a suggestion-"

c: [interrupts] "ive got this."

whether crowley feels like he is missing any genuine overture from heaven to apologise for making him fall for a minor infraction, or he feels guilty about something that he did (ie possibly what made him fall) and is making his own reparations in the outlet of constantly being aziraphale's saviour, the one that is certain is that crowley has to feel needed, and by extension - loved.

he does have a nasty habit of putting aziraphale down (which ill talk about next), however much in jest, and placing aziraphale constantly under his metaphorical wing. aziraphale going so far in s1 to actually work out the apocalypse and proceed to take what he believes is the right action to prevent it on his own must have, by extension, sent crowley reeling - if aziraphale can in fact look after himself, where does that leave crowley? what else, in crowley's eyes, could he possibly bring to the table that would make aziraphale want to keep him? love him?

i think that this is crowley's own brand of insecurity; that unless he is performatively saving aziraphale and protecting him from harm, and actively dismissing aziraphale's ability to protect himself sufficiently enough, he has no discernible quality that aziraphale would want. so instead he tries to make himself so integral to aziraphale's survival so that aziraphale has no choice but to keep him.

the fact that aziraphale saves himself in s1, and they then reflectively save each other, did wonders for aziraphale in progressing as a character. however, in crowley, i feel that this frightened him so emotionally that it regressed his character somewhat. all coming to the climax of when aziraphale, in good faith, offers crowley the chance at salvation for himself, crowley vehemently refuses it and takes it to insult. there are many other valid and understandable reasons why crowley rejects the prospect, but one of them to me is that it would leave crowley's fundamental role in aziraphale's existence as completely redundant.

both: demonstrating love

essentially what i put in an ask recently, but needed referencing here too.

leading on from crowley and his hero/saviour complex: the thing is that these are two diametrically opposing people in all but a handful of aspects. crowley by large is usually the more obviously demonstrative in his affection, borne out of many different reasons, and he is the ultimate Acts of Service (ft. Quality Time) dude. aziraphale tends to be more subtle, with Looks and Words, in how he displays his, so let's give him the Words of Affirmation (ft. QT) crown.

in s2, it seems to me that this hasn't really changed, but they are starting to cross over into speaking the language that the other understands. and to me, this comes to a head by the time of the ep5, and the ep6 FD. so obviously crowley has finally bridged into verbally demonstrating to aziraphale how he feels. aziraphale did the same action but mirrored by - however misguided - offering crowley the chance to be restored.

but neither want what the other is giving; they want what the other usually does to show their affection. aziraphale wants crowley to demonstrate his willingness to be with aziraphale by coming with him to heaven, and crowley wants aziraphale to acknowledge what he is telling aziraphale and respond in kind. neither are at fault for wanting that; they have simply demonstrated their devotion to each other in different ways, but those ways have been quite damaging.

crowley does do a lot for aziraphale, that can't be denied, but AoS is way more demonstrative, and yet it's easy to miss what those acts are actually saying. WoA can be more casual but the words you choose speak volumes... "our car/bookshop", "id love for you to help me", "my friend crowley", etc.

whilst i don't necessarily subscribe to the psychology of love languages, they're useful for this sort of analysis. aziraphale does even branch out in other languages; he is constantly touching crowley this season; the pub, the ball, the bookshop in early ep6. quality time is a given, and has always been their common ground. giving gifts im not so sure on, but i think the significance of readily offering crowley the bookshop as being his - something that was wholly aziraphale's, not heaven's, and is aziraphale's own sanctuary - spoke volumes.

specifically in ep5 however, aziraphale really goes ham in demonstrating to crowley how he sees love, defines it, and that he could give this to crowley - the pinnacle of this being the dance and the evident romantic implications of it... it summarises all of aziraphale's own romantic idealistic make-up; touching, intimate conversation, choosing crowley as his partner, romantic literature, classical music, etc.

and whilst comedic and obviously reflective of crowley being otherwise preoccupied re: demon incursion, i also thought that the physical imagery of aziraphale literally dragging him to the dancefloor, and crowley questioning when they've ever danced in the past, was particularly telling about crowley's reaction to how aziraphale is trying to convey to him, without saying the words, that he loves him.

aziraphale in s2 truly does give crowley everything that he can. his love is quiet, and gentle, and romantic, and whilst not as high stakes as saving aziraphale's life, it is still valid. however, it seems that where aziraphale seems to have recognised his feelings quite early on and acknowledged them early on, having time to settle them into his soul (even if he couldn't act for fear of heaven), s2 seems to indicate that crowley refused to acknowledge his until the eleventh hour.

but crowley's love has been there all along, ticking away. ignoring his tendency to stick his oar in where it isn't needed (saving aziraphale and treating him as if he were made of glass), he shows his love in his own ways - following aziraphale around soho, silently supportive, admires him for calming down the bookshop and handling the IB situation, tidies the bookshop for him (which also possibly indicates that he's now finally accepting the bookshop as his home), etc.

both of them take a swan dive in the declaring-love endgame in ep6, but neither of them are responsive to the love language that they usually give. aziraphale is given words but wants actions, and crowley is given actions but wants words. the chronic lack of communication between the two of them throughout the show is the main contributing factor to this disconnect, and leads to serious ramifications in their ability to possibly mend it going into s3.

aziraphale: pre-fall

at the risk of daring to contradict LWA✨ in their assessment of aziraphale's feelings towards the angel-who-crowley-was (AWCW) in the pre-fall scene, upon reflection i don't get the sense that aziraphale falls in love with AWCW in this moment. and exactly as pointed out by @assiraphales, we don't have any of the gaps filled in between this scene and The Wall, so it's arguably unknown when exactly those feelings deepened.

there is definitely attraction of some kind (can angels experience physical attraction? presumably they do, if aziraphale thought the "gorgeous" comment was directed at him), an admiration of AWCW's abilities, and an immediate concern for AWCW's wellbeing if he were to question god. but i don't get the sense that he falls in love; more that he's bumped into a cool, attractive kid outside his locker and immediately starts spouting angelic heart eyes, and at the least develops an immediate fascination.

AWCW is presented as being rather classist in this scene, and whilst not outright maliciously rude, he definitely seems to look down on aziraphale, or consider him relatively inconsequential. which is odd, because i think if he actually listened to what aziraphale was telling him, aziraphale actually comes across as having his own brand of status. i can't imagine that any bog-standard angel would be entrusted with helping god with building Her ultimate creation, building humans, and being allowed to see the Great Plan. whilst maybe not the same level as AWCW, i think the fandom is underplaying aziraphale's own significance in this part of the story.

the fact remains however that the aziraphale we see in this scene is still the fundamental foundation of the aziraphale we see later on in the story. AWCW calls for him as he's wandering (rocketing) past, and aziraphale doesn't hesitate to come to AWCW's aid. he's presumably going somewhere, but prioritises helping someone who needs him, and does so out of kindness and then, it seems later on, out of attraction.

he recognises the achievement of AWCW's nebula, asks questions to learn more (and thus demonstrating his interest) of the construction and purpose of AWCW's craft, and outright compliments it for its brilliance and wonder. all behaviours that id say is rooted in wanting to establish a friendship, and meanwhile developing an arguably shallow crush.

i think that these are also general admirations that aziraphale brings forward as he gets to know crowley as a demon, but has to adjust his world-view that he may admire the principle if not the act; he thinks crowley is clever and fun and talented, even if he doesn't condone the new ways in which crowley displays this.

there are definitely times where aziraphale is still caught up in crowley being a good person and concluding that crowley must still be an angel in all but name, but i do not necessarily think that he thinks lesser of crowley as a demon out of maliciousness. i think it's hard for aziraphale to conflate the two ideas that a) crowley has moments of being a good person regardless of hellish or heavenly identity, and that b) crowley doesn't want to be an angel. aziraphale still parallels good with angelicness, holds being good (and therefore being an angel) as the epitome of character, and can't as a result understand that if they were given the opportunity to change and improve the bad bits of heaven, why crowley wouldn't want to help him.

as LWA✨ says, the further we see their story progress, it becomes clear that aziraphale then begins to hold himself above crowley morally, and this is largely lynch-pinned on their separate identities as an angel and demon respectively. aziraphale constantly bats crowley down and puts him back in his place throughout s1, but less so in s2; in this, id refer back to aziraphale's insecurity around his being a good enough angel, but now that we have the context of AWCW having been aziraphale's technical superior, doing this possibly helps him to feel better about himself. this is abhorrent behaviour and is not at all kind, that can't be denied, but i think it is however possible to empathise with it.

aziraphale has spent a long time having an endless reserve of love and not having a lot of places where he can meaningfully channel it. he's got humanity and earth, but whilst he certainly cares for it, it doesn't mean that he candidly loves it. he still feels kinship to heaven and the other angels, but he certainly doesn't love them. in fact the only person he's ever had to fully pour out his love has been into crowley, but faced with the prospect that crowley may still be like his angelic self in that regard (ie not love him back), i think that love has been repressed so much that it's almost atrophied and turned self-destructive and self-sabotaging. in that context, whilst awful and generally inexcusable, aziraphale's behaviour starts to make sense.

crowley: Lucifer theory

i will preface this by saying that despite initial excitement, i don't necessarily think that crowley was lucifer in the colloquialised sense that we regard lucifer in general culture, but perhaps more represents lucifer in the wider sense of having a story that mirrors the one we can somewhat attribute to lucifer. whether or not he will actually be named as lucifer i think is up for debate, but in any case let's take a look at what lucifer's story actually entailed.

now i realise that i am absolutely not an expert on the matter, but there are indeed a wealth of misinterpretations where lucifer as a biblical figure is concerned. i am very behind on this discussion, angelology (shudder) is not in my limited repertoire of specialist subjects, and i welcome anyone else adding in their thoughts on the matter.

but if anyone else has zero knowledge on lucifer, like me, we'll start with the basics as i see them. name coming from the Latin for light- or dawn-bringer, lucifer has been linked to the planet venus in various tellings in roman mythology. given the occasional bright illumination of the planet as seen from earth, this is in part where we coming to the moniker Morningstar when also historically referring to lucifer. so on this base level, we have the link between lucifer and crowley by way of celestial context.

now down to a potential mistranslation, the hebrew for the name of satan, helel, has become synonymous with the name lucifer, down to their respective translations akin to the Latin for 'light-bringer'/'morningstar' as above, but that does not necessarily indicate that lucifer and satan are the same being. so this is where im fairly confident in that whoever crowley was, which is possibly lucifer, his story ran parallel to that of the former relatively unknown being and not the latter more infamous one.

crowley has referenced lucifer in s1, which has led to the debunk that the two are the same being, but when rewatching it, i think it can be completely reinterpreted:

c: "i never asked to be a demon. i was just minding my own business one day and then... "oh lookie here, it's lucifer and the guys!"... ah, hey - the food hadn't been that good lately, i didn't have anything on for the rest of the afternoon..."

this doesn't need to mean that AWCW was the one who came across lucifer and cohort, but possibly that someone else did, or just exclaiming it in the general sense. getting whimsical in the headcanon space, AWCW may well have been enjoying his afternoon, chatting with friends that he thought he could trust, and thought he could share his thoughts on challenging how things are run (same as he did with aziraphale). evidently, whatever happened completely bit him on the arse, and at minimum partially resulted in his fall.

there are multiple references to crowley being at least an angel of import, almost too many to count. however a common theme in many references to venus in various religious and mythological texts is the concept of reaching for higher power, but to be cast down and punished for it. given the indication (iirc) from interviews and also the pre-fall scene that crowley was up for collaborating with god on how to improve things in heaven, it could stand to reason that in a moment of anger or frustration he voices the thought that he could do a better job running the place.

and if other angels were behind him in this, equally dissatisfied with their lot in heaven, and being set aside by god in favour of humanity, it similarly wouldnt be a huge leap to think that this one sentence, this singular half-baked thought, might have precipitated the war. following said war, as LWA✨ suggests, it would make sense that in an effort to lick his wounds and keep a low profile, crowley would take or accept a middling rank in hell, and possibly even volunteer for the assignment of original sin; all the more opportunity to remove himself completely from the narrative between heaven and hell.

which then, now that i think about it, completely recontextualises crowley's aversion to being a part in helping aziraphale rebuild heaven. why would he want to, why wouldn't he be petrified of it, when the last time went so badly? there must be a sense of resentment towards aziraphale in this regard - what makes aziraphale, a potentially lower angel, so special that he would be invited to completely revolutionise heaven, when all AWCW did was make suggestions, and end up being villified for it? if he did join aziraphale, and challenged him, would aziraphale then be forced to cast crowley out again? what would crowley stand to lose this time?

so this is where i think the concept of crowley having a huge secret that he's keeping from aziraphale comes into play, and i agree must come out in s3. it would completely derail any faith that aziraphale had in crowley, for him to have kept such vital information from him, his potential part in the fall. i could imagine aziraphale interpreting the reveal of this secret as being that crowley fooled and hoodwinked him, however false or unintentional that might have been, and it representing the last vestige of aziraphale's innocence and naivety being swept away.

edit, because @baggvinshield has put this theory so eloquently and with far more comprehension and education than i could hope for: Lucifer theory

there are so many more topics that i have sat in various documents and in my notes as concerns these two characters; aziraphale's obsession with control and 'playing god', their shared inability to communicate effectively and meaningfully, crowley and his propensity for unintentional temptation, whether the love between them truly equates to any semblance of trust, etc etc. some of these topics have been alluded to in the above, but i felt that the above essay might be sufficient reading for now. im adoring (if a little bemused by it) the amount of discussion this silly little blog is generating, and im always more than happy to share my thoughts on anything GO-related where people want it!!!

and now - back to answering the hundreds of asks that have accumulated whilst i've hyperfixated on the above. ta-rah!✨💓

Totally Spies! S1 E5-10 Tier

Alright so. Yeah the show is not getting better. I am optimistic that it will get better in later seasons. Ok let's go this is gonna be a long one. Here's the current tier.

As a lil reminder, I'm watching this with my girlfriend Ivy (@twigsprout) to definitively find the worst Totally Spies! episode. This show is notorious for showing teenage girls in very horny situations.

I'm not optimistic that the top tier will ever have anything in it. "Abductions" almost made it but the last 5 minutes took a big turn for the worse.

I'll also note that this show is skewing my sense of normal. I almost put the episode "Spy Gladiators" into the "ok sure fine i guess" category. Luckily Ivy reminded me that a middle aged man with a jock fetish putting a mind control collar on a teenage girl to force her to be a gladiator is not in fact normal.

Anyway here's some notes.

The Eraser: blobs attach to people's faces and erase their memories, sam got gooped and brain erased*, very horny wording for the hatching of the goop??, characters shackled and collared again**

The Fugitives: guy makes clones of the main 3 and does crimes, the main 3's guardian finds out and says he's going to "reprogram" them with his lobotomy machine***, favorite quote "i'm so sorry i tried to lobotomize you"

Abductions: drowning/breathplay, trapped in a glass thingy, brain sucking, gross kid brain getting so big it almost explodes???????????

Model Citizens: some weirdos kidnap girls and forcibly swap their body parts with their own models' to make "perfect beauties," some mild inflation? (does it count if they just wear suits that inflate? i doubt it but i wrote it anyway), Clover gets big legs and sits on villain to stop him from getting away

Spy Gladiators: see the collar thing i wrote above, also the guy keeps prisoners and keeps them shackled to workout equipment in his dungeon to "keep his island running" but honestly i think he's just harvesting and drinking their sweat or something

*So at this point, Ivy and I decided to start a tally for how many times the theme of an episode involves brainwiping/hypnotizing/etc as well as a separate tally for how many times one of the main 3 gets brainwiped/hypnotized/etc. SO!

Current Brain-fuck count: 6 (out of 10 episodes!)

Sam: 3

Clover: 1

Alex: 0

**We also decided to keep a tally for how many times characters are collared. Cuz it just keeps happening.

Collar Count: 3

***Ok so. When we got to this part I started theorizing. Jerry doesn't hesitate to try to reprogram the girls as soon as he thinks they're acting up. That got me thinking: what if he already programmed them before? What if that's the reason the characters are so one-dimensional? I mean. I know it's just because the writers just didn't know how to give the girls any personality beyond "girl" but. In the canon of the show, it's kinda make sense if he gave the girls (who I'm pretty sure are orphans that WOOHP adopted and forced to work as spies for free?) just enough skills to be spies and high school students but no brain power beyond that so they can't rise up against him.

Actually. This is just the bimbo show. Whatever.

Anyway, once again, this show could be so iconic if it wasn't So Bad. Like. The aesthetic of everything. I mean. There's a moment in episode 6 where they're about to do this really important mission but then Clover is like "WAIT!!! I forgot my new sunglasses at my house and I'm not going anywhere without them" and so WOOHP send the girls in a helicopter to get her sunglasses before going to save the world from bimbo slimes or whatever. like. That's iconic!!!

To paraphrase Ivy, "It's such a cool idea to just do James Bond but with 3 high school girls from y2k ass Beverly Hills." It could be so good but it's just. not. I really hope the new stuff is better. I have a lot of hope for the new season coming out.

Also, on the whole character thing. Episode 10 feels like they might be starting to give Alex her own character maybe finally? Only barely tho idk.

Also, for a second I thought 9/11 didn't happen in this universe cuz I saw the twin towers but. They made that episode before 9/11 even though it came out a less than a month after 9/11 in France (over a year later in the US). And also the girls crash a plane into a building.

Anyway 16 episodes left in Season 1!

Hacks 2.03 and 2.04 Thoughts

Like Ava, I’m trusting the process even when it’s painful, and I’m still watching with an eye toward critical generosity. That being said, some (though certainly not all!) of my thoughts verge on the critical this week as a heads up. Thoughts are below the cut for spoilers (because I had to get this word vomit out so I could start my actual workday haha)

1. I’ve seen a few other people say this already, but the episodes feel a little more disjointed this season with the episodic nature of being on the road and on tour. I don’t mind that in and of itself, but I think it’s also led to this season’s feeling less cohesive in the overarching narrative at least in part because we’re being told more things this season vs. last season when we actually saw most of the action (e.g., we keep hearing that Deborah’s bombing, but, until ep 4, we were largely seeing her get laughs and punchlines in, even if they weren’t the best). So rather than *seeing* the process, we’re often hearing about it via meta commentary for better or worse (again, I think you do what you can with 8 episodes and what seems like an ambitious story to tell and tour to take the characters on)

2. I really loved the scene where Deborah steps in and makes Weed stop the bus to let Ava go look for her dad’s ashes, and the final “fuck it” moment of shedding her fur coat to climb into a literal dumpster to help look was exactly the kind of narrative payoff and emotional catharsis I know and love from this show!

3. Deborah’s always had the capacity for meanness and real cruelty toward others, but this season I feel like we’re seeing more of it directed at strangers, people in the workplace, and even fans--all of whom in S1 we saw Deborah being fairly collegial and even downright friendly with (which set her up from the start, imo, as different from, say, a Miranda Priestly, even though she could be just as cutting). Again, I think part of it is the seeing vs telling thing - I know theoretically that Deb’s frustrated about the tour going poorly, so it would make sense for her to be lashing out more. But because we’re seeing so little of it, I’m not feeling it as much

4. On the other hand, Deborah’s deliberately making Ava jealous (sometimes using and tossing aside others to do it) feels exactly the right amount of petty, and the way she’s doing it, MY GOD, it’s fucking L Word levels of gay 

5. Curious to see what we do with all of Ava’s very vocal pledges to clean living and very visible backsliding (largely encouraged by those around her, which makes sense! The entertainment business is a hard place for sobriety, as are a lot of the most visible spaces for queer life)

6. Look...I could write a whole separate post on ep 4 alone, but bulleted thoughts:

I get that it’s necessary for Deborah’s growth (comedic and personal) both to bomb in this painful obvious way AND ALSO to have some of the really shitty ways she’s talked about whole groups of people drawn out into the open, not for laughs but for scorn. THAT DOES NOT MAKE IT LESS PAINFUL TO WATCH. Holy shit an entire childhood spent in comedy clubs and bar basements, and that’s still in the top 3 worst things I’ve seen go down on a stage

The first 10 minutes or so...idk. I get that we’ve got a queer cast and not totally straight writing staff and all, but a lot of the jokes felt less like we were having a good in-on-the-joke kind of time and more of a laugh at the expense of queer women (like c’mon, why does the first woman to approach Ava have to be creepy about it?) Going into it (esp after having heard so much about how queer fans would LOVE this ep), I think I wanted The L Word Olivia Cruise episode vibes, and instead, it felt like I was watching Friends at first

BUT by the end, the episode felt like it had swung around enough so we could see that Deborah was the problem (the internalized misogyny, the way that she has such deep-rooted problems with a lesbian audience, the doubling down on it all), but I don’t think I personally ever shook my unease from the beginning of the episode

I really, deeply appreciated Ava’s conversation with Deborah during the manicure (so many thoughts about hands and queer erotics...). It gives a lot more nuance to conversations about sexuality than we generally get on screen. Esp after Ava’s brash comments in early S1, this felt like a chance for Ava to be serious with Deborah; she isn’t trying to shock Deborah to get the upper hand anymore, but is instead talking through a lot of things she’s had to process and think through herself, and I SO, SO appreciated it. 

I do hope we return to some of this because I think Ava can and should have a chance to talk to Deborah after that set... echoing a brief conversation I had with @softdeb, the molly-fueled awkward dancing at sea was, um, a choice, and I hope it’s not the last we’ll see of that arc

Also the question of Deborah’s relationship to desire and intimacy felt not nearly so settled as some comments in interviews made it out to be! It feels live and open to me. This isn’t an argument for canonicity or anything, but I do think there’s still much to be interrogated after that meltdown at sea

Oh Marcus... I can and will not talk about the puppy who deserves better 

Deborah’s phone call to Marcus was also so very good. I have a lot of care for both of these two deeply flawed, human characters--and a lot of thoughts about their history--and seeing them have this moment of being able to see each other/be seen while sitting amidst the rubble of all the ways they’ve fucked up was gorgeous. It’s what I’m here for in this show, and ending on that note was enough to make me hopeful

i get what you mean about his parents typically being a united front. ig it's bc they think that since steve's mom never left even after the cheating she tends to go along w what the father wants? she does go w him for work trips so that might contribute but even that is a point of contention/a result of fighting. i think it makes more sense for steve having to play peacemaker or just kind of disappear sometimes bc his parents are constantly fighting. like i think that his parents always fight and his mom tends to bring steve into it one way or another (like i 100% believe it was steve's mom that told him about the cheating) and steve will always be on his mom's side and his dad resents that. i also think it's one of those things where steve is 100% on his mom's side all the time but his mom ends up not really returning that support (like if the dad goes at steve she doesn't support him/tells him to just do what his dad wants), even if she loves steve, so that complicates their relationship. idk i feel like steve has the vibe of someone who has been used as cannon fodder in his parents' arguments.

yes I believe many of the things you bring up as well, especially the thing about steve's mom dragging Steve into the arguments and being the one who told Steve about the cheating, altho I could also see Steve accidentally finding out about the cheating from his father and then being the one to tell his mother. in my mind Steve and his mom have a very enmeshed relationship where Steve spent a lot of time trying to look after her emotional well-being instead of her looking after him (a form of emotional incest and parentification, something we see with Jonathan and joyce too)

there's so many reasons why someone would stay with an unfaithful husband, especially at that time...I like the headcanon of the Harringtons being catholic so divorce would be looked down upon in that case. many fics imply his mom also works with his dad but it's more likely that she is not financially independent and maybe wouldn't be able to look after herself and Steve if they left him. I also like the headcanon of them being older than typical parents, so generationally divorce would also be looked down upon (altho I can also see mr h being much older than mrs h, a sort of 'married his secretary' situation happening)

the other side of it is that we don't have any recent information about steve's parents. last we heard from them was in s3! and nothing about their current relationship status with each other. I think it's possible for steve's parents to be separated or divorced by s4 happening tbh (they were already sleeping in separate beds in s1, Tommy refers to the bedroom he and carol have sex in as steve's mom's room soooo) I also sort of see steve's mom as a combative/emotionally reactive type so I find the idea of her just going along with the marriage the way it's portrayed in fics a bit unbelievable

October 18: Yellowjackets S2 Eps 1-6

I took the morning off sick from work, so life is going really well right now. I did manage to make it in, and then go shopping afterward. I've felt mostly okay since coming home--tired, but not sad. I watched another episode of Yellowjackets (took me like 2 hours with pausing and so on) and soaked my feet, which does seem to be helping with how badly they've hurt the last couple days. It doesn't usually feel as good as I think it will while I'm doing it, but it feels better after.

Anyway, I don't know what to write about and I also really want to shower and get to bed, so here are some few thoughts on YJ S2 so far. I've just finished Ep 6, Qui.

I guess I get why some people really don't like this season and consider it a sharp drop off from S1. I don't, but I haven't been totally inhaling it like I did S1. It's slower, I think. That makes sense for the 96-era scenes: it's winter, there's not as much to do, they're losing their minds a little. I've read some criticism of those scenes too and various arguments as to how they could be done better but I honestly don't take any issue to anything (other than having to get used to the idea that newly introduced minor characters have been here this whole time). They do a lot to provide plot even though what's really happening is they're sitting around devolving: Tai and Van's relationship, Misty and Crystal, the mouse, Ben's alternate life (which I actually find rather chilling), the Javi stuff, and of course, the growing cult situation. The mood of the scenes matches the mood of the characters matches my mood while watching.

The '21 story line... I don't know. Mixed feelings. It's a little frustrating that every YJ is doing something totally different. A part of me gets it, like, they are all being ushered toward the compound and I still have 3 episodes' worth of plot for them there... and I also get that there was a fair bit of separation between stories in S1 as well. But it feels like the separation is more severe now; they're even in different genres in a way. I was also worried at the end of S1 that killing Adam would sort of spiral the show into something else--it's hard to not make a big deal out of a literal murder--and that's sort of happening. But only for Shauna. I actually do like how the story is allowing for Callie and Shauna's relationship to develop, but it still feels... like they opened a can of worms with this and now they're either stuck with it for a while or they have to stuff the worms back in as fast as possible, which will be unrealistic and unsatisfying. And what of uh Shauna literally killing a man? I know it might be nothing compared to the '96 crimes, but it still doesn't really gel with me, that she would be really that unbothered. That seems to make a claim about her character that I don't think is otherwise supportable. I don't know. Just thinking as I type here.

I don't hate the wilderness compound stuff at all, though I'm not quite sure what to make of it yet (or Lottie... a tough nut to crack for me honestly; she's like almost a couple different archetypes but not quite), and I like Taissa and Van meeting up again. I love Van. I love Lauren Ambrose. I want to watch Lauren Ambrose in everything. Van grew into one of my favorites over the course of S1 and I'm liking where she's going in S2. Tai's story in the pre-Van eps surprised me a little: she is spiraling way harder and way faster than I thought; it was very creepy and well-done, though.

This ep (6) was really hard to watch, as I'd been anticipating, and I definitely did cry at the end. Well done but sad. It's like you can't even be angry at something that upsets you that much when your emotion is tempered by respect for the craft. That's how I feel anyway.

What do you think are the good and bad aspects of each season of ST?

ok 1. thank u for this question omg and 2. this answer may or may not be a mess, but either way it’s long (almost 7k words lmao) bc i’m insane, which is why it’s under a cut. it’s still by no means an exhaustive list but these are the things that just kinda came to mind.

also i realize you asked “good and bad” and i wrote this whole post as “strengths and weaknesses” which um. is not Exactly what you asked. but close enough <3 i also ended up including a lot of au ideas ksjdckmn bc like i personally hate when people say a certain plot or whatever was bad without suggesting anything that could have improved it yknow so whenever possible i tried to provide Some idea for fixing the issues i had with the show!!

season 1

strengths (this is probably gonna be the longest section but that’s because a lot of these strengths also apply to s2/s3 by default)

nostalgia and authenticity

this one’s pretty simple, but i think that season one did a good job of blending classic eighties media homages (such as the many many e.t./el parallels) with explicit pop culture references (such as mike’s yoda impression, mentions of the x-men, etc) to create a show that’s essentially dripping in early eighties nostalgia without it feeling too forced. before st, i think the most popular depiction of the eighties in mainstream media was that overly exaggerated neon scrunchie aesthetic from the mid to late eighties, and it was usually done in a comedic sense first and foremost. st took a different approach, instead focusing on the early eighties, a time that’s often ignored in favor of going either Full Seventies or Full Eighties, and i think that this choice likely resonated with adults who lived through the eighties and hadn’t yet seen something that felt quite so accurate to their own adolescence. a lot of young people who watched st were totally unfamiliar with this period of time, unfamiliar with books/movies like “stand by me” that st borrows from heavily, and i think st lent more seriousness to the eighties than most young people had experienced so far, and this was refreshing and interesting!

the use of dnd in the show is also quite genius in a way i’m not sure i can articulate?? it isn’t something Everyone would have played at the time, but it’s something that existed within a different context back in the eighties than it does today, and it really lent a sort of authenticity to the naming of the show’s sci-fi elements. like, of course these kids would name parallel dimensions and monsters and superpowers after these similar things in their favorite game! it just feels so real and it grounds st in our reality moreso than you might expect from the typical sci-fi or horror universe.

utilization of existing tropes

almost every single character in st clearly originates from some popular trope. the plot itself is riddled with classic eighties movie tropes. almost every single element of stranger things can be clearly traced back to some iconic eighties film or just to, like, overused horror/sci-fi/mystery/coming-of-age movie tropes in general. this might sound like a bad thing, but it really works in st’s favor! starting off with familiar tropes gives st the ability to easily create a lot of complexity and make a big impact by selectively deviating from those familiar, comfortable tropes!! while el’s whole plot, hopper’s character, etc, are all examples of this in action, i think the steve/nancy/jonathan plot is the greatest example. even from the start, the fact that good girl barb dies while nancy is off having sex with her asshole boyfriend is an incredibly thorough inversion of the most well-known horror movie trope in the book. how often do girls in horror movies have sex for the first time, walk home alone in the dark of night, and live to tell the tale? nancy and jonathan’s dynamic at first glance is a sort of classic “good girl meets boy from the wrong side of the tracks, discovers he’s actually got a heart of gold” thing, but instead of following this well-trodden path, st diverged. nancy is brash, impulsive, and at times downright insensitive. jonathan is angry, bitter, and actually a bit of a creep at first. while they have the capacity to emotionally connect and support one another, they can also bring out each other’s darker side, which is not what we’ve come to expect from that initial tropey dynamic.

in addition, steve, the popular rich asshole boyfriend, is actually... a human being! unlike the cartoonishly evil jocks that we’ve come to expect (especially from eighties movies), steve has complexity. despite his initial immaturity and selfishness, he’s also kind to barb, he backs off when nancy says no, he’s gentle and sweet when they sleep together, his first big Dick Move of the season is in defense of nancy, he realizes the error of his ways after the fight and does what he can to fix it, he’s worried about nancy when he sees that she’s hurt at jonathan’s house, and to top it all off, he ends up saving both nancy and jonathan’s lives when he could have just walked away, and the three of them all work together to fight the demogorgon. like... steve began as the most stereotypical character of all time, and by the end of the season, he had one of the most compelling and unique arcs among the whole cast!

finally, at the very end of the season, instead of dumping steve for jonathan as expected, nancy ends up getting back together with steve, and they’re both on friendly terms with jonathan. i realize that i just kinda. summarized s1. but my POINT is that i don’t think the dynamics between the monster hunting trio would be nearly as fun and interesting had the characters of nancy, steve, and jonathan not been set up to follow certain paths that we already had charted in our own heads. like, within the first couple episodes of s1, it’s pretty obvious that nancy and steve are gonna break up, nancy will get with jonathan, and steve will either die or go full evil or just never be seen again. like, duh! you’ve seen this story a million times! you know that’s how it’s gonna go! so, when the story DOESN’T go that way, the impact of each character’s arc and the relationship dynamics become stronger due to their unexpected complexity and authenticity. 

distinct plotlines separated by age group

this one’s rather obvious, but the way that the adults in s1 were essentially in a conspiracy thriller while the teens were in a horror flick and the kids were in a sci fi power-of-friendship story and all three converged at the end... wow. brilliant showstopping etc. not only was it just really well done and unique, it also gave stranger things near-universal appeal. like, there’s genuinely something for pretty much everyone in season one!

casting

obviously this applies to every season sorta by default, but when i think about what made season one So successful, i always think about the cast, and not just winona ryder. yes, she’s absolutely amazing in the show and it’s very doubtful that st would be as big as it is today without her name being attached to it from the start!! however, i think the greatest determining factor in st’s success is the casting of the kids, particularly millie bobby brown. like... el is just absolutely incredible. she’s amazing. this has all been said many times before so i won’t harp on it, but millie and the other kids are all So talented and charismatic and i think their casting has been instrumental to the show’s success.

strong visuals

the way that multicolored christmas lights which have been around for decades are now kinda like. a Stranger Things thing. jesus christ. those lights are probably the biggest stroke of stylistic genius on the show.

atmosphere and setting

this is probably like. the least important one here for me sdjncdsc because i think s2 and s3 both had like Even Better atmospheres and shit but s1 was good too and it laid the groundwork!! i know a lot of people would have preferred st be set somewhere more Spooky with lots of fog or giant forests or whatnot, and while i do enjoy thinking about alternate st settings and how they might alter the vibe, i think hawkins indiana was a good choice. as the duffers have said, placing stranger things in a fictional town allows them more flexibility than if they’d gone with their original plan of using montauk, new york. besides that, i think the plainness and like... flatness... of small-town indiana just Works. like, the fact that hawkins is never really scary on the surface is a big part of the horror in the lab’s actions and their impact. hawkins isn’t somewhere that people just disappear all the time. it isn’t somewhere known for strange occurrences (prior to s1, that is). it isn’t somewhere shrouded in mist and secrecy. hawkins on its surface seems like the sort of place with no secrets and nothing to fear, and that’s the point! the lab is out in the open! it’s right there! everything is so close to the surface, yet so far out of the public eye, and i think that really works.

the byers family’s whole deal (specifically the joyce/jonathan dynamic)

this is going here bc i miss it so bad in s2 and s3. i’m not one of those people who believe The Byers Are The Whole Point of the show, because st is and always has been an ensemble, and el, hopper, and the wheelers are just as instrumental to the plot as the byers, but ANYWAY, i do think the byers were one of the most interesting aspects of s1. joyce’s difficulties with supporting her sons as a poor and (implied mentally ill) single mother, jonathan’s stress as a result of having to earn money, care for his brother, and keep the house in order when his mother is unable to do so, and the resulting tension between them when will’s disappearance and supposed “death” brings the situation to a tipping point? holy shit! it’s so good! that argument after they see will’s “body” is just incredible and gut-wrenching. their relationship feels so real and messy and i think it’s just... good. also winona ryder REALLY acted her heart out and she carried a lot of s1 which i think people often forget to mention so i’m saying it here.

weaknesses

pacing/timing

ok so pacing is probably going to go in each season’s weaknesses, to be honest, because i think they all had a blend of some good and some bad pacing. good pacing is invisible pacing, though, so i probably won’t be putting it in any of the strengths sections and will only be focusing on it in the weaknesses. i’m also probably not going to talk about weird day/night cycle things, just because i don’t want to get nitpicky on timelines because that would require going back and rewatching things to double check timing which i don’t wanna do at the moment lmao. anyway, when i think of bad pacing in season one, i primarily think of two things: nancy’s little trip into the upside down and subsequent sleepover with jonathan, and the sort of staggered nature of the climax in the final episode. the latter is simple so i’ll explain it first: while i understand that each group’s respective climax is like part of a chain reaction and that’s why each big moment happens separately and at different times, i think that st is strongest when the whole group is together, and i think that makes the stakes feel higher too, so i’m not In Love with the way s1 separated everyone and gave each group their own climax. 

okay, now on to the nancy/upside down thing! idk if i’ve ever talked about it before, but i think the worst decision made in s1 by far is the inclusion of nancy’s brief trip into the upside down, wherein she dives headfirst into another dimension with absolutely no backup, watches the demogorgon chow down, freaks out and runs around for a minute, and then leaves. like... what the fuck? even putting aside what an idiotic decision this was (because i do think nancy’s tendency to rush into things headfirst is an intentional and consistent character trait), it just kind of destroys any remaining suspense surrounding the demogorgon and the upside down, and it accomplishes basically nothing besides scaring nancy enough to have jonathan sleep over, which is lame. i will break it down.

like, first of all, nancy just getting to waltz in and out of the upside down and get a good, long look at the demogorgon makes the entire thing far less mysterious, and by extension far less scary. like... before this scene, we the audience haven’t got a good look at the demogorgon. we’ve seen its silhouette briefly and we’ve seen a blurry picture of it, but nothing more, and i think that is far more effective at building fear than this jaunt nancy goes on which gives us a full view of the thing and makes it into less of a horrifying nightmare and into more of a humanoid animal. like, maybe this is just me, but i found the demogorgon far less intimidating after that scene than before. it also lets nancy and jonathan know For Sure that they’re right without providing any crucial information that they need to fight the demogorgon (aka it’s unnecessary to the plot), which removes a very compelling story element (the faith nancy and jonathan need to have in order to keep going against a vague and poorly understood enemy, the doubt they might have about each other and their own sanity, the possibility that they might be wrong, the trust they need to have in each other) a bit earlier in the plot than i believe is ideal. at the end of episode 5, nancy goes into the upside down and jonathan doesn’t know where she is and it’s intense!!! you’re thinking like, oh fuck, not only is nancy missing and fighting for her life now too, jonathan might be implicated in her disappearance!! some people already think he’s the one who killed will and people know that he took creepy pictures of barb and nancy before they both disappeared, maybe this is gonna cause some serious problems for him!! maybe nancy will find will in the upside down and she’ll help him survive!! fuck, maybe she’ll actually die!! this is huge!! and then episode 6 starts and they’re immediately like oh nevermind jonathan found the tree and got nancy out and she’s fine. my point with all of this is that nancy entering the upside down could have done A Lot in the grand scheme of the plot, but all it did was just... get jonathan to sleep over so he and nancy could have some awkward romance moments and steve could see them together and pick a fight. which could have honestly happened at Any point while nancy and jonathan were working together to hunt down the demogorgon, without ruining the demogorgon’s and the upside down’s mystique. so yeah <3

weird behavior and dumbass decisions that make no sense (aka the whole camera thing)

gonna go off about the teen plot again sorry but: why was nancy so unbothered and quick to forgive jonathan for taking those pictures? girl what the fuck are you doing? why wasn’t that a bigger deal? why was jonathan’s motivation for doing it so weak and why did they just kind of forget about the whole thing? why did nancy TRACK HIM DOWN AT THE FUNERAL HOME while he was PICKING OUT HIS BABY BROTHER’S CASKET to be like hey can you tell me what’s in this creepshot you took? it’s insane. it’s so insane. i mean i think the funeral home thing is hilarious and i don’t mind it being in the show necessarily but like my point here is that i think a lot of character decisions in s1 just kind of.. happened because they Needed to happen for the plot. like, they wrote this plot that required jonathan to be secretly taking pictures of the party and required him and nancy to work together after seeing something odd in the pictures, but they didn’t like... really consider what that event would mean for their characterization and relationship. the whole thing was sort of just dropped with minimal discussion and i think it did both nancy and jonathan’s characters a disservice and was really mishandled.

lighting and saturation/color grading

i am literally begging horror/sci-fi shows to let me see shit. i GET IT okay i understand that when you’re doing cgi effects it helps to keep the lights down and i’m not mad at any of the lighting in the demogorgon/upside down scenes!! i’m really not i think the demogorgon scenes in s1 all look sick!! but like... dude. the colors. where are they. why does everyone look like a vampire. i know blah blah this was probably an intentional stylistic choice intended to mimic film at the time blah blah but dude a lot of old movies are very colorful!! please just let people have color in their faces so everyone doesn’t look like a sheet of paper!!! also i’m white and not a professional lighting designer so yknow grain of salt but i think lucas was kinda poorly served by the lighting sometimes in s1. not Hugely so, not to the degree that i’ve seen poc be poorly served by lighting in other shows, but there were some times where it felt kinda like the lighting setup was just not designed with darker skin in mind. 

horror

i just personally don’t find s1 very scary like... ever. i don’t think they were really Trying to be extremely scary yknow so i’m not counting this as a big deal, but i do think that each season has improved on the horror aspects. i think s1′s horror lies more in the mystery and the unknown than in what’s seen onscreen, and as i’ve said already, i think s1 kind of fumbled that suspense ball.

season 2

strengths

the possession plot

i’ll warn u rn this whole s2 strengths section is probably gonna be really short bc idk like. how much there is to really say i feel like it’s all so self-explanatory skjncmn. anyway yeah the possession plot!! eerie as fuck, and noah OWNED. so did winona tbh and finn and sean etc but like. noah. wow! i think the possession plot helped the show maintain a good amount of tension and suspense throughout the season, and a lot of scenes with possessed!will are flatout disturbing to watch. in a good way. i think the mindflayer and will’s possession were far more genuinely frightening than s1′s demogorgon, and it provided a new layer of depth and intrigue to the antagonist besides just “bad monster want eat people.”

tone and aesthetics

halloween season... literally halloween season. halloween season. that is all.

actually i will elaborate a bit and just say that i think s2 did a good job of having the sort of foreboding vibe that s1 was often going for, but without the annoying darkness and desaturation. so points for that.

also st2 is like one of the best Autumn pieces of media ever like it just. like steve and dustin on those train tracks with the fallen leaves all around them.... god. god the vibes are unparalleled. all of the halloween stuff also really contributes to the nostalgia st runs on yknow it makes you think about childhood and trick-or-treating and you kind of get transported like damn... i remember going to the rich neighborhoods to score the good candy..... idk i just think the whole thing is incredibly effective. 

“babysitter” steve

by sending nancy and jonathan off together, the show created a problem: what to do with steve? this problem pushed them to create the unconventional and unexpected duo of steve and dustin, and the world is so much brighter for it. seriously though we all know steve and dustin are great i don’t need to argue that point. all i’ll add is that i think allowing steve to grow in this way, serving as a mentor figure and becoming genuine friends with someone so unexpected, really took the originality of his character to the next level. no longer content just to defy his archetype, in s2 steve begins branching out in ways that never would have been considered in s1, creating an incredibly complex and interesting person from the sort of character that most shows would have simply written out or killed off for convenience’s sake. and it works and steve and dustin are such a joy to watch and i love them. <3

the lucas/max plot

so first of all max mayfield is the most perfect baby girl on god’s green earth and idk what i would do without her but anyway. i think lumax is the best romantic relationship in the show and not just because they’re the only ones with like an age-appropriate approach to the whole thing. it’s also because their relationship accomplishes more than just putting the two of them in a relationship!! lucas and max spending time together motivates billy to do his evil shit, providing more conflict in the narrative, and it also helps establish max as part of the group in a relatively natural way while giving both her and lucas a great subplot. lucas (and dustin) has a crush on the new girl, they start spending some time together, and lucas ends up needing to decide whether he’ll keep the secret of the upside down and lose her, or risk both of their lives by telling her the truth. that’s a pretty big, character-defining decision that he gets to make!! max has to choose whether to trust this boy she barely knows and endanger herself, or to walk away and stay safe, yet another great character-defining choice that also contributes to the sense we get as an audience of max as somebody who’s incredibly lonely and desperate for love and connection. this post is way too long already and i have a ton more to say so i’ll stop now but yeah i think lumax really Works in the show without ever distracting or detracting from the overall plot and narrative in the way that some other ships (coughjancycough) often do.

balance between the normal and abnormal

s2 i think did a pretty solid job of melding daily life with more fantastical sci-fi horror elements. i enjoyed seeing so much of the kids at school in the first few episodes!! you really get a strong sense of where they’re at in life, what their daily lives are like, and you get a sort of gradual shift into madness that makes everything feel more grounded than i think it would if they had just leapt straight into the horror shit, yknow? 

the el and hopper dynamic

go back and rewatch s2 and tell me that’s not one of the most moving portrayals of parenthood and trauma and growing up that you’ve ever seen. you can’t. or well you can but i won’t listen. i really can’t imagine stranger things without el and hopper’s relationship, and it’s my absolute favorite part of s2. their whole dynamic is so beautiful and complex, and gives them each amazing personal arcs in addition! the black hole scene is literally one of the show’s greatest moments of all time. any given scene between the two of them in s2 is just guaranteed to be heartwarming as well as heartbreaking, and i think that makes for an incredible show.

weaknesses

flashbacks

okay this applies to Every season they All have too many flashbacks but in s2 specifically... please stop showing me shit from season one. i watched it. i know what happened. you don’t need to spoon feed everything to me!! flashbacks can be a really helpful way of delivering information to an audience, but st has a bad habit of not only being kinda demeaning in how often they flash back to shit that the audience already knows, but they also have a bad habit of using flashbacks almost as a crutch to avoid having to deliver information subtly and naturally. 

you know i gotta say it... the lost sister

this is so sad. the lost sister really is like a great concept for an st episode, and i’m not mad about the idea of st taking a break from the normal action to focus on one story for a full episode, but the execution of it was just dreadful. kali and her crew feel very over-the-top and stereotypical, and its placement in the season totally kills the tension and excitement that was built in “the spy.” 

i think the lost sister honestly could have gone over far better, even with the stereotypical fake-feeling gang kali has, if they had just swapped it with “the spy” like... ok, the end of episode five has el setting off to find kali and will collapsing on the ground seizing. right? imagine if, instead of immediately following will to the lab, we’d followed el. we don’t know what’s happening with will, but it’s a very simple cliffhanger that leaves us on edge without making us feel cheated by the show cutting away. we follow el on her little journey, everything happens much the same as canon, and then at the end, el sees hopper in scrubs. she sees mike, screaming, sees that they’re both in danger. holy shit!!! what the fuck!!! what’s happened since we left will seizing on the ground??? we feel el’s fear and confusion. she decides to go home. and then... boom. “the lost sister” is over. now, we rewind, right back to will seizing on the ground, and “the spy” commences. we learn how they got into the danger that el saw in the end of “the lost sister,” and we sit on the edge of our seats all through “the spy” and “the mind flayer,” KNOWING that el is on her way back to save them but not knowing when she’ll arrive!! idk i don’t think that would have necessarily saved lost sister but i think it may have alleviated some of the issues that i and many others have with it, timing-wise.

the nancy/jonathan sidequest

once again, the idea of nancy going off on her own little mission to find justice for barb after s1 is like. amazing. genuinely i love that plot for her and i can’t imagine anything better for her to have focused on in s2. unfortunately though i think her and jonathan’s little trip to see murray was just kind of... lame. the whole thing just felt like an excuse to get the two of them alone together, yknow? which is fine i guess people contrive all sorts of situations to get characters alone together for romance reasons but in this case i think it just really doesn’t work for me because of what it’s juxtaposed with. like, will is POSSESSED, and jonathan is just off on a mini road trip and sleeping with his bestie, and jonathan never seems to communicate to joyce/will that he left town, and joyce never like... thinks to tell him that will is like sick and fucked up and they’re looking at him in the lab??? like it’s so weird i know joyce always forgets about jonathan when shit’s happening with will but jfc you’d think at some point in that like... 72-ish-hour period where jonathan was out of town she would have thought about him. like at least once. maybe i’m forgetting something and she mentioned him sometime and i missed it but even still, i hate the juxtaposition of nancy and jonathan just like cheers-ing at murray’s place and sleeping together and whatnot while everyone else is dealing with possession or trying to hunt down dart yknow? it feels really boring in comparison and i think it could have been done far better. like it was SO insanely easy for them to get into the lab and get an admission of guilt and escape with it!! i think it might have been a lot more engaging if maybe someone from the lab tailed them to murray’s place and they had to like lose the tail and race to get the recording out to as many news outlets as possible before they got caught, or something like that. the tension in their plotline is completely resolved in episode four!! episodes five and six are just them screwing around and addressing envelopes. while there were a lot of strong ideas in this plotline (i really enjoy nancy going out of her way to get justice, and the fact that they have to water down the story to make it believable), i just think the focus on nancy and jonathan getting together hindered it a lot without adding a ton to the plot or their individual characters.

season 3

strengths

starcourt mall as a setting

while i don’t think the mall was utilized quite to its full potential (something i could make a separate post about if anyone’s interested), i do think that starcourt was a genius addition to the series. i’ve said this before, but building a new mall is a literal Perfect in-universe justification for a significant leap forward in fashion and aesthetics, and it provides a great location for characters to just... be characters. idk how else to articulate this i just think that the mall is a great setting to let people interact with each other and to bring people together who may not have been otherwise (i.e. scoops troop). not to mention how sick it was to see the mall get wrecked toward the end kdjncdkm like they were able to do so much more with the mall in terms of like The Finale than they could with just the byers house or the cabin or the school or even the lab. i love all the back tunnels they run through it’s such a fun like acknowledgement of how this glitzy eighties mall is just a real place where employees get shipments and take out the trash and shit idk it’s all about the perfect facade and what’s hidden what’s underneath what’s hiding in plain sight etc etc i’m just saying words now. anyway. 

willingness to experiment and go against expectations

gay robin. neon aesthetics. giant fucking meat monster. i know some people hate both the neon and the meat monster but i personally think they were kind of amazing and like. yknow regardless of personal tastes i think it’s impossible to deny that s3 had a lot of incredible visuals, and they’re all visuals that just wouldn’t have been possible if the show were too afraid to stray from its s1 aesthetic. robin being canonically gay (and her resulting friendship with steve) and the season’s striking visuals are two things that most everyone (besides like homophobes skjncdknm) can agree were great, right? and they were both departures from where the show began and what we all expected!! so yeah i think while some of the experimentation in s3 wasn’t ideal it was also that experimentation that allowed for some of the season’s strongest elements to come about.

the hospital sequence (and the season’s action/horror scenes in general)

this one is fairly self-explanatory. while they may have underutilized the “body snatching” element of the season, the hospital sequence with nancy and jonathan fighting off their possessed bosses did an amazing job of building tension and creating a genuine sense of really intense and personal danger.

in general i think that s3 melded action and horror rather well, particularly in the sauna test, the hospital, and when the mindflayer busts through the roof of hop’s cabin. horror can come from many things, and in this case, st elicited horror largely from the feeling of helplessness, and it was really effective for me personally. i think it worked better for me than s1′s brand of horror because it doesn’t rely so much on a lack of knowledge or a sense of suspense that inevitable disappears upon a second viewing.

the body horror we got in s3 was also really fun! that’s it i just think all the blood and guts and slime were fun and i would like more of them. once again, the impacts of body horror are less dependent upon the viewer being in the dark or unsure as to what’s happening, and as such i think it tends to be a little more effective at eliciting reaction in the long term.

timing and mechanics of the battle of starcourt/finale

i think the battle of starcourt is just fucking awesome, and beyond that personal opinion, i think it’s the most high-stakes and intense finale of all three seasons, and this is for two main reasons! 1. el is out of commission, and 2. (almost) everyone is in the same cental location. this means that (almost) everyone is in danger all at once, and they are all working together at the same time to fight the same threat. s1/s2 have their groups more fragmented for the finales, and while i understand why in each case and i wouldn’t call either season’s finale necessarily weak, i do think the centralized nature of the s3 finale just Works on another level. in s1 and s2, large segments of the cast are already perfectly safe by the time el dispatches the primary threat. in s3, however, everybody save for dustin and erica is still in danger up until the last moment, and el is seemingly (you can def debate how much power she still had in her when she peeked into billy’s mind and whether the memory broke the mindflayer’s hold on him or if she was actually controlling him to some degree) completely vulnerable. this increases the tension and raises the stakes, making the finale a real crescendo to fortissimo as opposed to a series of little mezzo forte moments. i hope everyone reading this knows music idk how else to phrase that my brain is stupid.

emphasis on friendship and adolescence (but in a different way than s1/2)

this is definitely a controversial one but i think that s3 really did like... show a side of friendship that had been more or less unexplored thus far in the show. el and max were amazing, and i think it’s really nice that we got an opportunity to see the kids have some growing pains as well as see them support each other through Normal Adolescent Stuff like boyfriends and breakups instead of just like. death and trauma. this is maybe just a personal preference, but i think it can be really enlightening and provide a lot of depth when you get to see how characters respond to normal everyday conflict and not just how they respond to giant world-ending conflict!! letting el use her powers for goofy teenage shit like spying on boys and messing with mean girls at the mall is not only fun for her and the audience, but it also really emphasizes just how much those powers are a part of el, making it that much more devastating when she loses them at the end of the season. 

weaknesses

tonal dissonance

so this is like. obvious. but it must still be said! i won’t go on and on about it since we all know this so i’ll try to like talk about it from an angle people don’t usually? anyway. it seems to me like they were maybe a little worried about s3 being too dark. while the choice to really lean into humor was definitely driven by the sorts of eighties teen films from which s3 drew inspiration (like fast times at ridgemont high), i think it was also done in an attempt to alleviate the more troubling implications of some events in the season, particularly the russian bunker plot. like, yeah, st can be incredibly dark, but if they’d played the whole “children being stuck inside of a foreign military base, tied up, tortured, and drugged” thing completely straight without the humorous elements that exist in canon, it had the potential to be like... disturbing on a new level. steve and robin don’t have powers like el yknow their kidnapping/torture doesn’t have any sci-fi elements to sorta soften the blow. they’re just innocent teenagers being brutalized and traumatized by grown men. so anyway yeah i think maybe the writers were concerned about this storyline coming off as too dark and they wanted it to be a little more whimsical but they ended up pushing way too hard in that direction and creating extreme dissonance at times. this goes for joyce/hopper/murray/alexei too, but to a lesser extent. i think the ridiculousness in that group felt a lot more like... realistic. but still. 

newspaper plot

once again i feel like i don’t even need to say this skjdncmn we all know it was insane how the show basically ended up delivering the message “while misogyny is a serious problem poverty and classism are not” and i’ve said it on this blog a million times so i don’t need to repeat myself. i’ll focus on another weak point of this plot: the fact that it completely separates nancy and jonathan from everyone else. once again, the show’s preoccupation with j/ancy held them back! like... can you imagine a version of s3 where nancy and jonathan both worked in the mall? i have a lot of ideas about this possible au and like how the plot could play out differently if they worked in the mall but first of all it’s just more realistic, second of all it further utilizes the mall as a central setting, and third of all, it would bring everyone together. as it is in canon, nancy and jonathan were unnecessarily isolated from the rest of the group, and this isolation was detrimental to both of their characters. like, they only ever get to interact with each other! if they’d gotten summer jobs in the mall, they could have had more interactions with the kids/steve/robin, and they absolutely still could have had a similar argument! maybe in this case, nancy notices the rat thing (or something else odd) herself when taking out the trash behind the mall, and she wants jonathan to ditch work with her to check it out bc she thinks it may be related to the lab. jonathan doesn’t want to ditch work because he needs his job, nancy argues that they’re working shitty mall jobs anyway and who cares if they get fired, and we get more or less the same thing as s3 without the cartoonishly over-the-top misogyny. i mean honestly i think the rat shit could have been cut entirely it didn’t rly... accomplish much of anything. in my opinion. like imagine s3 without the rat plot you literally would not be missing anything except it would be more surprising when the dudes melted into goo at the hospital. so yeah i think it would have been better if nancy and jonathan had jobs at the mall, weren’t isolated from everybody else, and were maybe absorbed into the party’s plot or the scoops troop’s plot from very early on, allowing them to interact with more characters and have a less... dumb.... plot. like god splitting up nancy and jonathan between the party/scoops troop would have been So Much better i just. sdkjcnksdmn anyway yeah.

briefness of group reunion/separation of groups

remember in s2 at the beginning of “the gate,” where mike and hopper had a confrontation and max and el met for the first time and el hugged everyone and steve and nancy had their sad little moment together outside... where’s that energy? obviously the s2 reunion wasn’t that long either, but it made space for some significant emotional moments to take place. s3′s reunion had some hopper/el/mike resolution, but besides that... there was nothing, really. i just think that the whole group getting together in s3 was SO exciting and powerful the way they did it (with both the scoops troop and the adults having their own Big Moment reconnecting with team griswold family), but the emotional potential was more or less squandered. 

i also think in s3 at times they were really stretching to keep everybody separated even though it made no sense. and like... in s1 the separation worked bc nobody else knew that (x group) was experiencing weird shit too, and beyond that, each group (as i mentioned in the s1 section) was sort of operating within their own genre and bringing something unique to the season. they’ve stopped doing that though! now, the groups aren’t separate bc each plot is tonally/structurally different, the groups are just separate bc... they need to be, because it’s a big ensemble cast and you can’t just have them all be together for a whole season or it would be way too difficult to coordinate things and keep the show dynamic. all this is to say that i’m excited for s4 because the location differences make it so there’s a Reason for each plot to be separate at the beginning, and i think that’ll work better.

general ridiculousness

i dont mean like i think it’s bad that they made jokes this is just me lumping in all the dumb shit like hopper not worrying about el and not wanting to check on the kids, him and joyce bickering long after they both know they and their children are in danger, max seemingly forgetting that billy is a racist abuser, etc etc. i think many of these are just a symptom of the show 1. trying desperately to keep the groups split up a certain way even though it may not make any sense, and 2. trying to fit into a certain genre/trope mold when their actual characters are more complex than the tropes they’re imitating. this is so fucking long already i am not gonna elaborate further rn but i trust u all know what i mean.

soooo... yeah, that’s about all! i mean it’s not all there are definitely many more things i could talk about and i know i focused sorta disproportionately on the teens which is my bad :/ but i’m done for now. thank you for asking, and apologies for the delay in responding!! i’m sure some people reading (if anyone read this far) will disagree with some of what i’ve said and that’s alright like i’m not The Authority on st or anything i’m just trying to talk about like my own thoughts yknow? so yeah luv u all i hope someone enjoyed reading this!!

Breaking down Hunter and Omega’s relationship: pt 4.

Hi everybody. My biggest apologies for the delay on this series over the past two weeks, I’ve had a lot of medical issues going on, alongside a big decision in my life I had to make before the end of September taking precedence. However, with a little more time on my hands and a new team of proof readers behind me, I’m hoping to be back on track soon enough! I hope you enjoy my analysis of ‘Cornered’, and please always feel free to reply/reblog/send an ask with your opinions and discussions! I love to hear and reply to them! 💛

(Pasted paragraphs: I would just like to add a disclaimer here. I am, in no way whatsoever, slating the other batchers for having differing relationships with Omega. I absolutely adore everything single one of the boys, and I think they all have wonderful and unique interrelations with her. Although I may point out these different approaches in comparison to Hunter’s, I am not stating these engages are wrong, just different is all!

I’m going to separate this into a little series- covering each episode in a separate post, which I’ll have tagged as the series progresses. Once I’ve tackled these two, as they’re my favourites, I’m going to move on to each individual Batcher and perhaps a few other dynamics such and Hunter and Crosshair, or Wrecker and Omega! Let me know what you guys would like to see!)

(Thank you to this weeks proof-reader: @very-depressing-waffel 💛)

Cornered: S1/E4

Although minimal, I absolutely love the small interaction between these two in the opening scene of this episode. While it would make sense for Hunter to take the chair, as he is navigating co-ordinates, instead he allows Omega to sit down and rest, the pure affection between them is particularly radiant in these moments. I’d also like to note that it is Hunter’s order to originally send them to Idaflor, where we can only assume he is heeding Cut’s previous advice given on the subject of ‘disappearing to start a new life’. By connotation, this essentially means Hunter was extremely ready to settle down with his brothers and both raise and protect his newly found little one. However this clearly becomes an evident concern of Hunter’s as Omega begins to whine, claiming she desperately wants to explore the galaxy instead of hiding away on an uninhabited planet. Although appreciating her enthusiasm, he insists they cannot risk it, not right now, showing he has all further plans to take her to see the universe whenever it may be safe to do so. Her safety has become his priority.

Also, another little mimic on Omega’s part is mentioned after Tech’s evaluates their situation- “Well, Pantora it is.” “Pantora it is :)”. This angel, she steals my heart.

Moving on slightly to the arrival of Pantora, Hunter’s civvies and Omega carrying his backpack for him, which is as big as her little torso might I add, makes the world spin. Notice too how her eyes never leave him for a moment, it’s a typical child trait when wanting to catch an adult’s attention for good behaviour. After Wrecker mentions the implications of sightseeing, which ultimately peaks Omega’s interest, Hunter is quick to diffuse the situation by insisting this is only a quick supply run. I strongly believe this is because although he intends to take Omega into the city with him, most likely recognising her desperation to explore, his main intention is to keep her safe and protected, I personally spy a compromise here. Finally, regarding this little interaction, when inviting Omega to join them, he calls her ‘Mega, ‘MEGA!!! Hunter is the first member of the batch to nickname her affectionately, and her little excited cheer in response says it all!

When strolling through the busy marketplace, I noticed that alongside drinking up all sights she can set her eyes on, Omega continues to perform the aforementioned ‘smile at parent because I am both well behaved and very excited’ technique, breaking away from her awestruck staring to give Hunter a cute grin, which he affectionately returns under the realisation that her purity and innocence has erupted through something as simple as a marketplace, another endearing trait his charge has displayed. I’d also like to shed light on the protective hand-on-shoulder movement Hunter uses after the squad of troopers pass by him, Omega, and Echo. His wary stare and protectiveness is an extreme diversion from his usual headstrong attitude, which we know is correlated to his need to protect his charge. (Hand-on-shoulder, AGAIN. Comforting Dad alert!!)

When offering to trade with the Gran merchant, I noticed that whenever Omega picked up a new item to inspect or show off to Echo, Hunter glances over his shoulder to observe her. I have reason to believe he might not only be watching her explore, but keeping an eye on her after the incident on Cut’s farm. I can practically see Suu’s words of advice ringing in his ears, and he wants to make sure she stays out of trouble. And after she does inevitably knock something over, although he scowls a little in her direction (as any parent would), Hunter swiftly turns his look of annoyance towards the Gran as he begins to scold Omega, once again showing his protectiveness in her regard, and in all honesty, he has every right to respond this way, we’ve already established this salesman is stubborn and conceited.

The entire plot of this episode is centred around Omega’s inevitable separation from Hunter and Echo as she ends up running off to chase a voorpak, who has stolen her new doll. We cannot fault Omega for her behaviour, it was a little juvenile at most, but we must take into account this would be her first time in such a situation, and she has never been taught otherwise. Hunter’s immediate faltering smile as he realises Omega is missing is honestly gut wrenching. He has just received 3,000 credits, a hefty sum for what they’re in need of, and now he’s lost his ward, and the pain and concern is fully mirrored through his halting eyes.

I’m moving ahead slightly to add a little character-action comparison! Now, this may just be me nitpicking, and I mean no hate to Fennec Shand (I actually ADORE her), but did anybody else notice the difference between her hold on Omega and how Hunter holds her? Fennec’s fingers lay beneath the nape of Omega’s neck, almost curling into her tunic’s collar, and so while it may seem protective, it actually holds very possessive and controlling connotations. Whereas when Hunter places a hand to Omega’s shoulder, his fingers are quite loose, and it only ever rests up her upper shoulder, allowing the girl freedom if she so much as wishes it. It’s extremely docile. Furthermore, I wanted to briefly comment on Hunter’s tenderness when retrieving Omega’s new doll, most likely using it to track her recent movement. His hold is very gentle, considering he is now clinging to the last piece of Omega he has contact with, and a noticeable shred of panic holds his upper body rigid for good measure. It’s very nicely animated.

Coming ahead swiftly to the brief ‘positive’ interaction between Omega and Fennec, I haven’t seen this mentioned before but I personally see the discussion concerning the need for protection when travelling the galaxy as a small nod to Omega’s newly found connection to the boys, and Hunter specifically. Omega insists it’s a good thing she has her ‘friends’. Noticeably, she is still very hesitant to label them as her brothers, as she most likely feels excluded to an extent (bearing in mind the boys were raised together with the exclusion of Echo, no matter her previous ties to them, Omega was always going to feel isolated to some extent), but not enough to deny she has an attachment to them, and vice versa. Hunter has already shown on multiple occasions (Kamino, Saleucami, the moon from episode 3) that he would do whatever it takes to protect her, but it’s nice to see Omega’s perspective on the newly found emotions too.

Finally, Hunter is able to catch up to both Omega and Fennec, and the sudden change in his demeanour and her aura of innocence is extremely present here. Hunter drops the worrisome parental act fairly quickly, and it’s replaced with the familiar soldier we all know and recognise, he needs to exhibit such strengths to assert the extent he is willing to go to protect Omega. Equally, upon realising Fennec doesn’t quite have her best interest at heart, Omega wastes no time jumping (recklessly) into action to save both herself and Hunter anymore trouble. Of course, being a weightless little girl, she isn’t able to do much, and Hunter ends up in a physical altercation with Shand, where he actually ends up taking his eyes off the assassin to address Omega directly, insisting she run. This not only shows just how much he cares about her, but how desperate he was to ensure her safety by putting himself at risk by not only getting into a fight, but exposing a vulnerability by taking his eyes off of her. (Her worried little face as she flees too, poor girl 😔)

(This point doesn’t have much to do with the relationship between these two, so feel free to skip over it if you want, but I did want to briefly comment on Omega’s timid exterior as she runs to Wrecker in the maintenance tunnels. It truly helps to perceive her genuine age and immaturity, the way she cowers into his neck and sits in his arms especially.)

After Tech informs Hunter of Omega’s current predicament involving the maintenance tower, it’s easily noticeable that when questioning Tech’s information, his voice mirrors the exact tone and edge it held when berating both the former and Echo after their ship was impounded in Saleucami. To me, this shows a clear connotation between the dire situations, and how quickly Hunter has taken to his new role in Omega’s life, and his job as her primary carer. Not to mention, she is literally hanging mid-traffic lane, and in desperate need of assistance. Alongside this, we see previously in this episode that not only was Hunter worried about attracting unwanted attention, after receiving such a thing and accidentally allowing Omega to hang in the balance (pun unintended), he actually steals somebody’s hoverbike in an attempt to rescue the little one, seeming to not care he is attracting even more unwanted attention. There is no hesitation on his end.

The look of absolutely HORROR that crosses this man’s face as Omega drops from the tower and just about hits the hovertruck below. We haven’t seen a look like that cross Hunter’s features since Crosshair’s ‘betrayal’, another indication to his immense worry for the newest member of his family. Equally, this is mirrored by Omega’s wide eyed, petrified stare as she momentarily watches Fennec shoot straight for Hunter’s bike, realising both she and the closest thing she has to a parent are still in serious peril. We need to take into account that this little girl has never experienced something this grim before, and the internal panic is evident for both herself, and Hunter especially.

This brings us down to the “HUNTER!!” comment from Omega as she dangles from the hovertruck. I personally believe her first initial thoughts were not to warn Hunter of the oncoming Shand, but instead a desperation to cry out for help from her guardian. This escalated as she notices Fennec approaching, and her eyes even widen as she calls out for Hunter to watch out, giving further evidence that her first thoughts might not have correlated to her eventual dialogue. It’s also important to note that despite her incredibly tragic situation, Omega is still much more worried about Hunter’s predicament than her own.

(Slightly unimportant, but I love the way Hunter leans in to take Omega in his arm before Shand knocks him out of the way. It’s very parental.)

I never noticed this before, but as Hunter catches Omega’s hand and hauls her onto the bike, he actually scans her over briefly to check for any injuries, before insisting she hold on tight. Notice how his voice isn’t scolding or harsh, he’s very calm despite the dire situation, doing his best to remain neutral for Omega’s sake, especially considering the day she’s had. It’s also important to note that this is further improvement from the situation on Saleucami, another example of their ever-growing relationship.

The WAVE of relief that rolls from Hunter’s entire demeanour as he places the backpack down in the Marauder cockpit, knowing he can finally rest now that Omega is safe, while simultaneously anticipating the flurry of issues about to storm their already hectic lives with a bounty hunter after the kid. His eyes are exhausted, his shoulders are only slightly slacked to insinuate his rough exterior, and yet he still does his absolute best to comfort Omega as she begins to get upset over the prior events and the unknown future.

And, finally, a small action but important nonetheless. I noticed that Omega’s eyes quiver slightly as she begins to get upset, and in her final moments on screen, they direct towards Hunter. This may seem unimportant, but it provides further evidence to the notion that she seeks him out for protection specifically. She’s upset and frightened, so she looks to him because he protects her. It is set up as if she’s about to toss herself into his arms, because she needs him right now.

I hope you liked my analysis of Hunter and Omega’s relationship in episode four of The Bad Batch! Of course, I’d love to discuss these two with anybody who might be interested, so please feel free to drop me an ask or a DM, and if you’re captivated enough I’d totally recommend looking out for my future posts on the topic!

As always, much love to our ‘Megs and Hunter, thank you for reading! 💛

Part One: Aftermath

Part Two: Cut and Run

Part Three: Replacements

So I saw someone else get an anon message that said: “I hate to admit this, but I really can't shake the feeling that Benji loves Victor more than Victor loves Benji at this point.” I wanted to respond as well, because I think this is something people are probably seeing a lot and I really want to explain how I’m looking at it (from personal experience and just from looking at and examining the characters).

CW/TW: Mental Health, suicidal ideation/action mention, Addiction, Emotional Trauma, sex mention, Predatory relationship mention, catholicism, homophobia, misunderstandings, lack of communication, spoilers for love victor seasons 1 & 2 [let me know if I missed anything please]

I want to be frank in saying that Benji is my favorite character and I project onto him a lot (along with seeing a lot of myself in him). I’m also white AF, so I’m sure some of you think that’s relevant, but I really don’t think it is in this particular case. I do also however identify with Victor in a number of ways and I am trying to see the characters both as complex individuals with deep personal histories. Both have suffered traumas and both are clearly dealing with a lot of their own shit on top of being sixteen/seventeen and dealing with junior year of high school and all the pressures and expectations that brings for everyone.

I think what people are interpreting at loving someone more/less is actually about prioritizing someone/a relationship more/less. In my mind, from what I see on screen and interpret, they both love each other beyond words. They are both very much in love with one another. It comes down to how they display that to each other and to the public as well as where on their list of priorities this relationship falls.

Let’s start with Victor, struggles and life:

He is dealing with internalized homophobia and associated thought-patterns stemming from his upbringing in the Catholic church as well from the vocalized homophobic remarks from his mother (toward himself and Benji as well as likely at other points in his life toward strangers), his father (stating that he hopes Adrian doesn’t turn out ‘like that’; the scene in S1 where they’re at the church in Texas and he calls the hairdresser ‘flojito’; etc.), and his grandparents (on his birthday and likely at other points in his life). As a result of this, Victor tried to make himself straight (or at least interested in a girl) by dating Mia because he did like her as a person and everyone was telling him that’s what he was supposed to do. He ended up hurting her and almost losing her friendship (temporarily, he did, but she does seem to have forgiven him now).

He is dealing with outside homophobia as well. That kid on the very first day he was Creekwood responding to Benji helping him up. Felix’s comment that same day of ‘you don’t want to give people the wrong idea.’ The basketball team/gym class guys roasting him about not hooking up with Mia on the ferris wheel. Felix saying he’d be crazy to not like Mia. Lake asking ‘are you gay or something’ when he brought Felix along to Mia’s house, etc., etc. Some of these things may seem innocent enough, but they weren’t. Not to Victor who was already struggling to accept even the possibility that he might be gay. Once he managed to come out to his parents, obviously his father got better fairly quickly, but Isabel continued to struggle for six months which put even more pressure on Victor to try to lead this double life. Once he came out at school, the whole fiasco with the basketball team also occurred and that was a lot for him, because Basketball as always his safe-space. It’s where he went to get away from all the other pressure. It was something he didn’t have to think about and now suddenly, he did. Those pressure are also affecting his ability to think about what he may want and it seems affecting his ability to think (at all sometimes) about how any of that is also affecting Benji. It’s affecting him so much that he’s basically blind to how it’s also affecting Benji to see him suffer. He doesn’t even consider that possibility until Felix brings up how hard it is for him the night Felix breaks up with Lake and Venji get caught having sex.

Victor also has struggles away from just his coming out and accepting himself journey. He has the struggles associated with his parents separation. Until fairly recently, Victor always thought his parents had a perfect relationship. He saw that as the ideal. Get together in High School, get married right away, stay together for ever, happily ever after. That’s what he was raised to expect. And now he’s seeing their relationship fall apart before his eyes. Hell, his devoutly Catholic mother had an affair, and he’s wondering if it’s really possible for your first love to be your only love especially after he and Benji start butting heads, so he’s already vulnerable to that viewpoint when Rahim brings up the possibility. He gets so lost in what’s happening to his parents and what Rahim is saying about it not usually working out that he forgets how in love he is and he sort of loses his will to fight for what he wants, because maybe it’s just doomed to fail anyway (until he sees Benji at the wedding and it sort of hits again - and then Felix’s speech thereafter, obviously). He kind of loses his way by getting caught up in the statistic improbability of your first love being the one and watching his parents’ marriage potentially fall apart and he wonders for a moment if it might be easier, if it might be better to just walk away and go toward Rahim who he seem to get along with and seems to understand the things Benji doesn’t about him, but what he fails to examine in that moment is that he’s only barely scratched the surface with Rahim and that Rahim doesn’t know him like Benji does and that every relationship has it’s ups and downs and what it always comes down to is how willing both parties are to work to make things right. How much you’re willing to step into the other person’s shoes and try to understand. In my opinion, even if he were to walk away from Benji and go to Rahim, that bubble of understanding isn’t going to last forever either. He’s failing to remember that when he got together with Benji (and for most of the summer it seems) that’s exactly what it was like and failing to remember that they have grown beyond that into a deep soul-altering love for one another that deserves his time, energy, and effort and NEEDS those things to keep it going.

Now let’s talk about Victor’s priorities in life:

Victor has always been close with his family, especially his mother. The strain on that relationship is very taxing on his mental well-being. He has a hard time ‘standing up to’ her or talking back to her, etc. because he loves her and he just wants their easy, close relationship back. He already overcame his own anger at her affair to get her back, but now she’s the one pulling away because of his sexuality and it’s hurting him because if he was able to forgive her for something that was actually wrong, why can’t she forgive him for something that he has no control over. So he loves his mother and his family and he hates disappointing them. He has spent most of his life fixing his family’s issues (as he explains to Simon in S1), but now he is the issue and he doesn’t know how to handle it. When in 2x1 he decides to just bring Benji over and try exposure therapy with his mom, it backfires in a big way. Even though they barely touch each other. Even though Benji just says the word boyfriend once, it’s too much for Isabel and Victor desperately wants to please. He desperately wants to not lose his mother (who has always been the person he is closest to), so that causes him to take a step back from going against her and the steps he still takes (telling her he wants her to call Benji his boyfriend not just his friend, the whole conversation outside the church, the conversation with Adrian, etc.) are things that Benji doesn’t get to see happening and it frustrated Victor that Benji won’t even listen to him when he tries to say that his mom is making progress at all, because she is so important to him and yet it seems like Benji just doesn’t even recognize or care about that. This leads him to say the thing he does at Brasstown before Benji runs out, because he assumes that it has to do with Benji being white and of course, that is part of it, but I think Victor in that moment is so overwhelmed by the rejection of his mother and now the refusal of his boyfriend to even try to understand that he snaps. He forgets all the struggles Benji has told him from his own past and he just lashes out which causes Benji to leave [more on Benji’s viewpoint of this whole thing later].

Victor also loves basketball. It’s true that in some case LGBTQIA+ individual participate in certain activities to make them seem more ‘normal’. Gay men participating in sports to seem more macho is a common one, so Benji thinking that’s why Victor plays basketball makes sense to an extend, but he never bothers to ask Victor about, only makes assumptions, and Victor feels like the fact that he actually likes sports makes him ‘not gay enough’ (see conversation with Andrew). What he’s forgetting entirely is his encounter with Bram and the gay basketball league in NYC from episode 1x8. There are many ways to be gay, and sports gays do exist and are perfectly valid. That’s not the type of gay Benji or his friends/bandmates are, but it is the type that Victor is and Benji failing to recognize that and failing to understand or even ask Victor about that drives one of many wrenches into their relationship. In episode 1x5 when Benji shows up to Victor’s first game back on the team and does the Go Grizzlies dance with the other basketball girlfriends, it definitely does a lot of help Victor realize this was just a miscommunication/misunderstanding rather than anything malicious. Basketball and his teammates continue to be a priority for him after this, but that seems to be something Benji is now capable of understanding.

Finally, Victor loves Benji. He wants to be with Benji; there is zero doubt about that. However, for Victor when he’s put on the spot (as in episode 2x8) and basically told he has to choose his mom (who has raised him and been his closest confidant and biggest supporter for his entire life) or his boyfriend (who he’s known for almost a year and been dating for six months and is helplessly in love with) it processes as an error message in his brain. He just wants everyone to get along. He’s not mad that Adrian knows that he’s gay (he’s wanted him to know for months), but he is upset that his mom is now even angrier. [see my section about Benji in this moment, for more about Isabel’s reactions as well] In his mind, telling Adrian could wait. In his mind, he was willing to go along with his mom’s requests for a while longer just to keep the peace so to speak. He didn’t want his whole life to fall apart and that’s what he thought was about to happen in that moment. That’s why he asked Benji to leave. He didn’t want to make his mom any angrier. Could he have chosen his words better? Yes. Could he have made Benji understand better? Yes. But he’s sixteen and his brain wasn’t functioning at full capacity because post-sex brain is definitely a thing and he was also looking at his mom who has already been horrible and barely able to look at him for six months, looking even angrier after he finally thought they’d made some progress after church the previous week.

So in conclusion, regarding Victor:

He loves his family (especially his mom). He loves Benji. He loves Basketball. Obviously, he’s not going to prioritize basketball over either of the human beings involved, but I think it’s important to at least note it’s importance in his life. As for Isabel vs. Benji. To Victor, these are the two most important people in his life. All he wants is to be able to love both of them and have both of them love him in return. When they are pit against each other, especially directly, it’s hard for him to make a choice. It’s hard for him to say ‘no’ to his mom and it’s hard for him to say ‘no’ to Benji, but in the moment (episode 2x8 specifically), he takes Isabel’s side, because he knows the ramifications of saying no to her and of making her even more angry that she already is are far worse than the ones for asking Benji to leave for the night. He failed to realize however, how close Benji already was to the edge and how upset he was going to be and how little he understood (or was willing to try to understand) about the situation. This is something he really needs to communicate with Benji (even though it’s not quite as important now that Isabel’s apparently come around). I think it’s important for Benji to understand that Victor values his relationship with his mother enough that it’s difficult for him to go against her without a lot of preparation and having a fully fledged reason, etc.

Now for Benji - Struggles and Life:

The obvious of course is that Benji is a sixteen/seventeen year old that’s barely a year sober and attending AA meetings regularly. Recovering from Alcoholism is difficult at any age let alone for a teenager. One of the most important factors in recovery is looking at the things that led you to drink in the first place. Looking at things that may be considered triggers and either learning to avoid those people/situations or learning healthy alternatives in those situations. I have multiple family members who are both actively drinking alcoholics as well as those in recovery. I also lost my best friend/ex-fiancé to alcoholism a few years ago, so to say I have some personal experience in this arena is putting it lightly. Benji admits to Victor in 1x7 that he used to drink a lot because he knew he was gay, but didn’t want to be. To me that whole story screamed, I’m an alcoholic and while a lot of others agreed with that opinion. I was not shocked that Victor didn’t understand that underlying truth. Those that don’t have intimate familiarity with alcoholism often do not recognize the signs (either as they happen when when they are not directly told). It is made clear in episodes 2x7 & 2x8 that Benji hates this part of himself, in fact he says as much to Victor when he arrives at his apartment late the night of his birthday. Benji has still not fully accepted that the alcoholic part of himself that attends AA meetings and drinks orange juice while his friends are drinking vodka is one and the same with the part of himself that loves Victor with all his heart. This is something I’d really like to see him reconcile and work on in season 3 and beyond. Understand that you can’t compartmentalize yourself. You are but one whole person and all facets of yourself are in fact part of the singular you. [Not accounting for those with dissociative identity disorder.] It’s not directly mentioned if he’s still struggling with urges to drink, but most if not all alcoholics do, especially when experiencing those aforementioned triggers. Seeing Benji meeting with his sponsor after the incident with Isabel/Victor is not shocking to me and if anything, that was the healthy and correct response on his part. The reason he was drinking in the first place was that he was gay and didn’t want to be (internalized and probably external homophobia) and he just experience some really intense homophobia at the hands of his boyfriend’s mom (and partially said boyfriend himself). Benji’s lack of understanding of where Isabel was coming from in episode 1x8 speaks volumes to just how traumatize Benji still is about his own experiences with homophobia. The only thing he can think about in that moment is that this woman hates me for being gay. She hates her son for being gay. Being gay isn’t okay, etc. What he doesn’t factor in is that Isabel is also devoutly Catholic. I honestly don’t think it’s the gay part of the sex that horrified her the most. The Catholic faith is also very clear on the practice of abstinence from sex (at all) prior to marriage. She would’ve responded the same way had she walked in on Victor having sex with a girl, in my opinion, but in the moment Benji’s own trauma is overriding his ability to understand that because all he can see is the homophobia. This is especially true after she calls him Victor’s friend rather than his boyfriend and that in my opinion, is why he snaps. Could he have phrased it better? Yes. Could he have said it without shouting? Yes. But he is a freshly seventeen-year-old whose brain is not functioning on all cylinders in that moment.

Sort of coupled with his alcoholism and recovery therefrom is the allusion his mother makes to ‘dark times’ following his accident. I do have suspicions that perhaps he was also struggling with mental illness, and likely continues to. Depression to the point of suicidal ideation or actions (possibly only in the form of drinking, but possibly in other forms as well). Anxiety is pretty obvious from his actions and reactions throughout the series as well. I also think he is dealing with some sort of trauma-based disorder stemming from the homophobia he experienced (especially the instance of his father taking him to strip-club). It may go as far as C-PTSD (which I myself am diagnosed with) or it maybe something less (or even more). I’m not in the habit of sticking mental health diagnoses of people (fictional or otherwise though). Dealing with these things on top of what in his eyes feels like rejection from not only Isabel, but in a way from Victor as well likely causes some very unpleasant thought patterns and the potential for thought spirals and the likely. I also see indications that he could suffer from co-dependency (whish I also have dealt with in the past), but I’m honestly not sure if that’s me projecting or if it’s actually there.

Then on top of all of that, his boyfriend who he loves more than anything in the world, tells his deepest darkest secret to someone he’s literally never met or spoken to and that said boyfriend has only known for maybe a week at best and thinks it’s no big deal. In that moment, I can 110% see why Benji requests to take a break and I feel that choice is 110% the right one to make. What is a relationship built on if not trust? Victor just destroyed most if not all of the trust Benji had in him. That doesn’t mean he stopped loving him, just that he doesn’t trust him. Love isn’t something you can turn off and on like a light switch especially not the kind these two share. I definitely think Victor has a lot of explaining to do and a lot of apologies to make. I do also think they both need to have a really long, really honest and open conversation. Benji needs to be willing to get a little vulnerable and explain why certain things are causing him so much distress, but he also needs to be willing to listen to Victor explain why he can’t simply go against his mother as Benji seems to think he should. They both really demonstrated a degree of selfishness this season along with an lack of communication and a lack of willingness to understand or even try to understand each other’s points of view and that is a recipe for disaster in any relationship.

There also exists the issue of Benji’s parents. His mother especially seems to overstep quite frequently and insert herself into his life where she was not invited or expected. I do wonder if this was always her personality or if this is something that started after Benji’s accident. I have a hunch it was likely the latter. I see indications that perhaps there was some neglect or just general indifference on his parents part as he was growing up. They clearly missed that he had started drinking heavily and that he stole his dad’s car that night. He was also evidently dating Derek for quite a while before the accident. (Derek is another section by himself though.) This not to mention the fact that his father took him to a strip club and paid for a lap dance when he was no more than sixteen if he was even that old, in an effort to turn him straight. Benji tells Victor in episode 1x7 that he and his dad used to be close and that they used to go to Dollywood on road trips and other such things, but that he’s been distant since he came out. We see from the scene where he walks in on Benji and Victor making out that he’s not vocally/outwardly homophobic, but I would not doubt that he still harbors some of those viewpoints in himself. It’s evident to me that Benji is not close to his parents (he may once have been, but at this point it’s pretty clear that he’s not anymore). Benji doesn’t have siblings to the best of our knowledge. It’s also mentioned that his nana (like a paternal grandmother) is deceased, so it’s really not clear how much contact he even has with his extended family or how much of one exists. For these reasons, in his mind, there is no circumstance where his family (especially not his parents) would take precedence of his own happiness or Victor’s. That is why it confuses/hurts/angers him that Victor doesn’t stand up to Isabel, because if the roles were reversed, he would have no problem at all telling his own mother (or father) off. He doesn’t seem to comprehend Victor’s need to keep his relationship with his mother intact. I’m very glad Isabel pointed out to him that Victor has stood up to her and risked their relationship for him, but the disconnect still lies in that Benji isn’t a fan of the fact that he didn't’ do that in his presence and that he didn’t do more.

Then there’s Derek. Derek is at least a sophomore in college in season 2 as he was clearly in college in season 1 as well. Meaning he is at least 19/20 when Benji is 16/17. They had been together for a year the previous spring (episode 1x6) which means they started dating when Benji was 15 and Derek was no younger than 18 (I think he is like at least a year older than the youngest possibility). Georgia’s age of consent is 16, and there are no ‘Romeo and Juliet’ laws in place in the state meaning it is categorically illegal for anyone 18 years of age or older to engage in sexual acts with anyone 15 years of age or younger unless they are legally wed, meaning until Benji’s 16th birthday, this relationship was illegal in general not to mention the predatory nature of someone in college dating a high school sophomore to begin with. They generally don’t prosecute if the people involved are within 4 years of each other though (which coincides with ‘Romeo and Juliet’ laws in other states) which they could’ve been within depending on Derek’s actual age and birthday. It doesn’t seem like charges were filed either way which is questionable on Benji’s parents part. Benji also tells Victor in 1x10 that Derek made him feel bad a lot of the time about the things he like and about being a romantic, we also see Derek crap all over Benji’s special anniversary date in 1x6. The toxicity of that relationship is sure to have left it’s mark on Benji and carried over into his new relationship with Victor. I also find it questionable that knowing that, Benji was shitting all over Victor’s love for basketball at one point (isn’t that exactly what he complained about Derek doing to him about his interests?), though as you see in my earlier comments, I do understand that perhaps Benji wasn't’ fully aware that Victor actually liked basketball and wasn’t just doing it to seem straight/make his dad happy/etc. I also think it’s quite confusing that Victor managed to come up with that date idea for Benji in 1x6 and then the best he could do for Benji’s birthday was champagne and sex? I’d be more than marginally hurt over that if I was Benji, to be completely fair. It is also worth it to note that Benji stayed with Derek for over a year despite all of their problems (which goes back to the possibility of co-dependency issues) and yet he was willing to break up with him just to chase after the possibility of Victor. They had already connected on so many levels even prior to that night that even the possibility of that relationship made Benji willing to leave someone he’d been with for more than a year (obviously Victor’s little speech in the hallway played a part in that).

Benji’s Priorities:

In Benji’s world, he has a few things that could be considered priorities.

Maintaining his sobriety is obviously one, but he keeps that separate from everything else. I don’t see it being held above or below anyone or anything. It’s just a completely separate thing to him (which again I feel he needs to reconcile). He was able to do that while also appeasing his friends and Victor (see episode 2x4 where he switches out his cups).

His music/band is obviously a priority, but again that’s something basic that everyone knows about and accepts. He doesn’t have choose between that and anything or anyone else that we’re shown.

Victor is his primary priority however. To him, that is the most important relationship/person in his life. He doesn’t know what he’d do without him. He says he loves that part of his life which I take to mean, he loves who he is when they’re together and not so much when they’re apart. To him, there is no question of who he would choose if there was a choice in front of him between Victor and literally anyone else (including his parents). That is why it confuses/hurts/angers him when the choice isn’t so simple for Victor when he actually has to make one between Benji and Isabel. Benji isn’t close with his parents and he doesn’t seem to understand what it is like for someone that is. Even if his parents didn’t come around right away. Even if they still may not be fully on board with everything, it didn't’ matter that much to him, because he could stand up to them because he didn’t care about destroying a relationship, because there already wasn’t much of one to begin with. This leads to him not understanding that Victor is seriously conflicted in the moments where he is made to choose between his boyfriend and his mother, because to Benji that choice is crystal clear. Again, they could really do with an honest conversation about this where Benji actually listens and tries to understand where Victor’s coming from, because right now, I think he just doesn’t quite get it. It’s clear that Isabel’s speech at Brasstown helped him to understand or at least start to, and obviously now that Isabel isn’t so much of an obstacle everything becomes a little easier, but it is still something that I really feel they need to discuss and understand about each other.

In conclusion:

Both of these boys need therapy (individual, family, and couples), and they would really benefit from a lot more open and honest communication where they both are able to speak honestly about their needs and desires as well as both being able to listen to and understand (or try to at least) one another.

GRAY’S CHARACTER ANALYSIS PART III. AMNESIA AND IT’S FUTURE CONSEQUENCES

Hello! Once again: sorry for the lateness 8'D. My work, some illustrations and personal matters have slowed me down again. The good thing is that there is nothing that can be intervened and this week I will be able to go faster with the writing of my analysis. Thank you very much for the continued support you have given to the previous two parts, and I hope you like this one too!

PS: My analysis will continue as normal, I will not mention anything about the recent interview with the show runner of the series. Perhaps that will be done at the end of the analysis or a separate post, by the time Gray's analysis is complete. Besides that I have already been giving my views on what Duane said about Gray. For the moment I just want my analysis to be about everything that I captured and analyzed before the interview.

Here we go!

Goodbye (for now) to Gray/Crackle, and let's say hi to Graham!

As we know, Crackle had all his VILE-related memories erased, and he’s now a happy civilian at his previous job as an electrician at the Sydney Opera House. On a mission to Australia, Carmen finds him but he doesn't recognize her.

Carmen doesn’t understand how it happened and why VILE did it, but for his sake, she prefers to get away from her, because she doesn’t want to complicate the new beginning that Gray/Graham has now in her life.

To be honest, I don't have much to analyze in depth about Gray in these chapters where he has amnesia, even so, there are several points to highlight about him that speak more about his personality in this episode:

1.- When he taking out Carmen with her phrase "No wristband, no backstage access", I think I can safely say that he’s committed to his job, whatever it is. (as an electrician and also a VILE agent)

2.- He has great self-confidence and temperance for having invited Carmen for a coffee, a girl he barely knew but who shows that he has a slight attraction for her.

3.- Well, let's say that this confirms that he likes to be somewhat "naughty" and daring with his actions.

4.- I may be exaggerating here, but I think that with the previous points that I have said, this can also count: It seems that Gray is a punctual person. He arrived before Carmen. (He’s very punctual or he was very excited about the "date")

Ep.6 S1 served as a small introduction by Gray, or rather now Graham, of how now he has amnesia, he doesn't remember anything about VILE, or Carmen, a whole year "disappeared", as well as the decision of Carmen about being away from Gray so as not to complicate his life. Leaving a slight reminder of "you'll still see him again" for us.

Which did happen, in Ep.7 of S2. In addition to the fact that again there are some data that show about his personality, this time the episode left some clues that it was happening to him and the future that would hold him in the following seasons.

1.- It seems that he was serious that this place is his favorite coffee shop, and it seems that he likes coffee.

2.- That tranquility is to be admired. The girl he invited for coffee who looked like she had dumped him, and there wasn’t a hint of anger/resentment/indignation in him. Again, like when they first met: as if nothing had happened. I love that about him. And he continues to correct Carmen about his name. He is Graham, not Gray (not Crackle). It seems somehow that he cares about being told by his respective name, as if the subject of his "identity" is important to him. We will move on to that later.

3.- Can we look this screenshot for a moment, please? Leaving aside the “Red Crackle” feeling that can emerge at this time for many (myself included), I want to talk about the fact that there continues that communication with only the look that they have always had.

The first two chapters of the series showed you several scenes of how Carmen and Gray just by looking at each other communicated what they thought, they knew they wanted to say to each other. I mention this because to me, these glances between them were purposely done with the following objective: Yes, Gray will have had his VILE memories suppressed, but body memory is another matter, the subconscious is something that NOBODY can handle or manipulate. Gray's body responded to Carmen's glances subconsciously, the body responded because of body memory, because it already has that mechanism in the presence of Carmen.

4.- There is a theory/belief that a few weeks ago they shared which if I can believe it 50/50 because it sounds valid. In summary. Since Gray is an orphan, Carmen knew that by mentioning that she runs an international charity for abandoned children, he would not refuse. Because she knows he's an orphan, and it seems that somehow, Gray has had a mark on it. She left you the link.

5.- Again, maybe I'm exaggerating, b Gray/Graham seems to have very good manners.

6.- He likes Rock. (And before I thought it was a slight preview of Carmen's next cappers, but it was only an idea *sobbing*)

7.- 

This scene causes me a little laugh because of a personal event and because it shows an interesting side of Gray/Graham: 

- Personal event: Several friends and I were watching the episodes of the second season on the day of its premiere, when arriving at this scene, a friend said "Well of course, he will have amnesia but he isn’t stupid" I laughed uncontrollably, and in part, he had a bit of reason.

- This scene in addition to putting tension at the moment because Graham did something that wasn't in Carmen's plans, it shows how Gray/Graham is someone who needs answers/explanations when he something doesn't understand, or when he thinks they lied to him and he just goes to look for them. Because if he were too passive or behaved, he would have stayed to follow orders. Another thing he could do is just make judgments from his perspective, regardless of reality. But no, he stood up, and he couldn't wait another second for the answers. The truth is something that matters to him. And I think he's also somewhat rebellious. He makes sense because throughout the series it's noticed as if he wants/needs something, certainly does what he needs to do. I consider him too independent and confident that he can achieve it.

8.- His peculiar expression of surprise: Crikey.

9.- Another reminder that  his subconscious and unconscious have memories of what he lived in VILE.

10.- Beautiful Red Crackle scenes that in addition to adding feeling, actually matter a lot for Gray / Crackle's empathy in the future, but that will be for part 4 of the analysis.

11.- 

…Seriously Gray? EXCUSE ME Graham. SERIOUSLY? You fell, you could have hit severely or even broken something, Carmen cares about you, and instead of saying "I'm fine" do you say "It's Graham"?! ... Seriously he cares a lot about the name and identity.

As you can see, in this episode there was more about Gray and his personality, but it also hinted that there are still vestiges of memories in the back of his mind of that year in VILE and of having been Crackle. It's very curious about how Graham trusts Carmen so much, I think I know the reasons behind it, the first is because he has an attraction towards Carmen, but the most important are two: the first is because he already knows more about her, because Carmen had the confidence to ask him for help in one of his missions and to tell him in some way what she does. The second reason, again: his subconscious. As I mentioned in the previous analysis parts, Gray appreciated Carmen very much, and although before he could mistake it as "loyalty" and see her as her family, he still appreciated her very much. Her subconscious, her body, her instinct is still there, so I don't hesitate to defend her when she was in trouble with Neel. (His desire to help Carmen was greater than the "great memory and liking" he previously had for Crackle Rod.)

And well, now, let's move on to two last things before ending this episode:

1.- ACME is targeting Gray. Once again, we were told that it would not be the last time we would see him. More events awaited him.

2.-

This phrase left me so thoughtful when I watched it. It left me thinking TOO MUCH.

It left me pondering that phrase so much because I didn't understand why that mattered so much to him. We talked about how Gray/Crackle came into VILE, he agreed to be a villain, he basically agreed to be "bad guy" And now that he has amnesia, he cared about being on the right side. Which I didn't understand because Crackle's memory had been "erased". He had only "eliminated" him the whole year that he lived in VILE, just that. Doing that doesn't change his morale, because Gray had already arrived at the "Vocational School" with his morale of wanting to steal, he was already ambitious before joined to VILE. Which had me very intrigued, believing that something had happened to Graham, in that period of his "normal life" that had made him reconsider his morals and that now he wanted to do something good. I expected everything, whatever, except the change in morals. And so, wild first 5 minutes from S4 comes...

... are you telling me that EVERYTHING Gray thought, did and said in his state of amnesia... WERE LIES!?

I really couldn't believe it and that puts an absolutely huge twist on Gray's arc. Although my boyfriend and I are with a certain difference in perspective to what Maelstrom said:

When he mentioned “suppress the criminal impulse” to me he meant that VILE changed his morale, that they basically took away that “evil impulse” so that he wouldn’t be caught again by the law should it happen at some point. Ensuring that with memory removed and morale changed, VILE was safe.

My boyfriend on the other hand, interpreted it that they only took away the "desire to steal", nothing more. His morals, his beliefs, everything about him remains the same, except wanting to steal or do something criminal. Believing that in reality, Gray is a good person, since before entering VILE.

The perspective of my boyfriend is interesting to me and that is why I want to share it, to know what you think, and also mentioned it because this perspective will be taken up again in part 4 of the analysis.

And here concludes the third part! I hope you liked it. Parts 4 and 5 will be a bit long because it’s the most dense and symbolic part of Gray to analyze, but at the same time, they will come out on time faster, it may be that in the following week both parts are ready and published.  Regards!

Part. I Introdution

Part. II Empathy vs Ambition 

Part. III Amnesia and it’s Future Consequences (HERE)

Part. III.5 Graham Calloway: The Walking Enigma

Part. IV Integrity At a high (and unfair) price

Part. V The final decision and a new beginning

Plus 1. Gray and his strange habit of explaining things

Plus 2. Crossover: Sabrina And Gray: New Beginning

Plus 3. Crossover: Hawk/Eli and Crackle/Gray: Redemption

Look at those arms! MMMMM!

You know, I really like Gilina. Or, more correctly, I really like what Gilina represents, both in terms of Crichton’s development and in his feelings for Aeryn. Gilina is Earth Crichton’s dream girl: she is blonde, pretty, sweet, and plucky (she is no push-over). She is also a girl geek, and a techie and for our scientist, that’s quite irresistibly appealing. (Btw, let me take a moment to note how much I like that the show showed us that Crichton had a type in women, B.A. (before Aeryn): they were blonde and sweet and had a certain safe niceness to them. Aeryn is not blonde, not sweet, and not safe at all. And neither is his feeling for her). If Gilina was a girl working for a research institute on Earth and she and John met at some party, I can easily see them talking, dating, falling in love and getting married. And having a happy married life. And the John of ‘PK Tech Girl,’ despite some unpleasant encounters in the Uncharted Territories is still enough of the Earth John to be attracted to Gilina, to be at the very beginning of developing something for her. He is still enough of an innocent, with enough uncomplicated and sweet left in him, for Gilina to be his type. But of course, that is not the case any more when they meet again in ‘Nerve.’ When they meet again, Gilina has had a fairly uneventful PK tech existence. She hasn’t changed much. But she is not Crichton’s type any more. Not after Maldis and finding out firsthand that there are psychopaths that will just enjoy watching you die for the fun of it, not after Crais and finding out that no, if you only explain the truth, it won’t make it better. The person will still want to kill you even if they believe you, even if it’s wrong and irrational, and there is nothing you can do. Not after ‘Jeremiah Crichton’ (my least fave ep of the whole show, but whose theme of Crichton’s long isolation is well taken). Not after finding out the truth about Zhaan, or almost dying out there in space with Aeryn. Not after the mind and soul fuck of ‘A Human Reaction.’   Gilina is not for this John. Not any more. And it’s not just that in the meanwhile he’s ceased to see anyone but Aeryn. It is also that his character has changed. And that is only the beginning. When he meets her in ‘Nerve’ it is pre-Scorpius, pre-Aurora Chair, pre-everything in S2, 3 and 4 (I’d do a list but it would take too long to type). If Gilina met S4 Crichton, she’d freak and run away and rightly so. A digression, but I find it fascinating how John's non-Aeryn women reflect his change. We have his ex-gf on Earth who he was serious enough to apparently want to propose to, before they went their separate career way. She is sort of like Gilina only blander, less engaging (Earth Crichton strikes me as someone who's had things come to him too easily because of his intelligence or what not. His passion (for whatever) was never truly engaged to the full, and the gf reflects that.) There is also Caroline (who we meet in Terra Firma) with whom he had something or other, but she is rather like his Earth-ex and it's clear the Crichton of TF doesn't even have anything to say to her any more. From them, we progress to Gilina (about whom see above). In first half of S2, there is the PK Disruptor. Now, she is a lot more edges, more hardness. If she is like anyone, it's a female version of Bond. And Crichton sleeps with her, because hey, he's tried everything to get Aeryn to admit any interest, he's beaten his head against the rock and he's beaten it and beaten it. But she refused and she's conclusively walked out of his life for good (not even came to see him for the very last time, when he needed her most). And also, girl can kill him, good to stay on her good side. There is no Gilina sweetness in her, at all. PK Tech Girl Crichton would annoy her and be intimidated to be with her, not so much Crichton of that s2 ep arc. But interestingly, that is the last time he even looks at another woman, no matter the circumstances. Once Aeryn and he admit their love to each other at the end of S2/beginning of S3, that is it. Even at the second part of S3, when Aeryn is off with Talyn-Crichton, Moya-Crichton goes deep into his obsession with wormholes, not any girls at all, and he is just as obsessed with Aeryn as ever. Even after the end of S3, the beginning of S4, even after he tells Aeryn "I can trust you with my life. But not my heart" and he locks himself away, he still does not look at anyone else. He cannot. And even the drugs cannot knock her out from his mind. Which is why his last non-Aeryn woman is Grayza, who rapes him while at the same time telling him if he gives her the wormhole stuff she will help him find Aeryn (OMG, that bit is seriously the worst in the whole scene). I think the darker progression of these women-others mirrors the darker and darker universe. OK, digression over.   I find it interesting that in S1 we have a number of people (beings, whatever) whose life is affected, changed by Crichton and who are grateful for that and thank him for changing/opening/saving either explicitly, or it’s implied. But after S1 this slows to a trickle pretty fast and then stops almost entirely. Crichton is such an innately kind person, and one of the saddest things in the show is seeing this kindness leach away under the tortures (literal and figurative) he is subjected to. I find it so sad and so significant that in the S3 finale it’s Aeryn who brings up the fact that the command carrier has a lot of lives which John’s plan might end. Aeryn. Not John. She’s become more compassionate (she, who started out saying ‘I hate that word’) and he’s become much less. These are both reactions to their environment, to events they are in (When they initially meet, she is a product of an individuality-less, soulless scenario. Even if he is wrong in reading her at the very very first in Premiere during intros, he is not wrong in reading her potential, in recognizing she is a person, and even as early as Premiere she proves him right. I also love that for Crichton, she is always her own person, not a preconceived notion of what she should be. He loves her for being Aeryn, not for some idealized being in his head). And yet it is never completely suppressed, it is always there, however muted and downtrodden, however circumscribed. He had to jettison most of it in order to stay sane and to survive, but somewhere deep inside he is still the guy who, in a completely strange world, took the time to fix the eye-stalk of a mechanical critter thingy he didn’t know at all.   And of course, part of the reason he jettisons it is also because whenever he tries to save someone or make it better, it often ends up making the situation worse. I am thinking for example of S3’s lovely ‘Different Destinations’ which turns a beloved sci-fi trope on its head and he has to live with it and he can barely bear it.   And I love how the show never lets us forget the cost this takes on him, that he is not a power-hungry psychopath, a cavalier callous being only caring about his small group of friends. That coda to S4’s ‘We Are So Screwed’ where he is with Aeryn, and he breaks down, and he can’t help it, and he weeps for what he’d done, for what he almost did (and it’s going to be small fry in comparison with PKW) is just brilliant and heartbreaking and one of my favorite bits (and I love that she is there, and she silently comforts him, and he clutches her arm as a lifeline). And that is why I actually liked the drug storyline in S4. After all the stuff that Crichton been through, I am surprised he didn’t end up going on something earlier, just to deal with it all somehow (I love that the show brought up earlier that he has nightmares, feels tremendous guilt, and that was mid S2, I am sure they are much worse now). And it also made sense that when his number 1 obsession, Aeryn, told him to give it up, he did, as he’d pick her over anything. She’s his number 1 drug. Basically, he needs Aeryn desperately. She is what allows him to function, allows him to stay (relatively) sane, what holds him together. When he can’t have her, or doesn’t have her, he falls apart and needs something else to get through the days (wormholes in S3, lakka in S4). I do find it interesting that Crichton keeps his compassion, however tattered, but he develops absolute priorities, as a result of choices he shouldn’t have had to make. Most people don’t really analyze whether they will pick the woman they love or selling one’s soul and giving up something which earlier, to protect, you didn’t give up even when tortured or hunted or broken. They don’t have to. Crichton’s developed rigid priorities are a result of the environment where he had to confront those hierarchies in himself. Crichton’s earlier ‘purity’ and goodness and optimism exist in part because he is a product of a relatively sheltered life (compared to Uncharted Territories). But that early cleanness allows others to see a better or at least a different path for themselves and so they repay the favor later by pulling him out when he is on the brink of succumbing to all these horrors (which really do seem to be scarily disproportionately triggered at him). One of the things I love about Crichton is that even after he’s seen and dealt horrors, he has a certain moral absolutism to him (however broken it gets at times) and a pure refusal to give up, and strength even if only to make the least worst of two bad choices presented to him. Something untainted is always there, maybe a legacy of his initial idealism, and so he never breaks, not permanently, not irreparably, though he comes very very close. Throughout the show, even as that world bends and molds and twists him to its own parameters, he manages to make the world somewhat bend and mold and twist to himself.   Do you know what I really really wish for John and Aeryn and the kid after the end of PKW? A few years of total peace, where they can just travel the space in Moya, and John can do his research, and be with Aeryn and watch their child grow, without having to worry about saving his and their lives every other day.

OK, these are getting epically long omg.

Mayans Season 3

Soooooooooooooooo I have a lot of thoughts. Like, a lot. No one asked for this but some of you did express enthusiasm when I told you I was gonna go AWF, so here we go.

DISCLAIMER: I should perhaps also mention that this is simply a critique of the finished product — I understand, of course, there were other issues that affected the production of the season that perhaps didn’t affect seasons one and two, such as Covid and some of the confusion after the departure of Sutter. Some might say, however, that this season without Sutter was easier because there was less tension on set (I’m just re-counting what some of the cast have intimated). Ultimately, though, I really just want this to be a critique of the finished product, in the way that I assume all creators and artists want their work to be judged… Standing alone versus as a potential outcome of problems or challenges.

It’s probably clear by now that I wasn’t a huge fan of this season, so first I’ll start off with what I did like:

*SPOILERS, OBVIOUSLY*

• The cinematography was really nice. We got a lot of great wide shots that made us feel how expansive these worlds are, how lonely the desert, how wide the ocean, etc. They showed us the freedom that comes with this life but also how small it can make you feel when you get swallowed up in it. Scenes were also a lot less dark-lit, which was great cuz I didn’t have to mess with my screen’s contrast as much, so that was appreciated.

• There was also some beautiful color work this year. A lot of oranges and purples that I appreciated. EZ was almost always beautifully framed. We got some nice close ups of Angel as well. The scene with the tear running down his cheek was beautiful, which leads me to:

• THE ACTING: Danny Pino was far and away the best for me. His microexpressions, his ability to change emotions on a dime, his capacity for showing us the exact thoughts going through Miguel’s head, as well as his continued excellence at portraying Miguel’s duality and his divided loyalties (his family of origin vs. his current family, his American vs. Mexican heritage, his classy Cornell acapella-singing [!] self vs. his ruthless cartel persona) never ceases to impress me. Carla is amazing as well, she gave me chills in pretty much every scene. Sometimes I remember that she’s my age (30) and I’m just like holy shit, where did all this poise and presence and focus come from?? Couldnt be me! Honorable mentions include Clayton Cardenas (aforementioned crying scene, “WHERE THE FUCK IS RAMOS?!”), Michael Irby/Alexandra Barreto (diner scene), Felipe (telling Gaby to go scene...most scenes with Gaby), Emily Tosta, and Holland Roden. Richard Cabral did great too, although his storyline bored me so much that I couldn’t really pay attention to his excellent performance. Hope also was a distraction for me, but (much) more on this later. JD was pretty strong throughout, although some of his scenes (especially the ones with Gaby) were so poorly written that I imagine it was hard to make them anything but wooden (more on this later too, unfortunately). Sulem was hit or miss for me, but I felt like she hit her stride later in the season, and by the end, I fully bought it. MOMO RODRIGUEZ made me feel everything. There was a nuance and a depth to his performance that I was not expecting. It was a beautiful surprise to have a comic character (and a comedian) bring such an important role to the show. I loved that they made him symbolic of the heavy toll this life can take (I regret his death, but I think it was a wake up call) and how you can’t always escape your pain. And the fact that EZ was the one to try and tell him otherwise, emphasizing his own internal struggle, was especially poignant and heartbreaking, which now leads me to:

• THEMES: I liked a lot that we got to explore some of these character’s inner worlds more this season, and that we finally got to see the emotional consequences for what these characters have done and who they are. I never watched SOA, but from what y’all have said on here, it seems like more of those characters acted with impunity and were largely unphased by their own demons. It’s really nice to see the Mayans own up to what they’ve done and the lives they’ve chosen, from EZ, who wonders about the darkness inside of him and if he always was this way (see: theme of fate, later in this paragraph) to Alvarez, regretting what he’s done and who he has been (killing his own son) and wanting to live a new life, but not sure he deserves it. Angel’s monologue about “no happy endings in this town” was especially revelatory as well. It was also nice to see POCs, notably POC men, allowed to explore their emotions, cry, and lift back the curtain on what this kind of life does to your fucking soul. It humanizes the characters and liberates them from the Latinos = gangsters trope that we’re all so used to seeing, the very racist trope that ludicrously & infuriatingly suggests that POC men, especially Latinos, are almost meant to be gangsters and have no qualms about it whatsoever, that they are good at it because they are unburdened by the strict moral code that governs white people (LOL @1/6/2021). The theme of FATE was also drawn upon heavily, and I really liked that. It harkened back to S1 [Church of] Coco and the conversation he had with EZ on Celia’s floor, talking about how “everything that happens is what was meant to happen.” He insists that even though EZ thought he was supposed to be the “Golden Boy,” he ended up in the MC for a reason, maybe that other life was never an option for him at all. We now know that part of the reason his parents encouraged his Golden Boy persona so much was as a way to KEEP him from indulging his darker side. I liked the development of this theme a lot, but it did, unfortunately, also cause some problems, which leads me to:

PROBLEMS WITH MAYANS MC SEASON 3:

Characterization: I think this season suffered from what TV can often suffer from when a new person takes the helm, which is a lack of continuity from previous seasons… I understand, of course, that the characters were going through a lot this season, but I don’t think that warrants a total change in their personalities. The biggest offenders here, for me, were Angel and Coco. While we certainly had an idea that Angel, before he was with Adelita, was something of a hoe, I didn’t get the vibe that he was quite as insouciant or uncaring with his partners as he definitely seemed to be in Season 3. I understand why the show wanted to portray him that way—he was hurting—but it just seemed out of character to me that he would jump from partner to partner, so easily make intense commitments, and somehow be obsessed with creating a family life when that never really seemed to be his focus before… His focus on the baby in Season 2 seemed to be confined to Adelita. Coco, on the other hand, seemed to be very interested in his romantic relationship with Hope this season which really baffled me. Coco in previous seasons was almost the spiritual or kind of mystic element of the show – – his “Church of Coco” musings were, as I previously said, sort of a vehicle to highlight the element of fate as a theme in the show. For me, this made perfect sense as a place for him to be, partially because Richy himself is sort of woo woo (I mean this as the highest of compliments). To see him thrust into a somewhat arbitrary (for me) romantic relationship felt so forced, not only because their sex scene was incredibly dry and uncomfortable to watch (LOL), but also because it just didn’t make sense that Coco would risk everything for this woman he knew nothing about… And even at the expense of his relationship with Letty. As @drabbles-mc mentioned, why spend all this time developing Coco’s relationship with Letty when you’re just gonna destroy it? It feels disrespectful to the writing that has gone before… Speaking of, I want to address the EZ equals psychopath road that we now seem to be going down. As I mentioned earlier, I’m glad that they addressed that his scholarliness and the encouragement of that by his parents was a tactic to distract him from the “darkness” inside of him, however, it feels strange that all of a sudden they are intimating that he has a very very deep darkness inside of him that we didn’t really see in previous seasons. I suppose you could make the argument that it was there before, however I would’ve liked it to be revealed a little bit slower and perhaps have more references to it in previous seasons if you’re going to make this case now. It just feels a little incongruous to what we know about EZ that he is a psycho on the inside… Because that’s what they seem to be suggesting — that he’s dark and can’t be anything but dark. I guess I just would’ve liked to see a more gradual reveal of that versus him saying that he’s always been dark and he knows because of a Goya painting? Seems weird. Like, how is he Dexter all of a sudden? Finally, the Nestor/Álvarez situation at the end: are you telling me that Alvarez really would give a fuck about the Mayans after Bishop betrayed him, especially at the expense of his own life if Miguel figured out that he didn’t do what was asked of him? And how is Nestor, who has always been undyingly faithful to Miguel, all of a sudden going to flake out on his duties, especially when he knows how important this is to Miguel???

Writing/storylines: So, to the extent that this is a separate issue than just simple characterization, I would say that this was the biggest problem for me this season. Lazy writing was a real issue for me and that it took me out of the plot and the moment many times. As I mentioned before, there were some scenes with Gaby and EZ that just felt so stilted that I really couldn’t take them seriously – – the scene in the church comes to mind. In addition to this, there were some plotlines that just felt tired or unnecessary, or didn’t link up. The Angel/Hank/Nails storyline, for example, just seems so boring… We just did a unexpected pregnancy storyline last season with Angel – – why did we need one again? Have they just run out of ideas for him? And to put Nails into the position of baby mama just feels kind of disrespectful to her character. Does every woman in this show need to have her uterus or sex life be a plot line? Bishop is another character that I feel like was done a little bit dirty the season. While I previously mentioned that I adored the scene with him in the diner, I was confused by the purpose of his dead son storyline. As emotional as it was and as great as the performances that it produced were, it didn’t really tie into anything else in the season. I understand that they were trying to give some background to Bishop’s character, but it just seemed like kind of a one-off considering it lasted for a few episodes and then was never brought up again. Perhaps they were trying to show us that everyone lost family or had to compromise something to be part of the MC, but if that was the case, then I would’ve liked to see it be tied to his decisions or his story later on. Maybe they could’ve done something like show that his dedication to the club was because they are the only family he has now that he lost his son? Or that he is wildin’ out now and tryna be the one king because he has nothing left to lose? Idk, maybe that was implied but I certainly didnt catch it — it would’ve been nice to have a more explicit connection there, because to me it just kinda felt like they showed us his pain and then forgot about it and just made him this crazed bloodthirsty madman. I also want to talk a little bit about undelivered upon promises – – Elgin said in a review before the season came out that we would get to see a little bit more into the backstory of each character and why they joined the MC – as I mentioned before, we got a little more about different characters lives but we didn’t necessarily see the why, which is something I really would’ve liked to know. I also was hoping for more social commentary than in fact happened this season – – the new intro seemed to suggest that we would get more of an emphasis on Latinx history or culture or social clashes, but in fact, such references were few and far between, as far as I could tell (although totally possible I missed some stuff). One scene, or rather, one line, that I really really enjoyed was when Gaby said “I risked my life to come here and I try to survive every day and you choose to flirt with death. That’s the privilege of being an American.” I found this line SO powerful, but it was almost a throw-away, and I really wish it had been touched upon more. I was looking forward to learning more about this and having it portrayed in such a Latinx-centered way would’ve been cool to see.

Ok, this is likely to be the most unpopular section of this post (for those of you who are even still around LOL), but I’m including a list of all the plotholes, inconsistencies, or unexplained events from this season, of which there were many. If anyone has an answer to these, please let me know:

Taza and Riz: I’m supposed to believe that he killed Riz just because he wanted to start a war with Palo? Because palo killed his lover over 20 years ago?? Like, could he not have started a war with Palo without involving Riz? And when he said “I didn’t know how many people would get hurt?” What??? How could you possibly have thought that a. Murdering your brother and b. Starting a war with the VM over a personal issue wouldn’t result in carnage?

Dead SOA ppl: why did Chibs never come calling to find out who killed Thomas (?) last season? Or Montez? I know that Montez wasn’t actually killed by the Mayans but he was placed in the Mayans parking lot or whatever so wouldn’t that raise some suspicions??? All that they said about Thomas was that he disappeared and the Sons didn’t know what happened? @starrynite7114

What was the point of the whole Lobos Sonora thing? Why did Palo need to talk to them to get involved with the Tucson mayans? Could he not have just gone to Canche himself? Was this something that they were doing to set up next season? If so, it seems like a long walk to get there…

Speaking of Canche, how the fuck did that cockroach survive a bomb?

Who tipped off border patrol on the night that they tried to move the drugs from the tunnel? Was it the girl in jail? And how come we never heard from her again? Just one of many plotlines that was started and then never revisited.

The Miguel/Felipe thing: We got so close but never actually got there. Are we gonna have to wait a whole other season for this?

Speaking of paternity, who is actually the father of Adelitas baby? I’m kind of OK with not knowing if the baby is alive or dead but I’m ready to know who the father was… Again, I don’t wanna wait another season to wrap this up.

Additionally, did Adelita actually hurt Potter’s family? Did she kill them? It was very unclear.

They essentially said that Potter shut down the border out of spite after the Adelita thing happened… What the fuck does that mean? Are you trying to tell me that a government official can just randomly shut down the border whenever he wants? And what was it about the Adelita thing that pissed him off? That he captured her? That EZ and Angel got one over on him? I really don’t understand… Angel said in the first episode that “the shutdown affected me more than anyone,” ostensibly because he lost his partner and child, but I just don’t see how Adelita and the shut down were related??

CHUCKY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!111!!!!! GTFOH with that weak-ass excuse.

Coco storyline:

Was he never gonna find out that Hope was the one who took the picture of him and set him up?

What about the fact that Letty essentially conned him into killing his mom?

Also, did Isaac really die? And what about the reaper tattoo on his side? Was he part of SOA? Was that ever going to be addressed? The story just wasn’t wrapped up at all and I cannot HANDLE any more Meth Mountain next season.

I guess my point in all of this is that I don’t have a problem with the cliffhangers per say – – but there’s a difference between “oh this is an exciting unknown that we can speculate about until next season” and “this is just messy writing where many story threads were begun this year and then never finished” or “we were supposed to wrap up storylines from two seasons ago and we just didn’t.” The latter two just feel sloppy to me, and I feel like that’s a lot of what went on this season. The whole show this year felt both slow and overstuffed, both uneventful and packed at the end. Perhaps it was a pacing issue, a problem of Elgin wanting to distinguish himself and pack so much in and make it so different from previous seasons that he bit off more than he could chew and it all became unfocused. As I read somewhere else, the problem when you have this many unfinished storylines is that they weigh you down for the next season – the writers now have to either spend the majority of next season addressing these questions or just forget about them and pretend they never happened, which feels disrespectful to the audience. I guess my hope is just that Elgin will find his footing and be able to deliver us a more cohesive, well-paced season next year. I fully believe he is capable of this, and if he continues to deliver on the things that did work about this season, we should be in good shape.

Tagging some ppl who have expressed interest in my thoughts: @yourwonkywriter @angelreyesgirl @megapeacelovemusic-blog @starrynite7114 @joannasteez @brattyfics @mareethequeen

okay so... we do agree that the most sense for the first scene of season 3 is to show in some way the fall, right? we saw the before, we saw the after (as in eden), we now need to know why there was this schism in the first place

and so, my question is, since i've just finished rewatching the job episode - what do you think, in gomens' universe, is the point of that schism? why did the fall happen? why was there a Great War? who started the war, was the war just between the different angels? who actually cast the losing side away?

the whole bit with "an angel/demon who goes along with Heaven/Hell as far as he can" really made me think about this all. plus, i personally would find it very satisfying to finally find out at least a little bit of context of why this separation happened in the first place for the moment (i hope) when the whole system is finally broken down and dismantled

hey lovely!!!✨ i do think it will open with some reference to the fall (as you said, imo it makes the most narrative, poetic, and thematic sense!!!), but i also feel like a lot of the show's answers are going to be within the fall, so idk if we'll see all of it in the beginning cold open, or if some will be continued towards the end of the series?

as for the fall questions, wowzers, i'll do my best to answer what i potentially think could factor in here, although they may not answer your qs outright!!!✨ and probably link to some other specs/metas that ive had jumbling around!!!

i think aziraphale knew or suspected something about why it would be risky to question god; maybe not that the fall was already bandied about as a concept, but maybe that there were Things Afoot that made him think that going against her will and plan could be bad news

i think that god is ultimately a very neutral, very amoral party. i don't think she is good or bad, right or wrong, well-meaning or malicious; she just is. i even possibly think that the ineffable plan, if there is even such a thing like she says in s1, is that she has no plan at all. everything is up to everyone else. (don't really have a singular meta on this, but perhaps a bit of this and that)

metatron is the Big Bad. dunno why, necessarily (ie what are his motivations other than Power?), but i think when god goes AWOL somewhere between job (or maybe actually after golgotha?) and present day, he fills the void and acts like he is still the voice of god, that he is still receiving orders. (again, no singular meta on this, and ive kinda got it sprinkled across many posts tbh!!!)

so with those kind of things in mind, here are my possible thoughts (not committing to any singular one) on the fall and the schism you've mentioned.

the fall was not necessarily meant to be what it turned out to be. i think ultimately angels came to god asking questions, or questioning her and her Ineffability, or the plan, whatever.

god wanted all of her creation to have free will. if that free will was to break away from heaven and from her, and act in their own interest, under their own orders, by their own conscience, i don't think she ever had an issue with this. even if - in the presumed case of lucifer - the intention was to break away as a direct challenge to god, to have the same power as god, i similarly don't think she wanted to stop this. that is literally free will. so she does nothing to stop whatever happens when they choose to break away.

metatron however has other ideas; heaven is good, and is correct, and is right. anyone who even questions it, even if out of love and devotion to god, those who just want to understand, were forfeit. god has removed herself from the picture, not even there at the (literal? figurative?) trial, so metatron acts as judge, jury, and executioner. in some cases, i think there were angels who were pushed, not fallen.

we know there was a war, but i think it was out of the angels that remained 'on heaven's side' being told lies about their fellow angels - told that these defectors were actively working against god to jeopardise her creations and her plans. that heaven will fall if they are not cast out. conflict ensues - from their perspective - to protect the sanctity of heaven.

then, possibly, i think a memory wipe kinda thing did happen, but specifically on the events of the fall. i do also wonder if this is where the book of life comes into play, but not overly confident (on any of this, really)

and ultimately i think the whole concept of true free will might have been god's plan - if you can call Nothing a plan - all along? that she completely steps back, and let's heaven and humanity kinda work it out for themselves.

like, this is the kinda stuff that i hope they reveal later on s3; crowley falling with lucifer, and possibly meeting aziraphale again etc. would, imo, be great for the ep1 cold open, but the actual events of the fall i think needs to be the belter that comes out in maybe ep5 or 6. obviously i haven't gone into where i think crowley and aziraphale may slot within all of this, but most things can be found in my masterpost anyway, or indeed happy to summarise for anyone who wants it!!!✨

I'm not a shipper but I love Carol and Daryl and wouldn't mind seeing them together. But I never believed it would happen before season 9. I just didn't see it was coming and they were more often separated than together. However, season 9 changed my mind even though Carol was with Keke. At the beginning of season 10 I was like "holy shit she's really going to do that!" Now I'm again in a mood from before season 9. And I have four reasond:

1. She missed too many opportunities in season 10a and instead, she diverted too much in the wrong direction and too much complicated their relationship.

2. Leah. As if their relationship wasn't completed enough, adding Leah to this when it's the last season doesnt bode anything positive in my opinion

3. There is a spin-off. If the series was ending without Caryl continuation, she would make them cannon just to make shippers happy, otherwise, it's just too much opportunity for her to troll fans a little much longer.

4. Anytime Ilisten to Kang I get the impression that she doesn't want to do that, she has never seen them as a romantic couple and still sees them totally platonic. She even admitted in one interview that Caryl was always written as platonic and I got impression she sounded surprise that people have seen it differently.

I don't know how much into this is blatant ageism in show business and television but she may be also afraid that having them cannon would deter the audience from the spin-off (because not only shippers will watch it). I want to be wrong. And I m going to be very happy if she proves me wrong. But at this point, I just don't see it 🤷‍♀️

Answering these together to avoid repeating myself...

I think the problem is we're all so emotionally invested in these characters that we forget we don't have the authority to claim what's best for them. Angela does, and we can either trust her with them or not. Personally, I really think she wants the same things for Caryl's relationship that we do even if she has different ideas on how to get them there, and I choose to trust her based on what she's showing me on screen, not what she is or isn't saying in interviews that are intentionally vague. I will always be bitter about the Leah arc, but if anything, it should indicate to us that a groundbreaking moment for Caryl's relationship is not far behind. It was always unrealistic to expect Caryl's relationship to be smooth all the way to the spinoff. Tearing them down means it has to be built back up stronger, and obviously that will be accomplished before the spinoff. Their story may be continuing, but there still has to be a sense of closure for them in the final season of the main show, which is why I lean towards canon happening there and not the spinoff. I also think it's possible to split the difference. Establish that they're romantic by the series finale and then show them navigating that new dynamic in the spinoff.

P.S. No-name #1, that's really interesting that you started feeling more confident about a romance in S9 because I had the exact same experience. S1-S8, it was more about clocking their chemistry and wishing it could turn into something more without expecting it to. Then that scene on the loading dock came along, and bam. Gamechanger. AK had a plan (and still does).

as you just posted some writing tips can i ask one more question? how do you write your hcs and avoid being ooc? i want to try and write but im afraid of being terribly ooc

this is a good question!!!

how i try to avoid ooc characterizations;

so for this i’m gonna use eren as my example

if you’re converting them to a modern au like i do know who you’re basing your character off of, so i’m basing mine off of s1-3 eren mainly, just without like all the trauma if ykwim? so it’s literally just his personality

he’s a hardcore aries, he is passionate, aggressive, he’s not afraid to stand up for what he believes in, he thinks quickly but doesn’t really think things through, he’s an esfp/isfp (idrk??), he cares about those he loves, hardheaded, strong willed, determined

i take all these attributes and just apply them when people request eren in certain situations, i imagine what he would do or say, and i also think about times in the show where he has been in a situation similar, so like arguing with his s/o gets hectic because there’s times when he argues with people and just gets so tempered and fired up no matter who it is, even with armin and mikasa, so why would he be any different with his s/o?

for things that we have never really seen, i def use personality, so like i headcanon eren being clingy and very touchy, the reason for this being he’s so passionate about thinks he believes in, so that being said he’s passionate about his lover, he’s infatuated with the idea of them and the fact that they are his is so mind blowing to him he just feels the need to be with them as much as he can because to him it’s just like “wow?”

i also think i’m good at analyzing characters as well so i find myself constantly trying to break apart characters, episodes, scenes etc to understand it as much as i can, and that goes deeper than personality and more into my headcanons as well

also don’t be afraid to just pull shit that just makes sense off the top of your head, because some things you just can’t explain why it makes sense to you but it does, and chances are if it makes sense to you it’ll probably make sense to others as well, i do this one a lot

like in my recent headcanons i said that eren would be more worried about his s/o getting tatted than they would, i can’t explain why i hc this but i just do??? ofc if i thought about it more i could probably give a valid explanation but it just sounds right to me LMFAO

and don’t try to fit characters to your liking, make it realistic, really pay attention to them as a character, like as much as we might want eren to be into all things sex i can pluck a few things i feel like he wouldnt really be into, some things he wouldn’t do, just because you like it doesn’t mean he will all the time, like i don’t think he would be into bondage too much because he’s been tied up so many times it’s just kind of like ????, i don’t think he likes toys really because the thought of something else that’s not him getting his s/o off kind of shrinks his ego, things like that, but of course if YOU think so and you can explain why then go for it because there is probably someone out there who can agree!

don’t separate your version of the character you’re writing about from their actual character, like for example kenma, i see a lot of people making him out to be this “uwu soft boy💕🥺” when like no time in haikyuu did it really hint to him being like that besides him being quiet i guess??? like he literally has gotten into physical fights LMAO it’s kind of weird, and this goes along with like not making a character to be how you want them to be, because they’re still an actual character, so try to stick to the script that the creator gave if ykwim??

do your research about the character. search up their likes/dislikes, rewatch some of their scenes see how they act, research about their zodiac sign and personality type if it can give you clues to the character (cause zodiacs aren’t always accurate), like if you see a character acting quiet/shy then when they interact with others apply these two traits

i hope this helps!!!

In your commentary on Stranger Things on Twitter, you mentioned the way the show presupposes allocisheterosexuality about El despite that she was fully removed from "normal girlhood" socialization most of her life. And yeah, I've had problems with that since s1. The show has an unfortunate tendency of treating her as Nerd Boy's Dream Girl rather than fully examining the reality and trauma of her experience.

Oh jeez, yeah.

If you don't follow me on Twitter you may not know that I kind of watched... all of Stranger Things? I'd finished the first three seasons of In Treatment, the new In Treatment wasn't starting yet, it was a whole THING.

Anyway.

I have been thinking about this a lot, because on the surface El should absolutely be my character. She's a kid, extraordinarily gifted, isolated and abused so her talents can be exploited, who figures out how to fight back. And there are parts of El's storyline that I really, really like. But I'm overall frustrated with her narrative, because... wait, this gets long. And has spoilers for all three seasons. And talks about Billy's plots so CW for multiple kinds of abuse narratives here!

First of all, the things done to Eleven don't make logistical sense. I am ALL IN on an evil governmental/science conglomerate kidnapping special children and torturing them into using their special powers against their enemies. Characters overcoming that is my catnip.

But for El to be useful, she needs to function as more than just a tape recorder! We see this when she mindwalks to people but lacks the ability to know what things mean- she doesn't know what Illinois is, for example, or why the girls with Billy might be screaming for non-terrible reasons.

(BILLY'S PLOT IS AN ABOMINATION, YOU DON'T PORTRAY A BULLY AS AN ABUSED KID AND THEN HAVE ADULT WOMEN WITH KIDS HIS AGE LUSTING AFTER HIM ONE EPISODE LATER. But that is a whole separate post.)

El not knowing what a friend or a promise is may make her interesting for the show, and interesting to a bunch of teen boys who've just discovered her, but it limits her usefulness to the evil government! Like, it's great she can crush a can with her mind and listen to people from any distance but if she doesn't understand what they're talking about, you have no guarantee she's going to come away with the important information, and then this poor child once again has a nosebleed for no fucking reason. It's painful and cruel to her, which I accept they don't care about, but it's also INEFFICIENT IF YOU'RE A MAD SCIENTIST. Like I get that evil scientists aren't great with the long game but this is shoddy evil science and that offends me.

ANYWAY.

They make El a very "born yesterday" character, but it's not consistent how. She can speak and understand others, she can perform tasks, she's very good at violence, she has a moral code established despite the evil scientists who were the only people she interacted with (who could have just... raised her with a moral code that fit theirs, no harm no foul? THEY'RE VERY BAD AT EVIL SCIENCING). She had a friend, Kali, but doesn't know what friends are. She understands parental figures- she calls Brenner "Papa"; she knows who "Mama" is- but her feelings about parental figures don't seem at all impacted by how "Papa" was abusive. All of this combines to make her feel unmoored, as a character; I don't have a baseline of how she's understanding the world, and because we perceive her through the boys, it's really hard to find firm footing.

And then season three. I get that what we see is a lot of El trying to figure out what she likes by trying on other people's preferences for size, and that makes sense, but we never see her growing, so much as adopting one person and then another and then another. As you mentioned me complaining about already, in season three her desires match perfectly with those of a stereotypical allocishet teen girl from an 80s movie. And yes, Stranger Things is an 80s movie pastiche, but the boys are allowed to move beyond that in terms of what they want; El doesn't. She wants to make out with her boyfriend with the door closed, even though this has no rebellious value when you weren't raised with these values to begin with, and the soundtrack to her mall trip (which Max even SAYS is about figuring out what she wants, not what other people want her to want) is Material Girl! LIKE SHE'S BEING MATERIALISTIC RATHER THAN FIGURING OUT WHAT SHE WANTS!

(ALSO THIS SHOW IS CLEARLY LEANING ON HAVING AN ADULT AUDIENCE, SO PLEASE STOP SHOWING KIDS MAKING OUT, IT'S VERY DISQUIETING.)

Let's also talk about how the scenes with possessed!Billy kidnapping El are absolutely chock full of rape imagery, when El is a child, Billy is shown as abused by his dad and abusive to Max and kidnapping his fellow lifeguard and objectified by all the women at the pool, and yet El's fear doesn't reflect that. Even if El doesn't know pop culture, she clearly knows danger, and it's like the show doesn't recognize that even a young teen girl is aware of predatory behaviors because it's impossible to live in the world- even in a sheltered world limited mostly to an evil lab and a cabin in the woods with a TV- without knowing.

MOREOVER, El exists less as person than as a deus ex machina; every season, things get dangerous and she has to hurt herself (those constant bloody noses cannot be pleasant) rescue everyone else over and over while no one appreciates her. She wants to stop the bad men but we don't have a grip on exactly why she knows they're bad (besides trying to make her kill an animal, but I come back to why does she have the morality to know she shouldn't? and how does she know anyone else in the world is better?) and while I actually am fully on-board with a kid being raised to see herself as a tool lacking self-worth because she was never taught to value herself, the narrative should be contesting that! And it's not! And I don't understand!

All of this works if you only see El through the boys' lens, and only see El as an accessory to their story. But for El to be a character, rather than a nerd's wet dream, she has to have her own motivations and her own code. We get tantalizing glimpses of it- more from her time with Max than with anyone else- and we see her comforted (by Joyce and by Hop at different times, also DON'T GET ME STARTED ON HOPPER IN S3 IT IS A PROBLEM), but I feel like the show wants her to be mysterious to us because she's mysterious to Mike and his friends, without bothering to make that mystery consistent enough to root her.

I want El to be my character so badly, because she has all the pieces I normally gravitate to- and let's be honest here, River Tam and Natasha Romanoff and Micah Sanders don't exactly get fully fleshed out in their canons either- but she doesn't fit together for me. They've simultaneously given us too much and not enough, so she's a series of tropes that I can't Frankenstein together into a story for her that takes into account both her knowledge and her lack-of-knowledge but doesn't explicitly reject pieces of canon we've been given, which were supplied more in service of Mike's story than of El's.

And that makes Robin, Erica, and Kali all far more interesting characters to me, despite every instinct I have that El really really really SHOULD be who I gravitate to.