Spoiler: episode 12 that angle with grif is not something i'd thought of. i figured that it was just a parallels/duality thing going on with church-grif-temple-biff. like, church is the guy from the blood gulch crew that died, biff is the guy from the desert gulch crew that something really bad happened to, grif left the blood gulch crew when they went looking for church, temple led the desert gulch crew on a rampage to avenge biff...
Spoiler: episode 13 i'm hoping for an ending to the season in which the blood gulch crew and the desert gulch crew manage to connect through their similarities, and get the revenge rampage to stop. like, maybe grif comes back and temple is just hit with a lot of emotion and grif thus manages to convince him to stop. maybe church does and he understands temple and through that fundamental understanding, gets temple to stop. maybe the blood gulch crew sees their grief for church in the desert gulch's grief for biff, and manage to talk the desert gulch crew down. something steven universe-y like that. 'cause, like, i have formed a strong emotional connection to temple and i would be really sad if they had to kill him to stop him, you know?
Spoiler: ep. 13 I have nothing to add to what has already been said except that the rooftop music sequence was fucking hilarious. I love the ways the writer keeps poking fun at previous seasons and the tropes of the show, especially because it never comes off as mean, and his thorough understanding of and affection for the show and characters always shines through. ...honestly, it reminds me a little of transformers mtmte, in that it feels kind of like when a longtime fandom member gets to be in creative control of the canon.
Spoiler: episode 13 for a second there i was worried that temple was going to accidentally shoot biff somewhere more lethal because of the whole bad aim issue, but of course that wouldn't really bring in the revenge factor. also. that was gruesome. the fucking flag itself being the killer... yikes. really good symbol though, of how it's a game to the freelancers, but the sim troopers get fucking killed. (also yeah the fight scene background music thing was hilarious)
Spoiler: episode 14 i wonder what door loco was talking about. and feels about caboose and church! i wonder if caboose talking about church reminded loco of biff. temple's response to being asked if he was the bad guy... saying that, instead, the blood gulch crew and the freelancers are, and that all the other sim troopers have already joined him. that the blood gulch crew were traitors, being friends with freelancers and participating in photo ops and stuff. pretty black-and-white thinking there, but with what happened to him 'cause of the freelancers, i can forgive it. and doc and sarge decided to join him too. huh. but temple is wrong. i think the blood gulch crew did effectively stop project freelancer from doing bad shit, took down the leaders and the meta and everything. and the freelancers who joined them now regret the bad things they have done for project freelancer. maybe not all the bad things they've done, but enough that they are no longer a threat. so, like, the blood gulch crew went for effective social justice, whereas temple's went for the type that prioritizes feeling good and righteous over actually producing effective change. nuance vs. black-and-white thinking. it's a shame that tucker's response to temple was "imma kill you" 'cause, like, that just seems like the type of thing that would make temple and everyone he's recruited more sure that temple's right. i mean, i see why tucker would want to, but i don't think killing temple would do shit for the blood gulch crew. all it would do, i think, is just widen the gap between the blood gulch crew and temple's sim troopers, convince temple's sim troopers even more of the blood gulch crew and the freelancers being the bad guys. so yeah, i believe that the blood gulch crew needs to reach out to temple. and grif might be the one to do it, the one that can reach out without being consumed by temple's movement, and maybe get them to reconsider. or caboose could, by showing his grief for church. or simmons, missing grif and church. i dunno but the way tucker went about it is not one i see working at all.
Spoiler: possible spoilers for episode 14 a fascinating thing about temple and his relationship with church and the freelancers and the rest of the blood gulch crew (and by extension, his team and their relationship with their counterparts and the freelancers and the rest of the blood gulch crew) is that, if circumstances were reversed and temple was the director, he probably would have done the same thing that church did. and vice-versa, with church. if biff died the way allison did and temple then became the director and made an ai, i can easily see a biff beta ai coming out of his mind too. and see him clutching hard to that ai, to the last remains of biff, and trying to make it perfect, trying to get biff truly back. he has that in him. if church and allison started off as ordinary sim troopers and a freelancer killed allison, i can easily see church deciding to vow vengeance on the freelancers and deciding to kill them all. he has that in him. temple thinks the freelancers and the blood gulch crew and the director are really evil, that they aren't like him, but in reality, they aren't that different. they just got a different roll of dice, just had different lives that gave them the chances to make different choices. same fundamental core, different circumstances. that's part of the tragedy of it all. (of course, rvbswap wouldn't end up exactly the same as original flavour red vs blue. the characters aren't exactly carbon copies, after all. but it would hit a lot of the same notes.) (edited the spoiler tag 'cause i had put the wrong number before)
Spoiler: episode 15 star trek: the next generation reference!!! grif!!! grif talking to himself, trying to script out something he's gonna say to simmons!!! i'm hoping for Maximum Gay but i'm prepared to be disappointed. i think the only confirmed gay character on the show so far is a pretty minor one, one of the freelancers-turned-reds-and-blues from season 14, so yeah... grimmons getting confirmed doesn't seem that likely. hahaha "grab-ass." now that sounds gay as fuck. deflated church ball. my feels!!! and it sounds like grif is blaming himself and generally pretty down on himself. and grif seems about on the verge of a revelation! about to say the thing! and fuck, the thing he was about to say got took down by his lack of self-esteem. locus. "completely insane." oh, thank you, locus, that'll make him feel so much better. not. "i would know." i guess locus identifies with him a bit then. maybe he misses felix... locus and felix were one of the great partnerships of rvb, after all, before locus defected and felix died. i guess locus' redemption means new armor for him. huh. unfortunately, though, that meant i didn't recognize him when he originally picked up locus. i wonder if that was deliberate or rooster teeth just not considering their medium well enough. grif's concerned!!! "did you touch simmons?" that's a very specific and gay question. :D:D:D "you ever miss felix? i'm orange, just like your last partner." yes, felix is relevant, and tying into the theme that i don't quite have a name for yet. other than that relationships - of the teams and the Great Partnerships (church/tex, locus/felix, temple/biff, grif/simmons) - are important. and they're discussing why locus did what he did, and how they both changed, and how doing the right thing sucks sometimes. and i really hope that the moment that's been playing in my head ever since biff was introduced, the moment in which temple meets biff and is just... caught off guard, breathless, i really hope that moment (or some other moment vaguely like that moment) comes. the possibilities of temple seeing grif and simmons and getting jealous, and/or temple making a move on grif and making simmons jealous are also ones i'm liking.
okay, correction on the queerness front: church might be canonically queer if "okay, i'm cool with it. i'm cool with it but i'm out." when he met a male tex in the epsilon unit actually means anything, but it's not exactly definite. it's certainly not as definite as grimmons actually getting together would be. so yeah, so far, canonically, there's one queer minor character and one major character that might be, emphasis on "might." which is why i feel like the chances of the queer subtext in that episode turning into text aren't that high. are there any other queer characters i'm missing or is this about it?
check out this exciting theory post i found on tumblr! (now i'm hoping that either: a] temple goes back in time and saves biff b] the crew goes back in time and saves church or c] both)
Spoiler: episode 16 the moment. it happened. temple had feels seeing grif, thought he was biff. though he got harsh on grif later. i guess he was just really disappointed to find out that he wasn't. heh. sarge, i think you put a delicious mental image in temple's mind there. oh no. the message is fake. church is dead forever. dammit. well at least my sincerely me animatic will be kinda canon-compliant. :P and oh, my feels! about both temple hammering in the finality of death, thinking of biff as well as church most likely, and how the blood gulch crew feels now they all know church is dead forever. ... well, okay, maybe temple has a time machine and they can fix this, but... that's not a guarantee, unfortunately. goddammit. grif said "sorry." not that he loved simmons. damn. well, okay, it's not bad that he said "sorry" but i want him to confess his feelings too. and everyone basically thought grif was a big fuck up. :( and hmmm... it doesn't look like grif is trying to reach temple through their similarities. not yet anyway. even though i'm sure that's the only shit that would work, considering that temple has wooed lots of reds and blues to his cause and thus would probably just get replaced as leader if he was killed. and i feel like killing as a solution would sorta render the desert gulch crew's similarities to the blood gulch crew pointless, would not make full use of that. locus is saving the freelancers! which proves them all wrong! grif didn't fuck it up after all!
got caught up (or as caught up as a non-FIRST member can be! so, up through 15) Spoiler: ep 14+15 holy shit ok i was a few eps behind but i saw some stuff on tumblr and was like holy shit grif is back??? locus is back???? i HAVE TO SEE THIS also i loved simmons' attempt at stealth, and shooting lopez into fucking space was incredible AND he got picked up by locus which means their message in a bottle ACTUALLY WORKED but ep 15 was my fave, grif who's basically starved for company/conversation and wants to confess something to simmons!! and locus oh my god i'm so glad he's back & he's helping out ETA: AND GRIF HAS LEARNED SOME SPANISH HOLY SHIT I WAS LAUGHING AT LOPEZ SNARKING AT SARGE "Why don't you... play golf? Or crochet? Or learn a second language?" AND THEN!! THIS HAPPENED!!! Spoiler: ep 15 this is exactly my attitude. like if rvb goes Maximum Gay i will be So Psyched but i'm prepared for it to not. ALSO i have a fic rec for y'all green is definitely not a shade of red by Prim_The_Amazing 16k, incomplete, no major pairings summary: it is hilarious & i love it.
Spoiler: ep 15 I'm 99% sure Grif is trying to apologize for something, given the sounds he makes and the words the others jump to. That said, I really want it to be a shippy apology, like, so much. I didn't ship them particularly hard before the last few seasons, but...
Spoiler: ep 17 ah. no temple this ep. no temple at all. hah. carolina's being carolina, trying to do shit even though she literally can't do anything at all. and ooh, looks like locus just won a point over her there, saying that she and wash had done bad shit too and also had needed redemption. and good job, sarge! saving people, admitting mistakes! fuck yeah! and tucker's doing his tucker black-and-white thing again, his "fuck nuance and stab shit with my sword" thing. and grif still thinks everyone hates him, and that he thinks he hates everyone. and jax thought grif and simmons were gonna kiss! but they didn't. alas... ... and oh, fuck, we're losing washington, aren't we? 'cause i don't see him surviving a bullet to the throat, goddammit.... church confirmed dead last ep, washington is probably gonna be dead... fuck... fuck fuck fuck... ... though hopefully, if washington dies, maybe that'll mean grif won't, that one death will be enough and it will turn out that they weren't foreshadowing grif's death after all... i dunno. just, please, wash, survive this fucking season. everyone, please, survive... we've already lost church, goddammit!
Spoiler: ep 18 still no temple. the quiet moment of them mourning washington is really sad. it's a laser drill. disappointing. vic's back! and hah, i like how the blood gulch crew acknowledged their similarities to the desert gulch crew, even though i reckon that church would have been able to give them a better look into temple than caboose and sarge ever could. :P also temple is a dork. that is the dorkiest plan of all time. (and it parallels fake!sarge's plan to save fake!blood gulch in season 9. i wonder how much church's mind influenced that plan, given that it took place in the memory unit and was made by people conjured out of his own head. and heh. fake!sarge. that describes surge too.) and i see the parallels there. a light blue and an orange, talking by the fire, one wanting to leave their team and the other wanting to stop them. and two very different endings to the conversation. i like that they think of blood gulch as their home instead of earth now. wow. they're going to earth. it just hit me. they're going to earth. that's new. and i really hope that doesn't mean this season gonna be the end of red vs blue. 'cause it feels like the type of thing that could bring an end to the series, you know... it feels like if red vs blue is gonna ever end forever, it'll do so on earth or blood gulch. and this season does have a lot of aspects that would fit a finale season. "for church."
Spoiler: ep 17 shit, is that why i kept seeing stuff telling people not to send death threats to this season's director/writer? (for fuck's sake...) anyways, yikes. i don't want wash to die, and i especially don't want him to have a death like that... if he had to die i wish it would be more meaningful eta: also locus in this ep was Great, i love how absolutely Done he was
Spoiler: ep 17 yeah, i think that's what caused joe nicolosi to start getting death threats. like, i think most of the fandom was mad at him already, but that made them absolutely explode.
Spoiler: ep 17 see, i don't get why they'd be mad at him before this happened; i know i've been enjoying this season so far! i still don't have FIRST so i will have to wait and see whether ep 18 confirms death or not. hopefully tumblr doesn't spoil me, but then i managed to avoid the ep 17 spoilers - the only thing i knew was that people were spending death threats because of it.
i've been enjoying it too. but judging by the tag, before the thing happened, other people haven't 'cause they think the grimmonsy stuff is queerbaiting (possible), they think wash and carolina are gonna be written into a hetero romance with each other just for the sake of the hetero (wtf tumblr), and they don't like jax and the desert gulch crew (a matter of different strokes for different folks, i think).
yeah i've been making sure to hold my tongue on the grimmonsy stuff, since the defining factor of whether it is queerbaiting is whether it ever delivers, and since we're not at the end of the season yet it may still deliver. doesn't surprise me that tumblr doesn't have that kind of patience, given how little time they give SU to tackle the plotlines they want tackled.
yep, it is. that and i think grif and simmons taking a while, having trouble with confessing their feelings, even after grif leaving and grif deciding to apologize for leaving, is something that makes sense for them as characters and for red vs blue as a show. 'cause, like, seriously, most of the time, the characters on the show have difficulty with confessing that they are friends with each other, let alone in love.
