Izeinwinter

Ehh... I actually found Amy and Liam's high speed social scheming funny as hell, and not crazy at all. I mean, it would eventually become a bad thing if they kept returning to this well, but for the situation, it made sense, and was well done. I also think Liam is just angsting over the wrong thing entirely. The way his grandparents handled his momsters teen pregnancy ? Fine. That's actually a reasonable enough response if abortion is off the table. The fact that they are practicing dynastic marriage like it's the year 1342 ? Much worse. Re: The waitress. Amy was not oblivious at all. Actually, that was a gorgeous "meet cute" and an impressive display of social intelligence / gaydar on both sides. I mean experiment and experience both tell me people (and I myself) are abysmal at recognizing flirting, but Amy and Regan didnt miss a beat. The only bit of that scene that worries me is.. Contact info? I mean, how the heck is Amy going to find that girl again.

This episode was pretty clearly an excuse to put Rita Volk in full gala, I approve. Gosh, was she rocking the high femme, and Rita is just a walking blaze of chemistry. Never mind the cute waitress - she was getting the once over by his momster too... You know what, that would have been so much better an end to season 1. Instead of sleeping with Liam, bang slinky squirkle lady when she shows up to fetch Liam, then end the season on "YOU SLEPT WITH MY MOTHER?" The waitress was enormously cute, tough. And Laverne Cox was just obviously having more fun than most people ever manage with their clothes on.

Re: Felicity's finances: I figure that her actual income .. and what keeps the arrow in arrows.. is emptying the shady bank accounts of the criminals they bust. She has a job because being without visible means of support is suspicious, and it's difficult to buy health insurance with twice-stolen money in a cayman islands account. Because her clothes? She isn't buying those, Olivers bed, or a fern with what they pay her at that store. Sara; Not really sunk in yet, mostly because I just cant imagine her staying dead. I mean, unless Caity has enough movies lined up that she couldn't stay it just seems so.. daft.. There are like.. 2 actresses I can think of with comparable physicality, and they are both much, much more expensive.

I'm not sure why the heck the show keeps thinking more focus on Liam is a good idea. I mean, for season 1, I can see why the writers would think he would go over well. There are just a tonne of characters out there astonishingly like him with huge fanbases defending them past all reason, and by the time it became obvious that fandom reaction was "Hottie Doucheface", season one was in the can. But.. ehr.. why are they doubling down?

Re: the nine million. That was a grant to the university. Universities have accounting departments, so Harold can't actually spend that money as he pleases. His salary? Yes. Not the full endowment of the chair he is occupying - What the money did was to buy him a job. Given that the machine appears to be perfectly happy to do the "Research and publishing" part of the job, it is a near total sinecure, which is why he can spend so much time at HQ without blowing cover. I do however wonder... is the machine grading the papers his students turn in too? ;)

Karma's boundaries are so bad. This may be down to the fact that she hasn't had any other major female friendships, so the fact that her intimacy levels with Amy are set to "We've been married for years" seems perfectly normal to her. I mean, that conversation leading up to the tickle fight.. Really Karma? And the actual tickling was really just foreplay. This is a major reason I would like to see Amy get an actual girlfriend - because there is some comedy gold to be mined here. Not just jealousy, actually, it's probably better if there isn't any, but just hanging a gigantic lamp shade on the fact that she's been Amy's girlfriend for years in every sense except sex.

The hydra people who had the 084 originally believed it to hold the answer to death. So, yhea, Lucy will be back. Also, Coulson is a colossal ass. He's operating with absolutely no legal remit, and if we are judging his actions by his results, well: The only thing he needed to do to defuse this entire threat was to send a dossier on mister absorbo to the USG. Which Coulson's team actually stood there and pointed out! The cell he was in was perfectly designed to hold his 084 buttocks locked up for eternity, *if the guards knew what he was*. So "let the proper authorities deal with it" was 100% an option on the table. Instead, it's raid army base, steal shit time. Which appears to have gotten those guards killed, several of Coulson employees killed or wounded, mister absorbo loose, and oh yes, now hydra has the Obelisk. And for all those looses, his team gained.. a cloaked airplane, which Fitz would almost certainly have managed to build them sooner or later anyway. And the kicker is, it only didn't end in a total party kill because of writer fiat. 5 people raiding a secure installation like that and hanging around after the alarm sounds should end up with *all* of them dead or in custody Are we sure Coulson isn't hydra? Because he*s sure doing them lots of favors.

It occurs to me that the machine might well have intended Harold to read the entire thing - I mean, is it really that predictable that his new boss would be so anal as to helpfully bookmark the spelling errors? Well, maybe. But "The etics of high-speed decision making"? That is not a random topic! Isn't this what the machine does ?

Katrina did do one thing. She stabbed the horseman in the hand, then promptly stopped fighting. I'm kind of hoping that was about getting an ichor sample so she can hex him blind when he is no longer standing in the actual room. Because that would make sense. If she is passive because attempting magic or escape while he is *right there* would be futile, then she isn't being a wet noodle, she's being sane. - Jenny was after all being guarded by a cultist when she made her move, not by Henry himself!

Erhh.. The show was dropping hints on that front from the start. Very intense reactions to seeing her neighbour in deshabile, her repsonse to Franks high-as-a-kite daughter calling her a goddess, It would be a better story if the affair was with Helen, and it wouldn't have been hard to set up, either. Just have her actually meet her while nosying around. - The neighbor isn't really tied into any of the other plots, but Helen ? Helen is a true potential rival, to Charlie as a scientist, and in his wife's affections, because she's got a claim to having even more brains than he does, and is far more socially adept.

The thing is that Frank is being a moron about *everything*. Including the working hours. Is the project going to run to completion in the next four weeks? No? Then death-marches don't work. No amount of motivation is going to to overcome the toll of over-work, and you will get less done than the guy keeping bankers hours. He just flat out isn't suited to lead. Well, anything.

I didn't see that coming either, but on reflection, it feels like I should have. Faking it is in large measure "Fanfiction; The series", and well... cough... Alternate... genital arrangements are a major trope. Whats next, groundhog day? The zombie apocalypse?

I don't think Defiance *is* going to become independent again. Been there, done that, returning to that status quo means loosing all the characters tied to the Erep, and doing stories that are more globally oriented with a base in an politically independent city state-let would be nonsensical - It seems more likely that with the top of the E-rep political hierarchy and machinery annihilated we will get to see some reforms and power-grabs. Amanda used to work for them, pulling her back in would be trivial, and the Tarrs getting mixed back into politics doesn't strain credibility much either.

I am currently pondering just how deep the rabbit-holes go for various of these plot points. I mean: Did Pilar kidnap her daughter and inlaw because she wanted them away from Stahma and she's nuts, or is she operating under VC orders? if the second one, what exactly is their goal here - leverage over Stahma? Am I supposed to take the Kaziri plot at face value or not? Because I don't see how Nolan and Irisa end up in a life-support bubble if the Kaziri is dead. I mean, net results of the events shown: VC and Erep - scratch capitals. No more ark-falls or razor rain, because the debris cloud got vaped. Kaziri presumed destroyed. That could all be a plot, or I could be engaging in epileptic trees reasoning. If this is all a case of an AI running game on everyone, on the upside Tommy is probably not all that dead. I actually found it quite difficult to believe Amanda /wouldn't/ just shoot the Tarr's. It doesn't fit too well with her willingness to put a bullet in Irisa later that very day either. I love Berlin to bits.

Yhea, well, the entire votan star system has to be someone's pet science project - The biochemistry is compatible enough with earth that we can eat each others food, there are diseases that hit multiple species,, the cross-fertility, the very minor variations between species... (except the gulanites! ). The ridiculus number of lifebearing worlds around one star.. Someone raided earth for seedstock a loong time ago, and did a whole bunch of terraforming in the votan star system. And someone in the loop of picking targets when they ran knew. (..how? Ancient stone tablets?)

This cliche kind of needs the critiquing party to have their house in better order in *some* respect or other, and going off what we have seen of votan society so far? Not so much. On the other hand, I am seriously doubting even the *kaziri* means what it is saying - That entire scene in the tent was contrived as fuck. Tommy magically cures himself while he has Nolan dead to rights, then none of the people with arkbrain in them notice he isn't one of them anymore? That's just.. quite hard to swallow. It seems more likely the AI is working Nolan, and from that perspective, the speech is about maximum emotional impact to unbalance him. But.. why not just infest Nolan, then? Gah. Confused.

The bit with Tommy conveniently vomiting up the arkbrain infestation is suspect as hell. There was no triggering event for that to happen at that precise moment. If Nolan had tazered Tommy or something, that would be one thing, but the chain of events as shown only really make sense if the Kaziri let him go, and.. Uhm.. what the heck is it trying to accomplish?

Murder, plots and schemes are all calculated risks. In such endeavors, she pits herself against enemies, against the world. It is a high stakes game - the highest of stakes - but it is a contest with rules on can understand. Seeing the dead walking around puts your sanity, or your understanding of the workings of reality in doubt. That is an entirely different order of fear. And for someone like Stahma "And I may be loosing my mind" would be especially intolerable.

Going back to the murdered knitting circle - I figure that Stahma needed a story for the casti to tell themselves about why they were going against sacred authority. Seeming is being, remember. Siding with Stahma against a clergyman known to be incorruptible would have required the casti in defiance to give up their self-image. If he just vanishes, they would have to cast her down in retribution, even if that required mobilizing a riot and burning half the quarter down. But stitching him up? Well he looks guilty, so he is guilty! That doesnt cause so much as a ripple in the social order, and anyone who suspects what actually went down can turn a blind eye out of fear and still maintain the all-important appearances.

He is plotting an armed uprising against the earth republic. The E-rep was going to forcibly upload the spy's entire memory to get at the location of the new york bomb, but his entire memory would include Datak's plot, at which point Datak gets put in front of a firing squad. Or, if they are feeling really ironic, on a shaming rack. I figure killing the spy didn't actually do him any good, because the E-rep had been watching the porter for a while, so most likely, his entire little scheme is going to come to a really embarrassing end. Also, suspect that Stahma knows this, and just had him do the deed to cover up her own involvement with the guy, which was executed with sufficient discretion that the E-Rep can't nail her without the memories. She's not reconciling - she's giving the walking dead man one last shag.

.. Protocol for any kind of emergency responder is to not do work related to your family. Informal reality is that cases involving kin of police get taken very seriously, so the realistic take would be "are you stupid? I called it in" -> Cut to exterior shot of absolutely insane overkill number of cops showing up.

The conversation with Stahma indicated they had been keeping an eye on the night porter for a while. They hauled him in because learning where the bomb was took priority over anything they could learn from passive surveillance. He didn't tell the E-rep anything about Dathak and Rafe, but he didn't need to, if the E-rep has been watching him, they already know, and are presumably just giving them enough rope to hang themselves with. This is standard spycraft - heck, the E-rep seems really fond of video, so there is a good chance Dathak is on tape. So.. Kenya: Wth ? Why on earth would the votan collective have her on hand to black mail Amanda with at all? If Stahma shipped her to Brazil, there is no way to get her to defiance fast enough, so... Is Stahma secretly their chief intelligence officer for north america? (That would be funny as all hell) I suppose that whole getup the ransoming thug was wearing could hide one of her handmaidens as well as anyone else.. The only other option that makes sense is if they happened to have her there to use as leverage on Stahma, and changed plans or something. The Kaziri: We already knew it doing mass conversions, so what did we learn? Well, it is talking to all it's converts, not just little miss prophet.And it has a plan, it calls ark rise. Uhm. I have a feeling it means something entirely different to the shipmind than it does to the VC.

Okay, so the E-rep learn about the bomb plot, and promptly haul in the nightporter/spy. That pretty much has to mean they have known about him for a while, and left him in place as basic spycraft to learn his contacts, plots, ect.. So Rafe and Datak are utterly fucked. It's unclear how long his cover had been compromised, but if it is more than.. 3 days or so, the E-rep knows all about their little scheme. I have a feeling those weapon shipments may have acquired.. After-market modifications.. or something.

Okay, at this point, I think we have to consider that Jason is a goddarn incubus. Hoyt's sweetheart likes him enough to follow him on a trip from one of the only safe places on earth into... well, basically, hell-on-earth, and she is still showing interest? Nobody is that hot. It's goddarn farie glamour. Which in turn implies that the only women he ever slept with who can be considered to have been in their right minds at the time are Jessica and Violet. Erh.. So, Jessica. The doctor suddenly having urgent buisness elsewhere when she learned Sookies Bloodline was hilarious. Theory: Nial's bloodline has a twisted version of the universal fairy telepathy. The reason every human in bon-temps is so stupid is that every time she reads their minds, she makes them ever so slightly dumber. She is, basically, a walking disaster area. Violet put the frighteners on Adilyn to get Jessica to show up., and that is also why she was playing them so gently up until that point - appears a vampire cant use the blood bond to find someone who is calm. That house is just hilarious, tough.

The DJ's plot.. makes no sense. I mean, if she was running a short con, what she is doing might work - it can easily take people far longer to put the pieces together than it does for you to be long gone. But she wants to *marry into the family*. And she has to know about Stahma. She used to be Datak's favorite whipping post. So what is her end goal here? To sit on a social timebomb with Moriarty for a mother-in-law? That's not a plan, that is a death wish. I think she is supposed to be the anti-kenya, someone who was made much harsher by a life of prostitution, the whore with a heart of flint, as it were. But her plot still needs to not be an obvious (Obvious to her, even!) ticket to a shallow grave <,< Id really have been much happier if she had been aiming at seducing her way into a triad or position as junior wife / shared concubine, because that at least would be less doomed.