#spec talk

After last week I'm keeping my expectations low but remain hopefully optomistic. A character hanging off a cliff seems like a pretty big cliffhanger for me lol

I hope your day gets better and take a good rest tonight! Thanks for being a bright spot in this fandom and I love your blog!

Yeah, same. I'm trying to go into this episode level-headed. I'm reading spec and I'm definitely thinking about a lot of scenarios that could play out, but I'm cautious to not expect too much for 8a anymore.

They might have planned all the big Bathena episodes in 8a, because I just read somewhere that Angela is shooting a movie in 2025. So it might have to do with sheduling. This will leave more time for the rest of the mains in 8b.

Next to that, Buck only just broke up with Tommy and it was heavily hinted at that he would start exploring his bisexuality. Eddie is only at the beginning of his journey to find joy. So maybe they have the plan to get back to their stories in 8b and flesh them out.

But in order for that to happen they need the audience to think about the possibility of Buddie. To do that I would love to see something more concrete in Thursday's episode. 🤞🤞🤞

I have seen too many signs in the show itself screaming their story is about to begin, so I'm still in the boat and I will be until the ship sails, but it would be really nice to see some progress in 8x08. How great would it be to go into the hiatus filled with positivity?

Thanks for the wishes and the lovely compliment.❤️🫂 The latest negativity about the episode and the whole Tommies situation has really done a number on me. I'll be happy when hiatus is here to get some rest to refill my batteries.

As for now?

Well, I'm not replying to any of the doom posts in my ask box. Sorry to all the Nonnies who are dropping them in there. But I just don't agree with so much of it. I appreciate your thoughts and opinions, but maybe it would be better if you posted them on your own blog? That way you could find people who think the same and agree with you.

I like talking about the positive side of 911 and this fandom, so I'll mainly be replying to those asks and the occassional negative ones if I find them interesting for a certain reason. Sorry guys, but all the negativity is really wearing me down right now.

I'm also planning to go to bed early tonight, so I'll hopefully feel better in the morning.

season 4 is almost here! naturally, my mind has been buzzing with spec and i felt like i’d share some of it here with you guys since i love spec talk. feel free to chime in with your own theories/opinions :)

so, the topic of this conversation?

helena.

to be honest, i really don’t see them going through with the pregnancy storyline. that seems far too easy and it doesn’t really work narratively. for starters, the timeline of the show is a mess and even with the two month time jump that’s been confirmed at the beginning of season 4, it would still mean that helena is quite early on in her pregnancy (maybe three or four months, couldn’t really be more than that). unless they skip ahead several more months by the end of the season, helena will not be having her baby in season 4 and i really don’t think they’ll jump that far ahead and skip over all of the immediate chaos of sarah’s war against neolution just so we can see helena deliver her baby, which would mean we’d be stuck with a pregnant helena for the entire season. sure, watching helena become domesticated and struggle with her pregnancy would be pretty funny and produce many “awwwww” worthy moments, but that’ll get old really fast, not to mention that we already have alison for comedic relief so turning helena into a comedic, fluffy character would just be redundant. there’s just too much going on in this show and it’s far too fast paced for them to waste time just showing us helena simply being pregnant without really advancing the main plot. (although they did waste time with alison’s storyline and shaysima last season, so maybe i’m giving them too much credit...)

so, what do i think will happen?

i think helena will lose the baby.

yes, this would be heartbreaking and i know i said before that i didn’t want to see helena suffer anymore since she tends to get shit on far more than any of her sestras, but i don’t see any other choice that would really work well with the narrative. if helena loses her baby, it might force her down a dark path yet again, although this time, she has people who care about her to try to bring her back from the edge. let’s say she loses her baby because of external forces (maybe neolution has something to do with it in some way?) — that would bring her back into the fold, force her back into the meatiest part of the plot with a vengeance. maybe we’d see the crazed assassin from season one again? i think that would be interesting. as much as i love helena, her character has yet to truly redeem herself and face her “sins,” so to speak. i feel like helena gets infantilized a lot by the fandom and even by the writers at times. why? well, doing so has its comedic effect and allows us to sympathize with her character, but it’s also pretty problematic in that it erases her sense of agency in all of this. helena is not a child. she may be stunted in many ways, but she is a grown woman and on top of that, she’s incredibly dangerous, unpredictable, and a murderer. i feel like we’re constantly forced to forget this since her acts of violence are often juxtaposed with childish dialogue or situations, but i feel like it’s something pretty important that we need to acknowledge.

it always sort of bothered me how her murdering so many of the other clones hasn’t been addressed. it’s as if she saved sarah from daniel in season two and suddenly, everything was forgiven and she was immediately accepted into clone club. i know that she was essentially brainwashed to kill the clones and that sarah, cosima and alison understand this and forgive her for it, but does that really excuse her actions? absolutely not. hell, she even called rudy out on his shit in the season 3 finale right before he died, when he told her his childhood sob story to try to garner sympathy. he said “we’re just like you, helena.” and what did she say to him? “no. you are a rapist.” she’s able to make the distinction— she’s aware that the horrible circumstances of one’s life do not excuse one’s monstrous behaviour, that even though rudy and the castor clones had horrible and messed up childhoods, it doesn’t excuse what they’ve done. and she distinguishes herself from him. she tells him that he’s wrong, that she’s not like him at all. i felt like this was a pretty insightful moment and it would be a shame if it were to be discarded and forgotten over the course of the hiatus. 

we haven’t seen helena really show any sort of regret or remorse, or even really acknowledge that she’s murdered real people and not “abominations,” as she initially believed. there’s no doubt that she sees the other clones as real people now, as family, so why haven’t we seen her cope with the knowledge that she ruthlessly murdered her own family? if helena really believed what she said to rudy, if she’s really different from him, then she has to face what she’s done and atone, right? she can’t hide behind the excuse of “i was brainwashed by a cult and so i never had a choice in the matter, it’s not my fault at all and i’m not responsible for my actions.” that would make her no different from rudy (who was incapable of accepting responsibility for his actions) and she was very certain in the knowledge that they’re nothing alike. if she’s really different from him, then she has to accept responsibility and begin to make amends. 

i feel like just making helena pregnant and allowing her to have her baby and live a silly, domestic life after everything she’s done and everything she’s been through would be a total cop out, not to mention completely unrealistic considering the tone of the show. we’ve seen helena face down enemy after enemy, from tomas to johanssen to cody and castor. but helena’s greatest enemy has always been herself and we’ve yet to see her really face herself, to have a moment or true introspection. maybe it’s wishful thinking, but i’m hoping we’ll see some of that this season. and since helena’s eggs seem to be imperishable (contrary to what modern science would suggest), maybe even if she loses her current child, she’ll get the chance to have another baby someday— on her own terms. maybe she’ll get to use her eggs and have a baby with someone who actually cares for her, who doesn’t see her as some sort of scientific wonder or whatever. to me, that would be far more rewarding than watching her birth some “science baby” as she’s dubbed it-- a child she was forcibly impregnated with. it would be the ultimate assertion of her agency and i think a more complete arc to her character if she was to have a child by choice after having grown a little more.

another theory i had was that maybe helena does give birth to her child, or rather twins. however, she ends up losing them anyway because she’s forced to give them up and hide them away to protect them. i mean, it would be ironic (and a little cruel) if the twins ended up being separated for their own safety and it would allow her to reflect on amelia’s decision to give up her and sarah. perhaps it would give her a little bit of peace with her own upbringing.

WHAT IF IT IS HIS BROTHER

WHO IS EVIL

AND CISCO HAS NO CHOICE TO BUT TO KILL HIM?

WE GET CRYING CISCO

AND THEN HARRY MAYBE HUGS HIM?

Felicity is NOT in the grave. For pretty much a million different reasons. The biggest one being that CW enjoys making money. Over EVERYTHING else, they do what they do to turn a profit and produce successful shows that have decent ratings so they can charge advertisers higher rates. Period. And they are well aware of what will happen to those ratings if they kill off Felicity. 

That aside, Felicity being taken/hurt in 4x09 and the ramifications of that being seen in 4x10 and maybe 4x11 is almost a guarantee that she’s not in the grave. We’re going to see Oliver go through that. We’re going to see him distraught and almost destroyed over thinking he’s lost her. Why beat that narrative thread to death a couple months later when we find out who’s in the box? This is the same reason why I think Thea is also safe. We already know what Thea “dying” would do to Oliver, we saw it in 3x19/3x20 last season. 

Now, the last part of your question...the interpretation of all these disparate events. One can choose to view them as separate things that have no bearing on one another, or choose to think theres some sort of grand conspiracy and everything is connected. 

EBR is under ZERO obligation to attend cons. I’m really getting tired of a certain faction of this fandom hounding and bullying and calling her out on twitter for not attending. If you can’t understand how utterly shitty that sort of behavior is...I can’t help you. The only con I think she is contractually obligated to attend in SDCC, anything other than that is her own personal decision. And considering she just spent the past couple days doing press for the show I don’t fault her for not wanting to go to a con last weekend and again this weekend. This isn’t some sort of bad omen, it’s called EBR was aware of her schedule and smartly didn’t overbook herself. Or maybe she just wanted to chill in her bathtub and eat pizza instead of going. Regardless, it’s her decision and she owes people nothing. 

Regarding not shooting...maybe...maybe not. And if Felicity IS injured/still in the hospital or recuperating in 4x11 then her scenes would probably be pretty light for that ep. Thus allowing her the time to go do all that press. 

And speaking of all that press...if that’s what you’re referring to when you said you think she looks sad...I did not see that. I saw someone who is pretty damn adorable, and exited about her character, and very much committed and engaged in what’s coming up for her. 

It’s all about perspective. You can choose to look at all the info we get with the squinty eye of a skeptic or someone waiting for the worst to happen. Or you can enjoy this season because we’ve earned it. I know that well done, healthily portrayed relationships on tv are not the norm, but they are bending over backwards to do just that. The show is doing this right. More than right. They are proving to everyone in the industry that this sort of relationship can be done successfully. Have some faith in that. 

Why?

Because Olicity=$$$$ 

I'm not worried because I don't care.

I started this blog however many years ago because I wanted to talk to people about a show that none of my IRL friends were watching.  And it worked.  That happened. This blog - and everything else that's come with it in the subsequent years - happened.  Somehow I fell down this fucking rabbit hole way deeper than I ever anticipated.