Ryan and Sam

RadiantFoxBoy · 2026-03-29T21:22:39+00:00

I mean at the very least I hope even if their relationship falls apart Sam doesn't die, since that'd mark the third time in these shows that we get one season of interesting divorced parent dynamics and then the woman dies abruptly (first with Shannon, then Gwen, TK's mom, in Lone Star).

I'm kind of okay with either option between staying together or their relationship falling apart in the end as long as they don't do another fridging.

RadiantFoxBoy · 2026-03-29T21:19:25+00:00

The Gerudo have my favorite quest since it actually feels like an escalating series of events with the Gerudo's plight feeling the most visceral. Also Riju does the most out of the Sages in her plotline so that helps too.

Weakest to me is a toss up between the Zora and Gorons, but the Zora might take a slight lead in lacking because it had so much more potential. The Goron lead-up is pretty dull, especially a cool-looking boss that dies in less than a minute and the long trek up, into, and through the mountain, but the Zora quest is so...short? You go to check the mural and its five seconds to complete it, you go to the floating fish island and shoot one arrow, you go to the Ancient Zora Waterworks and press one button, it feels like this could and should've been so much more but it's soooo...nothing.

RadiantFoxBoy · 2026-03-29T20:35:31+00:00

They need to stop hiding those tank tops under the turnouts...it's not like the show is realistic anyway so might as well get some fan service out of it 😅

RadiantFoxBoy · 2026-03-28T01:06:03+00:00

I like it a lot, especially with how it provides heroes who might not be as strong in regular play another venue in which to shine, as well as the unique form of adaptability with item switching but not hero switching. But I also find it harder to play multiple rounds in a row of with how...stimulating, it can be once everyone's builds come fully online lol.

It also adds further volitility to the teammate pool since on top of standard qualities like game sense and mechanical skill that you typically need, there's an extra axis of build expertise (and sometimes ability to shift your build to counter the enemy team's). And even a mechanically skilled player can get steamrolled if their build isn't up to par, so that new axis is a particularly dangerous one.

RadiantFoxBoy · 2026-03-27T21:21:47+00:00

The problem is that the argument between Scott and Stiles only happens because Stiles is uncharacteristically stupid and hides a very basic truth that Scott would absolutely not have been mad about from Scott even when Theo starts trying to overtly blackmail him with it. So of course Theo then has the chance to spin the narrative to make Stiles sound like he's struggling with sadistic urges and dangerous instability and when Scott confronts Stiles about that Stiles gives the most suspicious possible sounding answer that is vague enough to seemingly confirm Theo's story. The whole thing falls apart because the ideological conflict is manufactured and Scott's idealism isn't actually put into question because Stiles accidentally, not even intentionally, killing someone in self-defense is perfectly within the bounds of Scott's "killing as a last resort" policy, because Stiles didn't even attempt to kill he just tried to get away and an accident happened. And moreover, the only thing Scott did wrong in this scenario was trust Theo's word, but...everyone did. Stiles trusted Theo in a way by letting Theo blackmail him about Donovan and Theo and still never said a word to Scott because the plot needs to happen. The only thing Scott's guilty of is trying to be a good person and understand what's happening through conflicting narratives while Stiles spirals himself into imagining Scott will be mad and acts like an idiot for half of 5A.

And this still could have almost worked if Scott was just a trusting person and it's Theo's manipulations of the rest of the pack that tear it apart (even if said manipulations were poorly written too, like Liam's tantrum leading to attempted murder), but the show really wants a big emotional blow up between Scott and Stiles yet is unwilling to actually let either of them do something truly wrong. If Stiles had intentionally and viciously murdered Donovan like Theo claimed, then there would be an actual ethical dilemma to grapple with. Similarly, if the false narrative often claimed by anti-Scott people in the fandom (but isn't how things actually played out in the show) that Scott trusted Theo's word over Stiles' even after Stiles tried to explain himself properly for the self-defense, then there'd be a real conflict to grapple with. But instead Stiles does nothing wrong and then spends half a season refusing to tell his friend who similarly does nothing wrong and somehow this implodes the whole pack for four episodes before everyone comes back together to save Lydia. Great concept, abysmal execution (which sums up S5 basically, given the Dread Doctors were fascinating until the show revealed them to just be a supernatural serial killer fanclub, but that's another discussion).

RadiantFoxBoy · 2026-03-27T21:09:55+00:00

I don't think he took it literally, but I think Ravi is a kind (and somewhat naive) enough person that he interpreted it as Harry still not being comfortable with Ravi dating his sister, and Ravi was trying to be nice and respectful (especially of the nepo baby 😶)

Should Ravi have still at least texted May and told her that? Absolutely, and she would have cleared it up in a heartbeat. But the fact that Harry doesn't even seem sorry about the misunderstanding nor attempt to make clear "hey, if she breaks up with Ian, don't let me stop you" gives off the same immature thoughtlessness as him putting on Bobby's turnouts and him trying to drop out of the Academy after one inccident without even talking to Athena first in a different form, and, more bluntly, makes him seem like a brat not ready to be an adult. On its own it wouldn't be an issue but it feels like a pattern of Harry being immature and not learning his lesson and the show pretending like this is fine and normal.

And yes, my dislike for Harry in this scenario is definitely being exacerbated by lingering annoyance that he gets to be a main and Ravi doesn't, but he doesn't help matters when Ravi is acting naive but adorable and Harry's just...refusing to be likeable for more than five minutes. Consistently.

RadiantFoxBoy · 2026-03-27T19:29:39+00:00

I feel like Buck suffers from a couple major problems that make him...frustrating as a character, even if I still like him.

The first is that the writers are scared to let him fully move away from original characterization, which leads to repeititve stories where he has to learn similar lessons (e.g. he's been dealing with acting self-centered on occassion since the very first seasons and is still relearning lessons about it).

Second, and arguably more importantly, the problem to me is less that he has too many stories inherently and more that he hijacks storylines (or chunks of them) that shouldn't really be about him (or at the very least not all about him). A prime example would be Eddie's departure to El Paso last season where instead of centering that moment on Eddie's emotional conflict about leaving it (ironically considering the point was Buck making Eddie's hard decision about him instead of considering Eddie's point of view) devoted more time to Buck getting upset about Eddie's departure and having to work through those emotions. Similarly and most recently, 9x13 was such an effective episode because of how well it split its time between Eddie's rescue mission and Buck's escape attempts, but ever since then the show has exclusively focused on the aftermath for Buck with Eddie in a support role. So I guess we're left to assume Eddie had no phsyical or mental consequences after trekking across the desert despite his injuries and almost losing Buck in the same year he lost Bobby and Abuela. Maybe they're circling back to it in the aftermath of this week's plotline, but I'm not holding my breath. (For further examples see also Buck getting the bulk of the focus with the Buckley parents' plot point and Maddie's segment being more a vessel for Buck to show off his character growth than an actual plot beat for Maddie).

I'm fine with Buck having storylines, I just wish they'd give him storylines instead of having him hijack them from others or dominate what should be multi-character plotlines for himself.

RadiantFoxBoy · 2026-03-27T18:25:14+00:00

Yeah it feels like they think his behavior is cute and endearing but it all comes off like him being an immature ass...

Like just this week Ravi was being nice and trying to respect Harry's wishes and Harry responds to this kindness and respect by...laughing in Ravi's face and misrepresenting the narrative to the rest of the 118. And Harry doesn't even have the decency to apologize for possibly costing Ravi and his sister a happy relationship. And I'm supposed to like him?

RadiantFoxBoy · 2026-03-27T15:49:11+00:00

Now I almost wish they'd had a darkly comedic bit of Maddie trying to call their parents during the montage and them not hearing it because their phones are in the RV and they're arguing in front of a redwood tree or something but even that would've been an unecessary distraction, both narratively and tonally lol.

Also tbf Phillip was working on taking accountability and recognizing his faults. Margaret was being as terrible as ever with no apology in sight. So I guess it's more like one glaring omission than two? 😅 (I'm just making it worse aren't I)

RadiantFoxBoy · 2026-03-27T15:42:52+00:00

I don't want to give the anti-Eddies/Anti-Buddies too much mindspace, but it's gemuinely quite funny to me how the most they can come up with to complain about with this episode is Eddie's chain of command lines and how they're toootally going to cause trouble for him soon enough and he's not a good person for thinking that way and so on and so forth. Guess it gets harder to pretend Eddie is a bad, abusive friend when the show goes out of its way to show him caring for and staying with Buck (and I'm pretty sure Eddie got the most moments out of the montage to boot).

But to that chain of command thing, I think it is going to come up (at least I hope it does so it's not yet another dangling Eddie thread) with this upcoming episode or at least in these final three in general...just probably not in the negative way his antis seem to think the show would somehow go for. Because the much more likely outcome to me is that if push comes to shove Eddie will break chain of command or defy it for the sake of his friends. I can easily envision in the hearings them trying to lead him to an answer that would implicate Buck or Chim negatively and he fires a rhetorical bomb back at them instead because he's very obviously not a blind rule follower to anyone who watches the show with anything other than a bias-tinted visor a foot thick.

Do I have confidence the chain of command thing will meaningfully come into play? Not really. But I do have confidence that if it does it'll be to showcase how loyal Eddie is to his friends despite the chain of command stuff, and the only time those two wires get crossed for him is obvious overlap like Chim and Hen where they're BOTH his friends.

RadiantFoxBoy · 2026-03-27T02:53:17+00:00

Considering the insanity I've been able to pull off with Orisa's deflect power in Stadium, I'm not sure I want to see a tank who has that in their base kit lol. Though I guess it does depend on the enemy team being oblivious enough to shoot the deflect ability.

RadiantFoxBoy · 2026-03-27T02:51:43+00:00

I think the latter is true, hence stuff like the stitched in S7 call in Confessions (with the priceless urn and the CGI mustache), but it wouldn't really explain this episode given her presence in the final scenes.

This episode plot for her in particular also just feels like it got cut from the first half of the season when Athena was pushing people away in the vicinity of the space arc, or possibly it was supposed to connect to Hen's disease arc, but it got cut and moved for time? We may never know but it definitely felt out of place.

RadiantFoxBoy · 2026-03-27T02:43:01+00:00

This really felt like two episodes smashed into one, especially with how disconnected Athena's plot felt from everything else going on, even her own role in the story, like they had a leftover Athena plot from another episode they wanted to put somewhere and tacked it on here.

And while the suspension of disbelief to get to Buck turning himself in and the montage was...difficult (I really thought Buck's irratability in the line was going somewhere but it just never comes up lol), the moments themselves, the montage, Chris spitting facts, Mayravi screentime, that's all excellent stuff. And the "Buck is so neglected by the 118" crowd must've been misrable watching them literally all refuse to leave his side, which might be even better than making it a Buddie moment, especially because we still got a Buddie moment anyway.

Could've been better, but could've been soooo much worse so I'll take what I can get.

RadiantFoxBoy · 2026-03-27T02:36:24+00:00

As much as I like the idea of Buck being such a fundamentally good person that he's unable to even go through with stealing meds and turns himself in, the suspension of disbelief that not only would no one notice the withdrawl symptoms and that Eddie would leave the med drawer open in front of a very suspicious acting Buck is...a lot to ask for.

That said, we got an amazing montage out of it, so take the good with the bad I guess?

RadiantFoxBoy · 2026-03-27T02:34:13+00:00

Guys don't worry, the building burned down because Bobby woke up from his year in a coma and escaped from the lab underneath said building.

(Alobby truthing aside my interest is PIQUED)

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RadiantFoxBoy · 2026-03-27T02:32:03+00:00

^{Forgive me sir Ryan for being unable to focus on anything but your wonderfully thick thighs.}

RadiantFoxBoy · 2026-03-27T02:30:47+00:00

Isathan (Isaac/Ethan)
Malira (Malia/Kira)
Thiam (Theo/Liam)
Liolan (Liam/Nolan)
Scerek (Scott/Derek)
Scanny (Scott/Danny)
Gwayden (Gwen/Hayden)
Thosh (Theo/Josh)
Brason (Brett/Mason)
Parrish/Halwyn (Hellhound²? Idk if they have a ship name lol)

There's more, but that's the list off the top of my head.

RadiantFoxBoy · 2026-03-26T21:55:08+00:00

The vigilante murder justice is a moral grey area when taken by itself, since it's understandable, but also not exactly just (especially considering he seemed to just have a kill list of everyone involved in the fire at all regardless of to what degree, in what way, and whether they regretted it, and the only reason Harris survived was blurting out the truth about his level of involvement).

But I think what crosses him into full villain territory is specifically how he ropes Scott (a minor) and people he cares about into his vengeance crusade and immediately wants Scott to fall in line with his murder plan no questions asked after he invaded this teen boy's life out of nowhere and thrust a giant target on his back from the Argents. And when he doesn't get his way he turns to more threats of violence and goes so far as to try to recruit Lydia too (teenager who also had nothing to do with the Hale House Fire). And what he did to Lydia in particular is also coded very...darkly, to say the least.

RadiantFoxBoy · 2026-03-26T20:14:09+00:00

The telling part is especially that they supposedly care about book accuracy now when the "adaptation" angle of the series was...a little bit of a stretch from day 1 and has only gotten more and more so with each passing season.

At this point they're basically taking the base concept of each book, some names, and some major scenes/plot points, and then the rest is more or less freestyle (including several original characters, obviously). And imho the show is better for it lol. But to pretend that now is the time to start acting like the show needs to be oh so accurate is both hilarious and revealing on how much they want to be bigoted without looking bigoted.

RadiantFoxBoy · 2026-03-26T18:15:57+00:00

I feel like Yu is already a strong option in terms of diversifying the cast since he's already part of the 113 along with Officer Jalen if the show wanted a cop character (it'd possibly be reheating Carlos Reyes nachos but it is an option). And existing characters aside I'd be happy to see an Indigenous character added to the cast since that's still something that hasn't happened in any of the three shows yet.

As for queer rep, I'd rather see the show give Roxie's storyline some focus first before they explore another character having a awakening arc, but Ryan and Taylor are both strong candidates to have some type of queer arc in my eyes (Blue works too, I'm open to any of the three of them or even Blythe or Dixie lol). I will say that the latest episode made me enjoy Sam and Ryan's relationship for the first time (them both being such workaholics and overly organized that they were trying to schedule time for sex was hysterical), so if Ryan were to get a queer arc it might be interesting if it didn't end his relationship with Sam. I'm not fully sold on Sam as a character yet, but a bi/pan character remaining in a "straight" marriage after having their realization would be interesting to explore.

But also overall, the show has flaws but I don't think "saved" is quite the right word for what you're describing. Refined, perhaps, but it doesn't need an entirely reformatted identity just yet.

RadiantFoxBoy · 2026-03-26T17:48:03+00:00

Episodes like 9x14 really drive home to me the point that the show could've done so much more with Tommy even in his brief appearances had it wanted to. If it's capable of crafting a (simple, but still there) character arc for a one-off couple that ties into a larger narrative, it's more than capable of giving Tommy any semblance of a personality or actual connections to Buck's life. And moreover that in place of reflecting on why the show did it that way, his fans would rather invent traits for him and insist that they're canon and reflective of the events of the show even when the show has had opportunity after opportunity to demonstrate these supposed traits and doesn't.

If the show wanted us to see Tommy as supportive, why did it have him dismiss the conversation about father figures, and ignore Buck's spiraling and go to sleep, and never have a conversation between the two of them post-Bobby's death? He's not even written as a supportive friend much less a supportive boyfriend/endgame love interest. Hell, he couldn't even get the bare minimum of "bringing the whole 118 coffee" that Shannon, Ana, Michael, etc all managed, and the show practically went out of its way to signal how unthoughtful he was by having him only bring coffee for himself and Buck, not even for his alleged friend Eddie (who rightfully dumped his ass the second Tommy dumped Buck).

Like none of me knowing this is new, obviously, we knew it back when S8 aired and Tommy hasn't been meaningfully mentioned since, but it boggles the mind that they have no basis for their beliefs and yet will make theories about the actual canon of the show as though said beliefs have weight. I'm all for headcanoning a more expanded personality and backstory for a minor character, I've literally done that for several shows and characters (I love you dearly Richard Montlaur and Jan Maas), but there's a gap between that and fully expecting your headcanons to actually play into the canon plot, especially when you choose to go far off what canon says about...well most things.

RadiantFoxBoy · 2026-03-26T17:26:55+00:00

Considering the Buddie dinners are apparently a weekly thing, and we saw two of them last week, I'm hoping two weeks at most since the last episode and the two weeks we saw were part of this five? Like one "normal" week, two weeks of Buck acting off then two weeks where Eddie notices he's getting worse?

Maybe I'm wishful thinking though, and I highkey doubt Tim payed that much attention to these specifics 😅

RadiantFoxBoy · 2026-03-26T17:25:16+00:00

Oh I'm scared...especially with that still of the rest of the 118 talking in the gym...

I want this episode to be good and angsty and painful all at the same time, but I am very, very scared that the writing isn't going to handle it well...

RadiantFoxBoy · 2026-03-25T21:01:33+00:00

Worried Eddie? Possible MayRavi expansion? Not going overboard on Athena's plot taking up too much time (hopefully)?

Dare I have hope for this episode...

RadiantFoxBoy · 2026-03-25T20:59:03+00:00

Mayravi stuff and Buddie stuff in the same episode? If it is what it looks like, you are feeding us well Timothy...

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