I know we all hate Fandom Wiki when it comes to it's usage as an actual wiki for various media because the website design is dog shit, but I feel like we need to at least respect it for it's role as a complete Wild West for 8 year olds on the internet to create elaborate fanons for their ideas about theoretical reboots and spinoffs and video game tie-ins of random kids shows. They're out there making full show bibles and scripts and 5 year business plans for their spin-offs of Fairly Oddparents and Veggietales for no one but themselves, just as god intended the internet to be used for. We need to design a better website for them to put this shit on because it's a shame that Fandom has a stranglehold on the market of entire wikis made exclusively for things that are entirely made up and only exist in the brains of like 3 random kids on the internet.

Inside 'Star Wars: The Clone Wars'

By: Gerri Miller  (original article link on howstuffworks)

Sources

George Lucas interviewed August 4, 2008

Dave Filoni interviewed September 11, 2008

The sci-fi phenomenon that began more than 30 years ago with a movie about a galaxy long ago and far, far away has expanded exponentially ever since with sequels, prequels, books, games and animated spinoffs. Although the animated "Star Wars: The Clone Wars" movie, released this summer, has to date grossed a less than stellar $34 million, it was an offshoot of creator George Lucas' mission to create a TV series, and it served its purpose as a promotional tool for the weekly "Clone Wars" episodes that premiere on Cartoon Network Oct. 3, 2008.

Focused on the conflict briefly referred to in the original "Star Wars," the galactic civil war takes place in the period between "Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones" and "Episode III: Revenge of the Sith." The Clone Wars pit the Grand Army of the Republic led by the Jedi Knights against the Separatists and their Droid Army, led by Count Dooku, a Jedi turned Sith Lord aligned with the evil Darth Sidious. Many of the characters from the "Star Wars" universe are involved, including Yoda, Obi-Wan Kenobi and young Anakin Skywalker, before he was tempted to the Dark Side and became Darth Vader.

"I was lamenting the fact that in 'Episode II,' I started the Clone Wars, and in 'Episode III,' I ended the Clone Wars, and I never actually got to do anything on the Clone Wars," says Lucas. "It's like skipping over World War II."

To remedy that omission, he tapped Dave Filoni, an animator (Nickelodeon's "Avatar: the Last Airbender" series) and passionate "Star Wars" fan, to bring "The Clone Wars" to TV.

Ensconced at Big Rock Ranch, near Lucas' Skywalker Ranch headquarters in Marin County, Cali., Filoni and his team of artists and computer animators are making 22 episodes in season one and have nearly two more seasons written.

"We're way ahead. We've been doing this ever since I finished 'Revenge of the Sith,'" says Lucas, who hopes to do at least 100 installments.

He and Filoni collaborate on everything from story to design to execution in translating the "Star Wars" universe for television. It's a daunting creative, technical and logistic task, as we'll explain in the following sections.

Building the Universe

How do you scale down an IMAX-size spectacle for television and still have it make an impact, especially on a small screen budget? That's just one of the problems Dave Filoni has to solve.

"'Star Wars' is very famous for the scale of it, and how convincing it looks. So when you're doing a weekly television series, you have to figure out how to do things on that level," he notes. "Sometimes it forces you to be creative and come up with solutions that are better than if you can shoot everything you want," he continues, preferring to consider budgetary constraints a creative incentive rather than a limitation. "The team here is challenged to come up with these giant battles. We haven't shied away from anything."

While he did some of the initial character design, subsequently, Filoni has spent most of his time supervising other artists and animators, who number around 70 in-house and another 80 or so at facilities in Singapore and Taipei.

"Everything is written here, and the story and design and editing are all done here. The animation and lighting are done overseas, and sometimes some modeling as well," he outlines.

­"I meet with George to talk about the episodes and he hands out a lot of the storylines and main ideas for the stories. I'll draw while he's talking and show him the sketch," Filoni continues. "That way we communicate right off the bat about what something might look like."

At any given time, the director notes, episodes are in various stages of completion, "from designing to working on a final cut, or adding sound and color-correction. I have four episodic directors to help me, who each have an episode they're managing."

Rather than use computer animation to duplicate the live-action films' characters or continue in the very stylized vein of the 2004-2005 "Clone Wars" micro-series, "We kind of shot for the middle," says Filoni, who endeavored to blend a 2-D esthetic with 3-D technology.

"The 3-D model makers and riggers who worked on the prequels dealt with the height of realism to create convincing digital characters. I knew that we weren't going to be able to do that for the series. And we wanted it to be different than a live-action feature, to get away from photo-realism. It was a choice to simplify something in the character models, the same way we would do things in a 2-D show."

So how did Filoni stay true to the "Star Wars" legacy in this newest installment? Read on to find out.

Clone Style

Taking some inspiration from the earlier cartoon series, Filoni

approached the characters as a 2-D animator would, "but stylized the face a little more. If you look at Anakin, he has certain edges and lines in his face. I would draw an edge or a line that might be unnaturally straight or curved, and that would play into the lighting of it. I tried to sculpt in 3-D the way I would draw or sculpt an image in 2-D, with shadow and light. I wanted it to look like a painting -- you see a textured, hand-painted style on every character. I have texture artists who literally paint every single character right down to their eyeball, because I wanted that human touch on everything."

Advances in computer animation have allowed Filoni to accomplish much more than he would have been able to in traditional 2-D. "For eight years I worked just with a pencil. I never touched a computer. But working with George, we try to look at computers as an incredibly advanced pencil. The technical side helps the creative, artistic side," he says.

Battles filled with huge numbers of soldiers can be rendered faster than ever before, but they still have to be created, along with every other prop and character in an enormous universe. "'Star Wars' is so complex in that you're building a whole galaxy. We go to many different planets," Filoni reminds. "So every rock, tree, blade of grass, native vehicle -- every asset -- needs design. We had to create a whole bunch of assets for each episode, and the budget goes up for each element you have. Once you build it, you have it, but we can't go to a different planet and have the same chair there," he laughs. "On a schedule where we need those things right away, it's difficult to get it all built."

Since "The Clone Wars" is chronologically sandwiched between "Clone Wars" and "Revenge of the Sith," it has been a mandate for the creators to stay consistent with the mythology. "That's probably one of the trickiest things," admits Filoni. "We always have to keep in mind what the characters are thinking and feeling at the beginning of this and at the end. You have a lot of room to play with when you're in the middle, but you have to remember what people say in the third movie. With characters like Obi-Wan or Anakin or Padme, I have to pay very careful attention that it will hook up. And then there's the expanded universe of "Star Wars" novels and video games. I try to be aware of it all and work it in, because fans really appreciate it."

Filoni hopes to attract existing fans and create new ones, especially among the younger generation, but admits doing the latter may be easier. "One thing we have that's different from any movie that came before is we're an animated series. But there's an instant reaction to the word animation that it's for kids. How you get around that is with the stories you tell. We'll have our snow battles and we'll also have our lighter 'Return of the Jedi' moments. Some episodes lean older, some younger. But in the end it has a broad appeal," he believes.

The recent "Clone Wars" movie (out on DVD Nov. 11 ) served as a stand-alone prequel to introduce the characters at this point in time. In contrast, "The series has its small arcs and shows you the war from across a broad spectrum of episodes. It's not just Anakin Skywalker's story," Filoni underlines. "We can go left or right of that plot and deal with characters we have never seen. There's a lot of material. It's a three-year period in the history of the 'Star Wars' Universe, and there are so many stories to tell. The longer it goes, the more chance we get to tell fascinating stories in that galaxy."

Character Study

"The Clone Wars" shows a different side of some of the film franchise's most iconic characters. "In a series, you can do a whole episode about a character and learn more about what they were like, which makes what happens to them a lot more poignant," explains Filoni. "We know Yoda is powerful, but how does that power develop? How does he use it? We get to go into more detail that you just couldn't do in the live action films, because they're mainly focused on Anakin."

While few of the actors from the live action movies agreed to reprise their roles in voice over for "The Clone Wars," Anthony Daniels, the original C-3PO, is the exception. "One of the special moments for me was hearing Anthony on the telephone, discussing C-3PO with me and his experiences. That really helps us round out the characters," says the director, who enjoyed similar input from Rob Coleman, the animation supervisor who worked on Yoda on the prequels.

Of the new characters not seen in the live action series, there's the alluring but venomous Asajj Ventress, a disciple of Count Dooku. "She is, of course, a villain, and fits into the structure of the Sith," Filoni elaborates. "Darth Sidious -- Senator Palpatine -- is the main bad guy, and his apprentice is Count Dooku. Dooku is training Ventress in the Dark Side. She's getting more powerful. I wanted to make her intelligent, deceptive and also kind of sexual. She's kind of a forbidden fruit -- Jedi are not supposed to get involved with the more lustful aspects of life. She adds another dynamic to the series."

On the other side of the good/evil coin is newcomer Ahsoka Tano, Anakin's teenage pad­awan, or apprentice. "She's Anakin's student and helps us see him as more of a hero," says Filoni. "Once he gets over his initial reaction, he takes pride in her. He's unpredictable and the Jedi know that, but he has compassion and that is used against him and it later brings him to the Dark Side."

Ahsoka was created, says Lucas, "Because I needed to mature Anakin. The best way to get somebody to become responsible and mature is to have them become a parent or a teacher. You have to think about what you're doing and set an example. You look at your behavior and the way you do things much differently. The idea was to use her to make Anakin become more mature. We've made her a more extreme version of what Anakin was- - a little out there, independent, vital and full of life, but even more so. He gets a little dose of his own medicine."

"She's been a really fun character to develop," adds Filoni, who likes Ahsoka but admits that his character tastes tend to run a bit more obscure -- his favorite is Plo Koon, "a bizarre Jedi Master. It's been fun to develop him and show his personality beyond the fact that he's bizarre looking and carries a lightsaber."

Fan Fare

Just three years ago, Filoni dressed up as Plo Koon to see an opening night showing of "Revenge of the Sith," so it's not surprising that the 34-year-old fan is still pinching himself that he has this job. "It's a very creative atmosphere," he says of Big Rock Ranch, where the lakeside setting is "meant to inspire us artistically and definitely does. A lot of the people I work with grew up with 'Star Wars,' so we have a great time. It's hard, intense work, but George is very engaged in what we're doing. What more could you ask for? I have the guy who created the 'Star Wars' universe excited and interested in what we're doing. We couldn't be happier about that."

Asked why he thinks "Star Wars" remains a fan favorite today, three decades later, Lucas says diversification is the key. "We were always able to deal with different aspects of the story in various forms and I think that keeps it alive. It is a lot of fun and it's a universe that has been created to inspire young people to exercise their imagination and inspire them to be creative, and I think that always works."

"The original 'Star Wars' had broad appeal to everybody, and it holds up so well," adds Filoni. "I think there's a timelessness to it, even though Luke looks like a kid from the '70s with that haircut. Luke is a farmer boy and Han is a cowboy. Jedi Knights are like the samurai of Japan or the knights of Europe. Those archetypes work the globe over. It's a world phenomenon that speaks to everyone. There will always be a character you can relate to."

My Top 10 Classic Series Episodes

This list was incredibly difficult to compile.  You’ll no doubt notice how many of the stories I listed as my favourites from particular Doctors are not present.  You’ll likewise notice the complete absence of a couple of Doctors from this list altogether.  Ultimately I decided to go with the stories I would automatically think of when considering different eras of the series, even if those particular stories might not be the ones I think are the best or even the ones I like the most.  Doubtless many of you will curse my name and hate me forever after reading this list, which is fair.

10. The Seeds of Doom

There are many superbly classic stories from the famous Season 13, but my personal favourite has always been “The Seeds of Doom,” one of the darkest and most horrifying tales Doctor Who has ever told.  I mean yeah, it’s more or less ripping off H.P. Lovecraft’s At the Mountains of Madness and the original Howard Hawkes version of The Thing from Another World, but it’s still wonderfully told and manages to keep the tension ratcheted up throughout all six parts, something very few stories of this time period manage to do.  The scenes in the arctic, showing a man slowly transforming into a plant monster, is still quite horrific to this day.

9. Remembrance of the Daleks

A cherished fan-favourite, “Remembrance of the Daleks” is one of the most exciting and action-packed stories of the Classic Series, and carried long-term consequences for the series as a whole and its titular character.  Never before had the Doctor seemed so powerful, so intense, and so frightening.  There are a lot of subtle hints that the Doctor, in his words, is “more than just another Time Lord,” and while these implications have been more or less overlooked in the modern series, this was the beginning of the controversial “Oncoming Storm” interpretation of the Doctor, and the story would go on to influence the legendary Time War storyline that still resonates throughout the series to this day.

8. The Keys of Marinus

Despite how much I love stories like “The Space Museum” and “The Tenth Planet,” I always find myself going back to “The Keys of Marinus,” what I consider to be the first really good Doctor Who story, and the one that is of high quality through all six installments.  I’ve always loved the structure of this story, with the first chapter introducing us to this strange planet and the challenge of the Doctor and his companions having to recover the titular keys that lie scattered across that planet. The next four chapters see us taken to four very different parts of the planet of Marinus, each with a different challenge for our heroes to overcome in their quest to collect the Keys.  This also offers the characters rare opportunities to have the screen more to themselves than usual as they pair off to pursue the Keys in different places, giving the actors a change to develop and show off their characters to greater degrees than previously afforded.

7. The War Games

What really makes “The War Games” so notable, beyond its ingeniously-written structure that keeps the dramatic tension up for the entirety of the mammoth ten-part story, is the sheer wealth of mythology the story introduces.  We learn for the first time that the Doctor belongs to an alien super-race from the planet Gallifrey call the Time Lords, a race he abandoned after stealing the TARDIS to wander the universe to both of his heart’s content.  We see the introduction of the famous Sonic Screwdriver (which is actually used to unscrew something), and witness the beginning of the Doctor’s long exile on Earth as a punishment for breaking the Time Lords’ most sacred rule of noninterference with the timeline of the universe.  Virtually the whole of the broader mythology of the series was birthed here, and watching it unfold was an unforgettable experience.

6. City of Death

When most people talk about the magic that was Tom Baker’s performance as the Doctor, scenes from “City of Death” are usually what they’ll reference.  Every Doctor Who fan worth their salt can recite the iconic “Wonderful Butler” scene from memory, and the sparkling writing combined with some truly beautiful location photography in Paris make for an endless memorable story.  The plot is a brilliant piece of melodramatic science fiction courtesy of the great author Douglas Adams, who penned many of the show’s best stories from the late 1970’s.

5. Tomb of the Cybermen

Patrick Troughton’s Second Doctor is one of my very favourites, and in no other story is everything that is wonderful about this portrayal so well displayed as the legendary “Tomb of the Cybermen.”  Aside from the beautiful photography and iconic sequences, this is the episode where the Doctor’s gentler, nobler, and wiser side is first really centre stage, which contrasts wonderfully with the titular Cybermen at their most disturbing and sinister.  I was always a fan of the Cybermen, but this story really catapulted them into my number one spot on the list of favourite Doctor Who monsters.

4. Genesis of the Daleks

This is the first story where Tom Baker really got to show us what he could do in Doctor Who, and was (in my opinion) the first step on his road to becoming the greatest Doctor of them all.  The legendary moment when he, with the future of the entire Dalek race literally in the palm of his hands, questions whether he has the right to exterminate them just as they have exterminated so many other races, is still talked about as a definitive moment for the character.  The story is notable for other reasons too.  It fully fleshed out the origin story of the Daleks, something that had only been hinted at in previous stories despite their huge popularity with fans, and introduced what I consider to be the Doctor’s greatest enemy, the megalomaniacal Davros, the father of the Dalek race.

3. The Curse of Fenric

“Curse of Fenric” might just be my favourite Doctor Who story of the 1980’s, and I pin that mostly down to the very strong direction and borderline apocalyptic themes.  It’s a prime example of how one can tell a large-scale story on a small-scale budget and location.  The elements of gothic horror, Viking mythology, transcendental science fiction and complex emotional drama are blended together seamlessly into one very pleasing package.  This is the kind of story that I would have watched over and over again as a child had I known about it then, even if I would have done so from beneath the safety of my blankets.  A real masterpiece.

2. The Caves of Androzani

For a lot of the Classic Series, the viewer has to more or less meet the program halfway. The quality of the writing, acting, directing, and especially special effects aren’t always up to the standards we have these days, but if you can overlook that, there’s still a lot of fun to be had.  “The Caves of Androzani,” however, need no such contextual crutches.  This story holds up unbelievably well even today. The plot is nuanced and sensitive without being too complex, the directing feels very modern with a uniquely strong pace and sense of immediacy, the special effects are pretty strong by Doctor Who standards, and the acting is among the finest the program has seen in the entirety of its history.  There’s not a lot I can say about this story I haven’t already spoken about at length, but considering how poor the series would get in the next couple of years following it, it’s emotional clout and thematic weight is even more remarkable.

1. Shada

“This is absolutely unfair; ‘Shada’ was never finished and surely animated reconstructions can’t count” I can hear many of you say.  Well it’s my list and “Shada” is my all-time favourite Doctor Who story.  Of course it had to be a Tom Baker story, and this story shows off everything that was good (and everything I liked best) about his time on the show.  It’s simply a delightful story that takes you into places of complex morality and science fiction madness that few other stories from the Classic Series have dared or done so well.

What I like most about “Shada” is its tone.  As we’ve seen, Doctor Who is a show than can tackle a variety of different stories, some light, some dark, some heavy, some silly.  But the kind of Doctor Who story I always liked best were the ones that sparkle, the ones that show us just how magical and delightful the Doctor’s life can be, the ones that give us the biggest sense of how wonderful travelling through the universe aboard a spacetime machine that looks like a phone booth on the outside must feel.  And “Shada” is by far the best exemplar of this in the Classic Series.  Is it the best Doctor Who story ever told?  No.  Is it the most fun?  I say yes. And if you don’t like that, well, I don’t like your tailor.

That Darn Love Triangle

So I’m going to throw my two cents in on the love triangle of Alex/Michael/Maria. But first a few quick links to relevant previous posts:

My previous A/M/M thoughts (Mid season):

My post about Maria’s POV: 

My post about Michael’s Headspace in 1x13

My post about Maria’s plotline with her mother:

And I did highjack this post about small town dating:

All of which are relevant to my final view.  I also have two views - that as a storyteller viewing the narrative and as an audience member trying to understand the characters headspaces and interactions. This got really, really long.  Here’s the short version.

Storytelling - I don’t like the choice of a love triangle involving these three characters. I don’t really see it as moving the plot or character development forward right now - which is the whole point of a plot device.  Not just random drama, but plot and character development.  I’m a ship and let ship gal - I can see the appeal in both ships - I’ve written fics for both ships.  I just wish things had been handled slightly differently.

Character Headspace:  All three characters are to blame for the mess they’re in.

Then there’s the long version.

When it comes to the set up for the love triangle, it all comes down to one main factor.

Alex and Michael’s complete silence over their relationship

While Max and Isobel seemed to have figured out Michael’s feelings for Alex over the years (possibly due to the pod squad’s psychic connection), the relationship doesn’t truly come to light to anyone else until the present day.  The silence when they were younger is pretty understandable - especially given Jesse Mane’s actions.  However, there’s definitely a hint that they’ve met up since that fateful day as teenagers, and that comes from their words at the drive in:

Michael:  Guess you’re still the guy looking for any excuse to walk away

Alex:  Maybe, but you’re still so good at giving them to me.

Seeing as I don’t see these lines referring to Jesse attacking them in the shed, this hints that there’s definitely been at least one more meetup.  Either before Alex joined the Air Force, or some time during the ten years that followed.  Their continued silence into the present day is part of how the triangle is set up.  With nobody knowing how Alex and Michael are connected, it changes viewpoints and dynamics that otherwise would have existed between them and their respective friends and siblings.

Which brings me to the second part of the set up, and I am firm on this.

Alex ends their relationship at the drive in.

Sorry, but the words:

Alex:  This isn’t going to work out.

Is pretty much classic break-up speech.  I count the drive-in as a date for them, despite the three feet retained between them on the truck flatbed.  (Feel like making a Quiet Man reference here.  The proprieties shall be observed at all times. No patty fingers.)  (And the lack of shared funnel cake.  No, I’m not letting that go.  Seriously, who doesn’t share funnel cake with their date?)  So I feel they were viewing their latest interactions as the start of a relationship.  Alex actually refers to them as us in the trailer that same morning.

Alex: Wait, does she know about us?

If they didn’t consider themselves in a relationship, he could have asked that question in a variety of ways.  Does she know about this?/Does she know that I’m here?/Does she know we’re having sex?  All phrases that could have easily been used to indicate he didn’t consider them to be anything serious.  Instead he terms it like a relationship -  Does she know about us.  So when Alex then says it’s not going to work out, that’s a break up.  He follows it with a line I actually find a lot of fault with:

Alex:  I’m an Airman, I can’t be with a Criminal.

His line about Michael’s side hustle is fine with me.  If he doesn’t approve of how Michael is living his life - than, sure - it’s a legitimate excuse to end a relationship.  These words, though?  They cross a line for me.  They aren’t - I don’t like what you’re doing.  They’re - I’m better than the likes of you. Which, whoa, objection.  Alex basically just called the guy he’s in love with trash, which is not okay.  I definitely feel this is Jesse getting to his head, but like with so much of what follows for all the characters, the reason why may give the audience an explanation, but it’s not an excuse.  It’s still a shitty thing to say to someone.

Despite this, Michael attempts to approach Alex again over two months after the drive in, and Alex won’t even engage him in a conversation.  When he goes to leave, Michael asks where they stand and if it’s really over.  And Alex confirms that, yes, it is.  Which leaves Michael in a position to pursue a relationship, regardless of who either still have feelings for.  Feelings are not a relationship.  Relationships require mutual consent, not just mutual feelings.

Small Towns Views Dating in Social Circles Differently

Because of my viewpoint of small towns - which given Liz’s soliloquy in the pilot as well as the general atmosphere of the town during the show I feel Roswell is presented as - I don’t really have an issue with Michael choosing to pursue Maria.  If Michael had ended the relationship, I may have thought it was a questionable choice.  But he didn’t - Alex did.  That changes the dynamic.  Especially since Maria occupies a space in both their social circles.

Frankly if I had friends/acquaintances  A, B & C, and A broke up with B, then B got into a relationship with C months later, and A came to me to complain?  I’d tell A they were being a little bitch, and to grow up. Considering workplace relationship drama, I probably am guessing I may even have said that sometime in the last ten years.  If A was upset about it, I’d tell them to reconsider their feelings for B, but that they really still had no claim on B.  That’s kinda part and parcel to the whole dumping thing.

That brings us to Michael and Maria, for which I have two things to stress.

Maria does not know about Michael and Alex’s history at first

Michael and Maria’s relationship is not based on a one night stand

I think the second part is what is throwing some people off.  All they want to equate is that Maria and Michael slept together.  To me Maria crying on Michael’s shoulder was in no way romantic, and more about Maria shattering under the realization she can’t save her mother and Michael shoving his own pain about Isobel aside to comfort her - making the scene doubly tragic.  However, it’s a scene that changed both characters views of each other.  Michael had never seen Maria vulnerable til then - and let’s not forget that MIchael has a positively huge hero complex - and Maria had never seen Michael as someone capable of kindness and selflessness til that moment.  That starts the change to their dynamic, which then continues into friendlier banter when he fixes her sign, followed by them flirting in Texas.  All this leads up to the one night stand, which isn’t truly romantic, either.  Both are upset about the outcome of the trip in regards to helping their mother/sister.  In that moment both of them are looking to grab onto something to take away the pain.  Let me stress that, even.  Both are looking to grab onto something to take away the pain.  Remember that, because I feel it’s very important for what happens in 1x13.  However,  the moment their viewpoints of each other change, that’s what starts them towards a relationship - not the one night stand.

Honestly, from a storytelling standpoint, I think this is actually not the best choice for setting up a love triangle.  I see plenty of relationship set up, if this relationship was set between two characters whose relationship stands alone.  However,  I think having the relationship between Michael and Maria be new wasn’t a smart storytelling choice in this case.  They could easily have had them have a previous relationship during the ten years Alex was away, and fall back into the relationship after Alex dumps Michael and Michael comforts Maria.  I just feel in terms of a love triangle, the two relationships are unbalanced because more history and episode time are given to Michael and Alex.  You don’t generally build that big a back story, and have huge moments involving romantic confessions in the middle of a building that’s about to explode with a couple you don’t intend to end up together. (Short of killing one)   That makes how the love triangle will play out transparent, and makes me doubt how useful it will be as a plot device. Moving on.

Alex claims his feelings are past tense to Michael

After Jenna brings the Alien Serial Killer to their attention, and Kyle knocks some sense into Alex both about teetering on the edge of drinking his father’s kool-aid about the pod squad and his feelings for Michael  (Thank-you, Kyle.  Everyone is seriously hopeless on this show.  At least someone has perspective.), Alex does go talk with MIchael.  Despite Kyle calling him on the fact that his feelings are current, twice, Alex places their love in the past tense when talking to Michael.  I’d say he’s both right and wrong about how well they know each other, because while his only known random fact about Michael is his dislike for Mars Attacks, the conversations they did have when younger were far deeper than fav movies or foods.  Alex shared that his own home life was bad and offered his bolt hole. Michael told him about his chaos and music, and his lack of belief in humans just being kind to each other.  Those are heavy conversations, tbh, and worth more than fav colors.  Still, starting to get to know each other from scratch isn’t a bad idea.  However, I still feel a miscommunication is going on over what Alex wants from Michael in this moment, and I feel Michael misunderstood why he chose to leave when he did.

Maria lies to Alex about her feelings

This is one of Maria’s biggest errors.  While I feel it comes from two places.  (Guilt and denial over her own feelings) - she still left Alex with the impression that she doesn’t care about Michael.  At all, really.  Do I think Alex suspects she’s lying?  Yes, I do think so.  I also can see why Alex wouldn’t have pressed that matter.  He doesn’t want Maria to admit she likes the guy he’s in love with.  I think overall this is Maria’s biggest contribution to the mess of the love triangle.  At some point, when she began to realize pushing Michael away was hurting her feelings, she should have come clean to Alex. This is her moment of an explanation is not an excuse.

Storytelling wise they don’t give them a single scene past that confrontation, which makes the confession impossible.  They could have made time for it, though, and I feel a second conversation on the subject would have gone a long way to making this love triangle less about random drama and open the door to it actually being used for character development.

Michael tells Maria he and Alex are over

Because their relationship is over.  Refer back to previous facts.

Alex dumped Michael

Alex confirmed they were over when Michael flat out asked him

This is why breakups can be messy.  One party can still have feelings - even both parties can still have feelings.  Relationships require more than feelings.  They require consent, the ability to build a life together, effort; communication. (That last one is a huge issue with these two)  Michael and Alex are not on the same page at any time post breakup.  So, Michael was telling the truth to Maria.  Alex feeling hopeful is great for Alex.  If Michael doesn’t feel that way, even if he still loves him - that’s Alex’s tough luck.  Love isn’t an obligation.  Until Michael is ready to be in a relationship with Alex again, Alex doesn’t have any say in Michael’s life.

Alex confesses at Caulfield, and seeks him out a few hours later

While Alex’s confession is huge, especially for his character, it comes at a desperate time.  They are both minutes away from dying when Alex manages to finally tell Michael how he currently feels, but Michael fails to return Alex’s confession, instead focusing on trying to shut him down and send him away to safety.  MIchael is desperate to save his people or die trying - until his Mother talks sense into him.  (Thank-you, Mara.  Damn, for such a short scene you really steal everyone’s hearts.)

This leaves their relationship on an edge, with Alex being the one whose put his heart on the line, and not sure where Michael stands.  It’s not surprising he seeks him out again, both to ensure he’s alright and to try to get clarification on that.  The problem is, they are again not on the same page.  Alex is messed up about Caulfield because his family was running a house of horrors, and he nearly lost Michael.  MIchael is traumatized by what happened to the rest of the people on their ship and the loss of his mother after finally finding her.  Alex’s desire to finally talk about his past choices and the problems he’s currently wrestling with would be a great step in their relationship, if it didn’t occur at a time when Michael is not in a good mindset to receive it.

Michael tells Alex they will talk the next day, but doesn’t speak to him before going to Maria

While I admit, Michael is traumatized, and storytelling wise I don’t like him being in a relationship with anyone right now, this is another of those an explanation is not an excuse moments.  Alex was definitely going to kiss him, and Michael did not look like he was planning on pushing him away.  While I do have objections to Alex approaching him in that moment when Michael is pretty messed up in the head, Michael should have spoken to Alex first the following day.  Even if it’s just to tell him he can’t be with him - it still should have been his first stop.  Trauma or not, it’s a jerk move.

Maria accepts Michael’s overtures to a relationship in 1x13

I see a lot of people saying they don’t understand her choosing Michael over Alex.  That’s how they see this choice. Friendship vs Crush.   That’s not what I see.  To me, she isn’t choosing Michael over Alex.  She’s choosing herself over Alex.  That’s a very different thing, and occurring for a very different reason.

This choice is likely to damage her friendship with Alex, and hurt his feelings.  So in terms of her friendship with Alex, it’s wrong.  However, all of them are single.  This isn’t adultery.   She is not “stealing” Michael.  He is not an object to be stolen to begin with. Her accepting a relationship with him is not inherently wrong.  Nor does it make her a bad person. It means, just like Alex and Michael through this whole love triangle mess, she’s making a call that’s going to hurt somebody else.   It means she’s human.

So, the real question is - why is she making this choice?  Let’s refer back to my earlier statement of why they slept together in 1x09:

Both are looking to grab onto something to take away the pain.

Every complaint I read about Maria’s choice seem to look upon this action as if Maria is in a happy, chipper place.  Like her life is hunky dory, and she has no reason to be in anything but the best headspace.  I’m really baffled by this interpretation.  So, let me enlighten you.  She’s not in a good headspace.

Will you step away from alien drama and take a good hard look at Maria’s life?  Let me give you the shorthand.  She has been solely responsible for her mother as her health failed for years.  She’s emotionally and mentally exhausted from that - we witness that in 1x07 and 1x09.  She is financially unstable despite owning the bar she also works at due to her mother’s medical bills. (Mentioned in 1x07)  Her own mother no longer recognizes her. (Stated in 1x09). And three days ago, considering the only questions Deputy Evans asked her that evening, she believes she was targeted and drugged by a serial killer.(Noah taking control of her and using her to steal the serum in 1x11)

Seriously?  How good a headspace do you think she’s in?  Chipper and well adjusted right now? Hell to the no.  Just like Michael, she is falling to pieces right now.  They are both in pain, both experts at fake it til you make it,  and choosing to grab onto something new that seems to promise happiness with no pain attached.  Do they honestly care about each other?  Yes.  Is it love?  No, I don’t think it is anywhere near that level yet.  If it weren’t for life really sucking right now, would they make this choice?  We don’t know - because that’s not the story we’re given.

From a storytelling standpoint, I actually wonder why they chose to reveal Alex and Michael’s relationship to her in 1x10, rather than hold out for second season.  It would have been easy not to do that scene, and have them get involved in an actual relationship before she found out.  I really don’t see how that would have hurt their relationship more than them putting them into a relationship and then her finding out, say,  Michael is an alien. (Still do not approve here.)  Liz found out before she got into a relationship with Max present day.  Alex found out during their break up, and before he chooses to pursue Michael again.  Even Cam found out after she split with Max.  Other than Noah, who doesn't really count anymore due to being an evil manipulative murderer who already knew anyway, nobody found out during a relationship.  How is that not going to be way worse a secret to reveal in the middle of a relationship?  Not to mention that her two best friends are also keeping this secret from her.   Right now I don’t see this plot ending happily for Maria, on any fronts.   So from a storytelling standpoint, especially as a fan of Maria, I hate this love triangle.

From a character headspace - All three are having potentially the most miserable year of their lives since they were seventeen, and are really effing things up.

Thoughts on Outlander season 4

Disclaimer: I’ve never read the books, so all of my opinions are based solely on what I know from watching the show. 

Warning: This will contain spoilers for season 4 and it will not be Roger or Brianna/Roger friendly.

There’s a lot of disappointed and/or frustrated fans with Outlander’s fourth season and I understand why. Overall the season has been underwhelming, inconsistent and lacking any cohesive, engaging plot. In addition, season 4 has had the least amount of on-screen interactions between Claire and Jamie than any of the seasons before it. However, there were memorable moments in the season which were beautiful to watch - Jamie and Brianna’s first meeting, Jamie and Claire finally finding a home at Fraser’s Ridge and experiencing some form of normalcy and domestic bliss (even if it was short-lived), Jamie and Claire’s reunion with Murtagh and every episode/scene with John Grey in it (because who doesn’t love John?). The season also highlighted prominent social and historical issues regarding race, colonialism and slavery (although the show didn’t quite go far enough or give these topics as much focus as they deserved).

The main issue with season 4 is that there was a complete lack of direction or clarity (which may be the fault of the books as the source material, but I wouldn’t know since I haven’t read them). Putting aside Brianna’s arc with Roger, there was very little of anything that happened and on reflection, looking back over the season 4 episodes I’m struggling to articulate what the story for this season was at all. I strongly believe this lack of clarity comes from the shift away from Jamie and Claire as the central focus of the show. It’s the only season that has pushed Jamie and Claire into the background and allowed other characters (mainly Brianna) to take centre stage. Although it was nice to learn more about Brianna, unfortunately, her character and arc (and particularly her relationship with Roger, which I’ll discuss in more detail later) does not hold the same weight as Jamie and Claire’s. Claire and Jamie are the heart and soul of the show, and Caitriona and Sam’s on-screen chemistry is the foundation upon which Outlander is built. A majority of the fans of the books and/or the show are primarily invested in Jamie and Claire’s individual characters and their relationship. To take such a huge step back from that, in my opinion, was a mistake. Without Jamie and Claire it felt the Outlander universe was spinning through infinity with no gravity to keep it grounded. 

Unfortunately, I feel that the same thing has happened on Outlander that happens in many stories (whether in books, television or film), whereby the child of the main couple has dramatically changed the tone of the story and stolen the spotlight from their parents. This is no affront to Sophie Skelton, who I think is a wonderful actress and has done an amazing job in her portrayal of Brianna, but generally, Brianna’s season 4 arc has been atrocious and done no justice to her character. To an extent, it’s hard to criticise the show too much on this front because I assume the show is following the books, but for the entirety of the season Brianna has been reduced to a fragile, pregnant woman and rape victim whose whole arc is entangled in men. There’s been no room to explore any facet of her character outside her “relationship” (I use inverted commas, because I’m using the term loosely) with Roger. Despite her meeting with Jamie being one of the most highly anticipated moments of the entire series, she was barely given a chance to get to know her father and bond with him before the pregnancy/Roger drama exploded. Although we met Brianna in season 3, we still know very little about her. We know she’s a student, that she studied history but changed her mind and was uncertain about her future, that she has the same fiery attitude as Claire does and she had a close relationship with Frank. But what else do we really know about her? Even after an entire season focused on her, I feel like Brianna is a stranger. There was a lot of potential in switching the focus from Jamie and Claire to the next generation (meaning Brianna), but it would’ve been so much better if her character had been explored in more meaningful ways and her arc had been better written and not been so focused on Roger and Bonnet. In particular, I think season 4 and Brianna’s arc would’ve been a thousand times better if Roger had been removed from the equation. 

I’ll put this out there - I do not like Roger.  In season 3, I didn’t have much of an opinion on him, but his actions this season have transformed him into a very unlikable and unsympathetic character, who I find, quite frankly, abhorrent. Not only has he treated Brianna as a prize to be won, he has behaved like a petulant child consistently, giving no regard or consideration to anyone but himself. At this point it’s hard to understand why Brianna loves him. That made their reunion at the end of season 4 with the classic running hug and swelling romantic music feel completely unearned. In fact, that scene left a bitter taste in my mouth and didn’t feel like a good pay-off at all. When Roger and Brianna were friends, they were cute, but everything that has developed between them since, in a romantic sense, has felt completely forced and inorganic. Roger’s proposal to Brianna was awful and the moment I realised I couldn’t get on-board with Roger and Brianna as a ship. For starters, Roger and Brianna barely knew each other when he proposed to her. They lived half way across the world from one another, had spent a long time apart and had only been friends and his out-of-the-blue proposal not only was completely rushed and inappropriate, but his reaction to Brianna’s rejection of his proposal revealed him to be a royal twat. Instead of understanding Brianna’s shock and her reasons for rejecting him, he lashed out selfishly and insulted her honour and character. I could walk you all through the rest of their “relationship” in season 4, but that would be boring and a waste of time, and I’m sure none of us want to relive that. The point is that Roger’s relationship with Brianna was supposed to be some epic love story on par with Jamie and Claire’s, but it has fallen short of that on every count. Roger seemed more obsessed with the idea of Brianna than in love with her, and Roger’s actions mean that there is no logical reason why Brianna should love him at all. They were barely together for 5 minutes, they argued multiple times and spent most of the season apart and yet we’re supposed to buy into them as a romantic couple? The over-investment in this relationship (and Roger and Bree generally) was very detrimental to season 4 as a whole and I strongly believe that removing Roger from the season would’ve greatly improved it and allowed the characters we know and love (primarily Jamie and Claire) to have the screen-time they deserved. 

Putting aside the Roger and Brianna/Roger arc, the season had a lot of great moments (some of which I’ve mentioned above). Jamie and Claire had some lovely on-screen moments (even if there weren’t as many as we’re accustomed to) and this was probably the only season where they didn’t come up against any disastrous hurdles that separated them from one another. Although we didn’t get to see as much of their domestic bliss as some fans had hoped, at least their relationship was secure this season for the first time ever. It was also invaluable to see Jamie, Claire and Brianna together as a family. Even just to see the three of them sitting together at the table eating dinner was such a beautiful moment and those subtle scenes were more of a pay-off than the over-blown reunion between Bree and Roger. Jocasta was a wonderful addition to the show and ‘Do No Harm’ (4x02) was by far the episode that touched me the most emotionally. Murtagh returning to the show as a recurring character evoked a sense of nostalgia and was very enjoyable. Everything that was done with John Grey was wonderful, the complexities of that character draw me in every time and it was fascinating to see his interactions with Bree. Young Ian was a delight, and his joining the Mohawk in the final episode was truly the highlight of the finale for me. He provided comedic relief on numerous occasions, but that moment showed the true courage and bravery and the love he had for his family. The scenes between Jamie and Brianna were touching and much needed (although my only complaint again is that there wasn’t enough). Honestly, Brianna finding her parents, finally meeting Jamie and Jamie’s reaction to that alone makes this season enjoyable to me. Brianna is such a huge part of Jamie and to see him go through that process of meeting her as a fully grown woman, grieving the loss of the baby he envisioned and missed out on raising, getting to know Bree as an adult, trying to understand and respect Frank as her father whilst also establishing his own bond with her and all of the complications that come from the nature of his and Bree’s relationship was lovely to watch. The season really felt like one that was about the parent-child relationship, and Jamie and Brianna were the epitome of that. 

Overall, I don’t believe season 4 was a terrible season, but there was a lot of room for improvement and some poor decisions made. However, it was rather in-keeping with its predecessor - season 3 - which I felt was also weak and inconsistent in comparison to the first two seasons. In fact, I preferred watching season 4 week to week than I did season 3. Personally, I believe that adult Brianna transformed the entire vibe/direction of the show (whether that was for the better or worse is up to interpretation) and that even if season 5 gives fans what they want and shifts the focus back to Jamie and Claire, it will continue down its changed path that has Brianna at its centre, with new additions of Roger and her son to boot. 

Legends of Tomorrow | 4x05 Thoughts and Feelings

Probably one of my favorite Legends episodes this season!!!

Loved this episode so much to be honest. I think, for me, who usually watches shows for ships that’s a testament to the awesomeness that is Legends that Sara and Ava can have literally no scenes together in an episode and that episode can be amazing. And in fact, one of my favorite of the season so far. 

So much happened in one episode, probably due largely to the fact the season only has 16 episodes, so they have to cram a bunch of story into single episodes, which I have mixed feelings about. Obviously I wish there were like 21-22 episodes in the season like other Arrowverse shows, but I also like stuff happening each episode to make the character development and plot move forward and not have filler episodes. 

So I guess we’ll start off with my favorite part. NORA FUCKING DARHK. I’ve made it quite apparent in my previous recaps that Nora is one of, if not my absolute, favorite villain(ish) character of any Legends season. And I’m glad it's her that’s getting the full redemption arc. I’m glad they’re still having her grapple with her father’s death because although Damien was an awful, awful person, she still loved him in her own way and for her to still be grieving, especially because she recognizes that despite everything, he loved her enough to sacrifice himself to give her a second chance. And that staying out of trouble and taking the second chance he (and Ray to some extent) gave her, she’s respecting his memory and grieving her loss. 

Then to have Ray basically beg her to save Constantine and her being really not into the idea in the beginning, not because she didn’t necessarily want to, but because she thought she was cursed to only have dark magic and that it couldn’t be used to help anyone. And if she used it, that she would be tempted back to the darkness. But both Ray and Constantine helped her realize that her magic is what she wants it to be, she’s not controlled by it. And in the end, Ray offering her the chance to run away (again) and instead, she turned herself in because in realizing that she’s not cursed to forever be a villain, she realized that she does have to atone for the wrongs she committed. Like Constantine said, she had to do that for herself. Not for Ray. Not for Constantine. For her. And that’s why I think this arc will go well. She’s not doing this because she’s in love with Ray. She’s not doing this because she’s selfish (as far as we know) and wanting to lay low, get free and then do evil things again. She truly knows that this is the only way for her to be free of her past. Other shows *cough* Supergirl *cough* can’t relate to a redemption arc written this well, even within the first episode of said arc. (We obviously don’t know if there will be betrayal or anything down the road, but so far, I can’t really see a justifiable reason for it. Though bear in mind, it’s early. Plus the writers and actors have never even hinted at that idea. It seems to be Charlie’s arc, not Nora’s). This is everything I want in a redemption arc. Recognition that past actions were wrong, full stop. Wanting to change and be better for themselves, not for anyone else. And doing the right thing without prompting from other characters (bonus points for going against said other character’s urgings to save themselves). I very much wanted her to stay on the Waverider and join the Legends, but seeing her turn herself into the Bureau and tell Ray that she needs to stop running and face judgment and repent for her past sins, I’m very much okay with this plotline and can’t wait for it to continue. I just hope there comes a point where she is released into the custody of the Legends or something similar and we get to see her more often. I even find myself interested in Ray/Nora ship, even though Ray is my least favorite Legend. 

Ahhhh, Nora is probably going to join my regular blog content. 

Ok, so let’s talk about the magical aspect of the episode. It was good. I think it was one of the better ones actually. It got a little bit away from the fugitive storyline and set precedent that not all magical encounters the Legends face will be fugitives that broke free from prison. Which I think is good. It gives them more freedom to play with magical artifacts and things like that. It also gave us some gems of Sara and Charlie bonding, as well as Zari and Mick. 

Sara and Charlie was one of the dynamics I was most interested in. Obviously, Charlie is sort of a rebel character while Sara, despite being the coolest captain in the Arrowverse, does want her people to listen to her (rightly so). But I think she’s hasn’t really added true new members (I don’t really count Constantine as a new member. He’s a Legend, but he and Sara have a different understanding than the others) in a while and Sara has been used to her team listening to her without any real question. And here comes Charlie, kind of similar to Zari in S3 who doesn’t have that same respect for Sara’s leadership and Sara has to learn how to work with Charlie and integrate her into the team. Sharing a drink at the end of the episode and Charlie seeming to start warming up to Sara was an encouraging sign. And if we end up with a betrayal somewhere down the line, I’m going to be so sad. 

Then Zari and Mick. I’m glad there’s a callback to the time loop episode where Zari finds out Mick is a talented writer and that, ultimately, is what saves the day. There’s not a whole bunch to say about it, beyond in true Legends fashion, they’re really leaning into being absolutely weird as fuck and having it completely work. 

Note, Zari and Charlie’s sexual tension in this episode was off the charts. 

I also appreciate that they, briefly, talked about Hiroshima and the atomic bombs. I think in history, we talk about that, largely in America, with such a detachment because America was the one to drop the bomb that we often neglect how the Japanese felt during that period of time. And for Legends to take a serious moment to talk about it and give the other side a real examination, as brief as it was, is important. Legends is largely silly, but they definitely can have their serious moments and pull them off well. 

Then Ava and Nate and the Time Bureau piece. Ava, my child. I am glad that, even though it's a short time period (probably), Ava is in a headspace where she can crack jokes about her parents and being a clone. It’s kind of a coping thing I’ve found when things are kind of traumatic. There are times where it really overwhelms you, like in the last episode. And there are times where you joke about it, like this episode. And those things can exist at the same time. 

So it seems we’ll be seeing more of Mona now that she’ll probably become a part of the Time Bureau considering she has such an intricate knowledge of magical creatures. I’m curious to where that will lead. And although I ship Constantine and Gary, I think Gary and Mona is equally as cute. 

And then we start getting a glimpse of the (likely) overarching point of conflict that will be a theme throughout the season. Project Hades. It seems, from the very brief conversation we saw between Hank and, likely, another government official, the Department of Defense has a secret project that involves utilizing magical creatures as weapons or something similar. He wants them controlled and used. And as these storylines go in other shows, it’s the evil government agency exploiting the supernatural to bolster their firepower in some way. And I think in coming episodes, that’s going to throw in a direct deviation between Hank and the government and the Time Bureau itself, probably specifically Nate, Gary, and Ava, (very likely Mona as well). I think the one that will probably grapple with it the most is Ava, followed closely by Nate. Ava is and always has been a stickler for rules and protocol and likely going against the government will be difficult for her and may even lose her the Director position. Though I think when push came to shove and she was faced with that choice, she would leave the Bureau of her own free will and join the Legends to stop whatever Project Hades is. And then Nate who very much wants to have a better relationship with his father but when his father is the antagonist, that’s going to full at him. Again, I’d fully expect him to side with the Legends (if indeed that’s where this plotline is going. It’s early). But it will be a struggle I’m sure. This is all speculation on literally a 30 second conversation so take it with a grain of salt, but that’s my prediction at this point. Will definitely be revised as we get more information in future episodes. 

All in all, amazing episode. I’m super hyped that we’re bringing in Mona and Nora to have more appearances, seeing a bit more of Charlie’s interactions with the Legends, and getting more context to the Bureau and the stuff that goes on there. They were always sort of, again, this largely antagonistic entity for a lot of season 3. And seeing more of the inner workings and politics of it, I think gives a lot more context to it and helps humanize the agency to the audience. 

I know the next episode is Hank basically coming on the Waverider and observing the Legends in action because apparently, the Department of Defense is questioning their efficiency? Which, I’m not pretending to know, but doesn’t the Legends basically do this freelance? Like they aren’t funded by the government/Bureau. As far as I’m aware, they don’t really get paid at all. Oh well, I’m sure that question will be answered in the next episode, which I’m looking forward to. 

25 Fucking Stupid Writing Choices OUAT Made

This post is a snarky response to Adam and Eddy’s little humble brag article that came out today:

http://ew.com/tv/2018/05/14/once-upon-time-crazy-storylines/

This is meant to be snarky and critical and if you don’t like that -- don’t read it.  (MY post, not the link above.)  

Look, I am a OUAT fan an there are many things I love about the show.  But there are many I just DON’T LOVE and I think they’re worth discussing.  If you don’t like criticism, you won’t like this post.  That’s fine.  

Thank you for all the suggestions!  I think I got quite a bit crammed in here.  

Under the cut for length and so as not to upset those who only want to ‘think lovely thoughts’ . . . . . 

25. Here’s a magic doohickey thingy we’ve never heard of before but NOW we’re using this thing.

Look, I’m not gonna list all the MacGuffins this show has used, I’d be here all day and there are worse things they’ve done, and this IS a show about magic after all.  

But there’s also such a thing as overkill.  And there was too much MacGuffin use that we didn’t know about before in this show. It was far too convenient and usually used as a cop out in lieu of – you know – actual STORY TELLING. THAT is my MacGuffin issue.  Don’t use it to replace character development.  We’re not here for that.  

24.  The Lost Boys/The Untold Stories and Other Dropped Plots

So the Lost Boys -- Did they get homes? Did they grow up?  I don’t know!  Do you?  Of course not – we’ll never know!

What about all those Untold Stories folks?  Weren’t there a bunch of them?  Are they still meandering around in Storybrooke?

Edited to add:  Maleficent and Lily.  SO SORRY I forgot to initially include you in this one.  My bad.  You are missed, ladies!  

Edited once more to add:  Poor Gideon.  Both parents dead and his extended family doesn’t give a shit about him.  Or at least I assume so because we don’t know where he is.  The child of Beauty and the Beast -- treated like a disposable plot device.  Nice.

OUAT is great with creating and LOUSY with follow through.  I know there are many others.  But there shouldn’t be.  There shouldn’t be that many dropped plots on this show.  If you’re not going to follow through with a story line, why add the characters AT ALL?  Speaking of that . . .

23.  JFC, how many new characters do we NEED on this show???

Especially since you still haven’t figured out what to do with some of the ones that are CONTRACT PLAYERS on your show!  Hey, didn’t Archie and Ruby used to be those?  (Waves hi to Belle!  Also the Charmings post S4.  More on that later.)

22.  You know – Rumple is Henry’s GRANDFATHER

He is!  Really!  

You’d never fucking KNOW IT, would you?  The erasure of any sort of familial relationship with Henry/Rumple was a damned shame.  And much of that, I believe, was because if they acknowledged THAT, they’d have to mention the character they want us to forget.  More on that later.

21.  The Shattered Sight Hype

Remember what a BIG DEAL the whole Shattered Sight thing was gonna be in S4?  OMG people say what they REALLY FEEL about each other!  It’s gonna be EPIC!!!

And then it – wasn’t. We basically got some Snowing/Evil Queen snark, Henry bitching at Hook, and Belle – well, Belle was asleep – what else is new?  

I think of all the things that were PROMOTED as something amazing for this show – this is the one that was a big old dud and a whole lot of NOTHING.

20.  Belle’s mom/Belle is written out of her own storyline in S6

In Family Business we met Belle’s Mom for about two minutes.  Then she was dead.  And Belle didn’t remember what happened.  And then – we never heard about it again.

I don’t know about you, but I wanted to know what happened there.  Why didn’t Belle remember?  Did Moe get a roofie magic thingy from Arthur?  Did Belle’s mom turn into an ogre and she killed her and blocked it out?

SO MANY possibilities there. But hey – it’s just Belle.  Why write a story for HER?  

In the same regard -- whatever your thoughts are on Rumbelle in S6 (MHO – it was garbage and an OOC shit fest, but that’s just me) – what happened with Gideon – Belle’s SON – was because of HER CHOICE.  Choices have consequences.  And in GOOD WRITING – the person that MADE the choice that caused the mess is supposed to be the person to help CLEAN IT UP.

But apparently – it was a better thing for ZELENA of all people to be the one to do that.  And Emma and Hook too.  Because why the hell not, right?  That makes all the sense.  

Yes, Rumple played his part too in the whole Gideon mess.  And he did get to take part in the resolution.  But that was something they should have done TOGETHER (what a concept!), and overall Belle was just – not part of it.  Even in the last two minutes they sidelined her with a sprained ankle.  Absolutely ridiculous.    Which leads me to . . . .

19.  Belle being sidelined since Season Two.

OUAT brought the lovely Emilie de Ravin onto the show as a regular cast member in Season Two, and had no fucking idea what to do with her character.  So she gets fridged.  She gets stuck in the hospital, left behind while the rest go to Neverland, she’s very fond of naps, she’s forgotten about in Camelot, not cared about while in a sleeping curse because the “heroes” care more about “stopping” her “evil” hubby (see #17) and written out of her own damn storyline in 6B (see #20) – and then she’s dead. (More on that later.)

I love Belle.  I love Rumbelle.  And I will forever be resentful that for the bulk of her time on the show, the character of Belle, one of my fictional heroes, was written as nothing but a plot device.  She deserved so much better.  

18.  The Musical Episode

I mean – if this nonsense (and it WAS nonsense) had moved the story forward, I could maybe – MAYBE – let this one slide.  But it didn’t.  It just rehashed the same shit that we had been talking about for 6 seasons.  And then Hook married Emma and her Stepford Wife conversion therapy was complete.  (More on that later.)  This episode WILL NOT HOLD UP in the future.  Future generations will be “WTF-ing” all over the place with this one, mark my words.  

17.  Rumple is a Hero – no he’s a Villain – No wait he’s a hero, nope a villain, make up your DAMN MIND WRITERS!!!!!

I got whiplash trying to follow the trajectory of Rumple’s story, as many times as they changed his characterization.  He’s a villain – then in 3A he’s a hero.  Then he’s the victim of a molester and kidnapper and show doesn’t address that AT ALL. Oops he’s evil again.  Except now he’s not – his heart is PURE!  He pulled Excalibur out of the rock, he’s a HERO! Nah – he’s dark again.  Bad Rumple!  Oooh now he’s REALLY DARK and his fetus with no brain stem hates him and his wife is living on a boat with his sworn ENEMY while pregnant, so he traps here there (!!!!!) and he’s macking on the Evil Queen . . . come ON.  Enough already.

Rumple is a complex character.  You can’t just flip/flop willy nilly with a complex character.  You have to know how to write them as nuanced, and CONSISTENLY complex but never falling fully into one camp or the other of ‘good’ or ‘evil.’

Rumple is played by Robert Carlyle, one of the best actors around.  And the ONLY saving grace from the horrible writing of this character over the years is the fact that Bobby knew how to play him most of the time – even when the writers didn’t know how to WRITE HIM.  Which was almost ALL the time.  

16.  Hook is a Dark One/Resurrecting Dead Hook/Hook the Gary Stu

I toyed with ranking the dark one higher on the list and as its own thing because really, this reveal caused the biggest MID EPISODE ratings drop in the history of the show up to that point.  Nobody liked it.  Nobody wanted it. And it ended up being a setup to the ‘Save Hook’ trajectory because of COURSE of all the characters in the history of the show, HE was the one that deserved saving THE MOST.  But I think all of these things tie together.  

What this moment did was solidify the fact that Hook was officially a “Stu” character.  He definitely had Gary Stu tendencies up to this point, and was basically an irritant to anyone but CS/Hook fans, but from here on?  That’s pretty much all he was and all he’d ever be until he was replaced (or should I say upgraded?) by his doppelganger.  

I combined the DO/Save Hook/Stu thing because it was in the Underworld that Hook’s full Stu-pification took place.  There wasn’t a line of people he had murdered wanting a word with him – as there SHOULD HAVE BEEN.  

And Hook still got to keep all his murder trinkets when he got resurrected and made out with his girlfriend over Robin’s grave.  What a guy.

15.  Regina/The Evil Queen Stay Split

I’m just saying – wouldn’t it have been better character growth for Regina to have to live with her ‘evil’ half than to split it off?  And no, the ‘heart mixing’ thing doesn’t count.  I get that the whole thing was really fan service to the Outlaw Queen fandom.  But that doesn’t make it good writing.  

14.  The Wish Realm

Oh, I could write a whole post about this (and I may do that at some point) but there are so many damn holes in the whole Wish Realm mess I wouldn’t even know where to start.  But so many things about it just DO NOT line up in a sensible way.  And even if you find one that DOES, it’ll create three things that DON’T line up.  

I’d have bought a ‘parallel universe’ over the ‘wish realm’ stuff.  They could have gone with that and it would have made much more sense. But you know – they wanted dead Belle, dead Baelfire, dead Snowing, no Emma and old Hook so – Wish realm it was. I just got to a point where I didn’t care anymore.  But that doesn’t negate the stupid.  

13.  The Timeline

The timeline in OUAT made sense – and then it didn’t.  And then they just stopped trying.  And I stopped caring.  But for paid, professional writers – just not cool.  DO YOUR JOB!!!!!

12.  Will Scarlett

Do I really need to say any more here?  No? Didn’t think so.  Moving on.  

11.  Neal’s Apartment in New York City

Have you ever been to NYC? Places of residence are at a premium there.  There is no way in hell that an abandoned apartment wouldn’t have been emptied and taken over by a new resident in that much time.  And I’m sorry, but odds are Neal did NOT pre-pay his rent for TWO YEARS out.  

10.  Belle and Hook – Best Friends Forever!*

You know – no woman with a brain in her head would befriend a man who straight up tried to murder her FOUR TIMES.  So, either Belle doesn’t have a brain in her head, or that’s some crap writing right there. (My vote is with the latter if you’re wondering.)

It was bad enough when Belle was just handing over the dagger to “Hook” in S4 (yes, I know it was Rumple but details shmetails, Belle didn’t know that), but a PREGNANT BELLE going to live on a boat with Hook to be ‘safe’ – come on. Who does that?  I get that Adam and Eddy wanted to wave the middle finger at the Rumbelle fandom, but they could have found a way to do that without making Belle look STUPID.  

*Honorable mention to Belle/Zelena being friends which was equally as stupid

9.  Zelena is Marian

Come ON – they pulled that one out of their asses halfway through S4 because they wanted to find a way to bring back Bex.  There was NO INDICATION of that until the reveal.  Because it didn’t EXIST until the reveal.  Ridiculous.  

8.  Making the Charmings Supporting Players

Starting with S4, Snow and David basically became secondary characters.  They had MOMENTS, but overall they were on the backburner and if they left the show at any point – would it have made a difference to ANY of the trajectory they were playing out?  I’d say no.  

I mean – how the hell did that happen?  How do you run out of ideas with the couple that you touted as THE ‘main couple’ after only three seasons?  I don’t get it.  

7.  Golden Queen

Just no.  There was never anything romantic between these two characters.  It was stupid and out of character for both of them.  No.  

6.  Queer baiting 101

If you gender-swapped either Emma or Regina – made one of them a man – they’d be banging by S2 and by the end of the series they’d be married with at least two more kids and three break-ups/reunions between them.  (Hey, I watch soaps, I know how this shit works.)

The chemistry between the actors is there.  They share a kid.  But they’re both women.  And you know – family show -- #nohomo and all.   Sure.  

The writers KNEW that Swan Queen was popular.  Now okay – if ABC didn’t want to go there, fine.  I don’t agree with that, but fine.

But don’t keep freaking queer baiting your fans every chance you get!  It never stopped.  In fact, it got progressively WORSE as the show went on!  That’s just bullshit right there.  Either do it or drop it.  Because what OUAT did with Emma and Regina and the baiting of their fans was just flat out shitty.  

And if that weren’t bad enough, we got the whole queer baiting with Mulan/Aurora, and THEN in S5 we’re handed Dorothy/Ruby as a token olive branch to the LGBT community and then – we never see them again!  

Okay, in S7 they got on the right track with Alice and Robin.  I will give them that.  But after six years of baiting, it kind of rang hollow for many, and rightly so.

5.  Hey, Here’s a Person of Color – Let’s Kill Them!

One of the first warnings I give to any new OUAT is ‘don’t get attached to any POC’ and with good reason. They don’t last long on OUAT.

Now I don’t want to assume or accuse any of the OUAT writers of flat out racism but . . .. . you’ve gotta admit – they don’t have the best track record there.  

It’s especially obvious when they bring on a character that is compelling and portrayed by a charismatic actor that the audience enjoys.  Lancelot, Merlin, and Facilier are the three best examples of that. Okay, so Lance was resurrected but – where’d he go?  Is he still trying to undo dead-Arthur’s roofie on Guinevere?  

And then we have an amazing hero and a compelling villain in Merlin and Facilier, respectively.  Both of these characters – and their actors – were bright spots in the show.  So naturally – they needed to die.  Without their storylines resolved.  

But it was just a coincidence that they weren’t white.  Of course it was.  

4.  The Death of Belle

Yeah, yeah, I know, Beauty was a beautifully written episode and Bobby and Emilie loved it and we got some great moments, blah blah blah . . . . . . but was it NECESSARY?  Did they REALLY NEED to kill off Belle?  You’re telling me that there’s absolutely, positively, not one plausible scenario for S7 wherein Belle is in Hyperion Heights and Rumple can find a way to rid himself of the darkness WITH HER THERE???? Really?  They couldn’t write even one lousy full season of Rumbelle (hello BEAUTY AND THE BEAST) happy and in love with struggles but still beating the darkness in the end?  Really??? There weren’t any options for that scenario AT ALL????  Give me a break.  

3.  The Stepford Swan

Over the course of seven years, many of the OUAT characters suffered with out- of-character moments. It’s not uncommon and I would even venture to say that this happens on occasion on MOST television shows.  But on OUAT, it was a common occurrence from Season Four onward.  And NONE of the characters experienced as much of an out of character de-evolution as Emma Swan.

When we first met Emma Swan she was a badass, intelligent, independent woman.  Yes, she had her issues and her inner demons and we saw her work past those as the series progressed.  

And then . . . . she got a boyfriend.  And he became the center of her universe.  And Emma – changed.  The writers (and Jennifer Morrison) will swear up and down that it was an ‘evolution’ but I’m sorry – a character that starts OUT like this:

Does not END UP like this:

That’s not evolution. That’s a shell of a woman dependent on a man for her self-worth.  That’s NOT who Emma Swan is.  This was THE worst character assassination on the show, and I’d say it’d be up (down?) there in the top 10 (er, bottom 10?) of worst character assassinations in all of television. What a shame.  

2.  Rapists – rapists everywhere!

Once Upon a Time has always been marketed as a family show.  For a family show – there’s sure a heck of a lot of rape in it.  

The first CANON rapist we have is Regina and her 28+ year imprisonment and repeated sexual assault of Graham.  Regina came a long way as a character in the show’s 7-year run – but it would have done great service to her if this had been addressed somehow.  Now, I know that Jamie Dornan is all famous and off making money playing Christian Grey but – you know, in this particular case – I’d have been good with either a recast or at the VERY least an apologetic mention.  But we never got that.

And that’s the problem with every rapey issue on this show – it’s never addressed for what it is. In fact – it’s really not addressed at all.  Hook’s rape jokes in S2 are treated like ‘playful banter’ by the writers, cast, and viewers alike.  Zelena’s ‘Hester the Molester’ stuff with Rumple in S3 doesn’t even warrant a discussion. Hook’s rapey innuendo in the CS movie is also waved off.  Then we have Zelena raping Robin in S4, Arthur magic roofie-ing Guinevere and probably raping her in S5 (Is she still roofied?  Who knows!), and Mother Gothel raping Nook in S7.

That’s a hell of a lot of rape for a “family show.”  And aside from the off-handed comment from Robin about lack of consent with Zelena, none of it is addressed for what it is – RAPE.  

1.  The Death of Baelfire/Neal Cassidy

In Season One there were three main story line arcs driving the series:  Regina’s war with Snow White, Emma as The Savior, and Rumpelstiltskin’s quest to reunite with his son, Baelfire.  All three stories intertwined, and it only made sense that the trajectory of the show would be that in the end, all of these characters would somehow come together, as they all were tied to one character:  Henry.

Unfortunately, the writers made the foolish decision in Season Three to execute one of the main (if not THE main) driving forces on the show.  Baelfire/Neal was connected to all of the aforementioned people, and his loss was a blow to everyone.  At least it should have been. But that’s not what we saw.

Not only was Neal/Baelfire killed off – he was flat out ERASED from the show.  His name from the point of his death on was rarely brought up. We didn’t get to see anyone truly mourn or grieve him.  (Okay Rumple, but BARELY – and anyone who has lost a child understands that it’s quite possibly the deepest type of grief imaginable.  I’m told you never get over it.)  As the show moved forward, you could literally spot the times when the writers made deliberate dialogue choices to avoid saying the name Neal/Baelfire in places where it not only made sense, it was WARRANTED.  

Let’s be REAL here – we all know the “reason” Bae/Neal was written off the show.  I don’t care what the writers say.  I’m not an idiot and neither are you.  And I’m sorry, but if the ONLY WAY you can think of to make a “romance” happen on a show is to kill off a character that would be forever “in the way” of said romance – you’re not a skilled enough writer to be writing a television show for a major network.  I mean – it works in spiteful fanfic (which I am more than guilty of writing).  But for a television show?  The viewers deserve better than that.  NEAL/BAELFIRE and every character that ever loved him deserved better than that.  

I know I probably missed a bunch but I really did try to hit the highlights and put them in the order they deserved.

Thoughts?  Comments?  If you think I’m missing a tag for this (I’m doing my best) let me know and I’ll add it.  

“She knew you wouldn't be pleased.” “Then she never knew me at all”

Let me get this off my chest:

THIS ENTIRE CONVERSATION IS BULLSHIT.

...

Now that that’s out of the way:

This entire conversation is bullshit.

I’m sorry, but this is the mother of all plot devices.

And this is coming from a show where a major character was introduced in her first episode as the sister of the assassin who killed her predecessor before shooting him, has killed off at least one major character a season For Reasons, has terrorist plots endangering Washington DC at least once a year, retconned character histories and past actions to repeat plots, INTRODUCED A HALF-BROTHER TO POINT #1′S VILLAIN TEN YEARS AFTER KILLING HIM OFF FOR NO REASON only to then kill him off, etc.

I’m saying, there’s a lot of bullshit on this show.

But this takes the cake.

Long-lost children are cheesy at the best of times, and that alone would be enough to make any fan raise their arms in frustration.

Even though on the flip side this is Confirmed!Tiva. 

It’s complete character assassination for Ziva, which is so unnecessary, especially given how she was written out in season 11. 

The Ziva who longed for something permanent (HER WORDS), who’s had feelings for Tony arguably since season 4 at the very least (IN THE SHOW’S WORDS), who knew how much family meant for Tony, who knew how committed he was to her ( “I can change with you”/ “I just want you to come home, with me” / “Hardest 180 of my life” etc.), who knew how much he’d grown in the last year before she left and stood by her side after she was in turmoil, who was trying to better herself and heal her old wounds and turn a new page?

You’re saying, Show, that that Ziva wouldn’t have told Tony she was pregnant?

(The very man she said she loved -- AGAIN, ACTUALLY IN THE SHOW IT’S ON TAPE PEOPLE)

NO FUCKING WAY.

(more under the cut because WE’RE IN FOR A WILD RIDE FOLKS)

[[more]]

First of all, it kills me (no pun intended) that this probably adds fuel to the fire for the Ziva-haters who thought she was selfish, because, well, that sure proves their point, doesn’t it?

It almost seems callous, like it was to get back at Cote de Pablo for whatever it was that went down when she left the show.

Except I don’t think the writers/producers were actually being that nasty or inconsiderate. Because given the show’s history -- by that I mean, trying to inflict the most Tragic Man Pain™ on its male characters -- I honestly do think they just thought this was a great way to create Drama and didn’t think twice about what this meant for the female character in question.

Again, I give you: Agent Lee, Jackie Vance, Diane, Paula Cassidy, and I’m sure lots of others that I can’t remember at the moment, but the point is that they are all female characters whose deaths were written specifically to heap more tragedy onto a male character to give them something to fight for/feel guilt over.

(I don’t really count Shannon & Kelly, since their deaths were pre-Show and were part of Gibbs’ origin story, nor do I count Kate’s, because that’s probably the one death that I feel was probably a legitimate “Gotcha!” for the audience to drive the story. Then again I’ve never actually seen season 2 so what do I know.)

So what I’m saying is killing Ziva off is bad enough. 

But now adding another layer to that with her hiding said male character’s child from him for almost three years is even more infuriating, because it perpetuates the stereotype that so-called “independent” women as Orli puts it completely eschew their male partners’ feelings, doing what they want and damn the torpedoes. And in this context, specifically reverts to the notion of Ziva essentially being a stone-cold (former) killer who lacks any empathy, especially towards the supposed love of her life.

Which, if you are a Ziva fan, you know is untrue, and there is ample evidence to the contrary on the show. Ziva was traumatized and self-destructive and often made terrible life choices, but when she felt safe she was also compassionate and warm-hearted and generous. 

But this decision by the writers throws that out the window. They hand-wave it off as, “well, she decided she didn’t need no man and had a baby by herself,” when we know that’s pretty much the opposite of what she was -- hell, did they watch the season 10 finale?! I don’t know if the fact that it seems like they genuinely didn’t even think this through or realize how it would look softens the blow or makes it worse.

The only way I can even remotely fanwank this so that Ziva doesn’t seem like a total self-centered jerk (and let me clarify I DO NOT THINK ON ANY PLANET THAT ZIVA IS A SELF-CENTERED JERK but that is what the subtext of this writing implies) is if you explain this away by thinking that Ziva was so terrified when she found out that she was pregnant that she froze and put off telling Tony until one day it just seemed like it was too late.

(I may or may not have written a fic about that. I may or may not get around to posting it if I ever finish writing about this episode. It’s been sitting on my computer since July.)

It’s not a good explanation, by any means, but it’s like you have to twist yourself into circles to make this even remotely palatable. And it shouldn’t be palatable, because this flies in the face of 10 years of character development.

The Ziva who grew up with a distant father and a presumably unhappy mother (from the flashbacks we’ve seen), who never really recovered from her family breaking up as a teen, who gravitated towards this group of people an ocean way from her homeland and came to consider them her chosen family, who started to think about her future and settling down and planting roots and having a family of her own, who canonically loved Tony -- you’re telling me this person would decide to cut the father of her child out of her life because she was “independent”?

Yeah, right.

Ziva was (is) reckless, impulsive, temperamental, brash -- all of these things, yes. But callous? I’ve never thought so.

Looks like I got ahead of myself.

- Poor Tali. She cried throughout the flight, enduring more in her last day than most people do in a lifetime. - Does she even know? I mean, does she understand? - All she knows is that her mother has gone away. Ziva assured me you were the only biological possibility, in case you were wondering. - I wasn't. But if she had any doubts that would explain why she didn't tell me. - No doubts. Yes, she's the image of her mother, but the eyes are all you, Tony. - If I'd known she was pregnant, I would've been there in a second.

First of all: MY HEART. That poor little nugget.

Second: UUUUUUUUGH my head hurts. Because whyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy.

There’s so much to unpack here.

Let’s take the first hair-pulling morsel: the “biological possibility.” Which is one of many hints about how little Orli knows him.

Part of me really likes this, because again I enjoy how Tony doesn’t give Orli even an inch. But also, because you get hints of before here -- in spite of everything that is happening, of how his life has just been flipped upside down over and over again in the last 24 hours, some things remain, like the fact that he knows the timeline and he knows Ziva, and he knows there was no one else.

Orli may not know what they were, or may assume that they were casual or a one-time thing, and is almost clinical about how Tali came to be. It’s just a totally different mindset to where these two were and who they were three years ago.

But it’s Tony who gets me -- despite his own grief, and now yet another shock, he’s cognizant enough to know that some things still hold true. He’d have every right to be angry right now and imo should be, but  he can separate that from what he knows of Ziva. That whatever they were that summer/fall, it meant something.

Yet he follows it up with his own doubts, because now that that possibility has been introduced, maybe that rewrites things, like maybe what he thought was true then was just an illusion, just like everything else is now. Because he probably never thought Ziva would drop off the face off the earth for three years and leave him on the sidelines, and never thought she’d end up blown up in a house fire when she’d quit law enforcement years ago, and definitely never thought she wouldn’t tell him that she was having his baby. So maybe she left him and never told him because there was more he didn’t know, maybe he’d read the whole situation wrong after all.

(Also, the eyes may be Tony’s in, um, spirit, but the baby actor playing Tali looks so much like Ziva, eyes and all, that it’s hard to believe they could have casted that part any better. I mean she’s even got Ziva/Cote’s wild curly hair, that’s crazy.)

If I'd known she was pregnant, I would've been there in a second.

Oh, Tony.

Sigh.

Because this is exactly the guy who left Ziva on the tarmac, who committed to her in that field, who searched for her for months, who stood by her when her life was in shambles, who stepped back to let her find her happy ending even if it wasn’t with him on more than one occasion.

We know all Tony wanted was to be by her side. He would have left everything behind if she’d said the word, and he would have brought her home if she’d wanted it. So he let her make her choices, even if it killed him. (And her WHAT.) But if he would have been by her side the second he knew she was pregnant, would have dropped everything because really, he wouldn’t be giving anything up at all, because that’s what he really wanted. And that’s what so tragic about PPF and now “Family First,” because they both want the same things but neither can voice them for their own reasons. Tony, because he’s trying to give her space and let her figure out what she needs when she’s ready. And Ziva, because she doesn’t think she’s deserving of him or in a space ready to be the partner she thinks he needs. Now, we see everything they’ve missed out on -- in even greater relief.

Oh, Tony, indeed.

But our mourning doesn’t get a chance to fester because irritation is far more salient at the moment:

- Which is precisely why she didn't tell you. She didn't want to disrupt your life any more than she already had. - That was not her decision to make. - You know better than anyone how fiercely independent Ziva was. She did not need a man to complete her. She was quite comfortable and confident raising Tali on her own. - Without ever telling me. - Actually, she came to regret that decision as Tali grew, but she struggled with how to break the news. She didn’t— she knew you wouldn't be pleased. - Then she never knew me at all.

UUUUUUUUUUUUGH MAKE IT STOP.

Like I spent the last 20 paragraphs extrapolating, the idea of Ziva being so “independent” that she wouldn’t tell the father of her child -- who she was in love with and knew loved her -- that she was pregnant is absolutely unconscionable and inexcusable. 

It’s not like Tony is some random hookup or one night stand who she’d never see again. Tony is the guy who she’s stood by for almost a decade, who she’s seen grown and has grown along side, who’s been something to her in varying stages that whole time, who was even more something to her that summer to the point that they were planning on spending their newfound unemployment doing that something together indeterminably until the shit hit the fan. 

The Ziva we’d grown to love for eight seasons wouldn’t unilaterally decide to deny Tony’s right to be a father (like she wouldn’t deny her child’s right to know her father) because she was independent. The Ziva who yearned to rebuild the family she lost as a kid wouldn’t knowingly repeat those same secrets in her own, or at least I’d be hard-pressed to believe it.

But I have no problem, unfortunately, believing the writers would find it perfectly acceptable.

(Which is why I’ve fanwanked it as Ziva being paralyzed by fear but WHATEVER SHOW)

It reeks of, “those man-hating independent women, they just hate us all so much.” (Misogynistic much?)

Again, this whole notion of Ziva “not needing a man to complete her,” is such bullshit, because that’s not the fucking point, and it contradicts everything we know about her. That doesn’t sound like her, and sounds more like someone making a superficial, impersonal assessment of her. (I could almost believe this was a cover for something or someone than I could believe this actually came out of fictional Ziva’s mouth.)

On the flip side, though, I like that Tony’s starting to get angry, because he should be. As much as I love Ziva and she is my favorite, this whole plot stinks, and Tony has every right to be mad right now. Because this sucks, and this is a huge betrayal, and none of this makes sense. So I like that he’s calling Orli out on her bullshit, and by extension, Ziva out on hers too. (As much as that hurts.) I like that he’s saying no, this is not okay, and just because you have an excuse for something doesn’t excuse it. Ziva being “independent” (blech) doesn’t excuse not telling him about Tali, no matter how matter-of-fact Orli presents it.

It sucks. Plain and simple.

I mean, I suppose Orli reassuring him that Ziva regretted shutting him out softens the blow a little, and lends credence to the idea that she just didn’t know how to get out of this mess -- which, to be fair, is kind of her M.O. when she gets into trouble -- but it still is beyond frustrating.

But then the second part of that statement, “She knew you wouldn’t be pleased,” is MADDENING.

MADDENING I TELL YOU.

Because again, if there’s one thing Ziva knew from the last time she saw Tony, it’s that he would be pleased. That he practically spelled it out for her back then, and that he wanted a future with her and she wanted one with him. (Again, I give you this.)

He wouldn’t be pleased? OF COURSE HE WOULD BE PLEASED.

Shocked? Yes. Confused? Probably. Though on the other hand he would have known exactly how that happened. 

“Not pleased”? Not a chance. 

It would have been what both of them had searched for.

So, Tony has every right to be angry.

And it saddens me that he thinks that Ziva never knew him at all if she believed that of him, because of any of them Ziva knew him the best, and she would never have thought that of him, but the writers went there, why?

MAN PAIN.

That’s what this all comes down to.

ARGH.

I’m going to end this now because I’m just talking in circles, but to sum up: Tony yes, Orli no.

Yall mind if I rant: The Sequel Nobody Wanted

The newest comic got me to question my stance on Korra/sami yet again (the dashes here exist to keep it out of the tags, just in case that’s still a problem). The short version of this is that my stance really hasn’t changed. (Also, just a headsup, I haven’t read my old anti k/s post in a long time, but it’s probably full of logical fallacies and the lot, so…what I’m getting at here is please don’t judge me based on what I’ve written in the past). 

I remember when I loved LOK. Book 1, I was able to look past the flaws, because the tension, characters, and atmosphere was so good. Book 2, the flaws became harder to overlook, but the Avatar Wan episode was definitely an experience. Book 3 was an entirely solid outing, though I missed some of that original atmosphere from Book 1. And then Book 4. I was so excited for the finale, because Book 4, despite its flaws, had been pretty great. But through the majority of the finale I was thinking to myself, “is that it?” Like, don’t get me wrong, there were some good fight scenes between Korra and Kuvira, and Mako’s sacrifice was pretty powerful, but most of it was underwhelming. It felt less like a wrap up of the show, and more like a wrap up of that season. Nothing from past seasons really tied together with the exception of the spirit portal. Plot elements from past seasons that could have been integrated into the show were dropped altogether. I don’t know. It was disappointing. 

So I was already in a bad mood, and the entire ending with Korra//sami kind of killed it even more for me. Because representation is important, no doubt. I push for it a lot myself. But not when it impedes the storytelling. The storytelling of LOK? Didn’t warrant it. This is coming from someone who, at the start of Book 3, loved the idea of Korra/sami. Their interaction in the car? Adorable. Asami sparring with Korra? Great. But there was nothing in future episodes to build up to a romantic conclusion. There was a scene where Korra blushed when receiving a complement from Asami. That’s the only scene between Korra and Asami that implied romantic intent. That and Mako’s whole, “What is with you two???” thing when they all go out for lunch, but goodness, if that wasn’t the most forced, inconsequential conflict I’ve seen in this series. I mean, if you have to tell the audience that there’s something going on between these characters instead of showing us, maybe there’s a reason a portion of your audience didn’t latch on to your intent. 

The problem with every scene where Asami and Korra interact (aside from the fact that they don’t bond over internal, character-building struggles, and instead just solve external problems together) is that most scenes are just Asami supporting Korra emotionally. Which, okay, for another character, that could imply romance. However, Asami’s character is already naturally caring and nurturing. She was already a character who was entirely supportive of the rest of the cast, so it’s no stretch of the imagination by any means to view her supporting Korra with tea or her offering intimate support when Korra is devastated in the Book 3 finale as inherently platonic. And, given that she was a support figure already, Korra sending her letters that the others “wouldn’t understand” can likewise read as platonic. This would be different if a character like, say, Opal interacted with Korra in similar ways after her introduction, a character who did not exist to offer unconditional support to our main leads already throughout the show, and whom Korra alternatively exhibits support for in Book 3 (or maybe I just really like their air bending scene together. I don’t know. Don’t hold me to that one). And that covers basically all of Korra and Asami’s interactions – Asami offering Korra support, and Korra accepting (usually) that support. That is, aside from those short (very short) but sweet moments at the beginning of Book 3. Plus, Book 4 takes place after a years-long gap as well, so the fact that we’re only shown them interacting once outside of the finale in Book 4 really speaks volumes. Which is not to mention that, aside from that last scene they have together, they hardly interact in the finale at all. I wanted to like this ship. I really, really did. But not when the writing didn’t add up. 

And then there’s the fact that Bryke’s claims that Korra/sami was intended from the beginning are obviously false. I mean, they’re on record saying that after Book 2, relationship drama had come to an end, and they were ready to focus on friendship. If I remember correctly, the voice actors had to be called back in after the finale had already been finished in order to include that last scene with Korra and Asami. It was literally last minute. 

It certainly doesn’t help that I dislike basically every ship in LOK. I never liked B/opal either. I didn’t like M/asmi, and Ma/korra didn’t have the best development itself. Honestly, I don’t think Bryke are good at writing romance period. But I’m angrier about Korra/sami, because not only is it a relationship involving the show’s main character, but it’s the central focus of the scene that ended the entire show. Say what you want about Kat/aang, but at least that ship was planned and introduced beyond minimal amounts of subtext from day one. It was a consistent part of the story. And alternatively, if LOK had ended with Ma/korra like it did in Book 1, I wouldn’t be necessarily pleased with it, but at least there was a textual history there between the two. 

And I hear the arguments about how Bryke couldn’t include textual evidence of Korra/sami because it was a ship between two women. Okay, point taken. I mean, they did admit that they didn’t even bother asking Nick until last minute, but I digress. But jeez, you could at least develop their relationship a bit, couldn’t you? Again, the only conflicts these two face together are external ones. Korra and Asami fight a gang. Asami carries Korra away from danger while Mako and Bolin fight off baddies. Korra and Asami escape/crash/rebuild an airship. In none of these scenes together do they have any meaningful interactions. Maybe you could count Korra grinning at Asami for two seconds while they rebuild the airship. Maybe. But they don’t bond over anything or talk about anything except what’s happening to them at the hands of outside forces (or essentially, what’s relevant to the plot). Hence why Asami’s offer of unconditional support of Korra in the Book 3 finale rings a little hollow. It’s just Asami doing what she’s been doing the whole time, albeit with a more emotional framing. 

And all this could all lead me to explaining why I didn’t like the conclusion of Korra’s character arc, or why I didn’t like how Asami was essentially a plot device until Book 3, and even then, she wasn’t given any real development. (In fact, I’m actually kind of bitter that the show didn’t write Asami better. Her entire character basically revolved around A) the love triangle nonsense or B) her father/company). But if I were to go in depth with that, it’d take another thousand or so words, and I’m amazed I even had the drive to write this whole thing in the first place. In short, the show really is a mess. 

Now, I’m only writing all this because I’ve seen panels from the comic. The first few panels I saw, I figured I shouldn’t judge too harshly. I didn’t see enough of the actual comic to draw a conclusion. But with the new ones out, it’s safe to say that the comic seems relatively out of character for both Korra and Asami. Seriously, maybe one sentence in there sounded like it could come from Korra. I implore you all to switch the dialogue and pretend Korra is saying Asami’s lines, and Asami is saying Korra’s. Do you feel the character-charged dialogue? Me neither. And anywho, I’m a bit frustrated people are hailing Korra/sami as the epitome of representation when it’s really…not. It’s hard seeing Korra develop into a nearly unrecognizable character for me, because she was the saving grace of the show from day one. 

Korra/sami isn’t the only ship that’s frustrated me like this. I downright despise several forced ships in fictional media, especially when it’s detrimental to a character’s development. I didn’t like J/ashi from Samurai Jack. Krist/anna or Kristoff/anna or whatever the heck it’s called from Frozen was pretty awful. Several Marvel movies (of which I am a fan) have awful romance subplots (Sta/ron and Bruce/nat are the biggest offenders). At the end of the day, Korra/sami isn’t the biggest offender. It does offer quality bi representation between two WOC. But that doesn’t mean we have to like it. Go ahead and enjoy your ooc comics folks. Who knows. Maybe it’ll actually be good. 

Vworp! Vworp? Click-bait of course – we all know the Doctor Who experience will never end! Still though, in one corner of Cardiff Bay, it has.

The BBC’s Doctor Who Experience closed this weekend, ending the fourth permanent, but significant exhibition in the world’s longest running science fiction show’s history. A permanent exhibit to the corporation’s premier franchise that’s suddenly become a whole lot ephemeral. But just as its creation was made possible by the show’s huge resurgence in the middle of last decade, as much as the rise of ‘experience’ entertainment, its demise doesn’t signal the end of Doctor Who‘s so-far 54-year journey.

There’s no doubt that Doctor’s Who‘s lost some of the sheen it recovered 12 years ago, just as it waxed and waned over the 26 years of its original run. After its 2005 return, kids were talking about that weekend’s show on the bus to school on a Monday morning, for the first time in decades. Those kids of 9 or 10 are now 21 and 22. Times change, even for an ever-changing show like Doctor Who. Audiences change along with their Doctors. And so do Doctor Who exhibitions.

The Past

The first permanent exhibition to Doctor Who was set up at the seat of the Marquesses of Bath, the stately Longleat. Alongside the growing safari. It set the standard walk-through of costumes, props and exhibit cards that were as close to an immersion that young and old fans could get, whilst ocassionally hosting some events, like the 20th anniversary party in 1983. Longleat was big on those big anniversaries, running from 1973 until 2003, and was my first visit to a Whobition – a word I will never use again.

Like Behind the Sofa at London’s defunct Museum of Moving Image, which I visited during thatsame mid-1990s period, my strongest memories remain, in no particular order, Daleks and the blister packed Dapol models in the shop afterwards. Count them down: Seventh Doctor, Tetrap, Mel… It’s worth noting that my few brushes with Doctor Who as a child it bloody petrified me. Being scared is a great thing. My first memory – although it may appeal to some fans – is Colin Baker land-drowning at the cliffhanger of the penultimate episode of The Trial of  Time Lord. I grew up on the coast, but not near hand quick-hand-sand.

Along the South Coast, Brighton’s Palace Pier (the only one left, horizontal) hosted a small, but prestigious and official exhibition in 2005. The lean years of the show’s prolonged hiatus between 1989 and 2005 had been partially bridged by Longleat and the resurgent Blackpool exhibition. originally open as a permanent installation from 1974 to 1985, that Golden Mile exhibition folded in 1985 not for a regeneration but a “re-evalutation”, coincidentally during the show’s 18-month mid-80s hiatus. Its second life ran from 2004 to just before the show’s anniversary in 2009 – but I never made it to either incarnation.

Back to Dapol, the factory that gave us those distinctive 1980s action action figures, enabling children everywhere to recreate Time and the Rani,  hosted is own exhibition, Dapol Dr Who Experience, between 1994 and 2003 in Llangollen. I never made it to that either, although the figures persist.

In 2008, with the show at peak Tennant and its fourth television series since returning, a well put together show was hosted at Earls Court Exhibition Centre for just under a year. Never intended as permanent, coincidentally that ended in the year of Specials – a hiatus by any other name.

Then in 2011, London Olympia2 hosted the brand new Experience, a new interactive development of the old props and history format. It ran for one year, before relocating to Cardiff to replace the semi-permanent Doctor Who Exhibition Cardiff that at the capital’s Red Dragon Centre that ran between 2005 and 2011. The London Experience was a whole different level. While it ended with a comprehensive tour of props, costumes and merchandise, the main draw was the interactive storyline that dragged willing family groups through a ready-made storyline, combining pre-recorded film with the Doctor himself, animated sets, classic monsters and a ground-breaking 3d segment that recalled early IMAX trips to that new dimension.

Of course, it was all helped by marvelous zeitgeist. It opened in the prime of the new series’ first reboot, with the arrival of the Eleventh Doctor, tying directly into storylines set out by the show’s fifth series and picking up from the three-dimensional vortex promos that accompanied that new era. But as well-knitted into the fabric of the show as it was, enhancing the immersion, it was always going to be the dating element. As the ‘cracks in time’device that effectively brought us into the show collapsed into a tangle of on-screen plotting over inconsistently broadcast series, it became a piece of historical interest far more quickly than the old exhibits ever had. As with many of the new era exhibitions, items would arrive as series were made, disappearing as they were recalled. it was a natural rhythm, when the series ran consistently.

In summer 2012 the Experience opened in Cardiff Bay, in a new 3,000 sq m building at Porth Teigr, handily near to the BBC’s Roath Lock studios, where Doctor Who is produced, aiding the ins and outs of props. Expected to attract up to 250,000 visitors a year, it was hailed as a further coup for the Cardiff Bay development and a further boost for the clocal economy delivered by temporal rift. I visited that incarnation of the Experience once at its opening in London, then in Cardiff, accompanied by, after a rain-soaked run, a trip around the TARDIS studio itself.

And then last month I took a trip to Cardiff for one final, sign-off visit to the Experience.

The Present

With the arrival of the Twelfth Doctor, the dated crack in time plot was deemed just that bit too passé. That earlier trip had served up some nice moments in its guided urgency, not least a trip into the off-screen Dalek civil war which went just a little way to explain the quick repealling of the multi-coloured New Paradigm Daleks in the show. As of 2014, a new storyline written by Joe Lidster brought things up to the Twelfth Doctor, making use of some sets – anachronistically the early Eleventh Doctor TARDIS remained – and twisting the scripted journey, spattered with some great scripting, but lacking the buzz of the television linked original, into a new shape.

As fun as it was – if you ever think it isn’t amazing, picture that desolate ’90s hole when the show’s fire was tended by a mere few thousand fans – there remains something wonderfully BBC about it all. The concept, not as strong in the Capaldi era as the former Smith Experience, was a little tattered around the edges come the end, the staff almost imperceptibly haggard. Camera phones are forbidden on the journey, but there was surely a day when enforcing that rule fell into the concept.

the Experience should haev soared to the end, but that seldom happens in Who. Like the show itself, 12 years on from its glorious resurgence. A trail traipsing between Angels lacked bite, the visit to the underside of the TARDIS was missing some sparkle (really, because it recalls the awful Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS). There was nothing to match the Dalek fighting in the first, but the pepper pots gave it a go, as we sought suspiciously kryptonion shards that could sort the merry temporal mess out. Perhaps the highlight lay in the past. While the 3d finale wasn’t as captivating and centre-stage as the previous version, it ended on Totter’s Lane, where the story began. There it broke through into the exhibition, with the TARDIS set and production notes of 1963, brought to screen for the 50th anniversary with An Adventure in Time and Space.

As Steven Moffat always propounds, a little too much, Doctor Who‘s a show about change. And time for change it is. So the Experience ends with its second and final Doctor. Concept experiences remain strong, perhaps stronger now than when it opened – certainly in London. In Cardiff, although filled by the promotion surrounding its final summer, its shelf-life is apparent. A root around the Experience merchandise shop, highlighted it. Pride of place fell to the new Mr Men tie-in range, but everything else felt flat and familiar. It’s a luxury for the brand, where every T-shirt, DVD and mug once gleamed new.

The trick remains in the exhibition that follows the tour, wonderful, expansive and still continually updating, it’s a far cry from the crawl past zygons and krynoids at Longleat or through Cassandra on Brighton Pier. The fad for the Experience is likely to stick and develop. Doctor Who and BBC Worldwide will return to the theme. But as contrary and awkward as the show it celebrates, it’s the exhibition that retains the ageless class. And unlike the walkthrough, it’s a photographers’ dream. I’ll miss these unscripted trips tothe past. Until the next time. The next Experience.

The Gallery

Out of the Vault

Ring upgrade

Bakers hands

Angel Power

Mummy shake

Morbius claw

Cyber heads

Cyber legion

War Doctor TARDIS

Console

Clara memorial

Recreating The Leisure Hive

Sleepy

Hanging Silents

Mr Sweet

Classic Daleks

Classic Daleks

New Paradigm Daleks

Bloody Monks

New Mondas

Emperor Davros

New Davros

Season 18 Console

Facing the Raven

Special Weapons

Exterminate?

Blue cat future

Console

Blue doors

Console room mood

HDoctor Who Experience – hello Menoptera!ello Menoptera!

Invasion of Earth

The Beginning

The News 23 November 1963

Out of the Vault

Ring upgrade

Bakers hands

Angel Power

Mummy shake

Morbius claw

Cyber heads

Cyber legion

War Doctor TARDIS

Console

Clara memorial

Recreating The Leisure Hive

Sleepy

Hanging Silents

Mr Sweet

Classic Daleks

Classic Daleks

New Paradigm Daleks

Bloody Monks

New Mondas

Emperor Davros

New Davros

Season 18 Console

Facing the Raven

Special Weapons

Exterminate?

Blue cat future

Console

Blue doors

Console room mood

HDoctor Who Experience – hello Menoptera!ello Menoptera!

Invasion of Earth

The Beginning

The News 23 November 1963

Doctor Who: End of the Experience Vworp! Vworp? Click-bait of course - we all know the Doctor Who experience will never end! Still though, in one corner of Cardiff Bay, it has.

Worst to Best Precure Seasons (Futari Wa - Go! Princess)

I’ve decided to do this just to get it off my chest. Remember, this is my personal opinion. Note: Max Heart and GoGo are not included in this because I honestly never had any interest in the sequel series.

SPOILERS FOLLOW 10. HappinessCharge Precure! I'm only 13 episodes into this season, but so far it's boring the crap out of me. The animation and their uniforms are beautiful, as is with most of the newer seasons, but I'm confused why they have SO many attacks and forms. Megumi/Lovely and Hime/Princess are kind of hard to watch; them, along with Yuuko/Honey seem pretty underdeveloped. I was expecting myself to like Hime because I had really loved Erika from HeartCatch, but she just doesn't have her charm and comes off as annoying. But, maybe my opinions will change as I continue with the season. FAVORITE CURE: Iona/Fortune 9. Yes! PreCure 5 I found this particular season to be pretty forgettable, unfortunately. Not only did I find Nozomi/Dream pretty annoying, I didn't approve of her thing with Coco because 1) he's kinda her teacher and 2) he's a chipmunk?? Like is she still attracted to him in his chipmunk form??? The whole thing is weird, and the same goes for Komachi/MintxNuts. Also, Milk was equally as annoying and this plot line wasn't too creative either. Plus, those Despair Mask-things were creepy af! FAVORITE CURE: Rin/Rouge 8. Suite PreCure One of my biggest problems with this season was the design. HeartCatch was such a big improvement in the animation from the previous seasons, and this one just looks like it falls flat. I kinda hated Kanade/Rhythm, and I had a couple of problems with Ako/Muse (specifically, I don't understand why, if she wanted to GET TO her father, why she disguised herself, or what the point of the disguise was at all). I did like her sassy personality though,and I was upset that they just sorta forgot about that once she joined the Cures. I will applaud this season's humor, villains, and Hibiki/Melody's characterization. FAVORITE CURE: Siren/Eren/Beat 7. Futari Wa Pretty Cure Splash Star As with most Precure fans, I assume, this season felt very similar to the Futari Wa. Saki/Bloom and Mai/Egret are pretty much descendants of the original pair, down to their personalities and voices. However, this season did feel a little newer, as it did introduce the whole "bad guys turn good and get Precure powers" trope with Michiru and Kaoru, even if they didn't officially become Precure. Also, Muup and Fuup are adorable af. However, I didn't understand why Saki and Mai got their Bright and Windy, forms, to be honest; it just didn't seem very necessary? Plus, the concept of two Precure forms wasn't really ever brought up again (not counting HappinessCharge). FAVORITE CURE: Saki/Bloom/Bright 6. Fresh Pretty Cure! When I first watched this season, I didn't like it very much because its animation looked stiff and the girls, besides Eas/Setsuna/Passion, barely had any difference in personality. However, I realize now that it was better than I thought it was. For example, I find this season to have the best use of the "bad guy turns good" trope; it's played out very nicely. This season also had a good deal of humor, especially in Westar and Soular (who I low key kinda shipped.) I also liked the idea of Love/Peach and Setsuna being adoptive sisters, since they had surprisingly good chemistry. I always saw Chiffon as just another damsel in distress, but Tarte is my bae because he was funny af and looked out for Chiffon like a big bro. Also, the concept of having the big-baddy be a computer was interesting and creative. FAVORITE CURE: Eas/Setsuna/Passion 5. DokiDoki! PreCure Okay, I can see why people love to hate this season, but personally, I kinda loved it. As mentioned before, the animation is beautiful, the girls and villains are well written (except for Aguri/Ace, which I'll get to), and the story is nice. Ai just overwhelms me with cuteness and Sebastian is the best side-character ever, I swear (he's basically Precure's Alfred Pennyworth). I think people hate the Mana/HeartxRegina pairing mostly because it takes up too much of the plot line, but I thought it was a nice divergence from the usual formula seen in Precure. Plus, they're pretty much canon already (they were holding hands in bed for fuck's sakes!) But there things with this one that will hang over my head every time I rewatch the scenes. One is Rikka/Diamond, who annoyed me just a little cause she was kind of a smartass. But my biggest problem is AGURI. Oh my lord, where do I start? How about the fact that she's like 9 in her normal form, but is suddenly 14 as Ace? Or that her transformation, while it is cool, is overdramatized and doesn't fit well with the others? Or how about the fact that when Mana becomes upset that she lost Regina again, Ace comes with no remorse and fucking TAKES AWAY HER LOVEADS??? FOR CRYING OVER A LOST LOVE??? Excuse me, bitch, what right do you have to determine whether or not a girl can be Precure. Get the fuck back, you're not helping. #LeaveManaAlone. Okay rant over lol. FAVORITE CURE: Mana/Heart 4. Futari Wa Pretty Cure Like with most franchises, the first is always a classic, and that's the case with Precure. Nagisa/Black and Honoka/White were both very likable characters, and I adored the love-hate relationship between Nagisa and Mepple. I liked how it was mostly hand-to-hand combat with this one, unlike the later seasons. I was also rooting immensely for the HonokaxKiriya pairing, and I was upset to hear that Kiriya is not even mentioned in Max Heart after what happened to him. I just felt like he was such a great anti-hero and they kinda just forgot about him entirely. FAVORITE CURE: Nagisa/Black 3. Smile PreCure! I will admit, I first watched this one as Glitter Force. However, I then went back and watched it as Smile, which was obviously better. This is the season that got me into Precure in the first place, and I'm glad it did. All of the girls are likable (notably Yayoi/Peace, she is my smol weeb bean and I luv and relate to her), their uniforms are easy on the eyes, and I loved their attacks. Joker was quite the villain too, especially for a kids' show. Everything in this one pops, and it just really uplifting, except for that one scene where they're all crying near the end. FAVORITE CURE: Yayoi/Peace 2. Go! Princess PreCure I had wanted to see this season for a while, after watching the transformation sequences ahead of time; when I did catch up to it, it was as good as I expected it to be. Everything about this season is so cool, from the proper-yet-badass style of the entire season to the girls' outfits and Keys. Pafu was really pretty, and Aroma was funny and cute too. While I didn't ship Haruka/FloraxKanata too much, Kanata is fuckin gorgeous, his hair is goals. This show definitely handled the whole dream motive better than Yes! 5, and I thought it was a great choice of character development to have the ever-optimistic Haruka lose her faith in her own dream when the one who initiated in the first place put her down for it. The girls are all great, Kirara/Twinkle is a queen of sass and super goals as well. I just wish they would've expanded on their future selves longer than the last 2 minutes of the series. One thing I wasn't a fan of in this season was those CGI attacks and scenes; they looked strange. FAVORITE CURE: Haruka/Flora 1. HeartCatch PreCure! You knew this was coming. Okay, so my first reason for this one topping the list is the animation style. It's vivid and energetic, just as the series itself is. I'm also lauding the much different tone of story in this one; it gives a sense of maturity in PreCure as a show for more than preteen girls. Specifically, my favorite parts were the whole Yuri/Moonlight vs. Dark PreCure battle (which contained some pretty fucking lit fight scenes) and Moonlight's history. I'm amazed they went as far to actually kill a fairy in this one, but I'm glad they decided to go through with it (not that I wanted little Cologne dead at all). I also loved Kaoruko/Flower as Tsubomi/Blossom's grandmother, I thought that was a nice twist. As with the others higher on this list, the girls are all well done, and this is the only season where I have more than one favorite cure. This season also had some pretty lit songs, and the final battle between the PreCure and Dune is pretty epic. FAVORITE CURE(S): Erika/Marine and Yuri/Moonlight

What Steven Moffat Doesn’t Understand About Grief, And Why It’s Killing Doctor Who

NOVEMBER 27, 2013 / TEA LEAVES AND DOG EARS

There’s a popular joke I’ve seen floating around on Tumblr for a while now. It goes like this:

“Joss Whedon, Steven Moffat and George R.R. Martin walk into a bar and everyone you’ve ever loved dies.”

Here’s the problem, though: George R. R. Martin and Joss Whedon are, of course, infamous for killing off the characters that they know are almost universally beloved by fans for precisely the reason that they are beloved and Martin and Whedon know it’ll have huge emotional impact. They pick the harmless bunny of the group and then give them some brutal offing — Tara on Buffy, Wash on Serenity, Ned Stark in A Game of Thrones being an easy handful of examples. But who has Steven Moffat actually killed off?

The two-parter that he wrote during the Christopher Eccleston/Russell T. Davies era literally ends with the Doctor blissfully proclaiming that “Just this once — everybody lives!” In fact, a woman who lost her leg years earlier is restored to bipedalism by space magic. It was an amazing, heartwarming scene specifically because of the first part of that sentence — “just this once.”

everybody lives

But apart from that two-part episode, the Davies era was plenty bloody. While Doctor Who is ostensibly a kid’s show, Davies made it clear that plenty of innocent people have been killed — often en masse — during especially high-stakes alien attacks despite the Doctor’s heroic intervention. And let’s not forget that Davies kicks off the entire reboot of the show by announcing that (nearly) all of the Time Lords and (nearly) all of the Daleks were wiped out by our genocidal and deeply guilt-ridden hero.

That was a hell of a way to re-introduce a popular kid’s show back to the airwaves, but it was perfect. It made the Doctor a new and mysterious character for people who’d never seen the show before, and it changed the way older fans looked at him. You couldn’t just continue down the same old lines and pick things up after all that time without some real change and expect it to work. And the change Davies employed worked beautifully. Until last week, of course — but we’ll touch on that later.

So let’s get back to the central question: who has Steven Moffat killed?

Well, on the last season of Sherlock, fans were reeling when Moffat had the show’s eponymous lead jump to his death, although with the promise that we’d find out how he faked it when the show resumed. So that doesn’t count.

sherlock

Well, what about Moffat’s next Who episode in Series 2, The Girl in the Fireplace? Reinette (Madame de Pompadour) dies, but she dies of old age because — and don’t even get me started on how annoying this concept is — the Doctor ditches her to go back in the fireplace one last time, apparently forgetting that it always results in a huge time jump. So that doesn’t quite count, as Moffat was fulfilling history.

Next up is Blink, Moffat’s first chilling installment of the once brilliant and now sadly tiresome Weeping Angels. Who dies? Well, the nice DI that Sally chats with dies of old age after being displaced in time. The same fate is afforded to Sally’s best friend, but she does manage to write a letter letting us know everything’s pretty much cool, because who wouldn’t want to be taken away from their family and friends to churn butter for 60 years?

But other than that? Nobody. A theme seems to be emerging.

The Silence in the Library and Forest of the Dead? Well, Moffat does kill off River Song and her whole crew, but then has their souls uploaded onto the library server so that they’ll never “truly” die. Again, it’s an extremely softened death, similar to the “old age/time displacement,” in that it’s sad but any real cause for grief has been removed.

Then Moffat, of course, took over the show as show runner. And once again, people just seem to keep… not dying. Part of the problem is that Moffat’s a big fan of the Giant Reset Button — so much so that he literally wrote in a Giant Reset Button into the episode Journey to the Center of the TARDIS. One step above the “It was all a dream” plot, the Giant Reset Button absolves the characters and the writers of any repercussions and they can carry on as they were, even though we, the audience, saw a “major event” that is evidently no longer relevant. You can have your fun and adventure, but you need not learn or grow or change from it.

friendly

Other notable not-deaths include any time Rory “died” in the series, the almost-people clones, the Doctor himself during the impossibly confusing 6th series finale, Vincent Van Gogh and, finally, The Ponds who were killed off exactly the way Sally’s security guard almost-lover in Blink was — by being displaced in time in such a way that the Doctor, for hand-wavey reasons, couldn’t just go pick them back up again and they seem to do just fine living in the past because they have each other, I guess.

All of this is leading up to my biggest problem of all: the recent 50th Anniversary Special in which Moffat, not merely content to sap any trace of blood or death or grief or loss from his own era, removed the basis of the show’s reboot plot:

big button

The mass genocide that the Doctor committed — all the people he killed and all of the times he wrestled with that decision and was forced to come to the conclusion that it was for the best — simply never happened now. All of the amazing episodes in which the Doctor, overcome with grief, spoke about the tragic necessity of his decision are rendered meaningless by this newly-invented War Doctor who allegedly “didn’t count” until now. Now he counts. Maybe. Because of the magic of love and Bad Wolf.

Now of course you can argue that the show plays with time constantly, and that it’s possible that this is a new time stream in which it didn’t happen, and that’s all well and good. But the fact of the matter is that from this point on, the Doctor is no longer complicated by this event. Moffat, who has never had the best track record with character development as it is, has actively written a plot which removes an enormous amount of change and progression from the show’s lead character.

But more importantly than that, when you have no death, when nothing truly has weight or scale, when decisions don’t stick and nobody feels the consequences… it’s hard to care about anything. The stakes on the show feel so low at this point that a once addictive program is unengaging, dull and hollow. Even the 50th special had no real gravitas because we were basically watching a plot be un-done, rather than made. We were watching a character be un-banished, rather than created. For a celebration of 50 years of a television show, it felt awfully like a celebration of a writer who’s only been running it for 4 years. And, perhaps most irritatingly for a Davies fan, the complete erasure of everything that was developed during that previous era.

I don’t think it’s an insult against Davies, though — Moffat does it constantly to himself. Amelia Pond grows up without parents because they were erased by a crack in space and time. When they are restored to her by virtue of yet another giant re-set button, we never see them again. Amy rarely talks about them. You cannot have a character whose parents were taken from her at a young age, who then gets them back — and remembers that she had lost them in the first place — and not see a perceivable change in said character. Similarly, you cannot rob that character of her baby, remove her ability to have children, and have the biggest consequence be that she becomes a model who’s moody with her husband for his own good.

model

Or take the latest companion: Clara cannot live and die hundreds of times for her good buddy the Doctor (who she’d known for, what, a month?) and then basically brush it off like it’s nothing.

We can talk for days about Moffat’s other problems as a writer — the sexism, the homophobia — and those are all valid complaints, but what will always be my biggest gripe is his fear of consequences. When you cannot deal properly with grief or loss or change, you cannot write believable characters or interesting stories. And as long as this show lacks believable, real, characters and engaging stories, it will continue to suffer. So please, for the good of Doctor Who, shed a little blood and actually deal with it. Revel in consequences. Let your human characters behave like humans. In short: restore the heart to a dying show.

Friday, May 12, 2017

I am not often critical of Supernatural. There, I said it. I’ve invested too much time and energy into the Winchesters to be incredibly critical of the show. But, after last night’s episode (12×21), I am going to be critical. Whether it was the fault of the writers or the showrunners doesn’t really matter much to me, but I still have an opinion.

Lauren Cohan, as Bela Talbot.

Since the very beginning of Supernatural, I think everyone knew that this was a story about men. A story about the relationships men have with each other, with themselves, and with the people they surround themselves with. But, one thing Supernatural has dropped the ball on is their female characters. Beginning in Season 3 with Ruby and Bela, both of those chracters were added as antagonists to the Winchesters, but also love interests, but by the end of the season, they were both dead.

Both incarnations of Ruby. L is Katie Cassidy, and R is Genevieve Cortese (now Padalecki).

Conveniently, in Season 4, Ruby was brought back, and she served only one purpose; to turn Sam to the dark side and get him to kill Lillith. She succeeded, but she was killed off and we’ve never seen her again… well, unless you count the actress who played her coming back for an episode because she and Jared ended up getting married.

Since then, we’ve seen some incredible female characters in Sherriff Jody Mills, Sherriff Donna Handscum, Claire Novak, Alex Jones, Charlie Bradburry, and even this season, Mary Winchester.

From L to R, top to bottom: Jo Harvelle, Bela Talbot, Ruby (Ver. 2), Meg, Charlie, Sherriff Mills, Rowena, Claire Novak, and Ellen Harvelle.

All of them are strong, independent, women, who feel, but also can be amazing and kill monsters. One of the times that the fandom was most upset was when Charlie was killed off in Season 10. Her first appearance was supposed to be her last, in Season 7, but the fandom liked her so much, that she was brought back multiple times through the seasons. She was killed at the end of Season 10 and left in a motel room bathtub. The fandom was in a rage, because 1) Charlie was a lesbian and a geek, but that didn’t make up her whole character, 2) She deserved better than that, and 3) We all loved Felicia Day, the actress who played her. The writers of the episode where she died, Brad Buckner and Eugene Ross-Lemming, known as Bucklemming, got a ton of backlash, and the showrunner at the time was under fire from the fandom.

Eileen Leahy

Fast forward to Season 11, we meet Eileen Leahy for the first time. She is presented as a hunter who is searching for the banshee that killed her family. While she is a strong, wonderful woman, she is also deaf. She was played by Shoshanna Stern, who is actually deaf, and I can’t explain how happy I was to see someone with disabilities be presented on a show about people who need all of their wits about them in order to succeed. In addition, it appeared that she and Sam had a bond, and I always want to see my Sam happy. She was brought back for an episode in Season 12, and it was made clear that the British Men of Letters were after her for ACCIDENTALLY killing one of their men. Again, the writers of last night’s episode, Bucklemming, have a history of bad writing/story telling, and treating women badly. Within the first three minutes of the episode, Eileen is killed by a hell hound, and the only other thing we hear from her is that she wrote the Winchesters a letter asking if she could come bunk with them because she was being followed.

I mean, REALLY. REALLY. Eileen didn’t deserve this, and if anything, I would have been more okay with it if we got to see her actually do something in the episode, rather than be killed off by a hellhound and not say a single word in the time she was onscreen. The fandom has blown up over her death, and last night #FireBucklemming was trending on Twitter. If it wasn’t enough that they killed her, they seem to not know the characters. They always dumb down Crowley, who has proven himself to be a smart, cunning demon more than once, and there were so many obvious plot holes that I wanted to scream. For example, at the end of the episode, Mr. Ketch, who works for the BMOL, leaves Sam, Dean, and Lady Bevell (we’ll talk about her another time) in the bunker. Through his obviously expository dialogue, we find out that when he and a brainwashed Mary (another issue) leave, they will have two days before they die. Come on. Anyone who has ever left the Winchesters alone has always ended up in a really bad spot. Sam and Dean have always been able to get themselves out of a tight spot, and to assume that this would be the thing that kills them is completely ludicrous and unfair. I mean they escaped a maximum security prison and avoided getting caught. With all of the resources of the Men of Letters, I doubt Sam and Dean would have a problem (and after having seen the episode the following week, they didn’t. Dean + grenade launcher = FREEDOM!).

Claire Novak, Sherriff Mills, and Alex Jones.

I’ve been so hopeful because Season 11 was decent and Season 12, for the most part, has been great, and then to have an episode like this a week before the last two episode’s air is really dissapointing. I am on the #FireBucklemming bandwagon, because I watch Supernatural to see people I relate to. While Sam and Dean are the clear protagonists, and I relate to them, I love relating to the women in Supernatural, because I may never be as awesome as them, but I relate to their struggles. I don’t like seeing people killed off in service of the story, and/or for shock value. If you’re going to kill someone, make it mean something.

Monday, August 14, 2017

The logo for the Wayward Daughters campaign, also known as Wayward AF.

After several months, I am so happy because we are getting a spin off, starring Sherriffs Mills and Handscum. Titled Wayward Sisters (or Daughters, I can’t remember), this series will focus on Jody and her wayward band of misfits. I’m super excited because we get to see the hunting world through their eyes, rather than through the eyes of Sam and Dean. Jody, Donna, Alex, and Claire all have rich histories in the hunting world, and I’m excited to see how they deal with the world that they were unintentionally shown. It gives me hope that we can see some amazing development in this series.

So, that’s all for now, but I’ll be back next week. Also sorry about last week. High Holidays are a thing. 🙂 xoxo: Kate

    Kim Rhodes (Sherriff Mills). If she looks familiar, think Disney Channel.

Brianna Buckmaster (Sherriff Donna Handscum).

I'm late! Sorry. A blog all about the huntresses on Supernatural. Written months ago. Friday, May 12, 2017 I am not often critical of Supernatural. There, I said it. I've invested too much time and energy into the Winchesters to be incredibly critical of the show.