Guess who's back

Dimension 20: Misfits and Magic Season 2, Episode 8: The Man We've Been Waiting For

This is one of my favorite moments in the series! It's such an important realization, and I'm so happy it was Jammer that triggered it. You can hear the truth a hundred ways, but it's still a leap of faith to KNOW it. You were brought to Gowpenny after the discovery that anyone can do magic! The physical manifestations of magic see you as their peers! Lemli took the magic from the bones of dead wizards! K has a server farm of amplification magic in their mind! You are magic.

YOU ARE MAGIC. The wand and the houses and the twee little magical isekai are a PSYOP meant to hold you back. Nostalgia for the past is holding you back. Snap the wand, because you can build something better to take its place. Even the mechanics tell the story. This was always the story.

This is the weirdest comparison but all I can think of is the US Constitution and how there were men involved in its creation who thought it should be updated semi regularly, but it's now treated by certain groups as a holy document that can't be touched and every amendment passed was like pulling teeth

Humans create systems in which to exist, however it is a failure of the imagination to not include in that system a process for adapting and adjusting to better fit changes in the world. People aren't stagnant, society evolves. It's a necessity for survival

But particularly with authoritarian systems, those at the top want to keep things exactly the same so they remain in power forever. It doesn't work. Time moves on, and so does the culture. And it's extremely short sighted to think they can force everyone to remain hobbled

Life is resistance and change. And that's cool as fuck

Has this been done?

can we talk about jammer consistently refusing opportunities that give him an advantage over other people in his community?

i keep getting stuck on the magical community kitchens that he wanted to create in the epilogue of the initial season. evan thinks about abolishing the wall between magic and mundane, k thinks how to facilitate access to information, sam thinks of leading with kindness and education. jammer thinks of the essentials of life. if we have a kitchen that can make anything without the burden of material resources, why would any being in the world go hungry?

jammer leaves school to preserve his sovereignty over his body and freedom of movement, but he also gives up something that would make him meaningfully more powerful than anybody in his day to day. with magic being wild and unpredictable, he can't funnel it into solving the most pressing problems affecting the people around him and therefore, there's not enough incentive for him to push past how freaky it might make him look to whip out a wand and do magic about it.

whitney doesn't have to be at LEEP as much as he is. he doesn't have to be getting 40-50 points a game. he tries to do a little magic because someone specifically asked about it but magic itself is not making enough of a fundamental impact on the way he can achieve his goals for him to use it. so he puts it away.

what i am getting out of jammer's arc so far is that the other members of the pilot program function to ask what magic can do. what is the nature of it in this form or that form? jammer is on this quest to ask "what is magic for? can we use it so that every body has everything they need to live a good life?"

love jammer.

sam britian is honestly everything i wanted allison hargreeves to be in tua and it’s just so nice to watch a Black woman have insane mind breaking power everyone say thank you danielle radford

Belated MisMag thoughts:

Okay I was a little apprehensive going into this and that is fully gone. Sam's immediate response upon hearing Evan say to her "Can I live in your house and be your dog?" was to inform him he was under a magical effect and to request they put a pin in that subject of conversation because she believed he'd feel uncomfortable and mortified later. She says something more about friendship that gets covered up by Lou shouting that he's a good boy, but point being, Sam realizes her friends accidentally got caught in her spell and she does not try to do anything to cross their boundaries

What I absolutely adore about this season is how clearly it presents the fact that has always been there, which is that each magical misfit has the exact same problem presenting in a wildly different way.

Each of these characters thinks that it’s their responsibility to take care of and protect everyone around them, at their own expense. But the presentation of that expense to themselves is so different (Sam’s bubbly, calming exterior vs Evan’s apologetic one vs K’s tendency to act without communication vs Jammer’s tendency to fulfill everyone’s needs before his own) that it’s OF COURSE going to cause conflict.

I missed these characters so much this is the kind of dynamic that I could only dream of

imagine the bad kids meeting the magical misfits.

the moment between sam and evan this episode REALLY highlighted why k and him didn’t work out. evan’s whole “i need to find a way to be in your life in a way that isn’t cumbersome to you” partnered with k’s comment about how being with evan was kind of a burden… just oof

never gonna get tired of Aabria and Brennan playing dnd together, they know each other so well, they are so fun, they're clearly having so much fun ''does Evan have a grenade??'' ''idk will you let me? :)'', ''you know what I'm gonna ask'' ''yeah I throw myself in front of Sam, absolutely'', ''I'll give it to you, if you detach your shadow'' ''.....(pause, clearly aware that with Aabria as a dm, this will have Consequences) yeah I do it, I want to get all of them'', ''is my shadow back with us?'' ''no :)'' ''okay. (concerning)''

And that's just this episode, but there's so many little moments in all of their campaigns that really read as ''I will fuck you up <3'' ''I know and I am walking into it with open eyes <3'' from both of them, never hold any punches, because they know the other one doesn't want them to, just. Inflicting emotional damage on each other for funsies is a love language I guess?

It's beautiful

Thank you Aabria and Brennen for one of the quietest and scariest descriptions of the death of a character I've ever heard.

this trend but with evan kelmp

applebees siblings hcs. i think it would be really fun if all of the applebees siblings ended up queer in some way. set in cork's sophomore year, a while after kristen graduates.

theyve all left their parents house by now, and kristen and sadie have gone no contact. they live at mordred manor and kristen is attempting to get custody of bricker and cork

You ship Sam and Evan for the tenderness, I ship Sam and Evan because the idea of celebrity talk show host Sam Britain introducing her boyfriend Evan Kelmp to a bunch of British celebrities is so fucking funny to me. Evan Kelmp standing next to Sam on the red carpet and getting a microphone shoved in his face and saying something so unhinged that it overshadows the whole Emmys. Evan Kelmp charged with aggravated assault after being startled on date night by a papparazzo. Tabloid headlines reading "Sam Britain stands by her man after brutal attack on The Sun photographer." Do you see the vision.

POV you're a powerful wizard with a fraction of a second to realize that your hubris has led to your death

brennan you did NOT need to look directly at the camera there lmfaooo

Regardless of how angry Evan is at K, however much unresolved conflict they have from their relationship, whatever he’s contending with internally in response to what they said about him, Evan loves K.

He didn’t hesitate. Boudicca attacked K and before they hit the ground, Evan breaks his wand and turns off all the lights in Boudicca’s brain. Hesitation gets you killed. Half measures get you killed. He’s lived his life in survival mode. He knows that if you don’t act decisively and severely you get hurt because it gives your attacker an opportunity. Take no chances. Your life depends on you fighting and winning. So you fight in a way that assures your opponent can’t fight back or get back up and try to hurt you again. It’s not a schoolyard brawl or a sparring session or an organized bout. There’s no such thing as honour or rules. There’s only life and death. Only survival. Anything else but ruthless efficiency is a waste you cannot afford.

Boudicca should’ve known that about Evan. As a teen he fought a full adult in a gas station parking lot. He already sees her as a threat but is willing to show restraint because there are bigger issues. But the second she shows him what she truly is and cannot help but be, it activates the keen animal instinct of survival. He loves K. Attacking what he loves is an attack on him. And all of life has taught him to meet any mortal danger with equally deadly force. She should’ve known. Her arrogance got her killed.