I am so happy to see your posts about Dark Angel! I love that show so much, it’s definitely one of my all time favorites, and I’m glad to see you’re enjoying it.

I was wondering what your thought are so far and who your favorite characters are if you don’t mind answering (for me Alec is definitely my number 1 but I really love Zack, Joshua, Original Cindy, and Sketchy for sure.)

Also I was wondering if you’ve seen season 2 episode 11 (The Berrisford Agenda specifically) what you thought of it? If not, I’d love the hear your thoughts when you do watch it:)

Hey lovely!!

Yesss I'm midway through season 2 of Dark Angel and I love this show. I wonder why it was cancelled. The writing was strong enough, the world is so interesting, the cast is great...maybe it just didn't have a broad enough audience at the time.

There were a couple of sci-fi shows like this that got cut too soon in the early 2000s (like Almost Human with Karl Urban and Michael Ealy).

My thoughts so far are that despite the relative simplicity of Max's "everyday" life as a Jam Pony messenger with her ragtag group of friends, this is a big show in a decaying dystopian world -- with interesting (and often horrific) elements of human experimentation, childhood trauma and indoctrination, and a struggle for transgenics like Max and Alec to form emotional connections because of that trauma (their training). It's very Winter Soldier-esque in a way.

And then with Joshua's character, they reinforce in season 2 one of the central themes of the whole show: people are confused by (and afraid of) what they don't understand. It leads Max and other transgenics to hide in plain sight. To try to live "normal" lives while trying not to expose themselves to the curiosity and the potential scorn of the world -- as well as the people trying to hunt them down; there's that too.

But similar to the show Being Human (also of the early-mid 2000s), what does it mean to be normal in society? Especially in this fallen, eat-or-be-eaten world after the Pulse.

My favorite characters:

The entire cast is awesome, but these characters really have my heart for real:

Alec

I mean duh. 🤣 But not just because it's baby Jensen. Alec's character is complex. He's cocky and endlessly flirtatious. (His brother/sister-like bickering with Max is hilarious.) He's highly intelligent and adaptive to change, due to his genetics and training, but because of that cockiness he can also be reckless. It gets him into some "unforeseen situations" that Max has to pull him out of.

But I literally just watched 2.11 "The Barrisford Agenda" last night, and I wept like a little bitch. 😭💔 Not only did we get Meghan Ory guest starring as his first love (she would later guest star on SPN and was Little Red Riding Hood/Ruby on OUAT)...

We also got the layers peeled back on this guy, to reveal just how deeply Manticore fucked with his mind. Rachel, along with her father, was his mission. His first undercover job.

He falls in love with her, despite the fact that he doesn't understand why she's got his head all turned around, cutting through the training in his head that insists he needs to fulfill his mission. (And that alone is so damn sad.)

He realizes too late that he wants to save her (and her father). But without giving too much away for those that haven't seen it, the scene near the end in the hospital room absolutely gutted me.

"I didn't understand. I didn't understand...how much I loved you."

Max

Played by the lovely Jessica Alba. I love to see a fellow Latina at work! 💅🏽

She's a badass. But she also learns how to fight for more than just herself. And how to actually face and deal with her trauma and start to help others (like Alec) do the same.

Original Cindy

Another lovely badass who I would lay down my life for! She's funny, unapologetically herself, and she has Max's back, come whatever, while still keeping her honest.

Joshua

My heart breaks for Joshua. He's so delightfully weird, childlike at times, while deeply insightful in others.

He longs to belong to the outside world, knowing he can't, without risking exposure to his transgenic friends. He discovers he's an artist! And he's a protector and a lovely friend. As a character says to him, "You're too good for us."

I can't wait to finish the back-half of season 2, though I also don't want it to end!! 😭 But in typical me fashion, my mind is already buzzing with a couple of story ideas for Alec x Reader. 🤣

You mentioned Luisa and Isabella detaching themselves from Mira in the papa Bruno AU, but I also offer this idea: one (or both) of them ends up falling in love with Mirabel, and once they're past the initial denial, they start to rationalize it by going "well, she's not our real sister" because surely the fact that they're half siblings instead of full siblings makes it better, right?

But this leads to them kind of being less open about acknowledging her as a sister and separating themselves from her, treating her like an outsider in her own family, which obviously leads to Mirabel thinking they've grown to despise her even though that couldn't be further from the truth <\3

Anon said: for dad!bruno incest AU: I think there's a perfect way to let Agustin love Mirabel (as makes sense for his character) and still have infinite angst: make it so that he can't stand Julieta's treatment of Mirabel and that's driving the two of them apart in a way the actual adultery didn't. Even when Mirabel is loved, she's still ruining things by existing. :) (would this AU have any Isamira in it, btw? normally I'd be 100% for it, but I'm just a bit uncertain of it in this AU for some reason)

Answering these two together because they touch on similar points!

Ahh I think that, realistically, Agustín would love Mirabel unconditionally, and might even act more as a parent than her own mother at times if we want to push Julieta to her limits and let her show her ugliest side - I made character analysis post some time back discussing their different parenting styles and why I think Julieta isn't nearly as perfect as she may initially seem. Agustín would be a safe haven for Mirabel, because - okay, her biological father doesn't want her, the rest of the family treats her like a pariah, her mother may or may not see her as her greatest mistake, and here comes Agustín, certified Good Dad, adopting her in an instant because he know she's a little girl who needs help and did nothing wrong to end up in this shit situation. If she's in shaky ground with everyone as to whether or not they count as family, Agustíns sweeps in, takes her in, and tells her she's 100% his daughter in every way that matters, and she can call him dad, and biology is not a necessary requirement to be family. So he could give her that safety and certainty that I imagine she may need (are her sisters her sisters? or are they cousins? Because she's their uncle's daughter but also their mother's but they say they're nothing, and her dad is her uncle and her mom is her aunt and her abuela says she shouldn't be in the house at all and her mom doesn't want her etc etc etc).

...Which is why I lowkey want him to not want her either, because part of the fun with this AU is that she's not Agustín's daughter, but Bruno's, and while you can realistically build this AU towards a direction in which Mirabel and Agustín are closer than ever, part of the AU's raison d’être is to make her less of Agustín's daughter and more of Bruno's daughter, not because I have any personal agenda against Agustín's character, in fact I think he'd be a much better father than Bruno, in this scenario, but I want to shake things up for the sake of conflict and drama, and Agustín's Good Dad Energy stabilizes things a bit too much, it brings it back to the tonic note, it makes the AU "less different" from canon when the idea is to explore how it diverts from it. And having everyone but Agustín sorta hate Mirabel and letting him be her only safe haven is... a surprisingly small diversion ;-; now she has... one person who actually likes her as opposed to... mmm... two, maybe three if we count Luisa... if anything, the bigger change would be Mirabel and Agustín's relationship with Julieta (like Anon mentioned), but I don't think Julieta would be a bad mother to Mirabel even in this scenario, I just think things would be rocky and difficult for them because she's not handling everything very well. She may hurt Mirabel a lot in the beginning, and I'm sure that would lead to a lot of fights with Agustín, but Julieta is a naturally compassionate and loving person, and I think she would try. Having Agustín acting as a mediator and helping them would make things much easier. Which is what I don't want. I want things to be difficult and horrible.

Which is why I'm a bit more inclined to making Agustín reject Mirabel in one way or another. That way, he doesn't entirely replace Bruno as her unconditional father figure and Mirabel stays in the limbo, alone, confused, not sure how she's related to everyone around her or how she's supposed to act. If Agustín rejects her, after five years of being a great father to her, she'd be utterly devastated and may try to seek Bruno out, who avoids her out of fear. I'm sure he still loves her, but he's convinced he's such a bad presence, that he doesn't want to be in her life at all. He already hurt her just by letting her exist. I imagine that's a way of seeing things that hurts Mirabel a lot, because she loves being alive lmao, and she loves her family, and having everyone tell her that they would all be better off if she didn't exist, including herself, is gonna fuck her up in the brain pretty badly. And again, I really don't want it to look like I'm pushing Agustín aside to make space for Bruno, but I do think that having Agustín reject Mirabel would give Bruno room to play a bigger role, be a larger presence in the narrative. I don't know. It would depend on how one handles it, but I think I like this approach better. And you could say that Agustín wouldn't reject Mirabel, that it's ooc, but tbh I don't think it's particularly in-character for Bruno and Julieta to fuck either, so I believe we can allow ourselves some creative freedoms. In this case, I think he may be being pressured by Alma, perhaps, to not try to defend the child and to "think of his other daughters' wellbeing". She may remind him that Mirabel isn't his and that it's not his place to intervene. So he steps aside, because this is suddenly a "family matter", and he's not part of the family, not really. If anything, I can see him having a bit of a character arc later on in which he learns to stand up for Mirabel and accept her. Dad Bruno AU Good Ending is essentially Mirabel having one mom and two dads imo so why not. But until then I want PAIN.

Nowwwwww as for siscon Mira:

Initially I thought it'd be interesting to keep this an essentially gen AU. Gen Encant0 fandom would never buy it lmao but Bruno and Julieta aren't really involved in the story. They had something going on during their late twenties and early thirties, they made a mistake, they droped everything, possibly fell out of love and now they need to face the consequences together, but the romantic aspect of their relationship has pretty much faded. It would be different from what I usually do since the focus is Mirabel's relationship with her three parents and her half-sisters-half-cousins, Isabela and Luisa. And everyone else.

AT THE SAME TIME I shall be the captain of the Isamira ship, I eat drink and breathe Isamira, I couldn't stop thinking "well what IF there's some Isamira as well?" So yeah anon(s) (both of you) I love how you think. MMmm so let's say Isabela falls in love with Mirabel. She's understandably horrified, even more so than in any other scenario, because the family already has a precedent of sisterfucking and it went horribly (though later on she may become a romantic sap and come to see it as "beautiful" because it means Mirabel exists and Mirabel existing is an undeniably Good Thing). She obviously feels guilty, gross etc she may resent her mother and see it as something "inheriting her illness". She may believe it's some weird genetical pheromonal phenomenom that makes whatever weird fucked up hyper-concentrated genes that Mirabel has drive her insane. Maybe she had it coming for not seeing or treating her as a "real" sister that she ended up tricking her brain into thinking she's fair game. In reality, Mirabel is just so impossibly endearing and beautiful, that Isabela would have never stood a chance. Detaching herself from Mirabel to the point she treats her as a complete outsider to cope with her feelings would take some wild mental gymnastics, because in this AU Mirabel is not only her sister but also her cousin, and she wouldn't bang Dolores or Camilo, because ew cousins, so of course even though she's more closely related to Mirabel than to them, to see her as being even further away would take lots and lots of denial. Which I can see her trying to do. I can see her trying to "fake it til she makes it". I can see her excluding her in an attempt to push her away, to comfort herself. And obviously Mirabel my love my poor baby only ends up hurt. Srly Mirabel in this AU has such a shit time TT_TT

And obviously all she ever wanted was to be part of the family properly and be loved and she feels that Isabela's treatment is so cruel and unfair that she breaks eventually. Isabela may or may not find her crying in a corner after saying some pretty awful things during dinner. Or idk all the grandkids were hanging out her room and she kicked Mirabel out when she asked to join. It doesn't matter literally anything that would make Mirabel feel hated and rejected. And idk somehow Mirabel expresses just how bad she's making her feel, like verbally tells her what she wants (to be loved and part of the family), and maybe we're reaching such a desperate point in the plot that Isabela tells her the truth about her feelings, because she can't stand to see her like this.

Now in any other scenario I think that, if Mirabel didn't return Isbela's feelings, her reaction would be something like "that's fucking weird, but let's talk about it. You clearly need some therapy and I'm the best next thing in this family". She'd be concerned and maybe a bit grossed out but not outright scared. She would want to help Isabela, because those feelings can't be easy to handle - she wouldn't yell at her or run. But this one scenario has the particularity that... Mirabel has a pretty big trauma with incest. It scares her. It ruined her life (after all, she was never supposed to exist). She knows her mama and papa did something very very bad together and she spent her entire life trying to redeem herself for their crime, to prove herself worthy despite her filthy origins, to be better to be good to earn her family's love and now... this? It terrifies her. This Mirabel doesn't want anything to do with it. She doesn't want to see Isabela at all. She runs from her. She hides. She avoids her. She's ruining everything again. At this point, incest feels like a curse that haunts her.

Especially if her reaction was only exacerbated by her own improper feelings for her sister.

And of course Isabela feels horribly guilty, she wants to take everything back but she knows she can't. She's spooked her little sister so much, that she feels like a big scary predator threatening her safety. She has to accept that no self-convincing will erase the fact that they're related by blood in one way or another. That they share a mother. At this point her biggest fear is Mirabel telling someone else, but she doesn't, and eventually she finds out it's because Mira doesn't want to ruin her image or make other people mistreat her. She's hiding a secret that scares her to protect her.

I'm not sure how things evolve from here, I just know that, at some point, they need to have a talk in which Mirabel lets Isabela know that all she wants it for them to be sisters. She doesn't want any other kind of relationship. She doesn't want to be less family, she doesn't want to be anyone's daughter-in-law, she wants to be a daughter. She wants her sisters to accept her as one of them. And Isabela understands. She's not some fuckboi she's not gonna stop being friends with someone she likes in the moment they "friendzone" her. She loves Mirabel, and the details on how can be just details. She fucked up and hurt her and wants to make up for it. So she becomes the first person to stand up for her, she tries to help integrate her with the rest of the grandkids, she talks to Luisa about it (she talks with Luisa a lot at this point, never quite revealing the most risky details of how she feels but ngl some of the things she says are very sus)... she starts treating Mirabel as a sister, nothing more and nothing less, and she's nice to her and defends her when she can (which isn't always because she's still terrified of Alma), and this is possibly the happiest Mirabel has ever been. Which is why it scares her so much when her feelings continue to grow.

If they ever do end up together, I can imagine insecure lil Mirabel waking up Isabela in the middle of the night to ask her if they're still sisters, to which Isabela responds to by pulling her into her arms and mumbling a sleepy "yes......." and idk giving her a very sisterly kiss in the mouth. To comfort her. It makes Mira happy uwu.

At this point the story diverts a little from the Dad!Bruno part of the Dad Bruno AU so I'm still not sure, but it's an interesting alternative.