“Demigods, The Time Has Come. I Am Thrilled To Introduce You To Percy Jackson”. -Rick Riordan

leverage is a monster-of-the-week show, but the monsters are corporate greed, conglomerates, and capitalism.

thinking about this moment again:

particularly in regards to this conversation:

thinking about inej, who is actively dying, asking kaz for an apology. inej, whose native tongue leaves no room for triviality here. this isn’t “you were mean to me and you need to make nice,” it’s so much deeper.

this is “promise me you won’t treat me like a piece in your chess game again. promise me you won’t keep acting like i’m replaceable. promise me i’m not just another one of your investments.”

this is the first time we see inej holding kaz accountable, the first time we see her ask him to be more, to do better. this is the precursor to the “without armor” conversation. and i think it’s fitting that we never hear whether or not kaz did apologize. because at this point, i don’t think he’s ready to give inej what she’s really asking for here, and in a way, it’s best that she doesn’t hear him say the words. he’s not ready to mean them yet.

when you grew up as a lonely uncool girl it will never stop haunting you by the way. you will meet a cool person at a bar or the train station or at a friend's party and you can wear your most stylish outfit and striking eye makeup and you will swear that they can see through all of the facade and see the lonely terribly insecure teenage girl you used to be who desperately wanted to connect and you will swear that they know that there is like an insurmountable gap between you. this will happen forever

The thing is, I can forgive a lot of it. The scene where Kaz tries to help Inej with her wounds? I guess it was a nice nod to the CK scene, if slightly too soon. The "I will have you without Armour?" Fine. We all wanted to see that anyway. Rushing Wesper into a relationship rather than keeping as the slow-burn from the books? Okay. I really loved them on screen despite that. Kaz beating up the dregs? Definitely could have done without it for obvious reasons, but whatever. I can brush it off.

But the two things that are really grating on me are Kaz's face-off with Pekka Rollins and Inej leaving to hunt slavers. Because the POINT of these things happening towards the end of the second book is that there's a build up.

These characters go through so much. We learn everything about them, we see their struggles and we root for them. We spend SO much time learning about Kaz's thirst for revenge. We see moments where he starts to lose it when it comes to Pekka, and slowly start to learn why. And at the climax of Crooked Kingdom, there's so much on the line. We finally see him snap. There's a build up there of something that he's spent his entire life and two whole books working towards.

The first season of Shadow and Bone consisted of 8 episodes. So we can estimate that the crows had probably less than 4 hours of screen time. And we learned nothing about them, really. They were the mysterious trio that were hired to steal something. And then suddenly S2E1's "Brick by brick" turns into the peak of Kaz's character arc. It takes away the impact and the reasoning behind it.

And the same for Inej. Where is the journey? Where's the trauma that was inflicted by a woman who was truly evil? When we see Inej running into Tante Heleen for the first time in the duology, she freezes. She can't do anything. Are you telling me that the same girl who is so terrified of this woman can face her without a problem?

Again, there's so much of a development here as well. Inej has this realisation and this epiphany about what she wants to do. She wants to hunt down these slavers. She wants to make sure that nobody goes through the same stuff that she did. And when she sees Heleen after that, it's when she slowly starts to lose power over Inej. I mean, she steals the necklace straight from her neck, for crying out loud. Erasing Inej's trauma from S1 was a problem but they dug themselves in a deeper hole by killing off Heleen. She can't go through the journey that she's supposed to. Her entire character arc was just completely erased.

And the thing is, in the duology, Inej still goes through even more hell before she can get free from her indenture. The Ice Court Heist, Van Eck's torture, Dunyasha, etc. And yet... she's free before the start of the heist?

The heist is an important job for each crow. They all have a reason for being there, and they all have something on the line. None of them really think they're going to survive it, but they're trying anyway because, at this point, what do they really have to lose? And for Inej, this is her chance to get the money to leave the barrel. So... are you telling me that she's going to willingly come back to help on a life-threatening job for freedom that she no longer needs? What's going to happen with Kaz now that he's already had that stand-off?

Would love to know because right now I'm as lost as the rest of the book fans.

the frequency of needing to food shop because you eat food and therefore deplete what you previously bought and need to restock…………being an adult is a nightmare

⏳ Madrigal Apologies⏳ "Let's all talk about Bruno!!"

He may be able to predict the future, but he sure couldn't predict this! Since they didn't apologize to him in the movie, this is my Head canon.

Fight me if you have any issues about that. ❤️

it’s crazy that they do the ‘taking off glasses makeover’ thing in movies when real life is always like someone you see everyday wears glasses once and is suddenly incredibly hot

OKAY BUT PICTURE THIS!!!!

soc spin-off, right? We get through the whole ice court heist, we’re on our way back to ketterdam. In the book, now is when we get the “I will have you without armour, Kaz Brekker. Or I will not have you at all.” But we’ve already gotten that scene in the show. Inej is already off on her own journey, and she’s had to come back for the heist. But the point is she (and most likely Kaz as well) have gotten through more character development compared to the books.

Which means that THAT scene will have to be replaced with something BIGGER, a step further into their relationship. I can’t even begin to think what it could be like (no gloves??), but I know it will definitely have me screaming.

But do you know what that means as well? The scene of Van Eck noticing Inej as Kaz’s tell and kidnapping her (which happens right after this) will have ANOTHER whole new level of ANGST, and I’m not sure I can handle it.

I’m going to get my money, Kaz vowed. And I’m going to get my girl.

I’m screaming, I can’t wait.

I don't think I've ever seen a show being more found family coded than Person of Interest

Strip the show to its bare bones and it's essentially about a isolated, traumatised guy who lost everybody, chasing death. He gets saved by the power of friendship, found family and adopts a dog. And I for one think that's beautiful