#timeless salt

[c-sand]

Every now and then, I think about how Timeless was butchered and wasted. How the writers used, what was theoretically their final chance to wrap up the story (although the momentum of the audience, prior, meant they were hoping it would reinvigorate the campaign once more, I think which lol whoopsi), to present the equivalent of a poorly written fanfic script on screen. Filled to the brim with ship names spoken out loud and poorly constructed and completely thoughtless plot devices. 

With ship baiting and ship mocking. With the total erasure of the poc plotlines that were, um, kind of a big deal and very crucial to the storyline. Instead reducing their entire personalities and relevance to them wanting the bland and loveless couple to get together. With the murder of a wife and her suddenly fake child, for no reason other than they needed to quickly get out of the way so that bland and loveless couple could get together. With the murder of the most interesting and complex character on the show, because *reasons* -- poor ones -- extremely extremely poor ones. 

With the erasure of the main characters’ entire motivation -- returning her sister back into the timeline -- with a single line in a crappy scene that was basically created to kick people who love Flynn further into the ground. With the character mutilation of an incredibly dope female villain, who’s motivation was turned into a cartoon caricature talking about diamonds and jewels. With entire plot lines about visions of the end of the world simply not being addressed, because man why bother putting in the effort to try and make it work. With the established rules of time travel just being tossed out the window and haphazardly warped, in order to suit them whenever need be. With ending things with Lucy in a job she never wanted, with a man who treats her like garbage.

And then, rubbing dirt in every single wound they’d just inflicted on our bodies, by naming the children after Amy and Flynn.

Every now and then, I think about how Timeless was butchered and wasted and it makes me so sad. That ending. Was so. Embarrassing. And so insulting to everyone who fought for the show to get the chance to come back. Twice.

The ship names out loud. 

I cannot believe.

[mearcatsreturns]

I guess my anti-capitalism extension is screwy, because it’s not blocking out sponsored posts. I’ve tried running adblock on it, but it messes up the entire site for me.

Every time I see the fucking ad for the Boys, I get a fresh wave of anger toward Kripke and I want to see it less. Which, you know, the opposite of a good ad. 

[letmetellyouaboutmyfeels]

I just watched the end of Timeless, and my heart is broken. Flynn deserves so much love, it hurts me

Ack my darling. First of all, allow me to hug you. Let us cry together. *pets your hair* There there. We have all been there. Let the pain work through you. All of our hearts were broken. We knew it would be bad but we didn’t know it would be that bad. I know I personally was so betrayed I don’t watch in-progress TV shows anymore. I know I’ve annoyed friends by refusing to watch shows they’ve recommended, but I have to stand firm. I just can’t go through that again (I will point out, Timeless was the straw that broke the camel’s back, I had been burned repeatedly by other shows before that).

Your pain is valid my dear. And I’m so sorry for it.

Second of all, if you are ready for it, once you’ve let the denial and anger and bargaining and depression stages work through you, allow me to suggest @timeless-season-four to patch your heart up. It’s a beautiful brilliant season three (and now season four) created and run by the ever-talented @qqueenofhades who is truly our lord and savior in this matter. If you want justice for Flynn, if you want him to get the recognition and validation and love he deserves, then please, do yourself a favor and read Season Three. It’s a treat on every level. You will not be disappointed. First episode is found here.

There is also Make Amends With All My Shadows, another take on season three done in fic form by @squidproquoclarice. It’s still in progress and hasn’t been updated since November ‘18 but it is still SO SO GOOD and I think you will enjoy it.

Third of all, YES. FLYNN DESERVES ALL THE LOVE. HE IS A TRAGIC HERO, A GOOD MAN, A LAYERED AND FLAWED BUT BEAUTIFUL HUMAN BEING. HOLY SHIT FUCK I DON’T EVEN HAVE WORDS TO DESCRIBE HOW MUCH I LOVE HIM. Flynn is hands-down the fictional character with whom I identify the most, head and shoulders above the rest, and to see him be treated like that by the writers had me crying for a week straight (let’s be fair, I’m not finished crying, in fact I’m tearing up a bit right now). He is loyal, angry, lost, searching, struggling with his faith and with his idea of himself, going against his own moral code and hating himself for it, he’s compassionate, he feels so so deeply, he’s prickly and sarcastic and sassy and brilliant, he’s a nerd, he’s soft as fuck, he’s complex. He supports those around him. He knows what it is to be hopeless, to hate yourself, to be depressed. He loves above and beyond with every fiber of his being to the point of stupidity and beyond that. GOD I FUCKING LOVE HIM AND YOU ARE VALID FOR LOVING HIM TOO, DEAR SWEET NONNY. LET US WEEP TOGETHER.

*ahem*

Your broken heart is understandable and valid. Mine is broken too. Let us rejoice in the gifts fandom has given us. Flynn doesn’t belong to them anymore. He’s ours now. @extasiswings @qqueenofhades and I adopted him last year WE HAVE THE PAPERWORK TO PROVE IT and he is safe and loved and no harm can come to him anymore. *curls around Flynn and hisses at the Timeless writers*

*hugs you again* Cry it out, nonny. We understand.

[misscrazyfangirl321]

For some reason, hearing that they're auctioning off the Timeless props is more real/harder for me than when the show was cancelled after the finale.

After the finale, there was just sheer relief. Relief that they wouldn't write MORE like that ending. Relief that I wouldn't have to look at those unfamiliar versions of the characters I knew and loved, and hear that they were canon.

But over time, I guess I started to hope that the writers would see all the backlash, all the hurt fans, and come up with something new. Something different.

That they'd FIX this.

I know that we have fanfiction. I know that the community is still here, and believe me, I'm grateful for it.

But to hear that it's actually really over-that there's no fixing this, not in canon, that Timeless ends on a note like that-is hitting me harder than expected.

I don't think I really realized how much I was hoping for that until now.

[costalglow]

Flynn deserved to die! He did terrible things!!

Complete rubbish. He followed the journal, which correct me if I’m wrong, was written by Lucy. He followed what the journal said even when others thought it was risky (“Are you sure you can trust that thing?”). If Flynn who just relied Lucy and what she said doesn’t deserve redemption then surely Lucy doesn’t either??

[letmetellyouaboutmyfeels]

AND ANOTHER THING...

...I ranted about this to @extasiswings last night but nope nope I’m not over it so it goes here on my permanent record.

Garcia Flynn was a murderer and doesn’t deserve a happy ending!?

He was a villain!?

His relationship with Lucy was abusive!?

WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU ALL SMOKING YOU IGNORANT PEA-BRAINED MORONS WHO CLEARLY LACK THE SKILLS TO THINK CRITICALLY NEVER MIND PASS A FUCKING BASIC ENGLISH EXAM IN FRESHMAN YEAR AT A TWO-BIT COMMUNITY COLLEGE!?

Do you have any idea how many times a villain has been introduced and people just... woobify the fuck out of him?

I’m talking villains who threaten to rape the heroine, threaten to hurt her or torture her, torture her friends in front of her, deliberately hurt her or go out of their way to hurt her, gaslight her, manipulate her, lie to her, try to control her, and show no remorse for their actions and justify everything they’re doing?

I mean dear God look at the Phantom from Phantom of the Opera who starts his relationship with Christine by manipulating her through pretending to be her dead father and trying to control literally who she sees, when she sees them, how she spends her days, etc.

Meanwhile on the other hand we have Flynn who knew from the start what he was doing was wrong, never said that it wasn’t wrong and let it eat him up alive and hated himself for doing it but sacrificed his own morality and turned himself, by his own admission/words, into a “monster,” in order to defeat a greater evil. Flynn said he wasn’t worthy of seeing his family again after what he’d done and was doing, even though he was trying to only target y’know the members of an evil white supremacist cult who tried to control the world.

In regards to Lucy, Flynn a) never once lied to her b) grabbed her roughly by the arm twice c) never manipulated her or tried to gaslight her d) implored her to listen to him e) always let her rant at him--which she does several times, she’s never once scared of him and she lets him have it on quite a few occasions and he sits there and takes it--and f) whenever he lands her into trouble he always regrets it. In 1x04 and other instances where Flynn gets the time team into trouble he then always has an “oh shit” look on his face when he realizes just how much boiling water he’s dumped them into--it’s not so much a “mwahaha” moment as it is an, “I tried to put out this fire with water but I grabbed a bucket of gasoline instead.”

We could point out that he grabbed her by the throat and threw her out of the way to shoot Lincoln but even that isn’t “I’m deliberately trying to hurt you,” it’s “fuck shit get out of my way.” Flynn has several opportunities to hurt, torture, manipulate, lie to, and even kill Lucy and he never takes a single one of them, to the point where in 1x10 and 1x16 Lucy puts herself directly in front of his gun, knowing he won’t shoot her.

Even Wyatt, who Flynn ties up and uses as collateral--Flynn spends the whole time trying to get Wyatt on his side and honestly I highly doubt he would’ve really shot Wyatt. When Rufus is shot in 1x15, Flynn doesn’t even know that’s what’ll happen--he has no way of controlling that. And I’m sorry but y’all need to get over the whole shooting Lincoln thing. According to Lucy herself, Flynn was preserving history with that, and when we look at the fact that Lucy later does the exact same thing by shooting Jesse James to preserve history... yeah that doesn’t hold water anymore sorry.

Does Flynn have asshole moments where he’s total garbage? Um, yes. But he literally sacrifices his own humanity to save lives and fight an evil supremacist cult and spends his whole time trying to convince the heroes to help him. He struggles with it the whole time. He doesn’t sleep, he goes to churches to pray and ask for guidance, he feels alone and worthless.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Flynn is the tragic hero trope. The only reason he’s seen as a villain is that he’s not the POV character, Lucy is, and so we see things from her side. But if you look at the sequence of events objectively, Flynn’s the hero of the piece.

In fact, if Flynn was the main POV character, I can already hear in my head the misogyny that would be unleashed at Lucy. “How come she gave him the journal and now doesn’t believe him? Is she a double agent?” “Guys c’mon I don’t think she’s actively evil I think she’s just stupid.” “WHY ISN’T SHE LISTENING TO HIM GOD.” “Flynn has too much of a soft spot for Lucy bitch needs to go.” The Lucy wank would be epic. And I’m not saying that would be okay, God no--I’m saying that if you switch the POV characters, suddenly in everyone’s heads the positions of hero and villain are switched, too, and you know what that means?

It means Flynn was never a villain in the first place.

Anakin Skywalker is always the villain. The prequels show us how he became Vader but you don’t see anyone realizing his actions were okay or justified. It’s a tragic story because you see the humanity in him, but it’s still the story of a villain. How many Batman comics have there been that tell the Joker’s story? Dozens. But the Joker’s always still a villain in them. If a simple change in the POV is all it takes for an audience to switch allegiances, that should tell you a hell of a lot about the characters involved.

I’m going into all of this because it pisses me the fuck off that I’ve had to watch, on this very hellsite, people excusing villains left right and center. I mean look at your beloved Supernatural where the two main characters do so much questionable shit I can’t even bother to make a list. Look at OUAT... actually you know what let’s not do that, dear God. Look at Loki (as he was written by Whedon in the first Avengers film). I mean the list goes on and on and on. Fandom is wonderful but it also has a lot of problems and it’s willing to excuse every handsome white male villain or ambiguous or morally gray character no matter what the fuck they do...

...and then suddenly Flynn comes along and y’all have Puritan morality standards?

Maybe it’s subtle anti non-American, anti-Eastern European racism at work here. I don’t fucking know. But it pisses me off beyond belief that every villain on this fucking site gets an apology and a half and nobody has the critical thinking skills to support an actual Tragic Hero when he’s sitting right in front of your fucking faces.

[letmetellyouaboutmyfeels]

I’m loving all the prompts and it’s sure making me happier about Garcy. You know what’s funny, I think I could have lived better if Flynn just had appeared in the first episode, killing him in that dumb way would still make me livid but the way they did São Paulo was the final straw, the final “fuck you” to all of us, and I know the guy in charge wanted that scene but good god, did he want like that I wonder, was everyone involved in this show a dick who thought everyone was a Lyatt shipper.

Nonny, oh my sweet nonny, I agree 100%.

São Paulo was the one thing, the one thing, that us Flynn fans were hoping for and they took it away by having Wyatt and Rufus there because how dare anything even possibly get in the way of Ly@tt for ten seconds, and having our compassionate heroine Lucy Preston turned into a manipulative pod person who implicated herself, Wyatt, and Rufus in all of Flynn’s “bad deeds” by literally telling him to go and do them and lying to him about how it would be and dangling false hope in front of a suicidal, desperate man.

Literally, WTF.

Now, we can’t speak for all the writers, because there are some who weren’t involved in writing this finale. So they get a pass although they’re still on thin fucking ice. But the two people who wrote the episode were clearly not only Ly@tt biased and shit writers who wouldn’t last a day in a community college Fiction Writing 101 class, but they listened to the 10% of the fandom that is the Ly@tt Echo Chamber on Twitter.

Personally, this showcases two important things to me about television and how it’s behind the 8 ball:

1. Writers need to start admitting that stories evolve and that they need to abandon their Original Plan. Dear God, I want to lock all TV writers in a room with Matthew Mercer and force them to play Dungeons and Dragons so that they learn that no matter how much you plan out a story, it will evolve in crazy ways and that’s a good thing. Television writing is a) long form storytelling and b) collaborative storytelling, because you have the directors and the crew and the actors and the fans all throwing in their input and thoughts. This is like the ending of How I Met Your Mother times a hundred, in that they shoehorned in their original pairing ending by literally shitting on everyone’s character development, ignoring the characters of color (to which I can only say, wow), and setting feminism in media back about ten years. When instead, they should have been fair and balanced to all characters, and dared to leave things a bit more open-ended and honored where the story had evolved to. Your stories evolve and change, god fucking dammit, and if TV writers don’t accept that, they’re going to keep writing utter horseshit and pissing off all their fans.

2. Writers need to start actually understanding how fandom works. Twitter is an echo chamber and honestly dangerous for your health as a fan. I have had at least two people whose mental health took a dangerous, and I mean dangerous, dive because they were on Twitter in the Timeless fandom. Writers can’t just look at the 10% who are screaming on Twitter about Ly@tt or whatever the shit. If they really want to do something for ‘all fans’, they need to assign someone to go onto Tumblr, to look at ALL the hashtags on Twitter, to read all the blogs and articles, to actually go into the fandom and see what everyone is saying. Because the loudest fans aren’t always the majority and sometimes they’re the crackpots. Writers need to respect fans, yes, but they clearly don’t understand fandom and are scared of it, and so just threw this shit at us thinking it was what we wanted instead of actually a) holding onto their artistic integrity b) honoring how the story had evolved c) being fair and unbiased towards all characters and d) actually doing their homework on what fans wanted.

Until these two issues are resolved in television, we’re going to keep getting shit on.

As for the guy in charge… I mean, I shouldn’t have had so much faith in Kripke seeing what’s happened with Supernatural, but given that the two main characters on that show are morally gray tragic heroes I at least thought he’d let Flynn, a BETTER WRITTEN AND ACTED morally gray tragic hero, have the kind of respectful treatment he deserved.

But y’know fuck that I guess.

I think honestly it was a combination of things. A combination of rushing the story, a combination of not honoring how the story had evolved and listening to the Twitter Echo Chamber instead of actually doing their homework, a combination of picking the wrong (crappy) writers to pen the finale and not looking at their own damn canon for context and inspiration on character development.

But at the end of the day, does it really matter why? Or what anyone was thinking? No. When we’re with kids, it’s important that we help them understand why they knocked the milk off the counter or why they threw a fit because we’re teaching them self-awareness and how to better handle a situation. But if you’re an adult, I don’t give a single flying fuck why you knocked the milk off the counter, just apologize and clean up the mess.

Seeing as the writers are telling us (and roping actual ray of sunshine and No. 1 Flynn fan Goran into it, GOD I want to hug that poor man) that the milk didn’t spill at all and we’ve got no reason to be upset since there’s no mess in the first place… yeah.

It really is just a ‘fuck you’ to their characters, their story, and 90% of their fanbase, isn’t it nonny?

*sigh* I’m sorry. As you can see I have a lot of anger and it’s not going away quickly. *hugs you* I’m glad that my stories can in any way help you. I highly recommend that you get into @timeless-season-three and proceed to ignore the movie, like we all ignore that Last Airbender film that definitely was never made, shame about that.