Aw, f'n tumblr. I have very little RNW content in my Tumblr feed, really just gifsets, and that's about how I like it.

WRT Alex -- what the fuck what the fuck what the *fuck*. I mean, I get it that people are like that. I am not at all surprised by that. But it was such a loving experience, love on a number of different levels, that I call complete bullshit on anything else. It was a healing threesome! Alex started to legitimately move on! And not just from Michael, but from his own shame and internalized homophobia and his long-term closet space too.

Heaven knows that if they'd wanted to keep the OT3 going I would have been super there for it, but you're exactly right, Michael and Alex need to grow up, separately and together, and could really do with being friends for a good stretch of time.

I am also not sold on Forrest, but honestly, he is exactly the kind of dude Alex would have had a college relationship with, had he gone to a lib arts school instead of the Air Force. It feels very on point for that relationship to happen, as Alex lets himself be himself, and the kind of delayed young adulthood folks -- especially gay cis men -- who come out of the closet a little bit later so often experience.

Honestly RNW is appointment television now, which is so hilarious to me, because I was very side-eye at the whole idea of a reboot. Once the season's over I'm pretty sure I'll go back and watch from 1x01 all the way through season two to see how it feels as a meta-narrative.

I have managed to convince myself not to try and read the books like I attempted once back in high school. I wish the fic was just a litttttttle bit further along, fandom wise, to engage with all the worldbuilding and mythology and not just the OTP(s).

Yeah, about Alex: It really pisses me off and frankly makes me feel like they're diminishing the idea of actual sexual assault, but it's not really anything I have actual standing to get into. And not the kind of conversation that will go well on any level. But honestly, they could not have made it clearer that Alex was consenting.

I understand if people are protective of one of the few gay characters on TV, and if they feel like this is a betrayal of his sexuality, but it was all just really ugly. Let alone the usual racism and misogyny that's inevitable.

So far the theme of season 2 seems to be DNA. The details of the alien biology, but also with a really strong theme of motherhood and genetics running through it. Rosa and her addiction problems, the truth behind what happened to Michael's mother, the revelation that Maria's grandmother was experimented on and is passing that on to her descendants. Plus, Max basically altering Rosa's DNA.

remind me, what is RNW?

Roswell, New Mexico. CW reboot of the old Roswell show, currently airing second season.

Ah yes. I know of it, I was just confusing it with PNW for some reason.

Dana, I completely agree. For folx my age and younger, sexuality has fallen more on a spectrum than a binary; your identity as a gay or queer or lesbian person doesn't 1:1 to your choices of sexual partners, especially as gender identity becomes increasingly more fluid as well. That whole scene felt very true to my lived experience, and very healing and loving. People suck.

I think you're right about DNA and motherhood, but definitely an emphasis on motherhood as an act of continuing a generation -- Isobel's choice to terminate her pregnancy, all the flashbacks to Michael's mom (maybe the Evans' twins mom too?) really are digging in more to those idea. The whole thing where Noah's heart could somehow magically (alienly?) be transplanted to Max's body, as if there was no risk of rejection much less the necessity of the homebrewed pacemaker Michael whipped up -- it hints at things about the alien DNA that I think we're starting to see play out with Rosa, and her manifestation of powers.

I'm guessing you know where this is going vis a vis the books, but just in case here's spoiler text: The whole thing with the three of them being clones in the books sort of drills down even harder into the idea of the importance of DNA -- their DNA as reincarnations(ish) of three significant Altaran leaders, and how important it was to protect their re-cloned bodies in the pods, is the underlying factor in the DNA story. It suggests more largely, since we're seeing other Altaran characters so early in this version of the series, that cloning to reincarnate/maintain immortality was a regular thing, at least for some strata of society.

It'll be interesting to see how it plays out. I don't love Michael coding Maria's psychic thing as a disease -- not only because she herself chose to move away from than language about her own body, but because it's a side effect of some unknown procedure that is sufficiently mutated to pass down through three generations of a matrilineal line. That kind of thing isn't easily "fixed", and I don't think "fixed" is the right perspective at all. This is going to bite him in the ass and, I'm betting now, be the catalyst for fucking up their relationship. (Bless his heart.)

Last week's episode was weird as hell. I'm super curious about this week's ep.

I think this is right for here -- I started watching "Motherland: Fort Salem" and it's pretty intriguing. Very full on with the show's mythology, and I really appreciate the 100% commitment to the wlw lead romance.

All the militarism and terrorism stuff makes me super twitchy, though. Not exactly a comforting watch.

I finished S4 of The Magicians last night. I'm glad I was spoiled for it, because that was a hot goddamn mess. Well, the whole season kind of was. It had way too many storylines that just didn't come together.

And I'm left wondering how Margo went from amazing badass to Must Look At A Fish (and also BAKE FOR HIM). What the FUCK. And Julia didn't even get to make the choice of what happened to her, and Kady said out loud that all she ever wanted was to be Penny's girlfriend. What the FUCK happened to how these badass women were written earlier???

I have too many feelings about Quentin to articulate right now.

::pets:: Yeah. Better to have been spoiled by far.

Roswell:

There was a lot packed into this episode, whew. I really liked the way Alex & Forest's date was handled. It really highlighted how debilitating Alex's internalized homophobia is, and how his fear of being out in public is rooted in trauma. He is a confident, capable, powerful man who nearly singlehandedly undermined Jesse Manes' and the Manes family's life work; but all of that accomplishment and self-worth doesn't automatically transfer to all areas of one's life. We can feel confident at work, and simultaneously feel paralyzed by social anxiety.

Now, twice, from Michael and now from Forest, Alex has been told that men he's interested in are not willing to compromise their own self-worth for the furtive pleasures of a secret relationship. Alex has to decide to put in the work, or not, to deal with his shit, if he wants the love life his emo teenage self dreamed of. That's some pretty nuanced character growth for a CW show!

It's interesting to see how deeply Jesse Manes appears to have changed. I don't prefer to think of this as comeuppance -- god knows he made so many people's lives miserable, from his own family to the imprisoned aliens at Caufield, but that is brutal karmic justice, to be so immediately and thoroughly disabled. I don't really *care* about whether or not Jesse can or is interested in repairing his relationship with Alex and Flint and their brothers. But I think that's the direction the show may be going in with him, apart from being a handy exposition resource to move the alien plot along.

Rosa's relapse was very sad. It was always coming, one way or another; Kyle pronouncing her body "free from addiction" upon her revival was the reddest of flags, because addiction isn't merely biological, it is of course deeply psychological. I'm glad she's going to rehab, and I hope it points to positive character development; heaven knows that girl's been through the worst of it all.

I was pretty meh about the whole Cameron thing... I just haven't been invested in her or her storyline, though I like her well enough as a character. I guess the gang's all back together now, wth Cameron's return. I thought Max's choices were interesting, though -- he's clearly struggling so hard with being on restriction, and that Isobel and Michael were able to carry on and grow without him there. For Big Brother Max that's kind of a blow, and his overreaction in white knighting Cameron points to the unresolved psychological shit Max hasn't dealt with from Rosa's revival through his death and now his return.

And we haven't even picked back up on the whole dire alien warning thing! Max's whole "if I am here they will come" deal -- that's a thread that feels entirely too dangly.

Also, I was so excited that Jamie Clayton was the guest star this week -- I loved her in Sense8, and I'm thrilled she's picking up work.