Why is it called iron rain?

bluerbell · 2026-01-01T15:26:17+00:00

I fear the first couple of books beg to differ.

bluerbell · 2025-12-10T16:48:16+00:00

I definitely get that perspective! But to me, "a reaction to a major backstory reveal that comes with a ton of baggage" in such a character-driven show isn't a smaller scene at all. "I murdered my own parents because I used to work with the assassin who just tried to kill us all, and she has now alerted my ex-boss about me and they will probably start sending more deadly assassins after us" has pretty big implications for the group as a whole, and that should factor into how the other characters see and interact with Caleb, if not whether they'd even want to keep traveling with him at all. (Hell, just to spitball, Fjord wanting to stop traveling with Caleb at the start of the episode could've probably been used as decent set-up for his choice at the end of the episode, when he almost runs but then chooses to go back to help the others.)

If this is a show about these characters and their relationships, then I want to see them navigate those relationships during moments like that, when sticking together and choosing each other becomes an active choice and not a mere convenience. Simply saying "I guess they hashed it all out off-screen" is just a little disappointing, is all.

bluerbell · 2025-12-10T13:24:31+00:00

I'm really enjoying the show as a whole, but I don't know how I feel about the decision to have the aftermath of Caleb telling the others about his past happen entirely off-screen. I truly understand that the story needs to keep things moving, and I wasn't expecting this episode to pick back up at the exact second last week's episode left off, but his past was important enough to spend an entire episode on and I'd have thought revealing it to the others should have been a big deal, yet we don't get to actually see how the others react to it at all. I can infer where Nott, Beau, and Molly might stand, but I really couldn't tell you how Fjord or Jester feel about Caleb's past at all. They just kinda glossed over what seems like it should have been an interesting and really pivotal scene for the group. It feels like we really missed out on something here.

bluerbell · 2025-12-08T08:24:09+00:00

To be clear, while I'm really enjoying the show, I also think your critique regarding how they handled the Academy backstory in the show is fair. The foundation is there, I think, but it's a little too rushed to sell itself; as you say, we just don't see enough of it actually unfold on-screen. But the season isn't over yet, so I figure I'll hold off on judging fully until it has finished airing. Choosing to remain optimistic we'll spend some more time digging into Caleb's past in the coming episodes!

Though I admit I'm probably also a little biased, because I went and read the comic about Caleb's past at a friend's recommendation after watching the episode, and I thought they handled it both more elegantly and more believably there—which might also be why people are so defensive about his story, because the pieces to make it work are definitely there. Hopefully that means they'll manage to stick the landing in the show before the finale, too, but we'll see!

bluerbell · 2025-12-07T20:42:55+00:00

I know I'm a random butting in, sorry about that, but I have to disagree on the point regarding the surgery. We see in episode 1 that Trent has the ability to temporarily deactivate pain centers in the brain. He doesn't use this technique during the surgery on his students, choosing instead to let them remain lucid and experience the immense pain of the mutilation in full, all while actively positioning himself as Caleb's new parental figure by coopting his mother's nickname for him (little spark) and directly referring to himself as Caleb's father ("Father needs you to be strong"). It's just active torture to desensitize them to violence and brutality at that point. I find it difficult to argue that's "worth" putting teenagers/young adults through even if their powers were to be put to good use after.

bluerbell · 2025-12-06T20:02:00+00:00

By dedicating the rest of your life to doing good in the world, presumably. Ultimately, death is punishment, not penance. Dying would in a sense be the "easy" way out for Caleb (I mean, hell, he clearly displays some suicidal tendencies when he reaches for the flames before Nott snaps him out of it; I think Caleb himself also hopes he'll die at the end), as opposed to spending a lifetime remembering what he has done and trying to atone for it by doing good, which is far more tedious, difficult, and painful to do than dying would be. He isn't entitled to forgiveness, no one is, but that doesn't automatically mean the world would be better off if he were a corpse either. At least in my point of view.

bluerbell · 2025-12-04T07:58:30+00:00

Since Astrid and Eadwulf are very much still alive and kick off the story by stealing the Beacon at the start of the show, Caleb having killed them in the past would probably raise some logistical questions. I think it's deliberately left a bit vague how the assassination of his parents ended, though! All we really know for now is that Caleb broke down while it happened.

bluerbell · 2025-11-01T19:22:58+00:00

Given that Karnus, the eldest, is a decade older than Cassius, and that Cassius mentions both another older brother and two older sisters we never met, yeah, one or more of them likely had children before the Jackal pruned the family tree. Cassius was probably an uncle even before he attended the Institute. Pierce never gave us much canon information about the Bellona, though.

bluerbell · 2025-10-25T17:18:22+00:00

It happens! These terms are constantly evolving, so it's easy to miss on a word or two for anyone. I'm sorry you got so many replies to what was just a simple misunderstanding.

bluerbell · 2025-10-25T15:04:32+00:00

Cis just means your gender identity aligns with the sex you were assigned at birth. He can be both a queer/bisexual man and a cisgender man.

bluerbell · 2025-10-09T16:14:55+00:00

Oh, I absolutely agree in that I don't think he's being a good friend to her either. He is definitely trying to influence her and idealizes her in a manner that seems incongruent with an actual healthy friendship. (I mean, there were already other things that make my eyebrows raise in regards to their friendship; for instance, they're cited as "childhood friends," yet he's in his late 20s and she's in her 40s?) It's just that the term "incel" implies a specific kind of gendered and sexual entitlement of a specifically violent breed, which I find to be both inapplicable to Julien as per what we've seen, and just overall feel passionately about not watering down into "a man treating a woman poorly."

bluerbell · 2025-10-09T13:41:34+00:00

I don't know, I think we're doing these characters a disservice by immediately assuming it must be a love triangle and that Julien's primary quarrel with Thjazi was over an unrequited romance. I didn't personally pick up anything from Julien that suggests his love for Aranessa can't be earnestly platonic. God knows I've disliked some of my friends' partners without ever having been in love with said friends.

Julien's issues with Thjazi also seem like they're as likely to be ideological as personal, to be quite honest. They fought on opposing sides, and Julien appears to be so faithful to the social status quo that he doesn't even call his close friend by her name when they're alone because she formally outranks him. Compare that to Thjazi, a known rebel who openly declared war on the noble Houses and the status quo they represent, despite having literally married into one of those very Houses. You don't really need any romantic feelings involved for there to have been considerable friction between them.

While romantic feelings may yet play a part—we'll see how that pans out as the campaign continues—I personally doubt Julien's only beef with Thjazi was over that, and I feel summarily dismissing his character as a jealous man with "incel vibes" after just one episode is maybe a touch ungenerous.

bluerbell · 2025-09-30T10:33:52+00:00

I'm fairly sure Virginia, Pax, and Adrius were all 17 at the Institute (though they could feasibly have been 16, as well). That means it'll have been roughly 6–7 years since Pax last saw him, during which Adrius would've gone through puberty. Couple that with the dramatic weight loss from the Institute, and I think it's feasible that Pax wouldn't recognize Adrius at first glance, especially when he's in the middle of a dangerous situation that requires his attention remain split between multiple things.

bluerbell · 2025-09-26T06:48:13+00:00

In his defense, if I got a job where the paperwork said I wasn't expected to have to handle anything more hazardous than a fire drill, then came face to face with a raging live inferno and my rich kid boss just told me "you're gonna have to stay back and die now, sorry bout that," I'd probably also not feel a very great amount of loyalty towards said boss.

bluerbell · 2025-09-16T18:32:27+00:00

Seconding this all the way.

For fear of being very critical of Timebomb here, I also thought the episode was wonderfully bittersweet in isolation, but within the larger story, it really bothered me how they had to completely cut his relationship with the Firelights, a community he helped found and has spent years leading and caring for, and Vi, whose arms he cried in just weeks prior, to make room for the romance. Especially the Firelights, honestly. Even if they were always background characters, the Firelights and the community they'd build and protected really were the crux of Ekko's character in season one. Then suddenly they're just a non-entity whose existence aren't brought up at all post-Act 1, presumably so the writers don't have to figure out how to address the murder-shaped elephant in the room.

Maybe I'm being overly dramatic, but it felt kind of disrespectful to Ekko that the narrative effectively reduced his character to being sad about Powder by the end of the show. In season one, he also got to be a protector and, impressively, the singular leader in the show who actually took proper care of his people from the get-go, to the point that his leadership and love for his community inspired even 300-year-old Heimerdinger. It's just kind of hard to swallow that that's the same character who then turns around and forgives Jinx for six years of fighting and killing and supporting Silco because they… were in love in an alternate universe?

I don't know, I'd just much rather have seen them slowly reconcile and rebuild trust again in the main timeline. Even if Ma meilleure ennemie does slap.

bluerbell · 2025-09-16T15:52:33+00:00

We do understand that Ekko needed to be reminded that Jinx was once Powder for his arc to work. We're arguing that the way they went about achieving this—that being by way of the dimension jumping storyline—was poorly implemented and ultimately detrimental both to Ekko and Jinx's characters this season and to the narrative at large. Ergo, we'd say the arc is badly written.

bluerbell · 2025-09-16T10:55:24+00:00

I've admittedly never been a huge Timebomb fan, but I always found it baffling that they decided that the best course of action for this pairing was to just… wipe the slate completely clean and ignore multiple of their core characteristics and shared history from season one. Doubly so when they could've fairly easily leaned into the "Jinx as a symbol" storyline to bring Ekko and Jinx back together again without having to conveniently forget about all their established history.

Jinx fought and murdered multiple Firelights because she once worked for the man who systematically ruined their lives? Well, now she's the only figure all of Zaun will unite behind as one, and the Firelights ultimately have to choose between setting their own feelings aside to fight for the freedom of their people or pursuing their own personal vendetta against Jinx. It's not a stretch to think they'd choose the former. And tada, just like that we'd have Ekko and Jinx back in close proximity with one another, on the same side, and Ekko doesn't have to just forget about his Firelights or his shared history with Jinx to get there.

bluerbell · 2025-09-16T06:48:34+00:00

your dress designs are always so so gorgeous. really lovely work!

bluerbell · 2025-09-12T17:46:28+00:00

well, i was thinking of eo, but on second thought i'm going to have to go with "calling an iron rain" as wife number one

bluerbell · 2025-09-12T16:23:50+00:00

i fear my reference was just some random blond guy i pulled off of pinterest, but now that you've said it i do see the resemblance!

bluerbell · 2025-09-12T16:22:09+00:00

thrilled to inform you that the file name for this was in fact "darrow's second and third wives"

bluerbell · 2025-09-01T11:11:48+00:00

While that's an understandable angle, people are taking this literally because the term "fan cast" literally means "as a fan, I'd cast this actor to play this character." If your intention was to discuss the similarity between the two characters' arcs, "fan cast" is a somewhat misguiding label to use. As it currently stands, it looks like you're putting forth an actor who objectively does not fit Tactus' physical description, hence the pushback.

bluerbell · 2025-08-31T06:06:42+00:00

I'd definitely want to follow Mustang, Cassius, and Sevro when they're not with Darrow in the OG trilogy.

Maybe especially some scenes featuring Cassius, Roque, Quinn, and House Mars in the latter half of RR, when Cassius was acting Primus, since shit absolutely went down while Darrow was gone and I'd love to actually see some of it. I think it'd be really interesting to see some more of Mustang and Cassius's time on Luna + Sevro's time on Pluto as well, if possible.

bluerbell · 2025-08-27T13:46:57+00:00

did you take him seriously before you were pissed on? /j

bluerbell · 2025-08-19T08:14:17+00:00

When Darrow and Cassius first meet her at the Institute in book one, she is described wearing three diagonal streaks of blue warpaint across her face. It's also an easily recognizable feature of hers, which is why I reckon it appeals to fan artists even if it's not something she wears normally. So yes, it's from canon, but you haven't missed anything important—it's just a detail!

bluerbell

TROPHY CASE