Something I haven’t really seen talked about with the Knights of Guinevere pilot is the frames at the beginning. It’s both a callback to traditional fairytales, and a neat way to establish a few things about our story.
Usually, when you put something in a frame in animation, it’s because you want the audience to pay attention to it: introducing a character, a big reveal, it can even be used as a misdirect that gets explained later.
Starting at the beginning of the Pilot, let’s look at each character framed:
Our first character framed is Olivia, and it’s a really fun frame to talk about: When this frame pops up, the narration is talking about a Princess “locked away [by] machines that run on blood and fear.” Of course, seeing Olivia framed while that’s being monologued, one would assume Olivia is the Princess…however, the next few scenes seem to poke holes in that: we see a shot from Gwen’s perspective on the bed, then Olivia tries to “fix” her. Everything seems…off.
Of course, we then get the scene of Orville calling for Olivia and showing her the park, but that sense of wrongness stays, until…
We’ve already seen Gwen’s face in the pilot…but the narrative wants us to focus specifically on her gored out body. The viewer realizes that she’s the princess, and the Parks are the machines that run on blood and fear.
(Also, as a fun lil foreshadowing, Orville never gets a frame for himself. He isn’t a main character.)
The frame pans up to guinevere’s face, but the image of her organs spilling out of her body sticks with the viewer.
Also, before I forget: Gwen is the only framed character looking directly at the viewer: Olivia, Frankie, and Andi are in profile in all of their frames, but Gwen looks at the viewer.
This looks like something you’d see in a book of fairytales, even despite the gore. I love how the background is a warm, almost inviting glow, but the foreground is in silhouette, the only color coming from the characters being the blue stuff from inside Gwen. Again, the narrative is telling us to pay attention to this: Gwen is trapped by these people, literally being almost killed by them. It doesn’t matter how beautiful and inviting the park looks, the pain and suffering Gwen has to go through stands out starkly. It’s terrifying, in a very visceral way.
The final frame is of our main characters as kids, Andi and Frankie. It’s a fun frame for 2 reasons: for one, we’ve only gotten one frame up until now, so getting two framed characters in the same shot means that these two are connected. Indeed, Andi’s frame has a line that transfers right into Frankie’s, showing that they are indeed, connected. It’s the narrative again telling us information subconsciously before anything is shown.
These are all of the frames I found, so idk how to end this, aside from the fact that I think it’s cool that they combine sci-fi iconography into fantasy iconography with the ornamentation, that’s pretty cool.
I hope they use more frames in the future, and that we get to see more of KoG
Anya is live and ready to show you everything. Watch her strip, dance, and perform exclusive shows just for you. Interact in real-time and make your fantasies come true.
✓ Live Streaming✓ Interactive Chat✓ Private Shows✓ HD Quality✓ Free Actions
Free to watch • No registration required • HD streaming
I received a DM from @daniqueeninabox asking: where is the door into the rover?
Well, I'll tell you: There is no door. There was a way in, but not anymore.
From deadlymelodic's concept art, we can see that there is a ladder up onto the top of the submersible to a hatch...
...but in later iterations of this vessel, it's gone, with nothing but the ladder remaining:
They took the hatch off, and what's left is a smooth panel. We can further confirm this by having a look at the interior ceiling, where the hatch would have been:
This implies that Simon was shoved into the rover from above and fell into it.
Into pitch black darkness, with nothing but the sounds of echoing machinery and people from the outside.
We see upon entering the tow ship, that the power is cut for safety reasons. I mean, it's pitch black in there:
The only reason the x-ray camera went off was due to David accidentally wiring it to the back-up battery. Otherwise, the power would have been cut off from that, too.
So, Simon would've been sitting in there with a bright screeching light above his head, probably trying to avoid flying sparks, as he watched them seal his fate.
There's a whole missing scene to be implied here if you think about it. Horrifying.
Here's the thing about being unloved by a parent: You don't receive the proper lessons on how to love yourself.
We don't know how old Robby was when his mother abandoned him but we can infer by the way he speaks of it that he was old enough to remember. He was either dumped at his grandmother's, or the state got involved when he was abandoned and he was placed with her.
The thing about childhood development is that we learn so much from our first interactions with our parents. There's a saying that you don't really become "people" until you turn five because that's when a child really begins to gain consciousness of the world around them. But in terms of SEL (Social Emotional Learning), those lessons begin very early.
If his mother couldn't be bothered to love him the way she should have, then Robby never learned that he should love himself. His grandmother, however, most likely taught him to love others, even through loving him. We've seen his capacity to love others. He's compassionate, empathetic, and deeply caring. It's like if you spent your early formative years with a parent who called you ugly and then as you aged you lived with someone who saw beauty, you would learn to see beauty as well. But not in yourself. It doesn't matter how often someone tells you that you're beautiful, you are unable to believe them, but as soon as someone tries to say that another person isn't, you can cut in and correct it. This is the same thing. Objectively, Robby knows love. Subjectively, it's foreign to him.
His SEL has been stunted by a mother who abandoned him. Judging by the percentages of mothers who abandon their children, chances are that while in her care, she neglected him as well.
All of this culminates into an adult with a capacity to love and care for other people, but not for himself.
If his mother rejected him, there must be something fundamentally wrong with him, right? At least that's what he is thinking.
Never mind that his father isn't mentioned at all. He's obviously not in the picture, otherwise Robby would have gone to him and not his grandmother. Now we have two parents that have rejected and abandoned him.
Keep in mind his empathy for Baby Jane Doe -- an infant also rejected by her mother.
Robby needs to feel useful in order to feel like he can be deserving of kindness and grace. Which could be another symptom of his mother abandoning him and/or the time he did spend with her prior. She may have demanded things from him. Potentially only showed kindness or gave praise when he was useful to her.
That's another lesson learned.
Unfortunately, by the time he gets to his grandmother, these things are ingrained. I've been using C-PTSD to describe a lot of his symptoms, and I've received a little pushback for that, but I'm holding my ground with this. Especially with the new information we have. This is childhood trauma, and it deeply shapes a person's mental health and their life experience.
Robby can't love himself but he knows what it is. He's begging without saying for someone to love him. He needs to feel useful to feel deserving. If he does decide to end it all, maybe if he leaves the ED a little better, then someone will look upon his portrait with the same love he looks upon Adamson's. If he can be useful, then maybe someone will finally love him. But Dana told him in 2x12 that he wasn't needed. She didn't mean it like that, but to a mentally ill person, it's going to be read in the worst way possible. And all Robby wanted was reassurance that he's useful and thus loved.
The thing is, he is loved. But he's been so damaged by his mother that he can't see it. Knowing how to love and knowing how to be loved are two completely separate things.
These types of parental injuries, these wounds will fester over time. And the worst part is the child-then-adult often doesn't have the lived experience to know and parse through the mud to figure it out. This is normal to them. And normal doesn't need fixing.
Nothing is a bigger reminder that Stranger Things is more concerned with 80s aesthetics rather than being period accurate quite like getting their lesbian character to make an STD joke. Like... I'm sorry, what?
Picture it. The year is 1989. You're a lesbian. You've moved out of your small town and you've final got other queer friends. Yet, there's one big thing impacting that community, obviously it's HIV. The media is using it to demonise the community, the government isn't helping as much as it should, and if you don't know someone who's impacted by it, you know somebody, who knows somebody, who is.
And for whatever reason, you look at your friend, your best friend, who you love dearly, who, yes, is known for sleeping around, and make an STD joke about him. Around, may I add, Jonathan who both has a gay brother and is currently living in New York.
This post is going to be long and is going to dive into my (non-scientific) thoughts about the Good Omens Series Finale and the subsequent fandom fracture, including thoughts on behaviors of fans and specifically a call to action for fandom community leaders (server owners, event organizers, Tumblr Community creators, etc.). It will touch on some of the more triggering head canons that have come out of the Good Omens fandom regarding the series, but we will not be diving into those.
This is going to be long, and anyone who comments without reading the whole thing with takes about how I'm wrong/condescending/stupid for liking the finale/whatever is going to be blocked on sight. This is mostly me just getting my thoughts out and frankly I'm not interested in debating with the kinds of people who have been crawling into my ask box with hatred. I have better ways to spend my time.
So, I've been thinking thoughts since May 13th, but recently these thoughts have really crystalized for me. I largely have to thank whatever anon(s) keep sending some really fascinating takes plus the sock puppet account screaming on one of my posts, as well as watching folks interact and behave in large Good Omens Discord server spaces.
I think there's currently this thought process that there are really two main GO camps in the fandom: those who loved the finale, and those who did not. And somewhere there is a middle of group of those who are "unsure." I would like to challenge this idea.
And in challenging it, I am specifically going to talk about the death of nuance in how people relate to stories and media.
What I've realized is that a lot of folks seem to think that those of us who like the ending, or have positive feelings towards it, all think it's a happy ending. This is not true. I know this is not true because, frustrated by the state of fandom, I started @gomens-timeaftertime, a Discord Server (TAT) for folks who liked the Series Finale. This is a "small" server of 100 people only because I have put a membership limit on it. Otherwise based on how we've had to kick people who were not active, the number of requests I have to join, and folks who were interested in participating in our Warm Close event but hesitant to join a Discord Server, TAT would be a lot larger if I had the bandwidth to moderate more people. Which I don't. So.
But the point is, in TAT the takes on the Series Finale are wildly varied. There are several people who found the ending to be a happy one (lots of reincarnation, snow globe, multi-verse, sort of head canons there). There are as many people who found the ending to be a sad one (Aziraphale and Crowley as we know them are gone, the world as we knew it is over, and similar head canons).
And these are all people who still enjoyed the ending and are having a great time Slorching about. We are picking apart details, putting together fan events, screaming, analyzing and when we complain, because we do complain, our complaints are largely focused on the loss of 6 full episodes. Because I think no matter what you thought of the ending, we can all agree that that deserved 6 episodes and fuck NG and fuck Amazon for all the shit that took that away from us.
The conclusion that one can draw from such a varied group is that the ending of Good Omens S3 is complicated. It can be interpreted in a myriad of different ways, and it is, in the most Good Omens sense, an ending steeped in shades of grey.
Which I find, personally, to be beautiful.
Anyway, "sad" has not been equated to "bad" within this community. We leave space for those who are mourning, but they still jump on the "Ice Cream Truck Bentley's eyes FOLLOW HER PAPA" excitement train.
Therefore it's my belief that the issue amongst the larger fandom is that there are some people who are of the opinion that sad/uncomfortable = bad. Bad writing, bad production, bad directing, bad. These are the folks who hurl accusations such as S3 being a "bury your gays" ending when the finale explicitly ends with a married queer presenting couple sitting in a house they presumably own and being sweet together. They also are writing break downs of how the ending is an abusers final gotcha, ignoring years of interviews and comments from NG, STP, Rob Wilkins, Rhianna Pratchett, and more all confirming that the ending has existed for a long time, and that it is a collaborative ending between the two writers, and that the goal had always been between NG and the Pratchett Estate, to deliver. Also it ignores that said abuser wrote the ending before his abuse was made public, so he had no reason to write a final "gotcha" when at the time he was still working under the assumption he would not be found out and he would still continue to create more and more series (Sandman comes to mind, but also fuck NG).
Folks are picking and choosing what interviews to include in their defense of "this is clearly a Bad Thing" instead of coming to terms with the fact that the ending was not what they expected, and that is disappointing. They point at the genre labels (a deeply flawed labeling system of stories across media types meant to promote marketing and sales and not actually indicative of the story content itself). They point at specific quotes and ignore full interviews (specifically interviews where the contradictions are addressed as information previously NDA'd or unpromised was intentionally kept under wraps). They invent thoughts on how the entertainment industry works (there is no secret cabal trying to personally victimize you in the writers room, and frankly if this was a cash grab, they would've gone with a less divisive ending). They applaud someone for taking an illegal recording of an unaware actor who is making a glib remark (and let it be known, having worked in the industry: actors know what you're looking for pretty quickly when you ask them questions and will not hesitate to say whatever they think will keep themselves safe, "on your side" and make you go away faster, especially if they are under the impression that they are not be recorded).
In sum, these "fans" are using their personal interpretation (aka: head canon) of an intentionally complicated ending, and justifying the vitriol and disrespect they are spilling on other fans, the cast, the crew, the creators, the Estate, and more, by saying that the ending was, unequivocally "bad" and anyone who doesn't agree with them is wrong, stupid, an abuse apologist, and more.
Because why? Because it wasn't a clear cut happy ending? We know that the finale was already adjusted to fit the times (Jesus showing up as a celebrity on a giant plane has very different vibes in 2026 than in 1996.) So we know that this ending was conjured during a different time. And while the time we are currently living in is harder, increasing the desire for more uncomplicated happy endings, that doesn't mean we are entitled to such endings.
So okay, there's all of that.
Let's talk more about the fandom fracture.
Because the thing is, when the finale came out, I was a community leader in some large fandom spaces. And as someone who truly loved the ending (I love how complicated it is, I love that it is both gut wrenching [Michael destroyed their universe, and they decided to accept it to free themselves, and that means they are gone] and uplifting [fuck me am I a slut for soul mates and reincarnation tropes. They found each other again in a different life, a real life, without the movie framing, the found each other and got to make their own choices, and fuck that's what it is to escape a fucked up system and live, truly live, wow, does this mean they keep going and keep finding each other again and again? It must]) it was incredibly difficult for me to sit and watch people not just be sad, but be angry.
And this is where I think as a fandom we fucked up.
In trying to give space to those who were grieving a complicated ending, and the end of an era, and a show that should've gotten 6 hours, not 90 minutes, we legitimized those who decided "sad" and "not what I wanted to see" equals "bad writing/production/directing." In doing so, we gave them the space to come up with conspiracy theories ("not STP's ending", you know, a dead man who can't speak for himself, and I guess we can say fuck you to his living loved ones who fought for this ending?, "NG wants to abuse us all", I cannot even with this one it is so deeply insulting to his actual assault victims. Stop., "NG actually had a different ending in mind, and the six episode script will prove it", ... what.)
In doing this, we harmed the rest of the fandom, both those who enjoyed the ending and fell more towards the bittersweet to happy interpretation of the ending, as well as those who actually needed the space to process and just thought it was a sad ending, without ascribing bad to it.
So when I say things like "you're allowed to just...not like the ending" this is not me saying that the ending was happy, actually, get over it. Nor is it me saying you gotta buck up and smile. Its me saying you should take a step back and look at this ending more objectively. Do you actually hate the ending? Or did it just make you sad? It can be both! You can hate the ending because it made you sad and you wanted to be happy--but then that's on you to grapple with. No one went out to "do" this to you. No one went "You know what, let's make this a sad ending specifically to ruin this person's life." It's just a story, and sometimes stories have sad endings. And frankly, this is why I often tell people I don't "do" in progress media. My anxiety struggles with cliff hangers and I absolutely read the wiki summary before committing to a thing to make sure the ending is going to be what I want it to be. Good story telling can hurt and sometimes I'm into it. And sometimes, I'm not.
And maybe if it just made you sad, you should think about distancing yourself from communities where people are mad. Because it's okay to be sad about an ending meant to be complicated and at least a little sad (if not more). But that doesn't mean you've gotta throw the whole thing, including your fandom community, in the trash too. It does mean that maybe you need to take a more active stance against those who are insisting that their head canon is the only "correct" interpretation of the ending, are throwing around incredibly triggering topics around without care because that's part of their head canon, and are, at the end of the day, disrespecting and hating on the people who made a story.
Frankly, those aren't the kind of people you should want to be in a community with anyway. Misery loves company, and if you're sad, maybe don't hang out with the folks who are mad, they aren't going to help you feel better. And I say that as someone who is mourning the end of some incredible friendships because people who I thought would never have been absolutely engaging in some frankly disturbing behaviors.
In sum: there are so many ways to interpret the Good Omens ending, whether you're looking at the Television Series ending or the Book ending (I mean come on the book ends with them discussing the "big one" and it is not clear which side Crowley thinks they are on, humans or not humans). This kind of shades of grey, wait 20 years and come back again and see how it's changed, ending is precisely the kind of story telling I'd expect out of either STP (GNU) or NG (rot).
And if we're going to preserve the community that has become so important to us, then yes. We need to stop letting the loudest (not the majority, just the loudest) people trample the joy of our community. We need to hold them up to better fandom etiquette: no yucking other people's yum, kink-tomato, all that doesn't just apply to NSFW works, it also applies to "My head canon is different than yours, and you gotta stop shoving your deeply triggering take down my throat without a content warning." We've got to be more firm in that the very existence of Asa and Anthony is not, actually, something that should be spoilered because they are the result of suicide because that is a head canon, not a fact.
And frankly, if you want your communities, your big servers, your whatever, to live on, you've got to take this seriously. Your mod teams have to agree that, personal feelings about the ending aside, the ending is open to a multitude of interpretations, there is no space for conspiracy theories that are harmful or disrespectful to cast, crew, actual NG victims, etc, in these spaces, and that these spaces are meant to come together in celebration of the story, not to complain about how much something sucked. If you want your spaces to survive, to not become cesspools of the worse kind of feedback loops, you've got to make sure there's more joy than hate.
And if you're "in the middle" maybe take a step back from the loud voices and ask yourself: Are you in the middle? Or did something make you sad and the loud voices are trying to convince you that means that thing must not be any good at all?
Anya is live and ready to show you everything. Watch her strip, dance, and perform exclusive shows just for you. Interact in real-time and make your fantasies come true.
✓ Live Streaming✓ Interactive Chat✓ Private Shows✓ HD Quality✓ Free Actions
Free to watch • No registration required • HD streaming
Every single step Sakura takes towards being her own independent person, she immediately gets slammed five steps back. She spends literal years training with Tsunade to become a useful member of the team and help her friends? Well, she gets one sick fight, and then is immediately relegated to the back for the rest of the show. Tries to push away the annoying voice in her head voicing thoughts she would never say out loud? Okay! It’s gone now. But that voice was the only honest part of her left, and she can never get it back.
Rin — machine/ai rules
Rin has made a mask for herself that she cannot take off. She is the perfect, kind, helpful girl, and that is all she can be. Any attempt to prove otherwise only tightens the mask. The only way she can free herself from this false perception is death. Except, even that doesn’t work, because there’s still a little piece of her left behind in the minds of those around her. She’d have to completely wipe herself from the world to be free, but she can’t. Because then nobody would be able to learn the truth.
Tenten — fae rules
Tenten is, unfortunately, trapped in Naruto as a female character, despite not being a girl. She is not able to Not be a girl, but she is able to be a boy sometimes. She’s the only character to escape heteronormative Boruto hell by simply not having a love interest (other than So Many knives). She completely avoids the shitty writing every other female character is stuck with at some point by simply not being written. She never falls victim to Konoha propaganda or loses herself trying to destroy the village because she refuses to care. She is free (as free as possible, at least)
You know Sterek has been frequently 'cancelled' and attacked for basically being the most popular ship in the TW world, right?
Because of the age gap between them, right?
Well, I have to complain about it, because it really pisses me off that they're discarding the beautiful, slow-burning love story that exists between Stiles and Derek in CANON.
Because damn it, they liked each other.
It bothers me that they tarnish Sterek's image for things like being a "pedo" ship when NO, they're not. They're trying to lump us all into a "sick shipper" category.
If we're being honest, Sterek has probably been the story with the most backstory, where we've seen how each season has seen the closeness between Stiles and Derek grow, where they've gone from 'hating each other and having to deal with each other because of Scott' to genuinely caring for each other to the point where Derek would take a bullet for Stiles or Stiles would go against the entire FBI to protect and get Derek out of whatever mess he was in.
They care deeply and genuinely for each other, so much so that Derek preserved and fixed Stiles' Jeep, keeping it in his garage as a sort of memento or anchor for him.
It bothers me so much that they talk shit about Sterek when this couple exists:
sorry but parrish/lydia was a canon pairing between a teenager and an ADULT and if that wasn't enough, an adult from the sheriff's department.
Why aren't people talking about this more? Why are they attacking Sterek instead?
Sterek: a couple that wasn't canon during the show's run, and we only got confirmation of feelings for each other through the actors and through obvious hints in the show. But directly, it was never a canon couple between a teenager and an adult guy. They were together.
I put the adult that way because Derek's age was never confirmed as such. At the beginning of the series, Stiles says Derek is only a couple of years older than him and Scott. So at the beginning of the series, Derek was between 18 and 19 years old. But later on, they address the fire, so they change the age again, but they never say exactly how old he is, so canonically Derek could be 2 to 5 years older than Stiles. You choose what age gap to give them.
While Lydia, about 17, and Jordan Parish, over 20, are a CANON couple.
Anyway, hypocrisy and homophobia, right?
But there is a VERY important theme between the Derek/Stiles relationship, which if you ask me made the possibility of a relationship between the two of them impossible while Stiles was still a high school student and perhaps only when Stiles was older could something exist between them.
The existence of this damn bitch and what she did to Derek.
I hate her as much as you do, and it disgusts me to have to watch Teenage Derek with her.
But it's important to what I wanted to say; it's why I think Derek repressed his feelings for Stiles.
According to the Teen Wolf book, Kate was Derek's substitute swim teacher, who used certain hormones and scents to attract the teenage Derek to her.
YES, that was not only a relationship rife with manipulation, power imbalances, and pedophilia, but she also ended up orchestrating the murder of Derek's family at a moment of vulnerability for Derek because Paige's death hadn't happened long before.
We all know Derek blames himself for the death of his family, and he hates Kate. He knows what she did to him. He knows he was manipulated by an older woman and that he fell for her.
Derek has serious trust and self-confidence issues.
He doesn't believe he's worthy of love or peace.
His anchor until Season 2 was anger because his life was infested with anger/hate/rage.
So he sees himself as something bad, something that hurts, someone who destroys what he loves.
He's a victim of sexual abuse, even though he doesn't admit it.
But Stiles became that little glimmer of light annoying, but a light in his dark life filled with negative things.
Stiles earned his trust. Stiles fought every step of the way and broke down that wall Derek built around himself to keep people away from him, because trust means giving someone the power to hurt you. Oh well, Derek's mind worked that way.
Unbeknownst to him, Stiles earned that trust.
And that's where we have this scene.
This is where Derek lets us see how important Stiles has become to him, Stiles became his anchor.
At this point, it's undeniable that Derek already has feelings for Stiles. He trusts Stiles blindly. But then, why didn't Derek do anything to have Stiles?
Because Derek is a victim of sexual abuse by a woman who took advantage of him in high school. And Derek never dealt with that trauma, or we were never shown to have it that way.
Derek dates women, of course—Jennifer (who also manipulated him), Braeden, etc.—whose relationships didn't end well or were never serious.
But not with Stiles, because Stiles is like that extremely important thing where he can't ruin that connection they have, he can't taint or sully this relationship he has with Stiles. It's too important to Derek. Plus, the untreated traumas surrounding his abuser are a clear impediment to starting something real, something serious. And everything seems to indicate that Stiles is THAT person his unconscious heart has chosen.
That is, to start any romantic relationship with Stiles, Derek has to face all of his demons, all of his traumas first, in order to give Stiles what he believes Stiles deserves.
Kate ruined Derek's heart and mind a lot, plus Derek already had a wounded and bleeding heart since Paige.
So, a relationship as such didn't exist in the series between S/D, and it was quite unlikely that it would, but the feelings were always there.
That's why I don't understand why they keep attacking a couple who has SO MUCH backstory, and who if they ever dated, it was definitely when they were already adults and able to deal with their own issues.
The sheriff's line about the jeep and Derek always makes me think that the sheriff was always aware and noticed everything. He never disapproved; on the contrary, he supported them, because he knows there's no one who deserves each other more than those two.
It was also a clear confirmation that Derek always had feelings for Stiles, complicated feelings he didn't know how to address, but whose feelings led him to treasure and fix Stiles's jeep.
